Wow, it's been quite a while since I posted to my blog, which I'm sure I could blame on something, but I'll skip that part. Incidentally, commenting on how long it's been since one's last blog post is a high-visibility cliche, which just happens to be the topic of today's post! More specifically, I'm going to ramble about cliched phrases I continually run across in online dating profiles (yes, I'm on dating sites, see if you can use your powers of inference to guess what my username is). This has absolutely nothing to do with my usual topics, but I felt like writing about this somewhere, and it is my blog afterall.
So on to the list! These are a selection of phrases that I've run across dozens of times, when browsing profiles either on OKCupid or Plentyoffish (both free sites, so they have large populations of uncommitted users). Some of these phrases have come to seem so unoriginal to me that when I see them, I immediately stop reading the person's profile.
It is worth noting that I have read many more profiles written by women than by men, which I'm sure biases the phrases I'm running across.
1. "I don't bite (unless you're into that sort of thing)"
I don't know why this is as popular as it is. If I'd only seen this once or twice, I might have thought "Oh, heh, I get it," and moved on. As it is, this phrase is so inexplicably popular that I can feel my blood start to boil when I see it, but maybe that's a defense mechanism my body has to ward off vampires.
2. "I want someone who can sing to me/play [x] instrument"
As someone with mild musical ability, this probably shouldn't bother me, but it does. The problem I have with this phrase is that it's a clear manifestation of the profile-as-venue-for-fantasies complex. Of course you'd like to date a rock star. Everyone would. Telling us so is not the point of your profile - you should be trying to convince readers you're interesting or cue them about what your interests are. Instead, profiles that include this phrase often read like dating fanfiction.
3. "If you want to know [x], just ask me!"
In the time it took you to write that sentence, you could have simply told your reader the fascinating fact you're obscuring from us. To make matters worse, the user that includes this phrase usually doesn't respond well to you asking about it, because everyone who messages them asks about it and now they're tired of repeating the answer hundreds of times. Of course, the solution to that is to just include it in your profile to begin with.
4. "I want someone who won't lie to me/cheat on me/make me cry for a change!"
Rule number one of online profiles: never focus on negativity. When you see the above sentence in a profile, it's often part of a greater paragraph, or in some cases a manifesto, about how much they really hate it when people are mean to them. This usually makes me run away.
5. "I'm not your typical girl/boy!"
Yes, you probably are.
6. Listing "travel" as a primary hobby
This is one of those lines in a profile that seems like it would add an air of sophistication, except that traveling any significant distance costs money. So unless you're completely loaded (in which case what you say in your profile doesn't matter that much), traveling is something you only get the chance to do from time to time. In other words, this user is claiming that one of their main hobbies is something that they spend 99% of their time not doing.
More importantly, this is most likely completely irrelevant to someone you're considering dating. Unless you're going to invite them to come with you on a trip to another continent right away, it's not going to have much impact on whether or not they're going to want to grab a coffee with you next week.
Note that this is different from "I traveled to [x] place and really loved it," which suggests you have stories to tell. Instead, the cliche suggests a negative story space that sucks interesting stories out of a date (again, profile-as-venue-for-fantasizing complex).
7. "I'm preparing for the zombie apocalypse."
I can't dig on this one too much, because it clearly does tell me something about the user's personality. However, this user would, in all cases, die instantly in a zombie apocalypse. So would I, probably, but at least I didn't waste any time preparing for it.
8. (In response to "I'm Really Good At") "Everything, especially being modest."
This is the one cliche that I'm guilty of perpetrating myself (or was guilty of). There's nothing inherently wrong with the phrase, until you start to realize how unoriginal it is.
9. (In response to "The Most Private Thing I'm Willing to Admit") "I'm on a dating site."
No. Crap.
Furthermore, this carries the connotation that the user is trepid about online dating and therefore less likely to respond to messages, which doesn't usually help their case.
10. (In response to "You Should Message Me If") "You're bored."
Way to maintain your standards, there.
