Why Half-Life 2 is one of my favourite games

Transcript

Hey hey folks, and welcome to another installment of Dave’s Favourite Games. This time around, Half-life 2. This video will be an exploration of my history with the game, and the reasons I love it to this day. Hopefully it will inspire those who have not played the game to try it, and for those who have to find new appreciation of it. Let’s continue.

As these episodes usually begin with a story, let’s do that. Half-life 2 is the subject of one of the first pieces of critical game writing on my old blog. I’ll put a link in the description and as you can see, I’m showing the article itself onscreen. I must have changed the background to the blog at some point and the text didn’t change along with it. Black on deep blue? Yeesh. Anyways, the article was about how every chapter in game shifts the gameplay in distinct ways and you’re never quite doing the same thing twice. I thought about this piece of writing a lot during this play of Half-Life 2, and while I still kind of agree with it, the shifts in gameplay are even more nuanced than originally written. Also at the end of that article I mention, and I quote, “...the upcoming Episode 3…”. Ah, so naive.

So let’s dive into what I love so much about this game. Replaying it, I was struck by the fragility of Gordon Freeman. Just like my memories of playing through Half-life, I spent a lot of the game on low health and if I had any suit power left, it was a luxury. The combine’s weapons can quickly tear you to shreds, and while the headcrabs and the monsters they turn people into are less damaging, you don’t want one in your face wailing on you. This turned many firefights into an exhilarating experience as I tried to make use of cover, and the environment for tactical advantage.

Alongside changing the gameplay from chapter to chapter, Half-life 2 is full of set pieces. Those who have played it will likely remember the airboat (especially the sections with the helicopter chasing you), crossing the bridge, the shootout with the Striders on top of the ruined building, and of course making your way through the Citadel. The boat and the buggy are cases where Half-life 2 shows off the pros and cons of its physics engine. My guess is they were very proud of it, as so many sections of gameplay revolve around using it to get around the world, attack enemies, or solve rudimentary puzzles.

Oh, I have to talk about the sound design. The word iconic gets thrown around a lot today (thanks Ubisoft), but to me, so many of the sound effects of Half-life 2 are iconic. There’s the sound when you pick up a health pack. When you pick up a suit recharge. The flatline of killing a combine soldier. The dispensaries. The scream of a headcrab as it’s charging at you. The meaty thunk of the magnum. The foont of the crossbow. These sounds breed familiarity. You spend the game with them, and so many are tied to positive or negative emotions (such as my blood curdling when I heard the shuffling of the dreaded black headcrab).

And since I have already mentioned set pieces and the black headcrab, I think it’s time to talk about Ravenholm. Arguably the most memorable section of the entire game. Ravenholm is both playful and terrifying. It’s playful because it’s your first real testing ground for the what the gravity gun can do. The early sections of Ravenholm are littered with saw blades, oxygen containers and all sorts of debris that you can suck up and shoot at all the zombies shuffling aimlessly around the town. Father Gregory is playful too. One of the more enjoyable personalities you’ll meet in the game alongside Alyx. And then the new headcrabs get introduced.

My memories of Ravenholm were predominantly about the terror of the black headcrab and their neurotoxin, so when the spindly legged headcrabs are introduced, I thought they were the dreaded black monstrosities. They filled me with dread. It’s also the way the monkey ones move that is sufficiently creepier than a normal headcrab, and this plus the sound are what make the black ones unsettling on top of their ability to momentarily take away all your health. To reinforce how unnerving they are and how the game knows it, when you finally make it out of Ravenholm, you come across a hole leading to an underground area with walkways above it. On the floor of this cavern, dozens of all three types of headcrabs are skittering about. Just when I thought I was away from the terror of Ravenholm, the game throws this on me. It’s clever, because the few moments in the rest of my playthrough where I came across the black headcrab and the lumbering blobs that throw them, it was a reminder of how effectively the designers had taught me to fear this one particular enemy. The monkeys are just an annoyance in comparison.

And while it’s not technically a set piece, I have to mention the Antlions. In the initial section with the buggy they can be an annoyance. Then they become a real threat once you have to cross the sand. You have to play around with the physics to create bridges to cross long stretches without setting the hive off, and thumpers, the large machines sending vibrations into the ground are your friends as they keep the Antlions away. Then you fight and kill an Antlion guardian. You gain the ability to control the swarm. You assault Nova Prospekt, the combine prison with an army of Antlions in tow. It’s a marvelous change in dynamic, especially how thumpers are now the enemy, because they stop the Antlions following you. I was kind of put off by how many of them I sent to be slaughtered before I made my way back to City 17. It must have been in the hundreds at least. I wonder if a similar thought weighs on the mind of military generals.

After a lot of fighting in the streets, you make it to the Citadel. It’s a great way to end the game, not just because of how difficult it was to get there, and the sheer size of the structure, but your weapons get taken away, and the process turns your gravity gun into a superweapon. You also get extended suit power. You’re not invincible as two specific areas of the Citadel reminded me, but blasting your way through combine soldiers with the greatest of ease is a nice change of pace. There’s also two sections where you hop into a motorised restraint and spend some time just travelling through the mammoth structure, taking in the sights. It’s sort of like a callback to the train ride at the start of Half-life.

Now before I started this channel, if a game had difficulty selection, I would choose the easiest difficulty available. I wanted to experience games with the least frustration as possible. I actually appreciated games with no difficulty selection over this choice. When I started this channel, my thought was that I should play everything on the default difficulty as that’s the baseline experience the developers intended. This playthrough of Half-life 2 was my first on normal difficulty, and I think it soured my experience more than I would have liked. All the enemies were a lot more difficult to take down and ammo and health were of a greater concern. I mentioned Gordon Freeman’s fragility, and while that’s always been the case, even on easy, it was a lot more pronounced on this playthrough.

It led me to think that perhaps I should always play my favourite games the way I’ve always experienced them, but similar to how I finally played Doom properly last year, I think there’s also a benefit in revisiting a favourite in a new way. Yes the game was more frustrating, but as the majority of this video points out, there was still loads to love, and the game is still a favourite of mine for all these reasons. What are your thoughts? What sections of Half-life 2 do you remember fondly, or not so fondly? Do you regard it as a great game? Why or why not? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please like, share, and subscribe, and I hope you’re having a wonderful day.

Dave Critiques - The Witcher: A game worth its troubles

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of The Witcher. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

My time with The Witcher was plagued by technical difficulties. I have heard it said that The Witcher is a game barely held together, and I agree. It strains its engine so that even 10 years later, I can’t get it to run well on my modern system. And talk about glitches and crashes. The game crashed so much that I was almost ready to give it up at the end of chapter 3. I didn’t though. I looked up ways to mitigate the crashes. I overlooked the glitches. I grew to love everything the game was trying to do even when it was bursting at the seams. The question then, is “what kept me playing”? This video is going to explain that. How it ended up being a wonderful game, that I can easily see myself returning to in the future.

Let’s start off with Geralt. When I first tried playing The Witcher years ago, I played it in English, and I think Geralt’s gruff Christian Bale voice might have been one aspect that stopped me playing. This time around I played the game in Polish with English subtitles. This greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the voice acting. Part of that may be that when you don’t know another language, you don’t know if it’s a bad line delivery, but it helped immerse me in the fantasy world of The Witcher. It definitely made listening to Geralt more tolerable.

