The Good Kind of Quick-time

Blogs, Digital Games

Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun has “a blind, silly prejudice” against quick-time events. Those are the reaction-testing interactive cutscenes that I discussed way back in Episode 001. A cutscene pops up, but (surprise!) you have to press a button or get eaten by a dinosaur.

I like the idea of quick-time events. Cutscenes usually feature the player character doing something interesting, and instead of taking that away from the player, quick-time events let you participate, even when the actions being performed are ones that aren’t part of your normal interface.

I’ll admit that the implementation of quick-time events can be a bit slipshod, but unlike Meer, I’m excited by their inclusion in a new game. In this case, it’s the FPS Aliens: Colonial Marines. There are events in FPSs that are cool, but don’t fit into the standard gameplay. Wrestling. Diving out of the way of things. Conversing. As long as the events don’t break the immersion – and I argue that it’s possible for them not to – I’m all for random button-presses to survive a cutscene. From Meer’s description of how A:CM is implementing them, I’m going to have to try this game out for myself.

Ludus Novus 009: Extra Life

Digital Games, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 009: Extra Life
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Death in games is usually a mistake. In these four indie games, it’s an intended part of the experience.

The music for this episode is “Make You Cry” by Jonathan Coulton, and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.

References:

Ludus Novus 008: State of the Art

Digital Games, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 008: State of the Art
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60 years of video games. How are we doing?

The music for this episode is “Brilliant Day (fourstones.net mix)” by fourstones and DeBenedictis, and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.

References:

  • It’s a Wonderful Life
  • Casablanca
  • Citizen Kane
  • The Wizard of Oz
  • Gone With the Wind
  • Bambi
  • The Philadelphia Story
  • The Maltese Falcon
  • Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
  • Notorious

The next episode will be about four games that inspired each other in an inbred tale of exploration.

Ludus Novus 007: Who Am I?

Digital Games, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 007: Who Am I?
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Amnesia. Can anyone remember why it’s so common in interactive entertainment?

The music for this episode is “Forgettin My Identity” by Jane His Wife, and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.

References:

The next episode will be about the progress and state of the art of the video game industry, as compared to another form of entertainment.

Blogs, News

So I am not dead. Now that I’ve cleared up the over 7000 spam comments that accumulated during my absence from taking care of the site, I intend to get to work on a new episode. We’ll see how that turns out.

GameTap Evaluation

Digital Games

So. As I mentioned in my last podcast, I signed up for GameTap. I got it working, and I’m generally pleased.

One thing to be aware of is that it is definitely a broadband service. My cable connection at home is a bit slow and spotty, and the client does all sorts of weird things, including crashing and failing to start up. It also takes forever to download stuff. And I suspect the client of being unstable in other ways, although my laptop has issues with a lot of applications.

But the service works. You can, like, download stuff and play it. The selection’s decent, and the added content, well, is indeed content. It is aimed at (I’d estimate) 12- to 16-year-old boys, which is a little disappointing, especially considering that I’d place the primary retro gaming demographic at 18-25. But that’s fine; I don’t have to watch GameTap TV if I don’t want to (and am fast enough on the mouse to make it go away).

I’d probably recommend the service most to parents of young children. The parental controls and wide selection of educational games, in addition to the lack of access to questionable material, make it a great service for parents who want to expose their 3- to 10-year-olds to games. Once the kids get much older, though, I think they’d be more insistent on newly-released games.

Right now I’m downloading The Last Express. They’ve got a bunch of other must-tries: early Sierra adventure games, Bioware RPGs (including the phenomenal Planescape: Torment), the Myst games, and Beyond Good and Evil. Beyond that, Sam and Max: Episode 1 comes out tomorrow, and Uru Live comes this holiday season. So I’m stoked.

Ludus Novus 006: False Narrativism: Walking Away

Digital Games, False Narrativism, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 006: False Narrativism: Walking Away
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The game Walking Away: In what ways does it succeed at what it attempts?

The music for this episode is “Criminal” by Peter Toh, used with permission.

References:

The next episode will be about amnesia, the video game trope we all love to hate. If you have comments or anecdotes about amnesia, please leave a comment here or at
gregory@ludusnovus.net.

Note: If you would like to sign up for GameTap and indicate to them that you are doing so because of Uru Live, you can use this link and click on “join now”. For a limited time, you can get a year’s worth of GameTap (including Uru Live, when it comes out) for $60, which is about 50% off of the monthly price.

Ludus Novus 005: Level Cap

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 005: Level Cap
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Length of works: is a given game most like a short story or a novel, and how can length affect content?

References:

The next episode will be a new segment called False Narrativism.

Ludus Novus 004: Hurt Me Plenty

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts, Roleplaying
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 004: Hurt Me Plenty
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Difficulty and completeness: Why do games have to be hard, and how is finishing a game separate from completing it?

The music for this episode is “Big Bad World One” by Jonathan Coulton, and is available under a cc by-nc-sa 2.5 license.

This episode, unlike most, is available under a cc by-nc-sa 2.5 license.

References:

The next episode will be about the length of games and how that relates to game classification. Is there a distinction between an interactive “short story” and an interactive “novel”? If you have comments or ideas, contact me at gregory@ludusnovus.net.

Ludus Novus 003: Not the Same Thing After All

Digital Games, Interactive Fiction, Podcasts, Roleplaying
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus
Ludus Novus 003: Not the Same Thing After All
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Variable player experience: What do we mean by interaction, and how can two players have different experiences with the same work?

The music for this episode is Enrique Granados’s “Spanish Dance n. 2” performed by Mario Mattioli, and is available under a cc by-nc 2.5 license.

This is the first episode in which I’ve talked much about table-top roleplaying games.

References:

(Note: I’m going to start putting the titles of IF pieces from the IF Comp in quotes, as that competition is intended for short works, so participants presumably intended their pieces to be analogous to short stories.)