The Complexity of Games

Complexity of games can be a tricky thing for developers it seems. On the one side of the coin you have the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle. On the other side of that coin you can try and throw everything and the kitchen sink into your game. Two games that I've most recently picked up are practically at almost the extreme ends of this spectrum.

Recently I took up DC Universe Online, which is a fun title to say the least. Its a simple game play style, almost too simple in some ways. I sometimes often find myself wishing I had more info about the armor and stats on how they actually affect my game play than what is currently visible in the game. The game play itself is nice if you have a controller. If you don't have one though, it gets a bit more awkward trying to perform the moves with a mouse and keyboard.

I also picked up a copy of Skyrim recently. Again the title is fun, but I my biggest complaint about Skyrim will remain my biggest complaint about the previous Elder Scroll's title. Its too big and too complex. Especially given its scope. Don't get me wrong, I applaud the amount of work the developers have put into these titles. You can go anywhere in the game, and do anything, but at the end of the day given its scope the game just feels so dead and lifeless to me. The NPCs don't do much and I still feel like I'm inside some weird vacuum when I play it.

Somewhere in the middle of these two makes me very happy some times. Ironically Minecraft in all of its simplicity is very fun to play; with a server setup I don't feel like I'm living in a vacuum as well. So maybe that's something both Sony and Bethesda can learn from. Sony, lets get some more numbers, and maybe some crafting into DCUO. Bethesda, let me play with some of my friends, and maybe give me away to actually alter the landscape I'm playing in. (Housing? Castles? Siege engines?!)

Fun moments in computer support

Nothing like the following to make you worry about the technical support you're getting from a software company:

"Does your software have any particular requirements for the processor? I'm having a problem with this particular processor and getting this error, etc etc"

"Yes, please see the following release notes:

* 32 bit minimum requirements:

686 processor

etc

etc"

"Uh, yea, you know a 686 covers everything all the way back to the Pentium Pro, right? Got anything more specific?"

I'm just going to leave this here...

For a certain contributor to the blog (because they are not on chat at the moment for some reason...)

Not trying to give anyone ideas or nothing. :3

Final Fantasy XIII: 25 hours in

Yea, I like this game. There's frustrating bits about it, but good elements can usually balance out annoying bits for me. In Resonance of Fate, the story eventually became bizarre and confusing, and I still don't understand all of it. But the characters were fun and the battle system was so enjoyable that I didn't really mind. In XIII it's a little of the reverse. The battle system and the level-up system are a little frustrating, but I'm enjoying the story. And god, the music in this game is great.

I figure one more post once I beat it, just to throw out my final thoughts.

Final Fantasy XIII: 6 Hours in

This game is very strange.

That might seem like an odd thing to say about a game in the Final Fantasy series. I mean this is a series where the women are often more masculine, more mature, and emotionally more balanced than the men, eldritch abominations can be found in your back yard, and remakes with more faithful translations receive enormous backlash because they don't have the word "spoony". But yea, this game so far is just strange. Elements of it are good, while others are kinda idiotic.

The voice acting and dialogue are pretty good (first time I've seen both good at the same time), and yet while the story is fairly simplistic, there are a few aspects of it that cause it to be sorta confusing. It skips the usual buildup of your party by introducing you to all but one playable character by 30 minutes in, yet it tries to make up for this by repeatedly breaking up or re-organizing the party. It's irritating. Also, I find it amusing that at least half of the playable characters have completely forgotten how to simply wield their weapons (a consequence of losing their basic job class). Apparently becoming an L'Cie and gaining magic means you lose the ability to throw a boomerang or shoot a gun.

The level up system is yet another re-hash of X's sphere grid. It's better than XII's license system (which isn't saying much) since the characters have different classes available to them (at least so far). There also seem to be some minor differences in what certain characters have available even for the same job classes, so it at least feels a little more flexible. But the organization of the Crystarium is idiotic. It branches out in three dimensions for absolutely no reason, which creates a needlessly complicated camera operation and makes it confusing. And even if it's 3D, it doesn't matter, because your progression through a job is still 99% linear. So why bother? Also, you can switch between different characters in the Crystarium at any point with L1/R1, but you can't switch between their different job classes without going back to that character's main area? I mean c'mon, you couldn't just use L2/R2 for that?

You get the point, I think. So far everything that's good or interesting seems balanced by something mind-boggingly retarded. Time will tell if the good elements gain favor as I continue playing. I'm not far enough in for a genuine review, so I think I'll try to put up a few more posts as I keep going.