Mr eel
Silent Hill 0rigins - Competent Rather Than Brilliant, But Still Worth Playing
I’m on some kinda streak here. I’ve actually been finishing games rather than getting bored with them right in the middle. I think it was actually Super Mario Galaxy that actually dug me out of the dumps. Anyhow I finished Silent Hill 0rigins this week. I put it down for a bit while I was playing Mass Effect and came back to it recently.
For a bit of background, Silent Hill 0rigins is the Sony PSP prequel to the Silent Hill series of games. It takes place before the first game and provides a lot of backstory to the events in that and later games in the series. It’s a classic survival horror game. Avoid getting eaten by monsters while simultaneously solving obtuse puzzles. The Silent Hill games are particularly good entries in the genre, with heavy focus on plot and character development. They also feature — in my opinion — some of the best environment, monster and sound design found in horror games. As a result most of the games in the series contain some delightful and terrifying mind-fucks.
Silent Hill 0rigins has our protagonist Travis nearly running over a girl with his truck as he passes through Silent Hill. He then later rescues the same girl — Alessa, for those of you who have played the other games — from a burning house and thus begins his journey through that rotten town, fighting monsters, solving puzzles and generally just trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.
Despite my initial misgivings, SH0 actually pretty good. Still before I get to good bits, I do have a few complaints. Firstly, there are far too many monsters in the game. It reaches the point where the locations are predictable, you know that when you open that door a freaky mmmmmonster is gonna jump you. The problem is the predictability sucks the scares out. Monsters also respawn, which is an incredibly annoying mechanic and quickly becomes predictable as well — after key moments in the game, you can move to another room and know that the monsters will have respawned.
The return of the nurses is predictable and boring. Yes, yes the fans love them, but to me they made more sense in Silent Hill 2 where they are directly related to character’s state of mind. The inclusion in SH0 is obviously just fan-service.
Also, the combat still sucks. It’s always sucked in the Silent Hill games and 0rigins is the same. The problem is that combined with the plethora of monsters, combat quickly becomes a chore. I found myself doing everything I could to avoid a fight, not because it was scary, just boring. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the addition of single use melee weapons either, the bloody things just end up cluttering your inventory.
The pacing felt a little predictable. Move from one building full of puzzles to another, with very little in between. Silent Hill 2 is a better example of how to handle this — plenty of interesting things happen in order to break up gameplay and make it feel less linear or at least less predictable.
Now, the plot in the end was satisfying, but I do have a bit of a problem with certain aspects of it. I think the attempt to have it parallel Silent Hill 2 was a mistake. I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t played either game, but I felt it took a bit away from story, viz. the bewildered protagonist getting information in drips and drabs. The problem is that it just wasn’t handled as well as SH2, which has a real emotional kick in comparison.
That said, the main character Travis is sympathetic and likable — a fair amount of effort has gone into his characterisation. The manipulations of Alessa add a lot of menace to the story, as her reasons and actions are ambiguous. Some of the interactions with other characters felt a bit tacked on — like those with Lisa, the nurse — and I think more of the plot advancement should have been handled via interactions with characters rather than fetch-quests. But still, the story was entertaining and satisfying in the end.
The puzzles; my absolute favourites in the series. I’m sure some of the hardcore crowd could point out that some of them are really obvious, but I don’t think that matters. For one thing none of them require you to accumulate seemingly unrelated items which can be combined in unlikely ways — SH2’s major flaw in my opinion. Instead they actually make a lot more sense. Very rarely was I left with the sense of not knowing where to go or what to do. Solving the puzzles themselves isn’t always simple — in fact some are quite tricky — but in the end they all felt less arbitrary, more integrated with game-world and hence more satisfying.
The graphics are top notch. Really impressive, especially considering it’s running on a hand-held. The lighting and mirror effects stand out in particular. In spots some of the textures where a bit low-res, but this was rarely a problem. All in all I think the developers should be proud.
So in conclusion, despite my criticisms, I came out liking the game. The plot is serviceable, the character of Travis is likable, great graphics, great puzzles and a few scares. If I was to make one last complaint, it’s that the game really doesn’t do anything different to the others in the series, but I can forgive it that considering it’s a prequel.