So what is a Witcher? A Witcher is a relic of the past. A group of specially trained mutants who are paid to slay monsters. Geralt is an infamous Witcher due to past exploits that he doesn’t remember, as he starts the game suffering from amnesia. I don’t know if I’d say that Geralt’s philosophising of a Witcher’s role in modern society is due to this amnesia or if it is part of his character. His friends like Zoltan Chivey certainly aren’t surprised when you engage them in meaningful dialogue of this nature, but it was one facet of Geralt’s character that endeared me to him.Regardless of the choices the player can make, you can see Geralt wrestling with what he is, what is the right thing to do, and if he has a place in what’s going on.

His friendships and the relationships you strengthen throughout your adventure are another highlight. Because of the amnesia, long time friends are still new to Geralt. The trust might not be there with some of them (Triss for example, due to her motivations as a member of the sorceresses), but I always loved spending time with Zoltan, Shani, and Dandelion, especially that one section of the game where you have a party with them, and just drink and reminisce. The Witcher is famous for its moral choices, but I’d say out of all the decisions in the game, the one that gave me the most pause was whether to hand Alvin over to Shani or Triss in chapter 3.

I spent the game making such decisions on the spur of the moment. Story decisions are made through the dialogue choices, so I’d always ask myself which reply made the most sense to me when it happened. This choice in particular was interesting because I made the decision to give Alvin to Shani before Salamandra got involved. After rescuing the boy, I needed to keep him safe, thinking that Triss would be able to protect him more than Shani. I loved how the game threw a curveball in there as if to say, “Yeah, this decision was tough, but was it really?”. I think it’s because it’s the most personal choice in the game. Siding with the Scoia'tael or the Order of the Flaming Rose is important plot wise, but Alvin, Triss, and Shani all have relationships with Geralt, and this choice can drastically affect those relationships.

Now let’s discuss the world of The Witcher. If you’ve played a fantasy RPG before, or read a fantasy novel, or watched a fantasy movie, you might know where I’m coming from when I say The Witcher is full of classic fantasy tropes, but things are just different enough to make it unique. It’s the enemies that are the best examples of this.Yes there are ghouls, spirits, rabid dogs and wyverns, classic fare, but there are also drowners, kikimores, giant centipedes, and the Vodyanoi. There’s the wild hunt too, the leader of which haunts Geralt for much of the game and ended up being the final boss in my playthrough.

This idea of “same but a little different” applies to a lot of the systems as well. You level up as you gain experience, but your upgrade menu is tiered and uses medallions, of which you only get a set amount. Alchemy may seem tedious for its collection aspect early on, but once you get a taste of the power of Witcher potions and oils, you’ll never want to enter an encounter without at least a Swallow on hand. There’s also the possibility for experimentation, and coming up with concoctions that you may not have found the recipe for yet.

Then there’s the combat. It’s like the world’s simplest rhythm game. Click when the icon changes and you’ll enter into the next stage of the combo. You might find yourself swapping stances, and throwing a few spells into the mix, but overall the repetitive nature can be tedious. What interested me is the difference between playing the game in isometric mode versus playing it over the shoulder. I played the entire game over the shoulder, but during my last attempt I played with the isometric view. Isometric gives you a more strategic overview of the battle. You’re able to position Geralt a lot better but you become more removed from the action. Over the shoulder puts you in the action, increasing use of the dodge to make sure enemies are in front of you. It’s more one at a time, changing to group style if there are others around.

Lastly it’s each individual chapter’s story that kept me going. Yes, walking around the outskirts or through Vizima for the upteenth time can be a chore, and yes, I did get distracted by much of the side content, but each chapter’s main story is highly engaging. Chapter 1 is a morality tale, about why the villagers are being haunted by a malevolent spirit and who is to blame. Chapter 2 is a whodunit that can end in different ways with different characters as allies, enemies or corpses depending on how closely you were paying attention. Chapter 3 is political intrigue with the tough Alvin decision I talked about earlier, plus payoff from earlier in the story. Chapter 4 is similar, dealing with a wedding gone wrong and the influence of an elder God and its worshippers. You also finally run into another Witcher. Then you have the finale.

Princess Adda has the Striga curse again, and the battle between the Scoia'tael and the Order of the Flaming Rose reaches its climax. You confront the one pulling Salamandra’s strings with the game suggesting that when Alvin disappeared at the end of chapter 4, he went back in time and grew up to be the man you just defeated: Jacques de Aldersberg. This places your interactions with Alvin in a new light, and colours not only the actions of Salamandra and the Order of the Flaming Rose, but Geralt as a father figure for the boy. Yet another instance of Geralt choosing actions that have unintended reverberations not only in the future, but in the past as well. You wonder if Geralt caused the events that took place, or if he was simply never able to prevent it no matter what choice the player makes.

And then the final cutscene plays starting another chapter of The Witcher. Yes it seems that it is linked to what Geralt and the player has just gone through, but it’s an inciting incident of its own story. Hopefully sometime soon I’ll get around to playing The Witcher 2. I have heard a lot of criticism towards that game, but then again I put up with consistent crashing, glitches, and a lot of tedium to play through The Witcher, and I don’t regret my time spent with it, faults and all. I’m looking forward to The Witcher 2 having similar qualities.

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - Immersion in narrative games

Transcript 

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

While thinking about the type of game Danganronpa is, my mind easily went to similar visual novels like the Ace Attorney and Zero Escape series. All three are murder mysteries (although Zero Escape is about the threat of murder). I wonder if a murder mystery is the best kind of story for a visual novel. I have heard it said that murder mysteries are kind of like games themselves, the reader trying to work out who the murderer is, how they commited the murder, and why, before these answers are revealed by the story.Certainly all these games have the player wanting to know the “why” behind everything.

In game design, Danganronpa is closest to Ace Attorney with the most entertaining parts of both games being the trial segments. The students of Hope’s Peak Academy are working out who committed the murders each time one occurs and how they did it (the why is stated from the outset. It frees them from the horror of their high school prison). The trials are more action orientated than Ace Attorney. You’ll mostly be going through testimony as your fellow classmates are discussing the case, disrupting a lie or an inconsistency with a truth bullet. It’s thematically clever. You’re blowing away falsehoods. This action is tense and exciting, not only gameplay wise, but narratively too as you’re slowly unravelling the murder in question.

Rather than increase the challenge of the cases and the logic used to solve them, it seems to me that Danganronpa keeps ramping up the difficulty of the gameplay itself. Well perhaps difficulty is the wrong word. The feeling I have is that the gameplay segments keep becoming more obtuse. Some of it makes sense like the ability to choose from multiple bullets to fire off at a false statement. That’s having the player use their head a little more. Then however you have comments blocking the statements you shoot that you have to clear out of the way first. Then you can suck up keywords from statements themselves in order to shoot them at another statement. And this is just the truth bullet segment. In the dual section, obstacles keep getting thrown in your path in a similar fashion.

This brings up the question of why. It seems that in the interest of servicing gameplay, Danganronpa interrupts the excitement and flow of its digital novel roots in order to have an increasing number of things for the player to do, an increase of the number of plates that they need to keep spinning. It makes me think of the criticisms that narrative heavy games face. How can it be called a game when there’s little to no gameplay, or if the gameplay itself seems superficial? Now I hear that criticism more towards games like Dear Esther or To the Moon than games like Ace Attorney, but I think the answer applies to all story driven videogames.

