April 08, 2013

Sidetracked weekend

So normally my day goes as follows, including weekends: get up, get dressed, get to working on one of the games, work all day taking time for biological needs, watch a previously downloaded episode of one or more tv shows to wind down and then sleep. There's no set schedule for times just working till I start getting tired then letting my mind relax with mindless entertainment so some days it's only 12 hours I put in, some days it's 16, once in a rare while I just don't get tired and it ends up being 2 to 3 days.

This weekend though I decided to take a break and let my volunteer testers go wild with the game for the weekend with no specific testing goals to see what would happen and took the time to play a game I've been meaning to get to for a while. Sometimes I'll set aside some proper gaming time for any number of games but I wanted to dedicate myself to completing this game at least once which I normally can't do unless I make a plan for it like this. The game of this weekend was the walking dead, the one from last year that released in parts which I thought was a very interesting idea. For those of you that haven't played yet beware of spoilers which I'll try to keep to a minimum.

It was strangely addicting up through chapter 3 then I went insane. One of the characters named carly which was a reporter pre-apocalypse, dies and there's no way I can save her, I spent hours retrying every possible scenario in the entire game up to that point trying to save her before looking online only to find out there is no scenario in which she lives beyond that point. I had to rage quit for a little while. In that time I went to a friends and played gears of war judgement which thankfully was better than what I was expecting based on the demo. I'm still fairly cheesed that they took out regular horde mode though, what would it really have taken to just keep it in?

Once I came back to walking dead the final culmination was intense and has me eager to do another playthrough especially knowing what I know now. There were some moments that annoyed me, scenarios where there's clearly a 3rd or 4th choice you could pick but the game forces you to pick one of the two it presents you with. Sometimes I wish for more dialogue options because of some of the thoughts I was having and questions I would think anyone would ask that simply aren't there. I don't know if it's funny or sad that in the moments leading up to carly's death if you side with her there's notifications saying "she won't forget that" given that she's about to die no matter what you've done it's ultimately true, but it still suggests there's a future for her when there's not. Some of the illusions they give you on choice are equally interesting in how they portray them as there are several scenarios where no matter what you do the end result is the same.  The strange thing is that I'm fine with almost all of them except for carly which seems entirely preventable and really the only word I can find for what happens is uncharacteristic neglect in such a tense situation.

I would say most gamers, especially anyone that loves games with branching storylines like most bioware games or heavy rain, should play walking dead at least once. While the branching might not be so extreme that it's like several games in one I would say that if this were a book it would be like a book passed by word of mouth where the details of what happens change but the main story stays the same. Was your character cruel or merciful, a hero or a savage, does it matter in comparison to what he did rather than why.

I for one am all about the "why" of things but I can still appreciate the what.

on a side note I am considering expanding the blog to incorporate reviews, of tv shows I watch and games I play. I've been told by a few friends my perspective and method of explaining shows is entertaining in itself so I figure I might as well share with the internet friends such as yourself that have been following me for the last year or so. If you have any thoughts on it feel free to mention them in the comments.

No comments:

Post a Comment