If you’re a Silent Hill fan just buy it all ready. The game was really made especially for you. For everyone else I suggest playing the other games first as the first three in the series are much better. Still if you find it cheap, grab it!
In the future we can look forward to playing Silent Hill 5 on the Xbox 360. Here’s hoping they can take the series beyond a retread of the previous games. As much as I love the series, I’m not interested in playing rehashes of the same game.
Obviously you can look forward to a review of that game when it comes out 
Sass & Haml - A Sweet Romance Begins
If you’re just starting out using Sass, you can make things easier on yourself by having it automatically compile the stylesheets with every request. This tip applies to both Rails and Merb. Just add the following bit of code to your development.rb file.
Sass::Plugin.options[:always_update] = true
P.S. After being dubious for some time, I’ve now begun my romance with Haml and Sass. It’s sweet indeed. Terse, auto-formatting, variables. Oh my. Delicious.
Mass Effect is Actually Really Awesome Even Though I Wasn’t Too Sure When I Started Playing It
Well, I sat on this post for a little bit because I wanted to mull over things a little first. Hindsight often makes games less compelling than you thought they were when playing them. That’s not the case with Mass Effect. It really is a very good game.
For a bit of context; I don’t play a lot of RPGs, since I find the emphasis on histrionic drawn-out dialog, stupid characters, clichéd settings and crappy game mechanics to be totally annoying. Oh and random battles. OMG I hate random battles. Granted I’m making a lot of generalisations here and most of these criticisms are pointed at Japanese RPGs, but hey… that’s mainly what’s out there right now.
Mass Effect thankfully avoids those problems. The combat is real time, 3rd person and despite the dodgy squad AI, has turned out to be great fun — I didn’t think too much of it at first. The dialog system is flat out brilliant. Being able to shape the direction of a fully-voiced conversation is an excellent experience, and the choices given to you show a fair bit of subtlety — they aren’t just the set of good/bad/indifferent given in most other games. Often I found myself thinking carefully about what response to give. Fucking up a bit of espionage because I made the wrong choices was actually enjoyable, because it felt believable. For anyone complaining about sitting through lengthy dialog and having to skip it; YOU ARE PLAYING THE WRONG GAME. Seriously, Mass Effect is all about learning and interacting with characters in the game. If you have a problem with that, it’s not the game for you.
The dialog only works because of the great writing and a compelling plot. Yes, the plot isn’t entirely free from cliché, but in the context of a game it doesn’t need to be the most original or deep-thinking story ever. The fact that you are affecting the outcome of the story based on your choices is the part that makes it especially compelling.
The sense of a large galaxy waiting to be explored is fantastic. You get to rocket about looking at various planets and pursuing the various side quests. Slight criticism; the on-planet side quests are a bit hit and miss. They tend to be repetitive, with some pretty bland environments. Still, they’re a good chance to collect some money and level up, like a slightly more interesting version of grinding — c’mon at least you’re tooling about in stealth ship while you do it.
I loved reading the planet descriptions and poring over the Codex as I learnt more things about the game-world. The amount of work put into these is fantastic. Open a codex entry and a deep, velvety voice starts reading it out to you. Yes, I did spend a fair bit of time listening to the entires.
So aside from the graphical glitches and ropey frame-rate, Mass Effect has become one of my favourite games, despite my initial misgivings. The fact that this is the first entry in a trilogy gets me all giddy. I can’t wait for the next one to come out!
In the meantime, I might play the game again. This time around I’m going to be really, really mean…
More New Merb (0.5 is out now)
Just a quick heads-up. Merb has moved pretty quickly over the last few weeks, with lots of nice additions, code refactoring and general polish.
Now, Merb 0.5 is out. You can install it via RubyGems. Ezra has release notes on his blog.
Well done to all the devs! Merb just keeps looking better and better as it goes along. Yay!
I Don’t Like Ruby’s Class Variables
Just a general comment. The behaviour of class variables in Ruby is nonsensical.
I’ve had many frustrating moments dealing with the way class variables are handled in sub-classes — they’re shared between all subclasses, rather than belonging to just the one class — now I’m having fun trying to create them when I mix in a module.