A narrative game features a different type of immersion than your typical videogame. The immersion is not in the connection the player has with the character they are controlling. There is little to no connection between the controller and the action on screen. These games, the successful ones, achieve their immersion through their writing. Strong characters, pacing, and revelations create a different kind of player engagement, a different type of immersion.The desire to see what happens next. Of course the problem with this type of immersion is that if the narrative isn’t engaging a player, there’s no gameplay to fall back on. It’s a testament to Danganronpa that its desire to try and increase its immersion through this escalation of gameplay isn’t enough of an overstep to destroy the immersion it creates through its characters and the mysterious and dangerous circumstances they find themselves in.

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - Night in the Woods: The meaning of replayability

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of Night in the Woods. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

One notable aspect of Night in the Woods is that during the day to day repetition, you choose which of Mae’s friends to spend time with. This means that based on the decisions of the player, you will miss content that reveals character and may help understanding of what the game is actually about. This gives the game ‘replayability’. This has often been a sought after selling point of videogames. Due to the nature of choice, an abundance of content, or simple secrets, games are praised for having new things to show the player on subsequent playthroughs. In narrative games, this is often done by asking the player to make decisions that impact the story in some way. Choosing which friend to hang out with may not seem like it matters all that much in the grand scheme of things, but Night in the Woods shows that such decisions can affect an overall understanding of what the game is about.

Viewing games as an artform, this presents an issue that paintings, films, or books don’t have to contend with. Yes just like these artforms, games can contain deeper meanings and thematic depth, but the difference is that those other artforms are static. A book has exactly the same words each time you read it and a film is exactly the same each time you view it. The only thing that changes is yourself as the audience, as you might uncover or make some aspect of the work more resonant than it was the last time you read or watched it. In fact, if a game is different each time it is played, it may be that it’s more difficult to engage with any deeper meaning or thematic depth as it’s quite possible that these aspects of the work are not experienced by each player on each playthrough.

The reason this idea struck me while playing Night in the Woods is because of how layered the game seems to be when trying to discern what it’s actually about. And I think that’s mainly because it’s not exactly just one thing. It’s many things, and these things overlap. For instance, Night in the Woods is a tale about the dangers of nostalgia. A manifestation of that idea that you can’t go home again because home isn’t the same as you left it, and you certainly can’t force it back to the way it was. It’s a coming of age story about early twenty somethings learning responsibility and understanding who they are and what they want their relationship to the world to be. It’s about mental illness and learning to live with that part of yourself. These seems to be the more grounded readings.

Night in the Woods is also about lovecraftian horror, about a malevolent elder god who might have descended from the stars and currently resides under the town of Possum Springs thirsting for blood. Whether this horror is legitimate or a metaphor for the more grounded aspects mentioned before is up to your interpretation. Having said that, the game is also about faith. Faith in people, faith in community, and faith in something larger than yourself. It’s about what faith means to different people, and what faith means to those who believe in the religious, including the possibility of the elder goat god. Lastly, It’s about small town America and the economic struggles of Possum Springs in the modern era.

All these aspects of the game I did not work out just by playing the game. I felt like I recieved the cliff notes versions of some of this while playing. The main path of the game will have you come into contact with the majority of these ideas, but my deeper understanding of the majority of them was coloured by the research into what other people have written about the game after playing.

Now if I were to play through a second time, I should be able to expand my understanding of the game’s meaning by making different choices in Mae’s day to day life.But let’s think of what this means for Night in the Woods as a piece of art with a definitive meaning. By definitive I mean what the people who made Night in the Woods had in mind when they created the work. I am not saying that an artist’s meaning is the “proper meaning” of a work or more important or “right” than the interpretations made by anyone who plays the game. It’s just that this game more than others has me thinking about what ‘replayability’ means in terms of artistic expression and interpretation.

The interpretations of Night in the Woods are based on repeated playthroughs and discussions between people who experienced different playthroughs. If you look at a game’s meaning as say a giant jigsaw puzzle, these playthroughs and discussions are clusters of pieces working to create a whole image. What does it mean however that a single playthrough of the game might only reveal small clusters of the jigsaw puzzle, and different ones each time? Does this mean that the meaning of the work is different each time? If so that adds a wrinkle to the idea of gaining new perspective from art when you return to it as the art itself may have changed. Then again, all this information present is actually a part of the game itself. It’s still been coded and animated even if the player never experiences it. I wonder if the ideas presented here hold merit.What’s your take?

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - Cave Story +: The positivity of games criticism

Transcript 

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of Cave Story. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

So this is not really going to be a critique about Cave Story specifically. Oh I will start off by talking about what I see as the pros and cons of the game, but in this video I will be using Cave Story as a springboard to discuss the benefits and importance of games criticism. In researching what people have written about this indie platformer from 2004, I was expecting to go through a large amount of critical writing, but surprisingly, there was very little (at least the way I normally search for critical writing on Critical Distance, Google, and Youtube). The pieces I found were of mostly a high quality, especially the Youtube videos, and that will come into play later on.

I think Cave Story biggest strength is as a cultural landmark in gaming. It’s the epitome of what has become the indie gaming scene, made over 5 years by one man, and then released for free online (before eventually being ported to every console in existence). Yes, a lot of the great games of the 70s and 80s were made by one person or a small team, but I think Cave Story brought that spirit back in a big way. Thanks to the internet, anyone with the time and passion can make something and have it resonate with a large audience. In that context, I think Cave Story excels.

I also love its interconnectedness. The story links to the level layout, to the weapon upgrades, and even to the secrets, including the secret ending. It’s all cohesive. That makes individual elements difficult to criticise because the whole of the game is like a finely tuned machine, and taking out one piece and describing the problems with it can have a knock on effect for every other aspect of the game. Maybe that’s why criticism of Cave Story is so scarce. Fans of any game seem to have difficulty with the idea that you can love something yet still describe the faults you find in it. Heck, in my experience doing so usually strengthens your love of it as you’ve admitted that it is not perfect, but in doing so, what it does right can shine even brighter.

On its surface, I love how unique the experience system is. Your character doesn’t level up, but your guns do. They reach a max level, but every level of every gun has its own benefit. As interesting as this system is though, it’s the other side of the coin that I loathe. When you get hit, you lose experience, so the game is punishing you for playing poorly. If you’re having trouble on a boss you’re taking lots of hits, and because of this, suddenly your weapon isn’t doing enough damage anymore, sliding victory further out of your reach. I get that such a system teaches the player to prioritise dodging over attacking, to learn boss patterns, and to experiment with weapons, but the message I got right to the end of the game was “You’re sucking, and we’re going to make you suck more because of it”.

I love the characters of Cave Story. They’re cute, and yet their motivations and what they go through can be quite tragic. I won’t say that I found myself caring about their plight past wanting to complete the game, but I could see how characters like Sue, Curly Brace, and Balrog have endeared themselves to fans. I would say I felt sorry for Misery at the end, but when she gets possessed for that final fight in the boss rush, the frustration involved over how many times it took me to finally complete it had me caring a lot less than I initially did.

