Kill Ten Rats

I occasionally post comments here on non-MMOs that have single- and multi-player options. I usually comment after the single-player experience. Someone invariably comments that I am not giving the game a fair trial unless I try the online multi-player. The games for which I do try the online multi-player, the other players are so horrible (as humans, not as skilled players, although sometimes both) that I refuse to play the game long enough to give it a fair shot. There need not even be many troublemakers: the perfect game to grief is one with few enough players that your impact is felt but too many to organize a kicking/banning, and bring a friend to become immune to most attempts to eliminate you.

The next comment, then, is that playing with a random online community is not giving it a fair shot. You need to have a guild/clan/whatever, be active on this message board with good people, visit this site, etc. Basically, bring your own community with you, sometimes for both teammates and opponents. Beyond the time investment that demands for a game (some of these “fair shot” multi-player conditions take longer to set-up than it does to play through the whole single-player game), once I am at the point of already playing with my known group of friends, it no longer matters much what we’re playing. The game is not contributing much at that point; I have done all the heavy lifting out-of-game by bringing the group. All we ask from the game at that point is not to be so horribly flawed that it ruins our time together. We’ve all tried things that horrible.

Basically, my ears are still ringing from someone’s mic spam while trying to find the mute command on a new game (as far as I can tell, it depends on “kick teammate” rather than having a mute), and I am feeling kindly towards those games that severely limit your in-game communications options. Limiting player interaction impairs a basic function of your game, but it prevents random people from actively making your game a worse place to be.

: Zubon

I heard good things about Puzzle Quest, so I picked up Puzzle Kingdoms on Steam during their summer blowout. It was not worth the $1, and I wish I had spent the time playing some random flash game.

Unless things change dramatically later on, it is just the one mini-game with some minor variations, like Bejeweled with some add-ons. You can go play Bejeweled right now. You and the computer are playing against each other on the same board with alternating turns, so it is a matter of playing denial while hoping something interesting falls into place. Of course, it falls into place in time for your opponent’s turn, so there is waiting and luck. The computer is tactically infallible but strategically hopeless, so it is a matter of getting an unsatisfying victory over an inept opponent, watching that opponent exploit something you cannot see (but it sees every possible combination), or hardly seeing what happens as it gets four or five combinations somehow falling from off-screen. The computer’s prescience is unlikely to be enough to save it, although it is a wonder to see it get two kills in one turn from blocks that were not on-screen when it started.

The gameplay is passable, although I found Warriors End a better version of the same thing. If you want that kind of thing, you get nothing else, so go to. The story is just bad: our hero is apparently conquering peaceful countries for their own good, but it’s okay because the dark lord is making them unhappy with magic boxes. You must destroy the magic box, even if that involves killing a path through a country that does not want your help. Nation-building through Bejeweled-based regime change.

There are also “RPG elements,” for when you feel like grinding a bit. Because sometimes mindlessly playing the same little thing and getting imaginary rewards is relaxing. It’s what we do here.

: Zubon

Oh, and Torchlight is $5 on Steam right now, in case you missed it during the last holiday sales.

Can you nail the Studio Ghibli visual feel in a game any more? No.

Eric Heimburg has a good post about why it may be cognitively impossible for some people to obey Rule 1 of raiding (“Don’t stand in the fire”). For more fun on this, I recommend the University of Illinois Visual Cognition Lab, particularly under “Gradual changes to scenes,” where they will tell you what is going to happen but you will still miss it.

: Zubon