-Silent Ellipsis
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Monday, October 19, 2009
Crazy Ideas for Crazy Times: Centralized Digital Distribution
Alright, I'll get right to it: amongst the many things that are being revolutionized in the world around us, distribution is a rather important one. There has been a lot of attention in particular to itunes, a music-player/mp3-store that has been the first successful attempt to capitalize on mp3 distribution, and on Steam, a game-server/game-store that sells Valve's products, as well as those of third-party companies. Amazon also recently entered the picture with the Kindle, to digitally distribute books.
So it seems like we're making a lot of progress on the digital distribution front, right? Unfortunately, there's a problem: each of these services is so much more successful than any competition in the same genre (itunes for music, Steam for games, Kindle for books) that they pretty much hold a monopoly of their respective markets.
Now certainly there are smaller distributors of digital goods, and in many cases individual developers of media can distribute their own files, but it's very hard to be a small distributor. In particular, smaller distributors have difficulty integrating effective DRM that users won't find overly intrusive (and in most cases, the overly intrusive DRM isn't effective anyway). Wizards of the Coast, for instance, has had so many problems with piracy that they've pulled all D&D .pdfs from their store (not necessarily a smart move, but then they just got $120k in a settlement with one particular pirate, so maybe they know better than I do, and in any case it shows that they at least perceive piracy to be a very dangerous problem). Steam and Kindle, however, are able to convince their users to put up with DRM by offering in exchange the convenience of a centralized library users can access from anywhere (something Wizards of the Coast can't offer, since they only have their own products available for download, and no advanced management software).
This suggests that digital distribution relies on centralization, to some extent, in order to gain traction, but since the companies that are capable of generating that kind of centralization are large and few, digital markets seemed to be destined for monopolization, and we're already starting to see some of the side effects, such as Amazon retroactively removing purchased documents from users' Kindles (would not go over well with consumers if there were an alternative product for them to defect to).
What could possibly be done about this? In my mind, what we need is to take the "hard" part out of the hands of for-profit organizations. If it were up to me, I'd create an international organization tasked simply with maintaining a database of users and which digital files they have access to. This organization isn't responsible for actually distributing the files - just keeping track of who owns what.
Once this is in place, private companies can gets permits to access the database and even modify entries for users for which they have the proper credentials. The companies offer services for connecting the user to files they own and to offerings for new things they can buy - basically what things like Steam do now. The difference is, now any other company that wants to can offer a competing Steam-like storefront that's capable of offering the same games Steam does. In fact, if you switched, in our scenario, from Steam to a competitor, you would still be able to access all of the games you bought on Steam from the competitor's application (because they're both accessing the same database).
In other words, the idea is that companies like Valve, Apple, and Amazon would be offering browsers - interfaces whose principal value is their user-friendliness, but users wouldn't be completely beholden to these companies for access to the items they purchased. What's more, the creation of a digital ownership database could speed up the shift toward digital distribution for things that aren't already available and possibly result in other advantages down the road...
There are a few more things that could be pointed out here, but that's the basic idea, so I'll stop there for now.
So it seems like we're making a lot of progress on the digital distribution front, right? Unfortunately, there's a problem: each of these services is so much more successful than any competition in the same genre (itunes for music, Steam for games, Kindle for books) that they pretty much hold a monopoly of their respective markets.
Now certainly there are smaller distributors of digital goods, and in many cases individual developers of media can distribute their own files, but it's very hard to be a small distributor. In particular, smaller distributors have difficulty integrating effective DRM that users won't find overly intrusive (and in most cases, the overly intrusive DRM isn't effective anyway). Wizards of the Coast, for instance, has had so many problems with piracy that they've pulled all D&D .pdfs from their store (not necessarily a smart move, but then they just got $120k in a settlement with one particular pirate, so maybe they know better than I do, and in any case it shows that they at least perceive piracy to be a very dangerous problem). Steam and Kindle, however, are able to convince their users to put up with DRM by offering in exchange the convenience of a centralized library users can access from anywhere (something Wizards of the Coast can't offer, since they only have their own products available for download, and no advanced management software).
This suggests that digital distribution relies on centralization, to some extent, in order to gain traction, but since the companies that are capable of generating that kind of centralization are large and few, digital markets seemed to be destined for monopolization, and we're already starting to see some of the side effects, such as Amazon retroactively removing purchased documents from users' Kindles (would not go over well with consumers if there were an alternative product for them to defect to).
