Electron Dance Highlights
The Real Interloper
Morpheus: "Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are."
JC Denton: "Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance."
Morpheus: "The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms."
If I ask you who worked on Deus Ex, what would you answer? Most would cite Warren Spector, others Harvey Smith. Personally, I was obsessed with Sheldon Pacotti, responsible for the writing on both Deus Ex and its sequel.
Yes, the game offered players a cornucopia of agency and a story of epic scope but what impressed me were the philosophical depths that Deus Ex merrily threw itself into. The superfluous conversation with prototype surveillance AI Morpheus, of which the opener above is just an extract, was one of those moments where I felt good to be playing video games. It was 2000 and the golden era of video games had arrived.
Or so I thought. I waited and waited for Pacotti to turn up against other projects of interest but, although his name surfaced here and there, there was nothing suggestive of Deus Ex's writing calibre. Eventually I stopped checking and made the decision to move on. There were other writers to develop amorous attentions for. What a shame.
Then in August last year, Rock Paper Shotgun let me know that Pacotti was linked to a game from new indie developer New Life Interactive called Cell: Emergence. There was even an inscrutable trailer.
RPS said it was due for release very soon. Except "soon" was delayed until two weeks ago.
Now that trailer plus “Pacotti” equalled instant buy. Cart Life, forgotten. Mass Effect, postponed. It’s Pacotti time. I bought it right off the bat without checking the demo.
And then: damn.
The Don of Cutscenes
I'm just going to come out and say it: Mafia is not a great game.
If I'd run through it in 2002, I probably would've had fun. But this is 2012. Mafia is another title that shows how fast games are ageing - or rather, how fast game design and audience expectations are surging ahead, throwing a harsh spotlight on the crude, medieval designs of our gaming past. In 2022, will the next generation of kids claim Minecraft is a bit rubbish?
But It’s The Truth
I cited Mafia in last year’s essay Those Honeymoon Hours, describing how an early mission in Mafia was exciting because I was oblivious of the game's constraints and hadn’t yet learnt how to master – or perhaps game – its mechanics.
Pretty soon, though, the frustrations break through and its wonderful façade crumples like a mobster taking a baseball bat to the head. I'm not going to whine about the Mafia "sandbox" not being interesting enough as I recognise it is neither a sandbox nor an open world - it is merely an enormous set upon which a gangster-themed third-person shooter plays out.
Ahead… The Stars
Last week I made the bold move of announcing a “game of the year” which was Richard Hofmeier’s Cart Life. It probably surprised everyone because I'd never mentioned it before although an observant follower might have seen this tweet on 3 Dec 2011:
Man, I think I love this game.
Yes, well, that was Cart Life.
Cart Life was teeming with showstopping bugs on release last May which is likely the reason it barely registered across the indie game-o-sphere. But what has been said of Cart Life following its mention on Electron Dance last week?
David Kanaga, the musical maestro of Proteus and Dyad, said the game "had me tingling for its first 15 minutes." I dare not ask about what happened the minute after that.
Pippin Barr, author of The Artist Is Present amongst other games, said it was craaaaazy and wished he'd made it as it was so interesting.
Nicolau Chaud, the mind behind Marvel Brothel and Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer, wrote the following on his blog:
I have to say, one of the things that motivated me and inspired me the most to work on Polymorphous Perversity again was playing an awesome indie game. And the game I'm talking about is Richard Hofmeier's Cart Life. This game is just so unique and brilliant that I have to be careful not to be overhumbled and give up on whatever I'm working at.
Yes, too many replays will eventually ruin its magic. Yes, too many bugs will keep this game off an IGF list. Yes, some of the broken design is accidental and not intentional. So it's time I explained why a game which made me panic about a cat's well-being is deserving of so much attention.
Read no further if you still intend to play, because I am about to discuss the lives of Melanie Emberley and Andrus Poder in some depth.
Game of the Year
Melanie Emberley tells the judge about the new coffee business she's starting up. He asks how it’s going and she confesses she’s still getting through the paperwork. The judge listens. He understands, he really does. He announces what he considers to be a fair decision for the interim. It's not what she expected. It's certainly not what I expected.
Wow.
I feel guilty. It's my fault, you see. And I actually feel guilty. How did that happen? I'm sitting at my PC, cringing. I just don't want to watch this play out.
But Melanie doesn't have any choice so neither do I. I press the SPACE bar and we move on, together.
This is Richard Hofmeier’s Cart Life and it is awesome – although probably not for everyone.
Dances With Waves
Speaking as a heterosexual male, it's totally possible to love two women at the same time. No doubt it'll earn you a place in Hell, but there it is. I try not to get worked up about it and I certainly don't make it the primary subject of everyday conversation.
But this is great news for gaming because in just the same way it's also totally possible to love two arena shooters at the same time. A mere month after professing my deep throbbing love for Charlie Knight's Scoregasm, I am here committing infidelity telling you all about Rob Hale's Waves. If only we could make it a threesome.
Anyway. Bloody Hell. Waves.
Twelve Flowers
All hail, Calunio. Last year he recommended I take a look at the intriguing Clock of Atonement and this year he's pulled out Wither by someone with the handle 'Rastek'.