And that boss rush brings me to my final issue with the game, the difficulty of so many of the game’s bosses, and the infrequent checkpointing. Now I realise I am saying this as a player in 2017 who no longer has the patience for games that require a prolonged test of skill between safe havens, so to complain about a lack of checkpointing in a 2004 game seems petty. I admit this is a personal bias. The difficulty of the bosses, especially that final gauntlet sapped all enthusiasm I had for the game. It’s one reason such a short game took me a few weeks to finish. I didn’t want to return to it. I actually considered ending my play session with the bad ending, fleeing the island with Kazuma, but the desire to finish the game properly so I could talk about it with greater understanding prevaled.

You might understand where I’m coming from now that we’re going to talk about games criticism. I saw the good in Cave Story, but I thought its weaknesses outweighed its strengths. Since I try to not just talk about my likes and dislikes in these critique videos, I needed to find another angle to write about, and that’s the main reason I read and watch all the criticism I can find on the games I critique.It tells me what angles other people have tackled and what resonated. With that knowledge I can usually come up with an original take on the game in question or at least an idea of what I want to write about.

Upon doing this with Cave Story (the many attempts required to beat the final boss rush still fresh in my mind), the overall impression I got was not only how beloved the game is, but deconstruction as to why. There was discussion about how the different endings and weapon upgrades play into the game’s central theme of not accepting power that is not yours (as that is the easy way out). There was analysis of the early level design and how it teaches the player through its layout instead of tutorials or cutscenes. And then there were videos just praising certain levels of the game in particular. I’ll link to a few of these videos in the comments.

What this did is make me see the game in a whole new light. I haven’t forgotten my frustrations, but I can see where the people that love this game are coming from. I have a more complete picture and appreciation of Cave Story, and if I ever was to play through the game again, I think I would be more forgiving of its faults as I would be focused on everything talked about in these videos. Seeing my reaction to Cave Story was more negative than positive, I have no idea if I ever will play the game again, but I will say the idea that I might is not completely ridiculous.

One reason anyone writes anything in response to a game, movie, book, or any other artform is to gain a clearer understanding of their reactions to the work in question, and perhaps uncover why the work made them feel this way. The more writing on any work you read, the more differing perspectives you come across, even if you start to see patterns emerge with opinions about certain aspects of the work. Cave Story helped me rediscover how positive an experience it can be to listen to those who feel differently about a work than you do, and why that is. I still don’t think fondly of my time with Cave Story, but I’m glad I played through it, if just to discover why it’s such a beloved classic.

Thanks for watching.

Why Day of the Tentacle is one of my favourite games

Transcript

Hey hey folks, and welcome to another installment of Dave’s Favourite Games. This time around, Day of the Tentacle. This video will be an exploration of my history with the game, and the reasons I love it to this day. Hopefully it will inspire those who have not played the game to try it, and for those who have to find new appreciation of it. Let’s continue.

One thing that I am appreciative of when it comes to nostalgia is that a lot of my favourite games are adventure games. The reason is that adventure games are primarily narrative focused, and that means dialogue. What ends up happening is that the lines from games such as Day of the Tentacle are planted in my brain right next to all those movie and cartoon quotes. I often say “Mmm, I’m thirsty” when I’m thisty, sometimes out loud, and sometimes in my head. I then follow it up with a “I don’t think you should drink that. It looks bad for you.” For a lot of this playthrough of Day of the Tentacle, I was quoting the lines along with the characters on screen, and yes, I was doing the voices.

Unlike the trouble I went through to play what’s considered to be the best version of Loom, all I had to do with Day of the Tentacle is to buy the remastered version by Double Fine. I’m able to have my cake and eat it too when it comes to the game’s options. The voice files are finally in an uncompressed format, there’s remastered music and sound effects, and yet I can choose for the visuals to use the original pixel art. It’s entirely subjective, but I feel the pixel art holds a lot more charm than the new smooth line art. It’s funny because I think the old sound effects have a certain charm to them as well, but after some deliberating, the choice I ended up going with was new sound, old art. I had a wonderful time playing through the game this way.

One reason I love Day of the Tentacle is how the developers managed to make such a complex and silly premise work. You control three characters over a 400 year time span, and yet with that mammoth scope, everything seems managable and self contained. And this is a story about a crazed purple tentacle trying to take over the world. I think it’s the sheer courage of the premise, the surity of its narrative that helps it along. Oh, the tentacle drank polluted water, that means I have to turn off the pipes yesterday. That means we have to use the time machine. Oh, the time machine broke and one character is 200 years in the past and the other is 200 years in the future. They have to get back, and we have to get a new diamond to make that happen.

Meanwhile Hoagie in the past and Laverne in the future have clearly defined goals in order to facilitate their return to the present. Hoagie has to build a super battery. Laverne’s goals are a little more complicated. She has to first escape from the tree she’s stuck in. Then she has to find a disguise. Then she has to win a human competition in order to take a guard out on a date, so she can free human prisoners, allowing her to access the basement. Bernard doesn’t have an easy time either as he has to trick Dr. Fred into falling asleep so he can record him opening his safe, so he can have a contract filled out, that can be sent back in time so the Edisons have enough money to buy a diamond to power the time machine. You also need to rescue Dr. Fred from the IRS.

The steps needed to complete these goals are not really puzzles, but short snippets of situational comedy. But like most adventure game puzzle solutions, it involves being a bit of a dick. Oh, this artist is sculpting his brother? What if I were to switch mallets on him. Ed really likes his stamp collection? What if I were to spill ink on it? Oh, an exploding cigar? Why don’t I give one to George Washington? While the goals are clearly defined, the steps required to complete them are wrapped up in these little moments of gleeful chaos. It means that often you’re approaching the game not as a series of puzzles to solve but a series of “I wonder what would happen if I did this?” questions to answer.

And while so many of the game’s funny lines were in my head after all these years, the same could not be said for all the puzzle solutions. Due to the nature of trying out funny things, and fragments of ideas lodged in my memory, I was making consistent progress right up until the end of the game. Then I got stuck. I had forgotten where I could get quarters for the dryer. I had forgotten how to get the chew toy away from the cat, and I had forgotten how to swap Dr. Fred with his replacement. To the game’s credit, at this point I knew why I wanted to do these things, I had just forgotten how. Although the Dr. Fred problem was caused by forgetting the utility of the ‘use’ verb.

All up, replaying Day of the Tentacle was an absolute delight. The game is as charming and funny as its always been, and the remastered version allows for  different ways to experience it. Even though I love the original pixel art, I’m also curious to play through it with the new art style. Perhaps next time. If you like adventure games, comedy, or stylised cartoon visuals and you haven’t played Day of the Tentacle yet, you owe it yourself to give it a shot. For those of you who love Day of the Tentacle, tell me some of your favourite lines or moments from the game in the comments.

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - Grand Theft Auto V: The potential of multiple characters

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of Grand Theft Auto V. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

Unlike a couple of my other critiques where I start off with a moment that exemplifies the game, I will be using this critique to discuss one moment in particular. No no, not that one. That moment has been discussed to death. I want to discuss this moment. The moment that Trevor finds out that Michael killed their friend Brad in order to fake his own death and has been lying about it. When this scene started to play out and Michael and Trevor pulled guns on each other, I held my breath. I was excited and scared. I was sure that this was the reason we were playing 3 characters in this game. I was going to have to make a choice to kill one of them right here and now. The way the story had been escalating called for this moment. Then it didn’t happen. Trever runs away, Michael is set on by Chinese goons and eventually captured, and Franklin has to bail him out before they kill him. After being rescued, we’re basically at the same place the scene started. True, Trevor now has had his suspicions confirmed so has no reason to trust or work with Michael. Hell, he has ample reason to kill him. It’s what you think would happen after every other violent action Trevor has taken in the game up to this point, but no. Later on Trevor actually saves Michael and the two begrudgingly work on their final heist. It’s all quite anti-climactic.