What could possibly be done about this? In my mind, what we need is to take the "hard" part out of the hands of for-profit organizations. If it were up to me, I'd create an international organization tasked simply with maintaining a database of users and which digital files they have access to. This organization isn't responsible for actually distributing the files - just keeping track of who owns what.
Once this is in place, private companies can gets permits to access the database and even modify entries for users for which they have the proper credentials. The companies offer services for connecting the user to files they own and to offerings for new things they can buy - basically what things like Steam do now. The difference is, now any other company that wants to can offer a competing Steam-like storefront that's capable of offering the same games Steam does. In fact, if you switched, in our scenario, from Steam to a competitor, you would still be able to access all of the games you bought on Steam from the competitor's application (because they're both accessing the same database).
In other words, the idea is that companies like Valve, Apple, and Amazon would be offering browsers - interfaces whose principal value is their user-friendliness, but users wouldn't be completely beholden to these companies for access to the items they purchased. What's more, the creation of a digital ownership database could speed up the shift toward digital distribution for things that aren't already available and possibly result in other advantages down the road...
There are a few more things that could be pointed out here, but that's the basic idea, so I'll stop there for now.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
A Word If You Can Spare
Her eyes dart. There's me, left, below, and sometimes nothing. She's juggling, but doesn't think to catch her parts. They simply wait to hit the ground. Her face is focus, and wonder underneath. If you peel you find quiet fears with loud reasons. Her answers aren't clear but they are transparent. When enough words swell and battle to describe her, she fades, and in her absence, her emptiness speaks to me:
Newborn memory
You stand before me
And taunt me with
The arms at your side
Your blood makes me move
Your bones keep me still
I need your skin to keep me
Clothed
But when I see through you
I do not see you
When I speak to you
My words do not travel
Where do they go, the things we hold in our hands?
How do we find them, the things we never lost?
When will we remember the things we never learned?
Why I do not love you
So I answer with my fleeing words and sounds, and all the things that emerge from my fingers, eyes, and sores. I answer with my unseen stares, my unwashed heart, and unwanted needs. In whispers to the world, and notes sacrificed before so many altars I say:
You cannot tickle your own foot
Though you might feel its scratch
You cannot frighten your own hand
Though it bows in its submission
You cannot yearn for things for you have
But might miss what you've misplaced
You cannot see yourself
Except before a mirror
I know no metaphor or trickery
I can only tell you what you are
A filled cup desperate to pour
A defiant falling
Juice
I have no solution, but am thoroughly immersed
I mistake double meanings for twice the words
Curiosities for desires
Wisdoms for truths
Love is not a thing you wait for
Come to
Or bring
Passion is not a paper trick
Of many-fold wonders
Hung by a string
And alone is not a number
They are the bubbling parts of your mind
The transformable parts of a world
And the means of my meaning
They are words
I'm writing them now, but may come back to hack off parts. What she has is still a mystery to me, but I know I have both longing and love. Freshly plucked with no jar to keep them. Her eyes no longer dart, but remain, and in her stillness her absence wanes. The earth is quiet again beneath me, but remembrances below me still flood with meaning.
I may be here for a while.
Newborn memory
You stand before me
And taunt me with
The arms at your side
Your blood makes me move
Your bones keep me still
I need your skin to keep me
Clothed
But when I see through you
I do not see you
When I speak to you
My words do not travel
Where do they go, the things we hold in our hands?
How do we find them, the things we never lost?
When will we remember the things we never learned?
Why I do not love you
So I answer with my fleeing words and sounds, and all the things that emerge from my fingers, eyes, and sores. I answer with my unseen stares, my unwashed heart, and unwanted needs. In whispers to the world, and notes sacrificed before so many altars I say:
You cannot tickle your own foot
Though you might feel its scratch
You cannot frighten your own hand
Though it bows in its submission
You cannot yearn for things for you have
But might miss what you've misplaced
You cannot see yourself
Except before a mirror
I know no metaphor or trickery
I can only tell you what you are
A filled cup desperate to pour
A defiant falling
Juice
I have no solution, but am thoroughly immersed
I mistake double meanings for twice the words
Curiosities for desires
Wisdoms for truths
Love is not a thing you wait for
Come to
Or bring
Passion is not a paper trick
Of many-fold wonders
Hung by a string
And alone is not a number
They are the bubbling parts of your mind
The transformable parts of a world
And the means of my meaning
They are words
I'm writing them now, but may come back to hack off parts. What she has is still a mystery to me, but I know I have both longing and love. Freshly plucked with no jar to keep them. Her eyes no longer dart, but remain, and in her stillness her absence wanes. The earth is quiet again beneath me, but remembrances below me still flood with meaning.