What they do and how they are scoped is confusing. Definitely one of my least favourite parts of the language.
January 2007 - Currently Playing
Like usual, I’ve got a few different games on the go at the moment. Here are my initial impressions of what I’m currently playing.
Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
Buggy graphics, driving the Moko vehicle on planet is a pain in the arse and the combat difficulty fluctuates weirdly. It also suffers from artificial difficulty. The idea that anyone would attempt to take on an tank-sized robots with rifles is ridiculous, but that’s what the game wants you do to — it makes it hard you see.
It also has quite complicated RPG elements, which the game makes no effort to explain or ease you into using. Which is a shame, because if you don’t read the manual you’ll be confused as to what’s going on. Also, you’ll get caned in combat. You absolutely have to swap and upgrade your equipment. Ordinarily I hate this kind of thing, but I actually really enjoy it in Mass Effect.
All the problems aside, the dialogue system and dialog itself is fantastic. I’ve yet to find a badly voiced character and most of the interactions are believable. I normally avoid dialogue in RPGs because it tends to be irrelevant junk, but in Mass Effect it’s interesting.
Also the sense of a well-developed universe is enough keep me poking about, although I almost wish I didn’t have to bother with all the on-planet combat. It’s a bit bland.
I’m still ambivalent about it, but I think I might come out liking this game. We’ll see.
Silent Hill 0rigins (PSP)
Despite my fears, this is actually a competent entry in the series. The art direction is spot on, the sound design and music hits all the right notes and there are some genuinely scary moments. It’s a quintessential Silent Hill game. That’s actually part of it’s problem.
It retreads the previous games very closely. The monsters — hello nurses — the settings, even how progression is handled. None of it is surprising. In that sense it’s not much like the previous games, where you can see a conscious effort was made to move the series in new directions.
It’s early in the game, but I’m slightly disappointed. Almost no time is being given to the plot — being a prequel, you would think this is pretty important. Instead I’m trudging through large, bland levels and getting assailed by loads of monsters.
Now, here is where I really complain. Combat in the Silent Hill series has always been clumsy and a bit lame. Thankfully it wasn’t much of an issue, since it wasn’t emphasised much and most of the monsters were easy enough to handle.
0rigins however confronts you with lots of monsters. Most of them are pretty tough, they are placed in multiples, will chase you and respawn at the most annoying spots. This coupled with a clumsy combat system makes for a frustrating time. Being killed by respawned monsters after solving a tricky puzzle is just plain shit. So rather than soaking up the atmosphere and you know, being scared, I’m just get annoyed at the game.
I’m early on in the game and I can see it might get better, but I’m feeling a bit ambivalent about this one as well. I’m having doubts anyone can make a Silent Hill as good as Team Silent — the dev team within Konami.
Zelda - The Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)
I love the graphical style, the controls work surprisingly well, tooling about in the ship is good fun and in general the game just oozes quality.
However… it forces you to return to a central dungeon repeatedly. This sucks. It really, really sucks. It’s boring and it takes a long time. I actually put the game down for awhile because I was just getting annoyed with it.
If I just grin and bear it, I know I’ll be rewarded with some good fun. At the same time however, I know I’m going to have to go back to that stupid dungeon again. Let’s see if I actually finish it.
RubyGems - Get Your Backwards-compatibility Here
If you’ve upgraded to the latest version of RubyGems you might notice that some older gems break. This is because the #require_gem method is no longer deprecated, it’s been removed entirely. Instead we need to use the #gem method.
That’s cool, but in the meantime we still need #require_gem to work, since it may take awhile for all the various gems we rely on to be updated. Lucky for us it’s easy to do.
unless Object.respond_to? :require_gem
class Object
def require_gem(*args)
gem(*args)
end
end
end
Here we’re just adding the #require_gem method back to the Object class, which palms of it’s arguments to the new #gem method. To make sure it doesn’t break with older versions of RubyGems — an issue when working collaboratively — I’ve wrapped it in a test which checks to see if #require_gem is already declared, in which case we don’t have to add backwards-compatibility.
