Winterton’s Fridays: Endings Part 2- The Importance of Themes

Last week I looked at the importance of narrative and character in the endings of video games. This week I’m going to look at how the presence of themes, and see how they can be put to good use. Again, there are obviously going to be spoilers here, specifically about “Red Dead Redemption” and “Mass Effect 3”. Just so you know.

So the theme of “Red Dead Redemption” is, ostensibly, redemption. We are told this in the title, and Marston himself keeps talking about how he hates what he is being made to do. Now, forgive me for missing something, but when exactly does John Marston get redeemed for his violent crime sprees? Is it…erm…when he is committing more violent crime sprees? Yeah, not sure how killing lots of people is penance for killing a few people in the past.

Hog-tying is, at best, morally ambiguous.

And yes, I know he’s doing it so he can see his family, but surely that sort of undermines the gesture? Numerous characters point out that he is killing hundreds of people just for selfish reasons. I mean, his family aren’t exactly in danger, they’re just away from him (and, as we see at the end, John often brings danger with him). Moreover, it’s hardly redemption if you are being forced to do it. Charles Manson didn’t suddenly become a better person when he was arrested, he just wasn’t around to commit crimes anymore.

Now let’s clarify something; the people John kills don’t necessarily deserve to be killed. Even if we accept that being shot dead by a cowboy is something someone can deserve (I have mixed feelings), it feels strangely at odds. Moreover, since “Red Dead” is a sandbox game, it implicitly encourages exploration, looking for side-quests and whatnot. Which leads to Marston actively seeking out trouble. In fact, the game ends with possibly the most clear indication that John has failed, as we see his son Jack gunning down a former FBI agent. Then, with no apparent irony, the title card flashes up, as if redemption has finally been achieved.

You can't just put a red filter on things so your title has a rhyme in.

The only hint we get at John’s internal dilemma is a recurring sidequest with a mysterious stranger who hints at John’s dark past, who it later turns out is a hallucination John is having. This was undoubtedly my favourite part of the game, and yet was never alluded to at the end, nor given much time.

Compare this to “Mass Effect 3”. Now I’m sure we’re all aware of the controversy and generally negative fan reaction to this ending. In simple terms, Sheppard finally gets to a point where s/he can kill the Reapers and save the universe. S/he is then presented with a choice: destroy them, but also all other synthetic species (such as the Geth who, in my playthrough at least, were a staunch ally), control them, or fuse all organic life with all synthetic life. Seeing the final option as the most suiting of my “solve-all-problems” Sheppard, I picked it, and was treated to a beautiful, transcendental journey as Sheppard sacrificed himself for this change. I then see the human Joker and the AI robot EDI landing on a new planet together, both sporting evidence of their new merged genetics.

I can honestly say I think this is one of the best endings, not just in video games, but in any popular media. The theme of choice that runs right throughout the “Mass Effect” series is solidified in these final moments. Throughout the game, we see the toll Sheppard’s journey has taken on him or her, as Sheppard is continually haunted by the memory of an Earth boy s/he failed to save. Throughout all the moral complexity of “Mass Effect”, the ending underlines quite simply and elegantly the things that are important in life, and for once ends on an optimistic note, after the fatalism of the series up until that point.

Pictured: Pure awesome.

I know many people have complained that we do not see what became of the supporting cast and how things developed, but my answer to that is simple; if you do not know Garrus or Tali well enough after three games you never will.

I’m interested to know what people make of this, and hope to read some controversial comments and interpretations.

Great Value Casual Game Pick: Cut The Rope

Well I love my casual games me. Don't get me wrong, I love a good 300 hour Mass Effect 3 (+ ME1 and ME2) save file as much as the next hollow souled recluse but with my often busy lifestyle I feel that while I'm neglecting my duties as a virtual hero in an expansive RPG world,  I still need to have my gaming itch scratched.

Cut the Rope's candy deprived Om Nom makes the same expression I do when I've not had a game to play all day long.

