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nethackI’ve been meaning to post this for a while, of course, but there’s just so much to say about it… It’s intimidating. I’m not going to try to extol all of the many virtues of this game (you’re welcome to read about them here), but I will say a couple of things for the none of you out there who haven’t heard of Nethack:

First, if you’ve heard of roguelikes but you’re not entirely clear on what that means, “something something procedural generation… something something permanent death…” Well, this is the game you play. Of the major roguelikes, this is the one which sticks closest to the rogue formula. Think of Nethack as the core which defines the roguelike genre. So why this and not Rogue? Setting aside the pedantry that Rogue is not a roguelike, the reason is simply that Rogue is old. It was released in 1980 and its last feature release was in 1985. There were some bugfixes and ports in 2006/2007, but it’s basically the same game that it was thirty years ago. Good for its time, and that’s about it.

Nethack, meanwhile, has been under continuous development for twenty five years. It is, and I say this without hyperbole or exception, the deepest and most complex game there is. There’s a staggering amount of interactivity here – you will be playing this game for years before you’ve exhausted it all. The principle reason to play this over Rogue is that you will enjoy it more.

As for how you should go about doing that: Well there’s a guidebook, if you feel like doing some reading. Here’s something that’s a little more succinct, albeit out of date now (it’s still pretty much all accurate).

What I’m linking here is the official unmodified release. There is no audio, other than some system beeps, and no graphics, other than ASCII characters. A lot of people have trouble with that aspect, and many roguelikes have started introducing tilesets in response. Myself, I think this is a mistake. Bad graphics are much worse than no graphics, and the ASCII characters really get the point across well once you learn to interpret them. Bring your own soundtrack though.

nethack bat fightTo the left we see a new level one player (@) fighting a bat (B), the player’s loyal dog (d) is coming to help and should the player survive this encounter there is some money ($) lying on the floor in this room, waiting to be collected.

I learned to play on the unmodified release, but there are many variants available for those of you who must have graphics or don’t like the way that the inventory is handled (I can sympathize with this one). There’s a reddit thread about these here (from which I took the title of this post). However you choose to play it, just bear in mind that all roguelikes involve lots and lots of failure and death. For this reason they’re often described as difficult, and that’s true in a sense, but it’s really just a different type of game. Once you learn to embrace that dying is how the game is played, it stops being so frustrating (mostly).

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Attack on Titan TVI posted Rick and Morty’s Rushed Licensed Adventure recently and while on the subject of games based on TV shows we might as well talk about Attack on Titan. Like Rick and Morty I highly recommend the show, though it’s a completely different style and subject. A post-apocalyptic fantasy, where the world is overrun by human-devouring giants and the remnants of humanity are left living in a small area behind enormous walls. It’s extremely violent, but the attention-grabbing part is its high degree of unpredictability – we’ve seen a great deal of media involving humans on their last legs, but it’s the feeling that any horrible thing could happen to any person at any time which really conveys a sense of danger.

There’s a good explanation for the odd title of the show here, but it does contain some spoilers. The short answer is that “Attack on Titan” was the imperfect-English subtitle for the original Japanese comic, the full title being: “Shingeki no Kyojin: Attack on Titan.” Even though it doesn’t make much grammatical sense, they decided to keep it for the English version.

All right, so that’s all well and good for the show but how does this translate into a video game? Well there are a couple visual novels offered as pack-ins with the blu-ray releases of the show, but only one full-fledged licensed action game so far, released for the 3DS. As with most licensed games the answer is: poorly. It translates poorly, reviews of the the 3DS game have been almost universally negative. The dull and overly simplified combat being a common complaint among the reviewers.

Now, if you’ve seen the show this should be a disappointment and possibly a little confusing: combat in Attack on Titan is anything but simple. The characters move around by means of high powered grappling hook mechanisms that they wear around their waists and attacking the giants means getting up very close and cutting out a portion of their necks using swords. It’s fast and acrobatic and dangerous and movement involves coordinating many things at once. This has all the components of a thrilling and very challenging game and the idea that the developers would dumb that down to the point where movement is a couple of button presses and attacking just means a rudimentary quick time event… It’s disappointing.

Disappointing, but probably shouldn’t come as a surprise: the whole point of a licensed game is to cash in on audience enthusiasm. The developer pays a lot of money for that license and needs to appeal to the broadest audience possible, that means avoiding a complicated and difficult movement system in favor of something more accessible.

attack on titan tribute gameSo what happens if you start with the same idea but the game isn’t made by someone who needs to make a return on the license? Say, by a fan? Just doing it because they like the show? You get the Attack on Titan Tribute Game. It’s bare-bones, graphically simple, but it doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the source material: moving and fighting in AoT Tribute Game is damn hard and it’s a skill which you must develop as you play. Mastering something like this is both a chore and very rewarding, I am nowhere close but I’ve had little moments where it’s come together for me – little flashes where I’m not thinking about the controls and am instead soaring from building to building, flying around corners and working my way behind the horrifying giants. It’s a wonderful feeling.

