Voraciously vociferous oh I can't do this

[davidn]

Well, best of luck.

One of the testers for Crystal Towers 2 gifted me VVVVVV by Terry Cavanagh QC over the holiday, and I blasted through the main game in a couple of hours. I had always meant to look at it, but had been put off by the price (it was originally $15 but is now hovering around $5) - however, even though it doesn't last very long, it's extraordinarily well put together.

The game's premise is very simple - it's a platform...ish thing, not quite falling into typical of the genre because you can't jump. Instead, you can switch gravity from down to up and back again while you're standing safely on a floor, and the rooms are based around variations on this theme - they start off simple but soon get spectacularly clever, having you navigate past wires that turn you over, conveyors, rooms that lead back to where they started, and various other obstacles as you try to avoid being impaled on the spikes from which the game gets its name. And there are a lot of them about - we're not in IWBTG territory here because the checkpoints are generous and you will never be smashed by a suddenly falling moon, but the level of challenge is high enough for you to really feel very proud of getting into a new room or collecting another shiny thing.

And the whole experience is wonderfully retro-styled throughout. This isn't a game that just uses the recent popular trend of having graphics that are a bit blocky - everything about how it's presented reminds me of the Commodore 64 era, in details like the names for the rooms and the abstract Manic Miner-like enemies, to the soundtrack that's like some of the best of David Whittaker. In fact, the range of expressions on the little men (consisting of :D and D:) also put me in mind of ZZT, as did the game's layout of having individual "levels" that seamlessly led off a hub area - a relationship that was only strengthened when I came across a room called Sweeney's Maze, which featured marching thetas and capital Os, which I can only now see as Centipedes.

I just can't get over how clever the whole thing is - it just sets up some basic mechanics and then uses them very well. There are points where you're accompanied by one of your crew members, who always runs towards you at full tilt unless you're on the ceiling - and you think that's all that you'll be asked to contend with, until something comes up that also makes use of the way that he'll only bother moving if you're a certain distance away from him as well. At one point, it even uses the way that the screen switches between rooms as part of the puzzle, and it's a really wonderful moment when you work out what you're expected to do. Followed by a dreadful one when you realize what's now involved in pulling it off.

It's definitely worth playing. And there's a Flash demo of it here!

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

"Followed by a dreadful one when you realize what's now involved in pulling it off."

And that's why I think this game should have a slow-mo option, for the people who like the puzzling but lack the dexterity!

[davidn]

Well, it does, under Options > Game Options > Slowdown. But you need to delete your saves to use it, so it's either on or off throughout the game...

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

...... :O

I think you just made a sale for this guy.

[kjorteo]

Ravenworks: frequently hates the "actually playing games" part of actually playing games, but doesn't ever let that slow him down!

How is it you were so into Minecraft? Did you just, like, generate a world once and then immediately quit out and stare at it through MineViewer from then on or something?

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I played back before anyone even knew that the game would eventually have monsters!

[kjorteo]

Aw, but all the cool stuff they've implemented since then! (Including a no-monsters difficulty mode IF YOU MUST, but that still doesn't save you from being dumb and falling off high towers into lava or something.)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but you have to WORK just to get bricks! It would take forever to make a giant penis in the sky at THAT rate.

[davidn]

There's an interesting part of one of Charlie Brooker's programmes where Dara O Briain talks about games being the only type of media that deny you content - and it's true, though I can't really imagine any other way they would be. The Rock Band example at the end is the best example, where there isn't really a relationship between one song and another, but in games that are meant to be a sequential, gradually increasing challenge, being able to get everywhere from the start (or have the ability to skip chapters, like the new Alone in the Dark game did) would seem to instantly defeat the purpose. There's nothing else really like them.

So I can see why someone who happens not to be as good at platformers as I might be still wanting to see the game with the challenge toned down... especially in an era where people who don't usually play games are getting into them - I often think that something is explained as simply and easily as possible, and yet you would be very surprised at how little of the visual language they understand (and I'm trying so hard not to sound condescending here). I remember uproar when Nintendo hinted that they would include a sort of "play itself" mode in future games, but as long as the actual... playing the game remains an option, it doesn't really affect me.

[kjorteo]

I guess it's just surprising to actually see one of these otherwise anonymous and theoretical people to which something like that would be aimed! I guess if the next Trauma Center included a "just watch all the cutscenes" mode so that you could check out the riveting storytelling (which is undoubtedly the main draw of the series) while not having to bother with those pesky operations, it technically wouldn't affect me so long as that remained optional, but... I guess I had just thought that demographic was a myth.