I may be here for a while.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Categories: Gameplay Instance and Sequence
When trying to categorize and describe gameplay experiences, there's one huge difference in experience that I've been thinking about lately, which is the difference between an isolated and repeatable gameplay experience and between the long-term experience of progressing a game.
The former experience I think I'll refer to as a gameplay instance. Note that I'm making up these terms as I go along, so if someone has better ones for me to use, let me know. A gameplay instance includes the decisions involved in completing a specific task, usually in a single gameplay session - like "take the opponent's king" or "roll up the largest ball possible." As I'm describing it, gameplay instances are layered on top of each other - completing the task usually involves completing minor objectives along the way ("lure the opponent out of his defensive position" or "get onto that hill so I can pick up the stuff on top of it").
So with a definition of an "instance" that broad, what is left? The unspecific goal - "progress the game." Usually progressing the game involves completing specific tasks, but there's a separate experience that emerges out of these specific tasks that is more than their sum. In a Final Fantasy game, each battle is a gameplay instance, and navigating a dungeon is a gameplay instance, but then there's the motivation to see what happens next driving you even when you're tired of killing your 300th zombie dragon. That's the gameplay sequence at work.
So while most games these days include both kinds of gameplay experiences, they emphasize each to different degrees. Games far on the instance side include almost all board games, and games like Left 4 Dead that emphasize repeatable mutiplayer experiences. On the sequence-heavy side of things we have adventure games and interactive fiction. Between the extremes we have most modern games, which include overcoming challenges as part of an ongoing progress toward an uncertain final goal.
So I intended to say more, but I think I'll just stick to this for now and come back to it. Generally speaking, the point is that figuring out early on what kind of experience you want to provide and focusing on elements to provide that is important, and among other things you should figure out to what extent you want to emphasize a instanced or sequential experience.
The former experience I think I'll refer to as a gameplay instance. Note that I'm making up these terms as I go along, so if someone has better ones for me to use, let me know. A gameplay instance includes the decisions involved in completing a specific task, usually in a single gameplay session - like "take the opponent's king" or "roll up the largest ball possible." As I'm describing it, gameplay instances are layered on top of each other - completing the task usually involves completing minor objectives along the way ("lure the opponent out of his defensive position" or "get onto that hill so I can pick up the stuff on top of it").
So with a definition of an "instance" that broad, what is left? The unspecific goal - "progress the game." Usually progressing the game involves completing specific tasks, but there's a separate experience that emerges out of these specific tasks that is more than their sum. In a Final Fantasy game, each battle is a gameplay instance, and navigating a dungeon is a gameplay instance, but then there's the motivation to see what happens next driving you even when you're tired of killing your 300th zombie dragon. That's the gameplay sequence at work.
So while most games these days include both kinds of gameplay experiences, they emphasize each to different degrees. Games far on the instance side include almost all board games, and games like Left 4 Dead that emphasize repeatable mutiplayer experiences. On the sequence-heavy side of things we have adventure games and interactive fiction. Between the extremes we have most modern games, which include overcoming challenges as part of an ongoing progress toward an uncertain final goal.
So I intended to say more, but I think I'll just stick to this for now and come back to it. Generally speaking, the point is that figuring out early on what kind of experience you want to provide and focusing on elements to provide that is important, and among other things you should figure out to what extent you want to emphasize a instanced or sequential experience.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Chess and Resource Management
My local Starbucks has a chess board sitting around, so I decided to play against myself. Since this gives me perfect predictive power about what my opponent is going to do, it obviously removes some of the standard elements of Chess, but there was one thing I realized when playing it: Chess is first and foremost about mobilization. That is, you begin with all pieces in play, but since most of them are behind a wall of pawns to start with, they don't immediately threaten your opponent. The way you gain options is by moving them into positions where they can form threats.