And it’s a shame because of the opportunities that multiple characters presents. So let’s compare this to every other Grand Theft Auto game to begin with. In these games, you’re always playing an anti-hero of some variety. Sure your actions may have a good motivation behind them, but at the end of the day you’re commiting theft and murdering hundreds of people before the credits roll. There’s not even much ludonarrative dissonance between the story and what the player can do when they muck around in the open world. Sure you’re more of a psychopath if you steal cars, kill pedestrians and lead the police and army on a chase full of rampage and wanton destruction, but it’s only a more extreme version of the actions your character is taking if you follow the main plotline in any of these games. And that’s part of their appeal. The game plonks you down in a believable approximation of the real world at the time these games are set and allows you the freedom to act out playful dark impulses. I’ve heard it said that most people who buy the GTA games never complete them, or even unlock other parts of the world. I think that’s because most people enjoy playing with the systems and fulfilling these desires of destruction rather than play through a crime drama or a tale of gangster revenge.

So as the player, you are attached to the character you control. You see things from their point of view. There’s a saying in writing that we don’t have to agree with the main character of a story, but they have to be compelling enough that we will follow their actions out of at least a sense of curiousity. That’s why we can spend hours with Tommy, CJ, and Niko. We want to see what the game is asking of us as the main character, and how the character we are controlling will react. It’s almost like we’re playing a part of a play we don’t know the lines to, so we’re just as interested to see where it goes. The fact that games are an interactive medium allows such characters to get away with not being as well written or well motivated as we would expect from a similar character in a book, film, or on television because we are the motivation. We want to keep playing the game.

But ultimately games are a storytelling medium, even if that story is as simple as “I as the player overcame a challenge and feel great in having done so.” Things get a little more complicated when the game is actually trying to tell a story alongside the narrative of the player’s actions, but it seems easier to get the player to agree with a character they play as because they have an actual stake in what the character is going through. Once again that stake can be as simple as “I want to get to the end of this game, so of course I don’t want the character I am playing to die or feel bad”, but once you begin to meld gameplay with narrative motivation, the player starts to care a lot more about say Michael’s family thanks to the missions that have involved protecting them.

Now one of the easiest ways to create conflict in a story is to put together two characters who have completely different world views or motivations, and watch them butt heads. This is where the potential for multiple characters arises as we return back to that standoff in the snow. In any other GTA game, we would be controlling Michael in this scene. He has the family, he has more to lose, and Trevor is definitely a great antagonist for him, especially because Michael is more than a bit of an asshole, and this situation he finds himself in is primarily his own fault. Yes Trevor is a psychopath, but at least he’s honest about what he is and what he wants. Michael definitely has room to grow as a character so you can imagine playing Michael in this scene and being completely on his side.

Only we’re not just playing Michael. We’re playing Trevor, and Franklin too. Suddenly this showdown has a lot more weight to it. If we were just controlling Michael we might still agree he got himself into this situation, but we’d want him to get out of it because we’re invested in him as the player character. Having control over both Michael and Trevor, there’s now cause for concern as this scene is playing out. I was certain that the game was going to ask me to make a choice. I was certain that it was going to ask me which of these two characters I sided with in the moment, and I was afraid it was going to ask me which character would live, and which would die.. I was scared because at that moment, I had no idea which choice would be the right choice, and it was one of the most amazing narrative moments in the game because of what was playing out in my head.

Of course I’ve already stated that the game did not take this route. Trevor escapes and Michael gets captured. This perfect opportunity to showcase the potential for videogame storytelling was lost. Well that’s my feelings on the matter at least. The funny thing is the game tries to give the player such a choice later on, but as Franklin. Not only does it not have any resonance, I think it’s kind of a false choice. Let me explain.

You’ve completed the big heist that was supposed to be a suicide run. Michael and Trevor have escaped from a giant double cross, and one of the game’s douchey antagonists Devon Weston appears on Franklin’s front door. He wants Michael dead. Franklin tells him that the FiB has already told him to kill Trevor and he doesn’t want to kill either of them. Devon leaves and you’re given three choices: Kill Trevor, Kill Michael, or team up and take everybody down. I chose the third option. It leads to a giant shootout against the Merryweather mercenary group, and then a series of missions killing everyone in the game who has given our three main characters grief. It ends with Trevor capturing Devin Weston and all three shoving a car into the Pacific ocean with the billionaire tied up in the trunk before the credits roll. Michael and Trevor still don’t like each other, but their antagonism is played off lightly because of Franklin, and the fact they have a ton of cash now, no one after them, and they can all go their separate ways.

This is the only positive ending. I Youtubed the others and both killing Trevor and killing Michael have a sense of betrayal to them that leaves a bitter taste. I think it’s because while the game tries to play Franklin off as a character who has no loyalty and is only in it for himself, his willingness throughout the game to go along with all of the crazy schemes asked of him by Michael, Trever, and the FiB play counter to the subplot of Lamar guilt tripping him for forgetting where he’s come from. Both Michael and Trevor are mentors to Franklin, and not only is killing them off a dick move, but it leaves the FiB and Devon Weston unpunished, and one of the many things that GTAV is great at is making you hate Steve Haines and Devon Weston. To roll credits without either of those guys getting their commupance would have been even more anti-climactic than the lack of a choice at Brad’s grave.

And apparently if Trevor or Michael are killed, there are consequences in the post credits game. Their cut of the final heist goes to the other two players, and certain connections are cut off. So it seems the developers chose to change their open world based on this final choice. In my research it was claimed that the third option originally ended with Franklin dying, so at one point in development it would have been impossible to end the game without one of the three protagonists making it to the post credits world alive. That decision might have made the end of the game have more impact, but I dunno. I just feel like the way things ended up, they squandered a golden opportunity to showcase what a game with multiple protagonists can really accomplish. What are your thoughts? Would you have chosen to side with Michael or Trevor if the showdown ended with one of them dead? What choice did you make at the end of the game?

Let me know in the comments, and thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - Nier: The essence of a game

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of Nier. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

One of my favourite writers on the internet is Film Crit Hulk. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, he’s primarily a movie critic, but usually uses the film or media in question as a jumping off point to dive into a deeper discussion. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about effective storytelling and drama from his essays, let alone all the other points of interest he touches upon. The reason I’m bringing up a film critic in this video on Nier is lately Hulk has spent a few articles talking about a movies’ essence. I’ll link a couple of these essays in the description. It’s how beyond every aspect of the film, from its story to its cinematography to its acting, despite how successful or unsuccessful each of the these elements might be, there’s a core to a film. Almost a soul, and this essence can run counter to the positive or negative qualities that the rest of the film exhibits.