[davidn]

I mean, it sounds ludicrous, doesn't it, to suggest that the gameplay is something that's getting in the way of a game - though perhaps there is a demographic that enjoys watching but not participating, the same group who watch you play from the sofa but don't pick up the controller themselves. It seems to be quite popular to do video play-throughs on Youtube now, and for those to be watched rather than played - I had assumed that they were aimed at people who had played the games and were looking for commentary on them by someone else (though if they go to Youtube for that, perhaps this is a misguided impression from the start).

[kjorteo]

Maybe they could just wait for the inevitable Uwe Boll movie adaptation?

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's true that video games are the only media to deny you content. Yes, there's nothing stopping you from reading page 108 of some book, but if you don't understand the character interactions, and are just reading each word to get through to the end of the book, then some of the content of the book is being denied to you because you can not understand that it is there.

What if the book's written in Arabic? You can still turn to page 108, but now even more content is denied to you. Maybe you can't even understand the numbers: now just turning to page 108 is denied to you; how about that. Books in English are very accessible to English speaking people, because English speakers have already learned the root language of that media.

With video games, it is like every new game creates a new language, specific to that game. You have to learn new things before you can understand all the content in the game. If you've played a lot of platformers, then you'll do better when you start a new platforming game, because you understand "the platforming language" better. But you still have to learn new things for each new game. Maybe you play a game, you walk into a snail and die: snails are bad? Fuck, I thought snails were good. Now you understand more of the game's language, so more of the content of that game is accessible to you.

If you think you're just going to walk in to an Arabic bookstore, and be able to get all the content of the books there without having to learn a lot of new things first, then you're in for a shocking surprise. And it strikes me that this is exactly what Dara O Briain is expecting from video games. Well, I'm sorry, but fuck you, Dara O Briain.

I so want to go more into this, but I think anything longer wont be read.

[davidn]

Go into any and all you want - have you seen the size of my usual journal entries? :)

It is, of course, ridiculous to suggest that you could get as much out of a book by starting in the middle than you could by reading the whole thing, as much as it is to open up the limits of a sequentially-played game like that... the difference here is that games are the only thing that answer back to you, that have the idea of being able to progress as a reward for challenge, relying on the ability of the player and not being able to just skip past something as a conscious decision on their part. That's something that games and other media have in common - they do at least generally have definite beginning and end points (although, as in Minecraft, they don't even have those!) and a journey that takes you from one to the other.

It took me a while to find something to refute the idea that being able to understand a book written in a foreign language and to progress in a game aren't the same thing - while they're both examples of having to do something first before you can get to something, the book example relies on outside knowledge of the reader, while the game relies on inside... ability of the player, and that can't be from something that's already been learned outside it. Unless we're considering basic hand-eye coordination ability, which... I suppose is an outside skill that does need to be learned to enjoy most any game at all, much like learning to read a language is to be able to read a novel written in that language, and I'm back at the start again.

ravenworks, I hope you've seen what you've started here.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I should ask you what your username is on Steam (I'm assuming since you mentioning being gifted the game) - as always, I'm Tamakun :D

[davidn]

My login name is DavidXN but it displays as DavidN, so I'm not sure which one to look for. I've added you - you will see me on about twice a year.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

And you'll probably hear from me just as much. XD

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Love the music in VVVVVV. Even played some of it when I DJed. A very fun game.

[dr-dos.livejournal.com]

I recently got the game gifted to me and was quite glad I did. I really had a lot of fun with it. It struck a really nice balance between difficult and impossible and the generally favorable placement of checkpoints.

I really knew I had a winner when I got to Veni Vidi Vici's shiny thing. More than half the deaths I had in my playthrough were to those boards but it was one of the most satisfying moments.

My reaction to Sweeney's Maze was to immediately take a screenshot and share it with anybody who'd get it.

[davidn]

That was a great moment, getting past that :) In another example of the cleverness of the game, it was very... daunting how he set it up - I thought the top room, "Getting here is half the fun", referred to the difficult jump on the conveyor at the left hand side at first, but as I then descended the rooms and it showed me this preview of what I was going to have to go through... my jaw just dropped. I had rakarr watching over a livestream and apparently it only took me about five minutes, but it felt like much longer!

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Hey, about half my deaths were from Veni Vidi Vici, too! I remember being so tense in that section, reminding myself over any over: "when I come down the bottom screen, make sure to end up on the right side; on the right side!" Because I knew I was only getting down the bottom screen once, and if I ended up finishing on the left side, then it would all be wasted.

[ethelfleda.livejournal.com]

There's another gravity-altering game that twists the screen round as it changes - and makes me feel sick as a dog. This (or at least the demo) gets lots of points for not making me want to vom :D

[davidn]

Does that one rotate the screen as well? I'm sure I used to be all right with that, but I've played a bit of Puzzle Dimension (from my brother) recently as well and that involves spinning around a lot, and I'm not sure I can cope with it all that well any more.