The downside often is though however, that such casual games can often lack the depth and progression of their bigger production value cousins. However sometimes a casual game will come along which will have you coming back to play little by little for what must sum to hours and hours worth of time because of its devious game design which opens more and more game elements and challenges as you progress. One game, which I've paid the full premium price (a measly £1.24 or something) is Zeptolab's Cut The Rope  (an in-browser trial version of the game can be played here) and it's taken over my work life in this last month or so. Research? Cut the Rope! Reading? Cut the Rope! Marking? Please don't go on for too long as it will only interrupt my rope cutting time.

The aim of the game is to feed pieces of candy to a very cute cartoon baby dinosaur/dragon creature called Om Nom by completing an array of skill/puzzle challenges which largely involve (you guessed it) cutting ropes from which the delicious candy hangs from. The levels (and there a lot of them) are organised into ten "boxes" of 25 levels (do the math son) and every time you move onto a new box, lo and behold a brand new element of gameplay is added to the mix for the next wave of levels and by god to they exploit every new feature to its fullest, especially when you'll be using a combination of all the elements revealed to you so far to not only feed Om Nom. but also to use the candy to collect three deviously placed stars in each level before you do so. If you're anything like me, the prospect of three stars per level is a curse as I personally must complete a level with all three stars in tow before I can move on. It's that Angry Birds bullshit all over again but this time it's actually fun and requires some modicum of skill.

Yes, yes it is, but that's the entire point... moron.

It definitely scores highly in my books and I think you'll find that it is a very satisfying casual challenge, especially at the bargain sum of 0.5 p per level. My only concern is that Om Nom isn't getting a balanced diet. All he eats are lollipops, donuts and muffins but I also envy the little mite for this too. Sometimes I deliberately destroy the candy to spite him which leads me to the conclusion that I need to seek therapy. So long folks!

What would you be if you were a WOMAN playing an MMO? - by Katie Highnam

I was recently asked by a friend of mine to join his league in DCU Online as it is full of boys, and they need some motivation to stay in the group, and talk more to each other, building a team mentality etc.etc. so I started thinking about girls and how they affect groups in gaming situations.
The reasons for women’s importance in MMOs are obvious, there are very few “proven” women in the genre in the form of “Pics or gtfo”, World of Warcraft has about 20% of its users as real women, and that’s pretty high for an MMO. So when there is a proven woman her personality can have a much greater influence on the group than would happen in normal life.


I would say there are three general types on women in MMOs and obviously these are highly stereotyped and there are degrees between the types but there is one type that can bond the clan together, another that doesn’t affect the clan in any way and the third type either causes conflict or drama without knowing or intentionally and can damage the clan.


The first type of woman in the MMO world is the “Tag-along” type, the girl who joined because her boyfriend plays and she wants to share something with him. Unless her boyfriend is involved in some politics or drama in the group this girl usually stays out of the way, is good support in PK or PVP but doesn’t commit too much to the group, she does no harm. 

Pictured: The Tag-Along

The second type of girl is the “Drama Queen” type, the girl who loves playing MMOs and really gets into them, but is over reactionary to anything that anyone says. Either she flirts with everyone and tries to cause drama with the rest of the guild relationships or she acts out because she feels under-represented and hard done by because she is in the minority. 


The third type of girl is the “Mother-figure” type, she cares about the MMO and loves to play it and care about all the people in the clan like it was a family. She helps mediate disagreements between the clan and keeps the clan working together. She can help motivate the clan and bond them into a team. 

Visual representation of a protective mother. Dumbo is a Lv.12 Paladin at this point in the movie.

A mix of these women is ideal for the balance of a guild, the Drama Queen is usually great at taking her anger out or proving herself in PK or PVP, the Tag-along is a great support and the Mother-figure obviously does what she does. I figure I am a mix of the Drama-Queen and Mother-figure and I have written a quick quiz for you to find out which type you would be!