On reflection, this is more similar than I'd thought to modern strategy games and their treatment of resource management. Think of Magic, where I've chosen cards to place into my deck - the cards are there, but they're not in a usable state, they're not active threats, until I draw them (and have enough mana available to use them). Even if I play an RTS game, say Starcraft, I have a potential army that becomes realized when I gather enough resources to build it, and the question I constantly have to balance is how long I should spend mustering threats before I try to use them - if I'm playing well, I should attack as soon as I think I have a force my opponent won't be able to defend against. This is the same kind of strategy I'm using in Chess - I'm trying to move my units into a position from which they can simultaneously threaten my opponent, and as soon as I think I can launch an attack my opponent can't defend against, I will.
So revelation of the day: mobilizing units and building them are, from the perspective of their impact on strategy, extremely similar (as long as it takes a similar amount of effort). The big difference, of course, is that my units can still be used to defend in many situations before I've moved them at all. If you like, however, you can imagine these situations as my opponent bringing the units into play (like if my opponent plays a card that results in me drawing new cards, or allows me to respond by playing one). It also suggests a certain consistency between the way classic and modern games conceive of strategy.
Just thought that was interesting.
On reflection, this is more similar than I'd thought to modern strategy games and their treatment of resource management. Think of Magic, where I've chosen cards to place into my deck - the cards are there, but they're not in a usable state, they're not active threats, until I draw them (and have enough mana available to use them). Even if I play an RTS game, say Starcraft, I have a potential army that becomes realized when I gather enough resources to build it, and the question I constantly have to balance is how long I should spend mustering threats before I try to use them - if I'm playing well, I should attack as soon as I think I have a force my opponent won't be able to defend against. This is the same kind of strategy I'm using in Chess - I'm trying to move my units into a position from which they can simultaneously threaten my opponent, and as soon as I think I can launch an attack my opponent can't defend against, I will.
So revelation of the day: mobilizing units and building them are, from the perspective of their impact on strategy, extremely similar (as long as it takes a similar amount of effort). The big difference, of course, is that my units can still be used to defend in many situations before I've moved them at all. If you like, however, you can imagine these situations as my opponent bringing the units into play (like if my opponent plays a card that results in me drawing new cards, or allows me to respond by playing one). It also suggests a certain consistency between the way classic and modern games conceive of strategy.
Just thought that was interesting.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Some Haiku
I don't know why in particular I've become interested in haiku, but I have. I post them from time to time on Twitter, but it occurs to me that they're likely being lost in the flood of 140-character posts, so I'm assembling them in one place, and may do so every few months if I produce them at a sufficient rate. These were all written this summer, and are in chronological order:
Summer sky beckons/An empty desk behind me/It's time for dinner
Shit-stained sidewalk/Ambulating down the hill/Cars pass on my left
Banana carcass/Its purpose perfectly served/Lies and stares at me
A "frappelatte"/An airport's quiet hours/And a slow-paced walk
Constant dull humming/With a book and a window/Sound of returning
In addition to the 5-7-5 structure, there are a few rules I tend to apply to haiku. First, they should describe a particular moment. Second, you should not only have 17 syllables, but really respect what it means for them to be different lines. That is, I don't think it passes to take a 17-syllable sentence and present it as haiku. In that case the haiku structure is nothing more than an inside joke, whereas if you respect the structure and what the limitations mean, they can force things out of you that you didn't expect.
Summer sky beckons/An empty desk behind me/It's time for dinner
Shit-stained sidewalk/Ambulating down the hill/Cars pass on my left
Banana carcass/Its purpose perfectly served/Lies and stares at me
A "frappelatte"/An airport's quiet hours/And a slow-paced walk
Constant dull humming/With a book and a window/Sound of returning
In addition to the 5-7-5 structure, there are a few rules I tend to apply to haiku. First, they should describe a particular moment. Second, you should not only have 17 syllables, but really respect what it means for them to be different lines. That is, I don't think it passes to take a 17-syllable sentence and present it as haiku. In that case the haiku structure is nothing more than an inside joke, whereas if you respect the structure and what the limitations mean, they can force things out of you that you didn't expect.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
On Short Games: Canabalt
Firstly, I see that I've been away for a month now - a variety of tumultuous things have happened in my life recently, so I don't feel too guilty about it.