If you’re using Rails, you can put this bit of code in you environment.rb. Just make sure it comes before any requires for gems.
Australia - The Nanny State
Australians do not have freedom of speech sadly. It’s not enshrined in the constitution. It’s what allows disgusting entities like the OFLC to exist. It also gives Our Great Leaders, lots of wiggle room when it comes to censorship.
The Government — poor idealistic fools that they are — have decided to follow through the the previous government’s plans for Mandatory ISP filtering. Basically they want ISPs to install filters to block all that nasty pornography. Magically. It’s to protect the children of course. Which it won’t. It can’t. These filters are all commercial and famously easy to subvert. Even when they work correctly, they still fail to block undesirable material.
The Government and family groups both — groups who claim to represent all Australian families, without any mandate to do so, stupid idiots that they are — are forgetting that the best protection a child has is their parents.
Anyhow, I got so annoyed, I decided to send of a letter to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. I’m getting good at the Complaint Letter. I’m gonna make and awesome cranky old man.
Anyhow, here it is. It also includes a link to an article detailing the proposal, if you want a little background.
—–
Dear Minister,
I’m writing to you to express my concerns over the proposed mandatory ISP filtering as reported here: http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22989956-15306,00.html
Firstly, let me preface my statements here by saying very clearly that I absolutely disagree with the measures put forth. I consider them an abrogation of my rights — censorship pure and simple. They are also likely to be expensive and ultimately ineffective.
As an adult citizen I consider it my right to access the internet — or any other media for that matter — freely, without interference from the government or any private body. Beyond illegal activities it is no concern of the government what I choose to access.
I am aware that I can opt out of these measures, but I see no reason why I should be burdened with this. I also have serious questions about how this will be implemented. If I choose to opt out, where is this information stored? How will it be used? Who has access to it? Essentially it is a threat to my privacy.
Ultimately, responsibility for monitoring a child’s internet access lies with their guardians. I do not accept any argument for adult citizens bearing the burden of these measures. Bluntly, parents have responsibility for their children. The idea that wider society should suffer because of nebulous claims about a need to ‘protect’ children is ridiculous. A sane society protects the vulnerable among us, but it doesn’t do that by threatening freedom and privacy.
In then end I think these measures will turn out to be quixotic. The government cannot magically create a technological solution to what is a social problem. The answer I think, lies in education. Both children and parents need to be aware of the potential dangers of using the internet. With the right information parents can be left to decide what is right for their children and adults can decide what is right for themselves.
The government does not need, nor have the right to be be involved in those choices.
Yours Sincerely,
Luke Matthew Sutton
OMFG, They’re Selling This? The Unreal 3 Engine looks Dodgy to Me
So I recently finished Gears of War. While running through the game, I noticed quite a few graphical glitches. Textures would flicker to black as the characters and scenery moved. I reflexively thought this was the Xbox 360’s GPU going to mush — they have a reputation for this apparently — and was feeling a bit anxious about sending it off for a warranty repair, especially considering I’d just bought the bastard thing.
Well! Turns out it’s not the hardware at all, but rather the Unreal 3 engine used in the game. I was able to confirm this while playing Mass Effect earlier today. It also displays the same errors, as it also uses the U3 engine. I also had a quick spin of Forza 2, which while being a stupid boring car game — I got it free, meh — at least didn’t have any graphical errors.
This according to the internets has been confirmed as an issue with the engine itself.
It’s really bad in Mass Effect. Really bad. Even looking in the stat-screens — which displays no scenery — character models are marred by this constant flickering. It strange because the U3 engine is otherwise beautiful, with fantastic lighting and a huge draw distance.
I’m a little bit gobsmacked at the idea that a finalised, released game has such obvious errors. I was also interested to note that the videos demonstrating the game lacked these errors. Mmmmm, yes very interesting. How very helpful of Bioware — and by extension Epic Games — to vaunt the quality of the graphics while neglecting to actually make sure things worked properly. That is false advertising.
I put down good money for that game, I expect it to work properly. If there is a patch that fixes the error I might be mollified, but otherwise I’m considering returning the game.
Seriously, what a dodgy bunch they are — Bioware and Epic both.