What keeps you playing?
a) The PVP!
b) Being able to spend time in a fantasy with my partner
c) The friends that I have made here
d) I'm a man


What do you want most?
a)  Better equipment for the PK and to make lvling easier.
b) A teleportation system that means I can teleport to my partner or vice versa whenever we want.
c)  More team activities
d) I don't know but I'm a man


What Pet do you have in game?
a) Anything that gives me the best boost for my stats, I wanna be MORE powerful!
b) Anything that matches my outfit and looks cute
c) A pet that balances my character and supports my style of play well
d) Something manly because I'm a man


Why did you join?
a) I looked around for a game with good PK or PVP that ran well on my PC
b) My partner found this game and enjoyed it, so I thought I’d give it a go too
c) My friends told me about this game, and even if I don’t play with them now, I have made some good friends here
d) I'm a man is why.

Michael Jordan about to dunk a basketball. Just thought it was time for a picture! Trollface.

What graphics style do you like?
a) I modded the style anyway to make it run faster for the PVP
b) I’m not too fussed, I got used to the game because of my partner
c) I like it to be friendly and not too bloody
d) Any graphical style that appeals to my manliness as I am a man.


What needs to be improved in the guild you are in?
a) The way items are given out I’m not given enough stuff from the team activities!
b) Sometimes I feel that my partner and I aren’t taken seriously enough
c) Less trash talk of each other, I feel I need to stand up for a lot of people in the guild
d) As long as these 'improvements' don't interfere with me being a man then I'm cool.


What type of class do you like to play?
a) Anything with a lot of power; DPS or massive AOE damage
b) I play full support and work with my partner or a team
c) Support/Damage mix I’m all about the balance
d) As long as it's male I'm fine.

Mostly As: Yep you guessed it! You are the Drama Queen! You love having power and being able to survive without support, but these games have party and team areas for a reason, just be careful you don’t upset your team, or you will find out why they say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts!


Mostly Bs: You’re the Tag-along! I hope that you keep playing the MMO if you and your bf break up as there are a lot of lovely people in the game who would love a full support character to help them and you can always make friends or morph into the Mother figure!


Mostly Cs: Surprise surprise! You are the Mother-figure, people in the guild look to you for political support, fairness and justice in guild activities. Just be warned, your status in the guild might be resented by the Drama Queen who thinks that her role is more important or less rewarded than your own, and it’s your job to keep her calm!


Mostly Ds: You're a man. Or at least you claim to be.

103% Interview with Maddy Thorson

(This is a lightly edited article from 2012)

Hi gang. In this 103% Interview, we talk to Maddy Thorson, who also goes under her developer name Mady Maek Game. Usually working alone or with friends, Maddy has produced an impressive array of games including An Untitled Story, RunMan and the Jumper series, all available to download from her website. She's also had success making some of the more playable games on the Adult Swim Arcade. Just check out  Mady Maek Game, fill your boots with some fun, and then come back and read this interview once you've experienced some of his works...

One of the multiplayer maps in An Untitled Story.

103%: You've made some impressive games as a solo developer and sometimes involve a small team of people close to you. Nonetheless, you're generally iron-manning the entire development process. What drives you to make games?

MT: Just a desire to create I suppose. At this point, it feels like if I wasn't making games I would be nothing.

103%: I've found that a lot of people who make games don't play them much. Does this apply to you? If not, what kind of games do you like to play? 

MT: Yeah I don't play nearly as many games as I did as a kid. I still play a lot of Team Fortress 2, and recently 100%'d Rayman Origins. Other than that I usually just play indie games here and there, because I'm curious where my peers are taking game design in a way that I'm not generally curious about big-budget games.

Rayman rules. Team Fortress 2 is also good.

103%: Will there ever be another epic adventure game like An Untitled Story?

MT: I love designing with exploration and an open world, but it's hard to control. As my games get more ambitious in scope and polish, it seems harder and harder to maintain an open-ended project like that. But on the other hand, I just read an article on Zelda 1 design that really got me thinking about it again.

103%: Making games for Adult Swim's website now are we? How did all that come about?

MT: Edmund McMillan had put me in contact with the Adult Swim guys when I was looking for a buyer for MoneySeize. They rejected it, but when I finished Give Up, Robot I had a feeling it would be more their style. They ended up being amazingly accommodating and we really saw eye-to-eye on everything for Give Up Robot 2 and Fat Wizard. As far as contract work goes, they're probably the ideal company for me to work with (when I'm okay with selling a game's IP).