So anyway, from Raph's Website I just got the link to Canabalt and it got my thinking about short games. You see, the game is very cool - it procedurally generates levels, has nice art, and is capable of producing a "that's badass" experience with simple presentation and single-button interaction. However, it is also immensely unsatisfying, because once you get over the "ah, that's cool" reaction, there's not much else to the game. It's not simply that the game is too short or needs more features - by concept, the game cannot provide anything more than it does.
The issue here is that it takes time for me to fall in love with a game, and even when I like short or experimental games, I never really fall in love with them. This troubles me because I care about art, and I care about games, and I'd like these two concerns to overlap at some point, and it seems that experimental games are an important part of getting there.
Maybe it's just that no one has hit quite the right chord with me to make me fall in love with such a short game, but I don't think that's quite it. The problem is that games, I think, need to allow for exploration, and if I feel like I get it right away, then there's nothing to explore. Exploration here doesn't simply refer to having a big map to cover, though that can work (I'm looking at you, Bethesda games!). A player can explore a game mechanic, or different strategies, or possible narrative paths, or a single narrative path, for that matter.
I'm not trying to discourage anyone from making experimental or short games, by any means, but I do worry that games that don't at least provide a couple hours worth of exploration (whether its by having a two-hour long linear path, repeatably simple gameplay with deep strategy, or just lots of stuff to discover in a virtual space) are ultimately limited in how deeply they can affect us.
That is, for games and art to converge, I think we may need to have larger-scale experiements.
So anyway, from Raph's Website I just got the link to Canabalt and it got my thinking about short games. You see, the game is very cool - it procedurally generates levels, has nice art, and is capable of producing a "that's badass" experience with simple presentation and single-button interaction. However, it is also immensely unsatisfying, because once you get over the "ah, that's cool" reaction, there's not much else to the game. It's not simply that the game is too short or needs more features - by concept, the game cannot provide anything more than it does.
The issue here is that it takes time for me to fall in love with a game, and even when I like short or experimental games, I never really fall in love with them. This troubles me because I care about art, and I care about games, and I'd like these two concerns to overlap at some point, and it seems that experimental games are an important part of getting there.
Maybe it's just that no one has hit quite the right chord with me to make me fall in love with such a short game, but I don't think that's quite it. The problem is that games, I think, need to allow for exploration, and if I feel like I get it right away, then there's nothing to explore. Exploration here doesn't simply refer to having a big map to cover, though that can work (I'm looking at you, Bethesda games!). A player can explore a game mechanic, or different strategies, or possible narrative paths, or a single narrative path, for that matter.
I'm not trying to discourage anyone from making experimental or short games, by any means, but I do worry that games that don't at least provide a couple hours worth of exploration (whether its by having a two-hour long linear path, repeatably simple gameplay with deep strategy, or just lots of stuff to discover in a virtual space) are ultimately limited in how deeply they can affect us.
That is, for games and art to converge, I think we may need to have larger-scale experiements.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Preliminary Eternal Poison
Because the only way to improve on an awkward title is to add more multi-syllabic words!
I bought Eternal Poison yesterday in a moment of weakness. I realized I hadn't bought a game in two months, which I decided was probably unhealthy, and the game had several solid points in its favor:
1) Nifty cover art. (see above)
2) It's put out by Atlus.
3) On the back, it advertises that you can bind enemy's souls. Pretty cool, but then it elaborates that afterwards you can "enslave" them or "sacrifice them for profit." Yeah, this is pretty much the exact same thing that made me buy Folklore (which I don't regret). It's almost like these crazy Japanese people have figured out the keywords that will make me buy anything they make. Almost.
So anyway, I've played about a half-hour of the game so far, but already have some commentary. Firstly, it definitely delivers on the promise on the back of the box - you play a witch who runs around binding demons into servitude, which is awesome. You also have an ally (familiar?) who is a magical wolf with antlers on cold fire. Somehow it doesn't seem quite as absurd when you see it, though.
