Covert Action Review

Originally posted on 28 May 2016.

Author: Xenus Icelon

Covert Action is a game almost as old as I am, and it has aged very well.
Players begin play as special agent Max Remington of the CIA and their goal is to stop nefarious terrorist plots from happening. To do this the game offers a few clues and the tools to find out more about the plot currently in motion. 

These tools come in the form of four minigames. A combat/stealth hybrid, a driving game, a cipher, and an electronics game. If you find yourself incapable of figuring out the plot one way, you can go through things with an other minigame. This coupled with plentiful options for clues such as local informants means that you will never truly be stuck. But with time of the essence, you will need to decide on how to spend your time, as with every move you make time progresses and the plot continues.
That said, all plots are doable in about an hour each if you don't purposefully delay them.

A big part of the game is figuring out this plot, and finding a way to get into it and disrupt it. You may not always know the hideout of your enemy, you may not always have the evidence to arrest someone who you know is involved. And there are red herrings out there. You need to think things through before acting, figure out where you want to go and when or you will just plain not be able to stop the plot. It's a bit of thought to figure these things out, but it is very satisfying when you get it right.

The minigames are more like one large game, and three minigames. Due to how important the combat/stealth game is you will find yourself doing it often. Everything the other games do, you can get done by the combat minigame as well. You can find clues, messages, make arrests, and do what the other games can not- Find insider info and incriminating evidence to turn an enemy agent into a double agent.
As the most important, or at least most used of the minigames it is also the most fleshed out. You can hide crouched behind desks, sofas, and a whole lot of other furniture, or even standing up behind a file cabinet. Once you have downed an opponent you can take their uniform and disguise yourself, so that other guards don't shoot you on sight. The disguise will work as long as you have your back to the guard - they'll figure out something is up if they see an unfamiliar face. The stealth system in this old gem is a lot more complex than one would at first expect, and once the alarm goes off the combat is again pretty good. You can use cover to avoid being seen by your enemies as you flank them, throw three different kinds of grenades, shoot, and if you run into an enemy you defeat them in personal combat at the cost of one wound.

The goal of this minigame can be whatever you're after. You can go in for an arrest, or you can go in looking for clues. Bringing a camera allows you to take pictures of their sensitive documents(And whatever they hide in the bathroom), while a safe cracking kit lets you open floor safes for insider information. They have a computer system as well, where you can search for information if you can manage to find or guess the password.
For the driving game, I've only found one use. Making an arrest while driving, which can be much easier than going into the hideout. You are also at times followed when driving away, landing you in the driving game where you need to drive to the CIA office in town or get ambushed by armed men.
The cipher game lets you decipher messages you've found, giving you the evidence needed to arrest someone as being a certain participant in the plot. They also help in telling you who, what, and where.
The electronics game lets you wiretap a hideout, giving you information and notifying you of messages they send out. It also lets you put a tracker on a car.


Good design ages well, and it shows. All these minigames work together to make for a great game, four minigames with a single overarching almost puzzle-like game that lets you work your brain to figure things out. Then feel great about yourself for stopping a plot and arresting everyone involved, getting a trip to the casino and having a well deserved vacation. Or you know, you could bumble around for a while and then your failure sends the country spiralling into chaos.

I know I certainly deserved this time off!

On levels in roleplaying games

or

Why “The Legend of Zelda” is the best RPG series I’ve ever played

Introduction

The first roleplaying game in the modern sense of the word is Gary Gygax’s and Dave Anderson’s “Dungeons & Dragons”, based on the wargame “Chainmail”. It allowed players to explore mysterious dungeons, slay horrible monsters and get exciting rewards for doing so. The system included classes, levels, equipment and various other things. Since the first edition of the game (currently on its fifth edition), a whole genre has emerged. Things have changed – not every RPG has classes, not all of them feature equipment in the usual sense of the word. However, one thing is necessary for a game to be generally viewed as an RPG or as having RPG elements – the player character’s advancement and customisation through experience points he gains over the course of the game. It is about this that I want to talk today.

Thesis

Advancement and customisation based on experience points are detrimental to a single-player RPG’s ability to engage the player.