Nier got me thinking about the essence of games. Why is Nier the game to bring up this idea? Here’s the answer I have come up with. I don’t think Nier is a very good videogame. Now I expect to get criticized for that statement alone seeing as the game is a beloved cult classic, but I will do my best to explain my stance. See I also think Nier is a great videogame, but it’s a great game whilst being a terrible game. I think it’s because a game is actually two distinct parts. There’s the gameplay, as what you are doing with the game should always be one of the most important things about a game, but then there’s the whole; what we call a videogame. This is where the essence enters into it. The minute to minute gameplay of Nier, I find highly flawed. I will not say it’s irredeemable. It has its high points, and I hope to touch on some of them, but by and large, running around that world and slashing enemies was in itself not enjoyable. Especially when the game asks you to play through half of it again three times after you’ve completed it once if you want to see all the endings.

Full disclosure, I only played the game twice. I completed it once and the game asked me to play again to uncover Kaine’s story. That highly interested me so I ran through the back half of the game again. It was of course much easier as I kept my level and weapons, but I will say looking back, I don’t know if the extra revelations that second playthrough presented were worth engaging with that combat system a second time, especially when there’s no new gameplay content to be had. Then when the game ends the second time, it asks you to collect all the games’ weapons for the final ending. I couldn’t see myself doing that a third time and certainly not a fourth (because this final playthrough gives you a choice), so I youtubed those final two endings, and I am content in doing so.

See, the positives of Nier are its sense of spectacle and its earnestness. I find the combat to be sloppy. Some of it is getting the angle right on the camera as you’re locked into whatever strike or magic you’ve thrown, and usually committing to an attack and having it play out can lead to a sense of tension, timing and complexity (see: Dark Souls), but here it feels more like flailing around at the enemies surrounding you. I’ve been reading a lot about game feel recently, and Nier is a perfect example of how it can misused or isn’t automatically a magic bullet to make a game better. The spectacle I mentioned at the start of this paragraph is on full display during the combat and interlocks with the way Nier feels to play. There’s this little pause upon a successful hit, and it certainly makes the magic fist one of my favourite moves in the game as that pause is followed by a meaty thunk tossing the enemy into the distance. That never got old. The boss fights are especially about spectacle. When you’ve harmed them enough a timer appears on certain body parts, and if you destroy this timer before it makes a full rotation you’re usually treated to Nier (the default name of the main character) completely cutting loose with a highly satisfying magic attack. Some fights have a few of these as the monster is tough enough to withstand the first and even the second, so the spectacle keeps rising until the end of the boss encounter.

You’ll notice that this sense of feeling and spectacle is always the end point of a fight, or at least is most prominent when you’ve dealt the fatal blow. When you’re in the trenches so to speak, surrounded by enemies, there’s little strategy or enjoyment. At least that’s how I felt. Replaying through the game that second time in New Game Plus made the boss fights easier because they hardly lasted anytime at all, but the swarms of enemies were still an annoyance, even more so seeing that they could knock you down but did jack all to your health. Speaking of spectacle, it’s the game’s music and washed out lighting that lend most of the environments a sense of beauty and delight even if you’re wandering through them for the upteenth time. The fights tend to get in the way of this.

So let’s discuss the second positive I listed, Nier’s earnestness. Most games with stories try their hardest to get the player to like the characters and feel emotion based on where the story takes them, but so few succeed. Why is that? It’s difficult to answer because so much of the success of a story is subjective. For every player who felt sad when Aeris died in Final Fantasy VII, there are those who were indifferent about it, or even laughed. Nier walks an even finer line because I would say its emotional moments are quite melodramatic. The emotional struggles of Nier, Kaine, and especially Emil seem to build to these large monologues backed with impactful music. I’ll show you an example early on in the second half of the game when Kaine has almost died. That’s the basic tone for most of the game. Melancholy, despair, and a glimmer of hope. It’s that last one that really plays with your expectations.

Meanwhile Nier’s emotional throughline is overt, and his motivation is at the forefront of the entire game. His daughter is sick, and then in the second half has been kidnapped. It’s funny how in the last few years, the “dadification” of videogames has been a topic of amusement looking at games like The Last of Us or the upcoming God of War, but Nier was using this emotional bond of father and daughter to push the player forward in 2010. Well at least in the west. Japan has two versions of the game, and in one of them, you play as Yonah’s older brother instead of her father. There’s still a familial connection, but I think you might agree that the protective quality of a father over his daughter is greater than that of an older brother. I guess the term “dadification” was created because some feel this type of emotional motivation for the player is a little too cheap. I think that might be true or false on a game by game basis. I do think in Nier it was pulled off rather well, but your mileage may vary.

But ultimately it’s this weird cast of characters who are each dealing with their own inner turmoil that I think pushes the player through the lackluster combat. The spectacle of the boss fights and their demise makes this easier, but these characters are so different from your standard troop of Japanese RPG party members, that you hope that by the end they can all find peace. That they don’t can deepens the connection that the player feels towards them. Even side characters like the young king of facade. His story was tragic enough the first time through, but that extra cutscene in my second playthrough really drove the knife in a little deeper. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how the second playthrough allows you to see cutscenes of the bosses you fight talking. This is meant to make you as the player feel like a monster for engaging in their slaughter, or at least feel sad that there has been such a fatal misunderstanding based on not seeing things from a perspective other than your own.

This deepened sense of perspective is why when the game said that the second playthrough would unlock Kaine’s backstory and let us learn more about this angry, foul-mouthed mysterious woman I jumped at the chance to play through the game again, despite my grievances with actually playing the game. Oh, and since I wanted to find a way to insert this into the video somewhere, here seems a perfect opportunity. This is more for those of you watching who haven’t played Nier, but the following footage is the first thing you are exposed to upon loading up the game. It’s an odd choice but sets a tone for what follows. Kind of enticing, isn’t it. There are plenty of laughs and great lines along this journey, and I loved the voice actors of all the characters, especially as they bantered back and forth as you’re wandering the world. The verbal sparring of Kaine and Grimoire Weiss was a highlight.

Now for those of you who were able to form a connection with the characters (and as I said, it can be quite subjective), I think you might understand where I’m coming from when I talk about Nier being a great game despite itself. This emotional core mixed with a certain amount of spectacle (in both the audio and visual department) overrides the lackluster combat, the terrible fetch quests and upgrading monotony that comprises the actual gameplay of this videogame. I think that’s why it’s a cult classic. I wonder if it is actually possible to explain the essence of a movie or a videogame because that intrinsic quality might mean different things to different people. Lacking the language to really get to the core of describing the experience of playing a game is certainly one of the greater challenges in regards to this idea being tenable. I hope I’ve been able to convey some of what I was feeling while playing through this game, and you understand the points I’m trying to make, even if I feel I didn’t quite succeed in doing so. I’m fully aware that this lack of language may just be a personal failing. Let me know your thoughts on this video, Nier as a game, and the idea of a game’s essence in the comments.

Thanks for watching.

Why Super Mario Bros is one of my favourite games

Transcript

Hey hey, and welcome to another installment of Dave’s Favourite Games. This time around, Super Mario Bros. This video will be an explanation of my history with the game and the reasons I love it to this day. Hopefully it will inspire those who have not played it to try it, and for those who have to find new appreciation of it. Let’s continue.