Look me in the eye and tell me you don't want to play a game called Fat Wizard

103%: Your minimalist style is celebrated and distinctive.  If you were magically given a team of code ninjas to make games with you would you keep this style or would you want to try some more complex visual techniques. 

MT: Shit I don't even know. It's so hard to separate what I've done out of necessity from stylistic choices at this point, because I started so young with such a limited skill-set. If that situation arose, I'm sure it would take a lot of experimentation for me to figure out what I even want to do. My limitations are a huge part of my process.

103%: Do you have any game-making heroes?

MT: If you make games you're passionate about, you're my hero.

103%: Simple question. Do you own any game consoles?

MT: Right now I have an Xbox 360 and a Wii.

103%: Ogmo cameo'd in Super Meat Boy. Would you ever consider making a premium game or do you like keeping it free?

MT: Yeah I feel like I want to start selling my games straight to players, and build more of a direct conversation with them. And it seems like the business side of indie game development is shifting in a way that will allow me to do that.

Pictured: Ogmo a.k.a "Jumper"

103%: Are you working on anything at the moment?

MT: Two things! A big collaboration with a couple friends that I'm not sure I should talk about, and a solo platformer that's starting to feel like a follow-up to Jumper or MoneySeize in a lot of ways (although it is not a sequel).

103%: Finally. Who (or what) is Ogmo?

MT: I'm not entirely sure. I remember he was just a red square for the entire development of Jumper 1, then I added his legs/face after all the levels were finished. I guess that makes him either an extension of the level design or an afterthought. Both kind of fit his character.

END TRANSMISSION

And there we conclude another exciting edition of 103% Interviews. I'd like to thank Maddy again for taking the time to answer these questions and invite all you readers to play some of her games once more.

If you have any real-life human being gaming heroes (or villains!) that I should know about please let us know of their existence. Thanks. 

Arkham Asylum Hard Mode - A Difficulty Mode Post

Hi all. In this new occassional series we'll review the various "hard modes" of certain games. Hardcore gamers like myself relish the challenge that some games have to offer but find that whereas some games offer a firm but fair challenge in their hard modes, others are just a plainly horrific waste of time and a clear sign of lazy game development. In this feature 103% Complete writers will sort the wheat from the chaff for the hardcore following. For this first iteration we have Batman: Arkham Asylum's Hard Difficulty on the chopping board.

As you would expect. Batman is well 'ard.

When you graduate from Normal Bat to Hard Bat in Rocksteady Studio's modern classic Bat 'em up, you will immediately notice the main difference between the two difficulty modes in that you lose the 'lightning bolt' warnings for incoming attacks in the Freeflow fighting sections. To the uninitiated, these lightning bolts appear during the frequent fights with the game's Black Gate Thug henchmen and warn of an incoming melee attack from one of them. Since you are almost always severely outnumbered, and the fact that these Thugs' attacks have a small counter-attack time window, these very bold warnings of an incoming attacks swiftly become a feature the player depends on and takes for granted. Hard mode pulls the rug from underneath the player who has already played through easier modes and asks them to re-master Freeflow from the ground up.

In Hard mode, the Black Gate cons don't telegraph their attacks nearly as much.

Now in the transition to Hard Mode from Normal mode, rather than merely increasing the number and variety of enemies fought at once (although this happens) and increasing the amount of damage taken for taken hits (although this happens too), Arkham Asylum fundamentally changes the fighting style that the player needs to adopt and forces the player to always be thinking five moves ahead in order to survive the regular onslaught of hand to hand 30 versus 1 rumbles. They do this in a sensible way (in fact it only adds immersion to the fighting) and as a result the level of satisfaction  from clearing a section is all the greater for not solely being a rescaled version of the Normal story.

I should also mention that the Predator sections are also more challenging but not in the same fundamental way that the combat is. But this is probably for the best. Given the critical amount of damage taken for being discovered in these stealth modes, taking away the essential Detective Mode from the player would have been a step too far and the game designers were wise not to go down that route. All in all, Arkham Asylum's Hard Mode is a challenge that is worth a second playthrough for.