One thing that’s missing and which I would like to see, but which might be difficult to implement: actual physics-relevant wires. As it is, the wires which pull you along are just graphical dressing – they clip through buildings and they can’t bend or otherwise be used to whip around the aforementioned corners. It’s a significant mechanic in the show, but I can see why it hasn’t been implemented here. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

If you’ve watched Attack on Titan and you’ve said to yourself, “Holy crap, that’s awesome. I wish I had grappling hooks like that, and also a city which didn’t mind that I was constantly poking holes in its buildings.” Well this is as close as you’re going to get.

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teen titansTeen Titans Go! is a silly show about a group of super heroes doing mostly un-heroic things. Like any super heroes, they need to stay in shape – here they are schooled on the importance of leg day. Nothing profound here, just some silly fun.

Two things: this was the only link to watch the episode that I could find which didn’t cost money and wasn’t illegal. I had some trouble with it though – many layers of awkward javascript and some nonsense about a login. It’s not available on Netflix or anywhere else that doesn’t charge on a per-episode basis. I apologize in advance if you struggle with it, the show is good despite the Cartoon Network’s head-in-ass syndrome regarding media distribution.

The other thing is that I had originally posted this to reddit, not thinking of it as something for the site. Because… it’s not a video game? Bleh. I started the site partly in acknowledgement that good media comes in many forms from many sources. Expect more of this.

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til cows tear us apart‘Til Cows Tear Us Apart mostly works on the strength of its dialogue and soundtrack. The interactivity level is small, but there are multiple endings and it does ask for at least a bit of thought from the player. Not a long game, but it manages to pack in a lot.

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There’s a TV show on the Cartoon Network called Rick and Morty, now in its second season. If you haven’t seen it, get on it. It’s hilarious and bawdy and sometimes disconcertingly dark.

rick and mortys rushed licensed adventureOnce you’ve seen the show, or if you’ve seen it already, you’ll probably be saying to yourself: “Gee. I would like to experience more of Rick and Morty, in any way possible.” Well, good thing for you they rushed out a licensed adventure game giving you just that opportunity. It includes Rick, being just as cantankerous and insulting as you’d like, Morty, being… probably not as dumb as Rick thinks he is, and some other junk, being there just to give Rick and Morty something to do. Unsurprisingly, it’s called “Rick and Morty’s Rushed Licensed Adventure” and while that may be accurate the game is better than that title might suggest – entirely on the strength of its dialogue and appreciation of the characters with which you’re already familiar. Also it’s free, so what’s to complain about really?

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I don’t like to be too negative, but Braid pissed me off. It was a decent enough puzzle platformer, using some time-based mechanics which were new then, but in addition to that it was a media darling. Every gaming site was going on and on about this thing, and a lot of their attention was spent on the… “plot.” And there’s reason for that, the game really pushed it – hinting at something profound, keeping you going to the end with the expectation of some insightful revelation. And when you reached the end what you got was really just more hints. It never came together and actually said anything, it just made the suggestion over and over again that there was something meaningful there beneath the surface. After you finished the game you’d spend a little while thinking to yourself that you weren’t getting it, that you just need to to find that thread – the thing which brings together a bunch of jumbled ideas and phrases into something insightful or at least cohesive… There’s no thread. Fucking Braid.

There are plenty of bad games and there are plenty of pretentious games (which are bad), but they usually don’t get the kind of attention that Braid got. That was the big thing, it felt like betrayal in a way. The game made you feel dumb for not understanding an idea that wasn’t there, but you were sure there must have been something there… the critics wouldn’t be fawning all over this if it was just about dicking you around… right?

one step backWell they did and it made lots of money, so now that’s a thing: puzzle platformers with levels tied together by deep thoughts. Fortunately for us, most other developers haven’t latched on to the idea that deep thoughts become even deeper when they don’t make any sense. As a result, despite my snark, some of these are actually pretty decent. I don’t know if Braid was the direct inspiration for One Step Back, there are plenty of similar games, but I am confident that somewhere down the line Braid was influential.

All right, this is too much talking for such a short game. One Step Back is a decent little platformer that’s a little too moody for its own good, but the time-clone mechanic is fun and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The message isn’t a bad one, at least it makes sense, it’s just a little out of place.

 

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