I like to start these videos off with a story, so let’s do that. My parents tricked me. The NES had been out for a little while. My friend Ryan down the road had one with all the best games. I’d been playing consoles at his place for a couple of years. He got an Atari 2600 before the NES and we spent far too much time over at his place playing both consoles. One day my parents said they were renting me a NES for the weekend from the local videostore. I told them I’d love if they grabbed Super Mario Bros 2 with it, because that game looked amazing. The ability to select from four characters, how colourful it was, the ability to pull vegetables out of the ground and throw them at enemies, that you could ride other enemies and throw them at other enemies? Such things are important to a kid. So they brought home a NES with Super Mario Bros 2. It also came with the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt split cartridge, two controllers, and a zapper. My parents informed me that they hadn’t rented the console, they had bought it for me. Needless to say I was ecstatic.

A strange thing happened. I took turns on that weekend with Ryan and my Dad who was interested in the NES as well. I wanted to play Super Mario Bros 2. They both wanted to play Super Mario Bros. I couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t as colourful, it was a lot harder, and you could only play as Mario and Luigi (and they both looked and played the same). I reluctantly let them play, and even had a few goes myself, but my imagination and heart was set on the US sequel.

It wasn’t until years later that I reconnected with Super Mario Bros. I think it was in my early 20s actually. I had played the game a handful of times on my NES, but it was through emulation that I rekindled my love of the game. Years ago, Ryan and I had discovered the secrets of the game either by ourselves or on the school ground. We knew how to use the warp pipes to get to world 8 as fast as possible, and my newly found love of the game was partly due to that reason. Years later in a university paper I wrote on Super Mario Bros, I would describe the concept as “forward flow”. The idea that there is a joy in certain games to keep moving forward no matter what. To leap into the unknown with wild abandon. Of course what really helps this along is knowledge of the level, so you know when to jump, what you can get away with, and when to adapt. The best example I have of this is jumping over the Piranha Plants in 4-1. It looks like you’re going to take the hit, but if you time the jump right, you can scrape over their snapping by a pixel or two. No matter how many times I do it, it’s still exhilarating, like I’ve gotten away with something I’m not supposed to.

I’ve always used Super Mario Bros when discussing game feel. There’s something about how Mario controls and his jump that feels great to this day. The friction of sliding along with the screeching sound effect, or how when navigating a landing on a small platform midway through your jump Mario will end up turning backwards, giving a greater sense of joy that you’ve pulled off a tricky maneuver. There’s a fire flower in 1-2 that I never need to get but I always do, because the way to reach it is to use the game’s rudimentary physics to bounce off a wall in mid jump, essentially wall jumping to the fire flower. I wonder if little moments like this inspired Mario’s greater library of jumps, especially in the 3D games. The plumber has seemed to have gotten more acrobatic throughout his games, but that even as tenuous as the connection might be, to trace some of his later abilities back to what is possible in Super Mario Bros puts a smile on my face.

Secret shame time: I cannot actually remember completing Super Mario Bros. I swear I must have since I know all the secrets like the back of my hand, and 8-2 and 8-3 have many familiar elements as I play through them. Maybe it’s the time that has passed between serious plays. I visited as many levels as possible for this playthrough, and it’s easy to forget how difficult Super Mario Bros can be. Anything with bullet bills, and hammer brothers especially, not to mention how crazy some of the platforming gets. I had a talk with a friend whether or not he thinks 8-2 or 8-3 is the more difficult level. I argue for 8-2 because of the Lakitu, the Bullet bills, the Paratroopas and the perilous pits littered throughout the stage. I can see where he’s coming from with 8-3 as the stage is basically a full on Hammer Brothers gauntlet. Let me know which stage you think is the most difficult down in the comments. Maybe it’s something from world 6 or 7. There are definitely some nail biters along the way if you choose not to use the warp pipes.

So I did complete the game this time around. 8-4 is actually a bit of a let down after the madness of making it through 8-2 and 8-3. It uses the mazes that previous castles have used, but this one is pretty easy, even with an underwater segment. I think a lot of difficulty in Super Mario Bros comes from the low amount of lives. How if you get a game over, you have to start over. Sure it’s easy to get back to any point with the warp pipes, but you might have a bout of bad luck and find yourself without the leeway to make mistakes. A lot of people overcome this obstacle by using the infinite 1-up trick in world 3 (and I think it can be done in world 5 as well). I might have been able to do it at one point in time, but not this time through. I relied on save and load states instead.

And I think that’s all I have to say. While the controls weren’t as tight as I remember them being, the game still controls incredibly well and is a joy to play. There are so many nail biting moments as you’re running through these obstacle courses, so many close calls, and because of the random elements of some of the enemies, and your own skill, it never seems like you’ve played the same way twice. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this favourite game of mine, whether they be positive or not so positive experiences with it. I would prefer positive however. Until next time,

Thanks for watching.

Dave Critiques - The Witness: Does your first playthrough really matter?

Transcript

Hey hey folks, Dave here. Welcome to my critique of The Witness. Just a friendly reminder that I will be discussing the game for those who have played it. If you haven’t and are worried about spoilers, please pause the video and go play the game before returning. For everyone else, let’s continue.

So let’s start with what I think are the easier questions to answer before I get to what I want to talk about, although it all sort of intertwines. Why is the game called The Witness? There’s a concept in eastern philosophy that I discovered through personal readings of Buddhism and meditation. It’s the idea of witnessing your own thoughts. A simple way to put it would be if someone says something that makes you angry, instead of being consumed by the emotion of anger, you are able to detach yourself from that emotion and think “I am feeling angry”. You’re not rejecting the anger, but you’re choosing to distance yourself from it. By doing so, the anger will pass more easily, and you can then choose to react to the situation in a calmer state of mind. That’s my level of understanding at least. Like a lot of philosophy, the rabbit hole goes deep. For instance, another aspect of witnessing is the following. Start a line of thought in your head. Maybe you’re thinking about what I’m saying and your reactions to it, or maybe your mind has wandered and you’re thinking about what happened at work today or what you’re going to eat a little later. Now, with that thought, who is voicing that thought in your head, and who is listening to it? They’re both your mind, but there is more than one aspect to your consciousness, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to engage in internal dialogue, or even be able to observe your thoughts as you have them. The trick again as I understand it, is to be the witness as much as possible. This is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. It’s as difficult as clearing your mind of thoughts during meditation. After years of meditating, such a state is still a very rare occurrence for me, but the idea is to try and reach that state… but then again you shouldn’t be trying to reach that state. It’s all a bit complicated.

So why is the game called The Witness? If you uncovered what’s known as the developer ending, you will have entered what looks to be a resort hotel that suggests the whole island and its puzzles are a virtual reality retreat. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the island might be a getaway to encourage and facilitate the witnessing state of mind in those that visit. This is somewhat reinforced by the video at the end where either a tourist, or more likely one of the developers or testers (or possibly even creator Jonathan Blow himself) exit back into the real world and have trouble distinguishing reality from the perspectives they’ve learned to experience on the island. While typing this the idea came to me that perhaps also this video is a metaphor for Blow waking up to the real world after working on this game for so many years, and not being able to adjust back. I think anyone who’s undertaken a large project can relate to that feeling. This sort of segue ways into the more traditional ending; when you enter Willy Wonka’s glass elevator and the whole island resets. You see, the point is not in completing the game at all (resetting the game so you can access the developer ending aside), and that’s why the island resets. It’s all about the moment to moment. That satisfaction you feel when activating the elevator slowly fades away as you realise that the island is resetting. Nothing is permanent, and you should not expect it to be. You should enjoy that feeling when it happens, and not worry that your progress is being undone, because the progress was not important in the first place.