The other side of the proverbial coin is that...the UI is kind of clunky. This is honestly kind of shocking from a moderate-budget strategy RPG. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the likes of Disgaea, but I feel like absolutely everything I want to do just has two-or-three-too-many button presses involved. What's worse, every time you attack an enemy, it cuts to this 3D environment and plays out the attack animation in close up. That sounds really cool, except that it takes a good 5 seconds to load the animation, another 5 seconds to load back the tactical map, and up to 10 seconds of attacking animation when all I'm just using a normal attack to finish off a mook. If it were, for instance, a special animation when I score a critical hit, or a special animation the first time I attack the enemy leader, then I'd be fine with that, but not every single time anything on the map does anything. That's just excessive. Fortunately, there seems to be an option to turn these animations off (I didn't know what they meant by "animations off" in the menu screen when I first ran across it, and certainly didn't expect that I'd want to actually come back and turn them off).
Finally, after each battle, it asks you if you want to save your game, and if you do, then it returns you to the main menu screen. This isn't a huge deal, since you can just load the game to continue, but the whole "save and continue" idea has been around long enough that failing to include it is kind of befuddling. It's almost like these design choices were made by someone in the early 90's who used an arcane technique to communicate with a modern team of developers.
All in all the clunkiness is outweighed by the personality of the game so far, and I'm definitely going to continue playing, but it boggles my mind that a game would ship in a condition where in a half-hour I can come up with a multiple-page-long list of obvious and easy improvements. Then again, I guess that's why I believe there's a market for people like me in the first place.
-Silent Ellipsis
I bought Eternal Poison yesterday in a moment of weakness. I realized I hadn't bought a game in two months, which I decided was probably unhealthy, and the game had several solid points in its favor:
1) Nifty cover art. (see above)
2) It's put out by Atlus.
3) On the back, it advertises that you can bind enemy's souls. Pretty cool, but then it elaborates that afterwards you can "enslave" them or "sacrifice them for profit." Yeah, this is pretty much the exact same thing that made me buy Folklore (which I don't regret). It's almost like these crazy Japanese people have figured out the keywords that will make me buy anything they make. Almost.
So anyway, I've played about a half-hour of the game so far, but already have some commentary. Firstly, it definitely delivers on the promise on the back of the box - you play a witch who runs around binding demons into servitude, which is awesome. You also have an ally (familiar?) who is a magical wolf with antlers on cold fire. Somehow it doesn't seem quite as absurd when you see it, though.
The other side of the proverbial coin is that...the UI is kind of clunky. This is honestly kind of shocking from a moderate-budget strategy RPG. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the likes of Disgaea, but I feel like absolutely everything I want to do just has two-or-three-too-many button presses involved. What's worse, every time you attack an enemy, it cuts to this 3D environment and plays out the attack animation in close up. That sounds really cool, except that it takes a good 5 seconds to load the animation, another 5 seconds to load back the tactical map, and up to 10 seconds of attacking animation when all I'm just using a normal attack to finish off a mook. If it were, for instance, a special animation when I score a critical hit, or a special animation the first time I attack the enemy leader, then I'd be fine with that, but not every single time anything on the map does anything. That's just excessive. Fortunately, there seems to be an option to turn these animations off (I didn't know what they meant by "animations off" in the menu screen when I first ran across it, and certainly didn't expect that I'd want to actually come back and turn them off).
Finally, after each battle, it asks you if you want to save your game, and if you do, then it returns you to the main menu screen. This isn't a huge deal, since you can just load the game to continue, but the whole "save and continue" idea has been around long enough that failing to include it is kind of befuddling. It's almost like these design choices were made by someone in the early 90's who used an arcane technique to communicate with a modern team of developers.
All in all the clunkiness is outweighed by the personality of the game so far, and I'm definitely going to continue playing, but it boggles my mind that a game would ship in a condition where in a half-hour I can come up with a multiple-page-long list of obvious and easy improvements. Then again, I guess that's why I believe there's a market for people like me in the first place.
-Silent Ellipsis
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