Note: here, “ability to engage the player” is used instead of a more vague and subjective “fun”. If I mention “fun” later on, it means that thing.

Argument

Let us look at a typical open-world RPG (don’t worry, we’ll consider linear RPGs as well). It is divided into various areas and tasks (quests, monster lairs you have to clear out, treasure caches you have to find, etc). Each of those is assigned a level or level range – in the starting village you’ll encounter rats and can find an iron sword; at the Mountain of Gods you’ll find demon-spawn hydras and after completing a long series of quests will get the Infinity Spear. It gives the player a sense of progression, but at the same time serves as a barrier between the player and most of the game’s content. Not being able to access harder areas is fine, the real problem lies with cutting off “outdated” areas.

Remember that village you started in? No reason to go back to that secret stash you’ve missed, it contains a minor healing potion which you have hundreds by now. The bandit fort that was a huge challenge while you were still on the track of the Lich Queen? Would’ve been nice to clear then, the Bow of Undead Slaying was a pretty great treasure for its level. Now you’ll just waste your time to make yet another area devoid of life by clicking through enemies that can’t possibly present a challenge to you. And even if you’re going the completionist route and doing all the level 30 quests before starting the level 31 ones, you’ll notice that after doing about a half of the level 30 ones you’ll already be miles ahead of them, because the game designer has to balance the game around you doing only the bare minimum.

And if the rewards and challenges are based on your level (see: “The Elder Scrolls” series), then what is the point of it? If at my level 1 the rats in the cellar were just regular rats, and when I reach level 50 they turn into angelic dire rats of death, then why did I even bother leveling? If that stash contains an iron sword at level 1 and a fiery sword of poison at level 20, then shouldn’t I postpone opening it until I reach the maximum level for maximum rewards? Not to mention it makes the world seem lifeless, revolving only around the player.

One thing levels and experience points do help with is the sense of character progression and the ability to customise him – when you level, you can choose which stats to improve, which stats to get, think about your further progression. Such a system makes implementing vertical (directly improving your already existing abilities) and horizontal (getting new abilities with power on par with the old ones) progression quite easy, but it is definitely not necessary. “Wolfenstein: The New Order”, for example, let the character improve through finding hidden objects (bonuses to maximum health and armour) and completing specific tasks (new abilities and improvements to old ones).

On that note, “The Legend of Zelda” series, while not usually classified as an RPG series, does the job of giving a sense of progression extremely well. Abilities and upgrades in that game are tied to story progression, exploration and mini-games. You delve into a deep cavern to grab a heart piece (which is always a prize, even when you have almost all of them), you win the race to get a bigger coin bag, and if you ever get stuck – you know you don’t need to grind, you just need to progress along the story to get a new ability that allows you into previously inaccessible areas. It does all that and engages the player without ever using experience points or the like.

A game that is heavily inspired by “The Legend of Zelda” – “Darksiders” – has shown the distinction between level-based and not level-based quite nicely, when its second installment added an “RPG” system as the biggest new feature. The result? “Darksiders II” is bigger, prettier, but ultimately more corridor-like. When coming back to old places for newly-available or missed upgrades, you just run past the enemies (that are too low-level to harm or challenge you) instead of, well, playing the game. When getting new treasure, you’ll often go “Oh, these scythes are worse than those I already have. Oh well.” And the game suffers for it. It becomes a slog where the first part was a fun and rather quick diversion.

And as for the linear RPGs I’ve promised to mention? The state of affairs is even worse there. You either have the opportunity to grind – in which case you’ll often be either ahead or behind the level the designer “intended” you to have at this point – or you don’t, in which case why even bother with experience? Could’ve just made it like “you’re getting an upgrade after beating this boss” like most games.

Conclusion

Experience is a holy cow that desperately needs butchering. It works in pen-and-paper games – because there the game master watches from behind the curtains, adjusting challenges, story and prizes as necessary to make the players feel like they’re in a living world, to feel like they’re being rewarded for their efforts –, but is not at home in videogames, where the player’s getting a finished product that doesn’t have the development team bundled inside the box. Look at “The Legend of Zelda”. Imagine what an actual RPG – with character choices, namely – would be like if it had that game’s systems. Wouldn’t that be great?