So I'm going to talk about this one and lather up the spoilers into a nice froth. Before we enter spoiler foam, I'll let you know the essential facts if you want to go play it first.
- Play time can last between thirty minutes and an hour, depending on whether you get stuck anywhere.
- It looks like a simple JRPG. It sounds like a simple JRPG. It even tastes like a simple JRPG. But it's got David Lynch DNA.
- If you play it once, then by God play it twice.
If you're game, go download and play. Come back when you're done.
The rest of you, come through the spoiler foam with me.
For A Few Explorers More
This is a follow-up to last week's article “For The Explorers” on exploration in games.
![[proteus game title screen]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Proteus-2011-10-22-23-44-30-82.png "Proteus Titles")
At this time of the year, Great Britain loses its sunlight pretty early, and I realised the current incarnation of the Little Harbour Master, three years old and fairly articulate, had not witnessed the world at night. So, last weekend, I took him out for a walk to the local corner shop at 6 o’clock when night was falling.
He delighted in pointing out all the houses and shops with lights on as well as directing my attention to illuminated doorbells. His world is still one of continual construction upon a relatively blank slate. Whereas adults often need to travel far and wide to see things that surprise them, the Little Harbour Master sees such things right outside his door.
I think that’s why the explorers amongst us find joy in virtual game worlds as they allow us to become children again: not in terms of play but in reviving the process of learning about the world.
Is it possible, though, to boil a game down to pure exploration? Dispense with the puzzles, points, rewards and any hoops to jump through?
For The Explorers
![[woman before lake before mountain]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/aso.jpg "aso")
Mrs. HM and I are explorers. In our pre-parent years, we'd embark on walks without any goal, just to see what we might find, and often blasted straight through lunch hour into the threat of imminent death from starvation at 4pm.
In 2005, we spent a few days on the island of Madeira. Madeira is riddled with irrigation channels called levadas which are also used by locals as footpaths. We spotted the start of one near our hotel and, on our final day, chose to follow it. It gently led us around the coast, snaking through villages and plantations and eventually headed inland along the edge of a rocky gorge. But we never completed the journey as, after half a day of hiking, we had to turn back to catch our plane home.
![[shot of levada overlooking plantation and coastline]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/levada.jpg "levada")
Levada dos Piornais, 2005
Exploring is our vice and it's an activity we look forward to resuming once the children get a bit older. But our joint obsession also thrives in virtual spaces.
Both of us spent countless hours wandering the neglected alleyways and meandering train routes of GTA III’s urban centres. I've scoured the junglescape of Far Cry 2 apparently hunting diamonds when in fact I had hijacked them as an excuse to explore. STALKER was another of my virtual world romances, whose anomaly-pocked hostility was fascinating to grapple with. And Mrs. HM basked in every shadow of Thief’s Haunted Cathedral, the imperative to search for loot under every abandoned desk and chair somehow more potent than the need to get the fuck out of there.
Charlie’s Shooting Spree
![[space phallus screenshot - sperm, dog's head]](http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/space-phallus-r.png "Space Phallus")
Charlie Knight's first successful game was an arena shooter called Bullet Candy. It made some money, attracted praise and propelled Charlie onto his next project, another shooter but more ambitious. This was five years ago.
“It was completely mouse controlled with a simple gesture system that worked by clicking the mouse and waving your hand about,” he tells me. “The actual gesture bit worked pretty well, but the game became too much for me to handle in the end."
The ambition proved to be the game's undoing. “I'd been programming a system whereby the game would learn how you played and which special attacks you preferred and would counteract by creating situations which forced you to use different powers or strategies. The problem was it grew ever more complex with every addition and, after two years, had grown into something that was out of control, that I'd never finish well.”
So what did he do? “I dropped it and wrote Space Phallus.”
Men of Science
While I was researching, writing and castrating myself over Where We Came From, I did manage to find time to work through the Portal 2 co-op campaign with prestigious Alliance of Awesome pal, Gregg B from Tap-Repeatedly.
So this week Gregg and I chat about the special, intimate moments we shared together - but first, here's a short video with scenes taken from our game. My intention here is not to demonstrate Portal 2 but capture the camaraderie of co-op play. I think it works and there's bound to be at least one scene that will bring a smile to your face:
HM: Right, I think we need to say something about the podcast-sized elephant in the room, our Portal 2 discussion on the Alliance of Awesome podcast. We were a bit down on this puppy, weren't we?
GB: Only in a small way, at least for such a great game.
HM: Yes I'm talking about the podcast that never got broadcast.
GB: Apparently it was my fault. Too quiet or something. Try telling that to the Gregg that played Portal 2 with Joel Goodwin.
HM: You're actually louder than me on that video. That's because my microphone only pumps out the left channel for reasons I still have not got to the bottom of.
GB: It's been such a long time since I played the original Portal but playing Portal 2's co-op mode made me realise what it was that I loved so much about it. In the original Portal it felt like I was walking into each chamber and all the puzzle pieces were there in front of me; it was just a case of me putting them together in the right way. With Portal 2's single player I sometimes felt like I was searching for the pieces as well as putting them together, namely those damn Portal-able surfaces.
HM: Yeah let's get our single-player grievances out in the open here, go all open kimono on this.