Verdict: A great example of a challenge mode

“The only thing good to come out of the past is history”- Things that gaming is glad to be rid of

As with most things, aficionados of gaming often have a tendency towards an overly strong fondness for the retro. Hence the reason everyone still loves the original “Super Mario Bros”, why people continue to lament the decline of Sonic, and why people still punish themselves with the hideous difficulty of early “Castlevania” games.And I, for one, am most certainly a part of this dewy-eyed nostalgia, although if I’m brutally honest those games were not my personal “golden age”; rather, the N64 and Playstation were my generation’s console of choice. But I was still very familiar with those styles of games as a child, and I’m surprised to see the hangover of that period still having a strong effect on video game design today.

Admit it, getting a game over screen after getting to the boss of labyrinth zone is a kick in the nuts.

Given how often (particularly older) gamers lament how gaming has lost its way, and become a charmless,
homogenous corporate predictability, I find it strange how often people forget many of the more annoying aspects of older games. So as a counterpoint to this moaning, I’m going to try and remind people how much gaming has improved.
Firstly, save features and save regularity. Many older games do not have a save feature of any kind; you simply had to complete the game in one run, or if you were lucky got a password system. Do you know what’s great? Autosave. Been playing “Oblivion” for 2 hours without saving and it crashes? Sorted. And on a related note, respawn points in general are a massive plus. If I have proven I can reliable do a section of a game, I probably don’t want to have to play five more times just for another crack at the harder section that follows it. Everyone likes a challenge, and I would not want games to be toned down, but involuntary repetition is not challenge, just boredom. This next one may seem a little petty and irrelevant, but the normalising of wireless controls is criminally underrated. I am as guilty as anyone for taking this for granted, but the jump between Wii and Gamecube becomes painfully clear when I trip up passing dogs with my attempts to sit more than 3 feet away from the TV. Wireless controllers are tidier and simply more convenient, not least when you lose you rag, as you can throw them that much further.

This wireless gamecube controller fetches $130 dollars these days. I can see why!

Removal of lives systems. I’m only going to try again, so unless there is permanent limit on lives for the entirety of that games life, it ain’t gonna work. And probably the biggest complaint I see from hardcore gamers is that games have become too easy. My first response to this is, quite simply, that they haven’t. You played “Super Meat Boy”? “Bayonetta”? Have you forgotten that they still make “Ninja Gaiden” games? My second response is that, even if they have, it is probably a good thing, as games were stupidly unfair at points. I also think that truly hardcore gamers should seek out and create their own challenges. The quote in the title of this article is from “Bastion”, a relatively easy action rpg, which contains so many optional difficulty modifiers it is possible for any gamer to modify the game to their skill level. Games like “Castlevania” and “Contra” just came with one mode; hard. We still have these difficulty levels, they are just buried behind the more welcoming aspects of games. And I refuse to believe gaming being more accessible can ever be a bad thing.

Play My Puzzle Game: Linesweeper

Yes you read right... I kinda invented something. "Linesweeper" is not too unlike popular Japanese puzzles except I guess it's not Japanese since I made it (so we I guess we should call it one of those "British Puzzles?") but this is all fluff. I should tell you all how you can play it online and where you can do so.

Linesweeper is hosted on the website of a great guy called Otto Janko, (I've mentioned his excellent site before) and he has kindly made a Javascript applet for what would have otherwise been solely a pen and paper based grid puzzle so you can actually just do it all in your browser right now!

There is a good explanation on the main page on how to solve... but it's in German so unless you want to use a translator to figure out the rules I'll just explain it here.

LINESWEEPER RULES!


1. The object is to create a path through the grid which forms a single closed loop. You can only ever move up, down, left or right (not diagonally).


2. The loop can't cross itself or have a fork in it, just one uninterrupted loop.


3. The numbered cells can't be passed through and tell you exactly how many of the 8 surrounding cells should contain some part of the solution path. (e.g. "0" means the 8 surrounding cells can't be passed through at all).


NB: There is only ever one solution and no guesswork is required.


There are 20 puzzles on the site at the moment and I've already written another 5 personally and perhaps other puzzle authors out there will create their own problems in the future? Watch this space!