Children of the Nile Review

Originally posted on 17 November, 2014.

Author: Xenus Icelon


Children of the Nile is the more modern version of the old citybuilders like Pharaoh And Zeus, allowing you to build a city in ancient Egypt. Some of the more modern things are, aside from the obvious graphics being different, that you no longer need to worry about intersections sending your supply and maintenance people entirely the wrong direction. You can now actually focus on building a city, rather than having to puzzle out the most efficient way to place buildings without them collapsing, catching fire, and starving because the food vendor doesn't show up there.

Citizens in your city are in a class society. From top to bottom, they are the pharaoh. That is you, and your family. You have a palace, and your family goes out to collect any sort of material, be it luxury goods or a humble pot to store things in. You are the state. All food belonging to the city also belongs to you, but you will always have a nice supply of food stored away in your palace. Pharaoh gets first pick, and a percentage of all food farmed in taxes.
Just below you are the nobles, who live in large houses and get their income from the farmers under them, and in order to support a large farming population, you will need nobles to guide them.
Under the nobles are the educated elite. Priests, scribes, overseers, and commanders of the military. They have similar demands as nobles in terms of luxuries, but they are paid by the government for their services. Only the sons of nobles and luxury shopkeepers qualify for education. These are the doctors, the administration, and the tax collectors. Because nobles will try to dodge paying taxes, a scribe can catalogue how many fields have been sown so that you know exactly how much belongs to Pharaoh.

Under them still, the middle class. Entertainers and shopkeepers. These earn their bread through their services and the goods they sell. Simple, but neccesary for society to function.
Below them, the peasantry. Farmers and servants. The farmers work the land and earn enough food to last until next harvest in doing so, and the servants do the shopping for nobles and collect resources for luxury shopkeepers - So they don't have to mingle with the common folk.
Separate from them all are government workers. They fit somewhere between the middle class and peasantry, and are paid generously by Pharaoh's bread. They are the brickmakers, the construction workers for bigger buildings(Small buildings like a servant's shack are made by the servants themselves), and anything else government wants from a papyrus maker up to the military.

If at any time your system fails and the people are without food, they will leave their jobs to scavenge for it. Dates, pomegranades, fish and so on are plentiful, so you need not fear you'll ruin your city and have a ghost town.

The game starts slow every map, as you have 10 bricks(Enough for one baker, brickmakers huts don't need bricks), and only one educated person in your city at the start. So you will want to build a school and several brickmakers more to ensure you can keep growing. Before you know it, you've spend several hours building. There is no immigration either, from what I can find. You start the map with 200-300 citizens living in huts, scavenging off the land. After that, children will be your main population growth. This becomes an issue when you want a big military, as military men don't get married - They live in their barracks-tent with two other men.

Some things that are bad, there are a lot of shrines out there that will take a bit to figure out which goes where and which are popular - If you even have room for them. Sometimes your citizens or a merchant may get stuck on a corner, and sometimes you may find your labourers can't figure out which limestone block they want to pull, and manage to fail to move any of them.

In the end, it's still a pretty and somewhat relaxing game where you can spend hours getting your city just right, and then decide to change it up again because you have a new idea. Cosmetic things like gardens, plazas and trees are free to place too, so you can make it look good without having to worry about your workers spending ages watering the plants and not farming.

Worth grabbing it if you like citybuilding, it's good at what it does and it has aged fairly well

Reus review

Originally posted on 17 May, 2013.

Author: Urist McDorf

Reus is a bloody amazing tapestry of interwoven elements. The best way I've ever heard it described is "a positioning-based puzzle that disguises itself as a god game". Remember games like Populous and Black & White, where you'd get to indirectly control your followers as a deity of some kind? See how Reus kind of looks like one of those? Forget it, they're nothing alike.

