Yay! Finally made the list. I was blown away by the response to my story -- I guess that's what I get when I write something that's both interesting to lots of people and topical.
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Yes, bring on more adventure games.
I'm playing Dreamfall at the moment, having played The Longest Journey earlier in the year, and would love to see more games in that style. The world feels so complete and full of life, while the characters are well-written and down-to-earth (despite the crazy stuff that happens to them).
I usually say to people that Myst killed innovation in the adventure genre, because it was so successful that it gave developers a formula and fans an expectation for what adventure games should be like. It's the same thing as saying the Myst-clones killed the genre, but drives straight to the heart of the matter.
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I neglected to mention it in the article, but to answer Rob's question on the previous Game Diary, the Japanese did land their troops on Genoan soil. Three of them occupied the tiny island just to the east of Genoa, while the others landed adjacent to the city. None of them actually did anything after landing, though (except die).
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Like Alex, I find the writing part easy. The problem is plucking up the courage to tell people they should pay me to do it. But I've made huge strides in the past 10-12 months -- I actually believe I am a writer now, and I've got a growing body of professional-quality work to prove it. (I'll take this opportunity to give a big thanks to Bitmob for giving me both a platform and the encouragement to write more.)
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This is called "the illusion of choice." When done correctly, as you say, the player believes their decisions are meaningful and there is no disconnect between action and consequence. All games with story try to utilise the concept; only a few succeed -- even BioShock breaks down at the end.
Games that do it particularly well allow for some genuine player agency, wherein your actions really do decide whether a character dear to you lives or dies. The first example that comes to my mind is Fallout 2, where a decision you make can result in the genocide of an intelligent race (the peoples of which you may have gone out of your way to help).
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There are a lot of very smart people trying to do exactly what you're asking for, here, but it isn't easy. (Because the complexity of the system increases exponentially with each "choice.")
One game that tried to do this was The Last Express, which was Jordan Mechner's big adventure game project following the original Prince of Persia. I think it took them four or five years to make, and was at that point (1997) the most expensive game ever made.
The Last Express played out in (accelerated) real-time, taking place entirely within a train. The other characters went about their lives whether you were there or not, although your actions could modify their's. If you took too long to choose a dialogue option, the other character would either cut you off or walk away. There were even alternate endings that could occur at various stages of the game, should your decisions lead to disaster. Unfortunately, the "seamless choices" broke down at a few key points where only one of the possible actions was deemed acceptable.
I think we're still in a situation where the only way to effectively provide seamless choice is to scale down the scope of the game -- set it in a small, enclosed environment like a train, house, or cemetery. Then, the amount of work required in handling player choice becomes more manageable.
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Well that's a horrible bug! I can't believe they didn't fix it. I would have seriously considered the option to puppet those cities had I noticed it, but I clicked on "view city" straight away.
There's no way to retroactively turn a city into a puppet, is there?
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I know some people who are working to solve these problems. From what I can tell, the biggest problem they're having is with legal issues -- to do things properly takes support from legitimate businesses, who will not touch anything they could get sued for. So these people have to skirt around the issue of copyright infringement and piracy, and when they try to create a business they run into all kinds trouble keeping everyone happy.
Keep in mind also that a lot of older games do not have clear copyright ownership. Companies have gone into liquidation or been bought, sold, and re-sold dozens of times. In many cases, no-one knows who owns the copyright, and no-one has the source code. A lot of games have been lost completely, while many others remain only so long as the amateur or illegitmate archives survive. So even if the government does change the copyright law (which it absolutely should), there will be games that get lost in the turbulence of game company mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcy.
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So as someone who played the hell out of Pro Evo 5 back on the PS2, but has barely touched a soccer game since, should I get this? I had a quick play with the demo and enjoyed it, but was a bit intimidated by all the tactics stuff that's been added over the past five years (or is all that stuff new as of this version?).
I guess what I really want to know is whether this version plays and feels better than PES5 did back in the day, because I won't settle for anything less.
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That reminds me I've still got to play Rabbids Go Home. I think the Rabbids should have a TV spot -- they're so charming and funny.
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All very clever videos. I've seen the third one before, but knew nothing of the other two.
I laughed all the way through that Japanese one -- it may be staged, but the presenter's reactions were fantastic. And I wish my history classes were as interesting and well-presented as the first video.
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My choice of buildings depends on what I need at the time. Recently, the happiness issues have prompted me to mostly build stuff that boosts happiness. And my empire grew dramatically in a very short space of time. As a result, maintenance costs increased considerably while income changed very little. That's changed now, as you'll see in the next Game Diary (to be posted later), but it was tough going for a while.
With happiness more-or-less under control and my major cities able to prop up the empire, I'm now working to get gold-producing buildings in all of the outlier cities.
I'm doing everything I can to prepare for a tense finish against Siam. The two things that trouble me the most are that they have the giant death ray unit (or whatever it's called), and they have a huge population. I'm catching up to them in all demographics, and am sure I can outmaneuver Ramkhamhaeng, but it may be too little, too late.
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