My reliance on a walkthrough for much of this game was quite different than other games. It has to do with how the puzzles work. Each puzzle really has two parts to it. First is the code, or what could be called the rules. Do you understand what the puzzle is asking of you? If the answer is “yes”, then the next step is in solving it. Because the island is open to you from the start, the game encourages exploration. If you haven’t seen these symbols on a panel before, you can certainly see if you can work out their tricks, but the smarter option would be to search the island until you find the series of panels tutorialising those symbols you came across.

These puzzles are as varied as the island itself. Many other critics have talked about their enjoyment of those puzzle types that incorporated the environment or a shift in perspective in some way. I am of the same opinion. My favourite areas are the desert temple, the autumn garden, and the treehouses. Each uses the environment in very specific ways, whether that be the glint of the sun, shadow, or using the alternative exits on a puzzle panel to branch new paths. The castle and the buddhist temple have similar tricks to them, but are much shorter areas (or at least they felt shorter). My least favourite area and puzzle type is the marsh and its Tetris blocks. Initially I loved the concept of incorporating the Tetris blocks into line drawing. What soured me was when multiple shapes were introduced. I just couldn’t work out how to draw both. Then returning later I understood that if two shapes are in the same area, they can move around into any number of combinations. To put it simply, I think this rule is bullshit. I think I have such a visceral dislike of this concept because I like to work out puzzles intuitively by playing with them until a solution emerges (sort of giving my non-conscious mind time to parse out the solution as I fiddle around). The more advanced Tetris grids have multiple shapes, and then on top of that, they have blocks that remove sections of the shapes. Now it’s not impossible for a solution to present itself by playing around on a panel with these rules, but it seems that the best way to work out the solution is to start to grid out the possibilities on a separate piece of paper. It’s strange that I’m giving this criticism, because I loved the desert, and some of the more advanced puzzles in that area require you to write down sections of pathway, so you can piece the whole thing together.

Perhaps it has to do with puzzle preference. I know there’s a lot of critics out there that absolutely despised the sound forest. It may be that not everyone has an ear for pitch or the rules were not as apparent, but I loved that area just because it was so different. To compare The Witness to Myst for a second, many who have played that game complain about the underground maze. That puzzle blew my mind because of its reliance on sound, as so few adventure or puzzle games base their puzzles around hearing. I had the same positive reaction to the bamboo forest. Yes, I think some of the later puzzles got a bit silly, but nothing in the sound forest angered me like the Tetris puzzles. Not even the quarry with its negation rules. I actually thought those were pretty clever. I think everyone is going to have the puzzle types they love and the puzzle types they hate, and while there likely will be crossover between players, those likes and dislikes are going to be different for every person. I know a lot of people loved the craziness of the puzzle types inside of the mountain, but by that point in the game I just wanted it to be over. By the mountain, I had come to rely on a walkthrough almost exclusively.

I’ve talked before about walkthrough use, how it’s like a reverse case of diminishing returns. The more you use a walkthrough to help you get through a section of a game you are having trouble with, the easier it is to return to the walkthrough the next time you get stuck. Initially I only used the walkthrough when I knew how the puzzle needed to be solved, but couldn’t figure out the solution for myself, or if I just didn’t like the puzzle type. For the majority of the game the walkthrough was used mainly for the Tetris puzzles. As stated before, I absolutely despised them. They angered me, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Every other use of the walkthrough was a lack of patience with the more advanced puzzles in areas whose rules I understood. By the time I reached the town and the mountain, I just wanted the game to be over, and was using the walkthrough to reach the end. Especially on those pillar puzzles right before the elevator. A wonderful concept, but not being able to view the whole puzzle threw me for a loop (and the slippery mouse controls when drawing lines didn’t help matters too much either).

Now if this was a different puzzle game, I might feel more guilt for having had to resort to a walkthrough. There’s always an element of shame involved with admitting that I did not have the intelligence or more to the point, the patience to figure out a solution out on my own. I know it’s doable too. Remember how I talked about the design of the island invoking the idea of witnessing in the player? I think it plays a similar role in allowing the player to work out the solutions to puzzles. The island is completely open, and you can tackle the areas in any order you wish. I think the idea is that if a section is giving you a difficult time, go somewhere else and work on that for a while. Maybe just wander the island, listen to some audiologs, watch one of the videos, or try and find some of the islands’ hidden puzzles. Eventually you’ll find yourself back at that panel that was causing you grief and you’ll solve it. Heck, you’ll solve it without even trying that hard. Your mind worked out the solution for you while you were busying yourself with something else. By giving yourself the time and a change of pace (or a change in perspective, which is an underlying theme of the game), you’ve come to the solution without thinking about it. It’s almost intuitive. That moment is yours to cherish, and it will likely happen many times.

Early on I played the game this way. I wandered, completing small portions of each section, and coming back to previous sections and understanding what was alluding me before. When I finally came back to the autumn forest or the castle, I was impressed how far into the area I had actually gotten the first time through, and was able to finish up and move onto something else. Maybe that’s why I found the town and mountain annoying and relied on a walkthrough for them. The town is a culmination of everything the game teaches you, but it also has a couple of sections where you think you know what the rules are, and yet you have it all wrong. It tricks you, and only later with some exploration or frustration (or looking up the solution like I did), you’ll see what was going on, and perhaps you’ll appreciate the ingenuity of it.

The mountain is the final area you’ll tackle, so if you do get stuck, by this point, there won’t be much you can do on the island while you’re trying to work out a solution. Yes there are plenty of environmental puzzles, and most won’t have activated all the lasers to open the mountain (as you don’t need to), but there’s a sense that “this is the only way forward” so you will find yourself focused on the one puzzle that’s standing in your way. It diverts from how I think the game is designed, encouraging wandering so your non-conscious mind can work out the problems, enjoying the scenery and all the little secrets that the island has to offer. Again, you can still walk out of the mountain and do this, but it seems counter-intuitive.

Coming back to the autumn forest, the seaside island or the castle later, and seeing how far I’d come on my own gives me greater peace about my own cognitive ability, about playing the game the “right way”, and about future playthroughs. See, I may have absolutely loathed the Tetris puzzles, but who’s to say in the future when I replay the game that I won’t then find these puzzles an entertaining challenge. I know that part of my desire to use a walkthrough was to consistently progress so I could make this video. In the future when I return to the island, there will be no video to make. As I have already completed the game, knowing that the completion of the island is ultimately pointless, I can take my time. I can load up the island, wander around, and enjoy it without worrying about how many puzzle panels I complete or lasers I activate. I can search for the environmental puzzles in my own time when I need a break, or actually try and find most of the audiologs. They’re so small that if a friend hadn’t told me about a couple of them at the entrance to the bamboo forest, I might have never found any of them. I only uncovered two videos as well. There are another 4 to find and watch.

This unfinished business is certainly an aspect of why I want to return, but it is not the whole reason. I want to prove to myself that I can complete the island on my own. And yet, I don’t seem to care if I do or don’t. I just want to experience that feeling again of wandering around, coming back to a panel and suddenly the solution just appears like there was never a puzzle that needed solving. Perhaps the desire to chase that feeling is the wrong way to go about it, but I feel that as long as I am witnessing this desire, I can at least be at peace about it. Similar to how I used a walkthrough to get to the end of a game where the ending does not matter.

Thanks for watching.