What this game really is about is making the best of extremely limited resources. You are given a set amount of time (from half an hour to two hours at the highest), a small planet divided into tiles (it's pretty much one-dimensional) and four giants that can either change the terrain type of a bunch of tiles, place a source in a tile (the resulting source is based on the type being placed and what terrain it's being placed in, so an "exotic animal" means different things in swamps and in forests) or use an activated ability like healing all other giants. All those actions have a cooldown. Sources give points of three different types (food, science and wealth), and human cities appear to make use of those points. Your goal is to get as many total points as you can by the time your time runs out. Simple so far, right?

Except the resources by themselves are only half the battle, what actually makes you scratch your head are their symbiosis bonuses. Blueberries triple their food output if near certain other plants. Agates give extra wealth when next to animal nests. Frogs increase their tile coverage and give more wealth per tile when next to elderberries. That's what makes positioning so important in Reus - you have to figure out how to place sources next to eachother to maximise their output.

Now you think you've got the hang of it and can plan ahead far enough; you might even have a few favourite three- or four-tile source combos you've developed while playing the game. Then come the ambassadors. You see, the human cities I mentioned start projects that require a certain number of specific points (like 15 food) to complete. When they are, not only they give an extra boost to the point output in that village (again, depending on other sources in vicinity or in the world), but the village also produces an ambassador that can be put on any of the giants. Depending on the giant and the type of ambassador the giant gets a new ability or upgrades an old one. The abilities you get at first usually allow the giant to place an enhancement on a source. The enhancements provide a small boost to the source's point output and - that's the most important part - sources with enhancements can be upgraded into other types of sources with completely different symbiosis prerequisites. So now you have to completely rework your combo so that it supports the updated resource, because, well, with the right setups the upgraded resources ARE better.

Don't even get me started on the fact that if you give too many points to the humans too fast they'll start being greedy and attack you or other cities (and that's under a time limit, remember). Or the fact that each type of source (mineral, plant or animal) has a specific mechanic that further sets it apart from others. Or the fact that you will never have enough ambassadors to fully upgrade your giants so you'll have to pick which enhancements and sources for each giant you prefer. Or the fact that you unlock new upgrades for sources by completing specific tasks like "have 500 food in use by the end of the era".

Beneath a simple facade, beautiful artstyle and soothing instrumental music lies a game that manages to be relaxing and brutal at the same time. Each and every element in Reus serves a purpose and they all come together to create one of the best games I've ever played. If you like puzzles, things that make you think, you cannot miss this one.

Divinity: Original Sin nitpick

Originally posted on 06 July, 2014. Out of date given the Enhanced Edition, but a lot of the things still stand true. It's not a review per se - you guys probably know enough about the game for that to be pointless.
Author: Urist McDorf

This is the first of Urist's Nitpicking of Good Games (tm), which means two things - I like the game and I care about it enough to focus on the flaws that could be changed in whatever sequel it might have. I think it's worth every penny you'll spend on it, at least if you have a friend to play it with. I haven't played it in single-player, but I can assume it'd lose some of its charm which comes from the co-op experience.
Now, on to the "review".

Tactical combat
Don't get me wrong, the combat is amazing, and it's pretty rare you have something so focused on terrain nowadays. But for all the ways you can create terrain, why should there be so little tools to reposition your enemies into it or somewhere closer to/farther from you? So far the only things I've seen are two air school spells, teleport and featherfall, the latter being a poor choice to use on enemies most of the time as it deals no damage on itself. Sure, you can create terrain easily enough if you're a mage, but adding some pulls and pushes would bring more variety to the martial classes that have no elemental magic to handle that, apart from special arrows for the archer that cost a pretty penny.
Another rather annoying aspect of the combat is its focus on disabling effects. Almost every time you fight a group of enemies you have a few that will be able to stun, freeze, knock you down or even petrify you. This takes your character out of the combat for two or three rounds (or more if once he's able to act again they just use a disabling attack again) and it poses a real problem for those with the Lone Wolf perk. It pretty much forces you to spend points in willpower (which is the main disable protection), and a non-choice is worse than having no choice, as it traps new players into thinking they can safely ignore the ability and making some levels just "oh goodie, I now have slightly more resistance to some of the disabling effects" instead of something exciting like having a larger pool of skills when you level a skill ability.
Which brings me to the following:

Character advancement
Nevermind the fact that you can't plan your character in advance the first time you play because there's no chart or anything that shows what you get each level and it doesn't seem to have a specific pattern (I know you get ability points each level, but at which point you start getting two per level? three?). Nevermind the abilities which range from very situational (charisma, lockpicking) to situational (bartering, stealth) to indispensable (willpower) at the same cost. The talents are the main offender. See, they're things that can change the way you play completely. You have Pet Pal, which allows you to talk to animals and, while it doesn't actually change the gameplay for you, it opens a host of new quests and tips. You have Lone Wolf, which makes a four-person party into a three- or even two-person party with the benefit of you having more HP and AP (as well as ability points, but that doesn't scale with level and so it's not as big of a boost as it could be). You have Zombie which is bizarre but can be extremely useful in some circumstances, especially if your mage doesn't want to take water magic for healing.
And then you have Politician, which gives 2 charisma (a niche ability which when successful allows you to sometimes go through a quest without a fight I guess?) at the cost of 1 int, restricting it only to non-mages (as attribute points are VERY important). You have Anaconda which adds 10% damage to a specific weapon type, a feat which is accomplished by leveling One-Handed Weapons once (and that adds +10% to all one-handed, not just the maces and such). You have Arrow Recovery which saves you a bit of gold in the long run. You have Escapist which is extremely situational as you usually are able to take an opportunity attack before using the flee button, if there even is an attack. In short, it's a grab bag of game changers and trap choices (though those aren't as plentiful as I've first feared before I actually counted them, there's still a sizeable amount), the latter seemingly thrown in just to give an illusion of variety.

Traits
Dialogues in D:OS give you points in binary traits, which give small bonuses when in one of the states (for example, if your Vindictive is higher than your Forgiving, you get a bonus to opportunity attacks; though you still have to have the Opportunist talent to make them in the first place, which is a slight problem when you want to roleplay a vindictive character and still have some kind of advantage for it). The problem here is that in a lot of cases the increase is rather illogical and obscure. A tiny spoiler for a side event that happens in the first town you'll enter: why would sparing an orc's life for information (which is the reason expressed in the dialogue, at least) make you gain Romantic points, even taking into account the fact that the orc being under the effects of a love potion is why it's willing to divulge the info? And things like this happen with alarming frequency, though, thankfully, not all the time.

Rogue stuff
I'll try to keep this short (and fail at it), as I don't feel right complaining about stealth and pickpocketing in an RPG when so far not a single one has done it right to my knowledge. Basically, stealth in games like these is either useless (when you can skip an encounter sometimes but why would you if that makes you have less XP and thus weaker) or too good (again, skip an encounter and you get the full XP for it while spending much less time and resources and investing in just one skill instead of the plethora you use for combat). D:OS has stealth being useful for getting your rogue into the right position before the encounter starts (which is great), but the problem is more with the out-of-combat use of it, and that's stealing. You can basically steal anything that's not nailed down, and it's never marked as "stolen" or anything, so you can grab all the paintings in a house then sell them back to their owner with them being none the wiser. It's made even worse in co-op when you can use the other player to root the NPC in place with talking while stealing everything.

As you can see, a lot of my complaints come are about balance and optimal play. It's easy to dismiss those with a "but we just play to have fun, not spreadsheets", but when you end up getting a poor choice of a talent or ability and you notice you're less useful than your partner, it grows on you and in the end you might stop actually having fun. Working more on balance solves those issues and makes for a smoother experience for those who just want to play and have fun. I hope the developers realise at least some of their mistakes and are working on rectifying them for the next time, and I'm looking forward to it. As I've said, I love the game and I think that despite its flaws it's very fun and worth a try if you and a friend like RPGs even the tiniest bit.

Opening post

This is the start of the blog. Right now it's going to be filled with old content - some reviews by XSI, some articles by me (including those that never before have seen the darkness of the Internet). From now on, however, you can expect to see actual new stuff written to these pages. I'm hoping that this will be a pleasant experience for everyone involved, and that you'll come to agree with my views after reading what I write.

Let's not crash and burn this one, okay?

Urist McDorf