Blogging the experience of gameplayhttps://www.gamelog.cl/gamers/GamerPage.php?idgamer=1953https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6652Game Log 3 Part 3 – Shadow of Mordor Making progress in this game is a slow endeavor. I got through a couple more quests and ended up helping Ratbag get promoted to Warchief, but it took a while, and I died trying to get further than that. I did get some more backstory on the wraith (the game finally revealed his name) and now I’m guessing that his evil friend in the flashback sequences was the one who killed his family. I still wish that Talion and the wraith would have more interaction than “we’re very cursed, have some exposition,” but it doesn’t seem likely at this point. The mechanics are getting more complex as the game goes on, but the core gameplay of hunting down orcs is starting to get repetitive. I feel like all I’m doing is finding chiefs and captains, murdering them in a variety of gory ways, and occasionally interrogating them for more information so I can hunt down more captains. Once I have that information, the cycle starts all over again. I’m obviously going to have to spend more time with this game than what I’ve put in this gamelog if I want to get anywhere near finishing it. I’m a few hours in already, and my progress according to the menu is only 18%. That said, it has been a generally enjoyable experience so far, and I’ll probably be able to put in a few more hours with it before it becomes a mind-numbing grind. Wed, 28 Mar 2018 12:54:26 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6652&iddiary=11774https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6652Game Log 3 Part 2 – Shadow of Mordor During this play session, I did manage to get a bit further in the story. First I helped a guy named Ratbag escape captivity and overthrow a captain, and then I ended up following Gollum around on a couple of quests. I’ve gotten the hang of combat and stealth at this point, so I was able to get through all three without too much trouble. I’m also starting to learn more about the wraith’s past, and I’m still not quite convinced that he wasn’t the one who murdered his family, and he just doesn’t remember it yet. Talion, the ranger protagonist, has so far remained a static character, slashing orcs and generally not trusting anybody. I’m intrigued by the duality of him and the wraith, and I wish the story would go further into that, rather than have Talion just roll with the fact that he’s possessed now. I’m also starting to get some bad blood between me and a couple of orcs. After getting murdered by one of them, I was treated to a nice cutscene of him gloating over my corpse and getting promoted. My attempts to get revenge on him ended in me running away from an angry fortress horde several times, and I had to give it up. I tried to take solace in knowing I wasn’t helping other orcs with their player-murdering career aspirations, but then I ran into two other captains and my plans were foiled. I managed to take one of them down, but then the other killed me, and this reshuffled the entire ranking dynamic, ending with my old foe getting another promotion despite being nowhere near the conflict.Tue, 27 Mar 2018 23:29:17 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6652&iddiary=11756https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6652Game Log 3 Part 1 – Shadow of Mordor I had no idea what to expect when I started up Shadow of Mordor. What I got was a fighting/stealth game with a hilariously uneven amount of polish. In some ways, my experience during this first play session was good. I enjoyed running around and learning the controls, the soundtrack was lovely, and even the tutorial was well done, built right into the story-heavy intro without too much fuss. But it was during the tutorial where things also started to go wrong. During one of the flashback scenes in the tutorial, I found my gruff and grizzled protagonist standing outside a peaceful feast hall of some kind, with a flower in his hand to give to his wife. The problem was, he kept the gruff and grizzled stance you might expect from a drawn-sword idle animation, so it looked more like he was ready to smack someone with a pollen allergy than give a gift to his significant other. This amused me a lot during what should have been a serious moment, but for the sake of getting past the tutorial, I pressed on. There were a few more cutscene bits after this, showing the inciting tragedy with the protagonist’s family and the wraith that ended up attached to him, and then I finally got to the gameplay proper. Here, the game had some issues with randomly minimizing. When I finally got it to come back up, the sound of my sword was gone, and I ended up fighting orcs with just the sound of angry grunting at each hit. It eventually fixed itself. Following that encounter, I spent a while figuring out how to play the game and getting used to the control scheme. After dodging a giant monster and accidentally tackling a prisoner, I made my way back onto the main quest. Unfortunately for me, I ended up dying during one of the quests early on, and had to spend a while leveling up instead of progressing with the story. I spent the rest of the session running around to find artifacts and upgrade my skills, and I’ll hopefully be able to get to the meat of the story in the next play session.Mon, 26 Mar 2018 22:53:00 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6652&iddiary=11738https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6606Game Log 2 Part 3 – This Is the Police More happened during this session than the last. After repeatedly refusing to help the mafia, I got murdered in my kitchen one day. This led to a game over, and I had to lose several days of progress in order to keep playing. On the bright side, this meant I could save a few officers that ended up killed by the mafia, at least for a couple more days until they were all killed on another job. At this point, the main character has gotten pulled into a war between two crime organizations – the Sand family, and some guy named Vargas. I decided to help the Sands because I at least knew a bit about them, but I’m sure this is going to end up with me having huge problems with the law later in the game. I did figure out this time that I can send less effective officers along with more experienced officers, and everyone gets a boost to their skills when they succeed. This was helpful when I got two new hiring slots by letting some guy sponsor them on the condition that I hire and never fire his terrible nephew. The nephew is still useless on his own, but so long as he doesn’t get murdered, he’ll eventually get up to par with the rest this way. Having played for a while now, I can say this game is on point in terms of design. Everything is terrible, but it’s supposed to be terrible, and each component of the game drives that point home, from the narrative snippets, to the directives from the various factions, to the personality of the main character. Corruption is the only way to get by in these situations, and that in itself illuminates why people might become corrupt. You’re casually asked to do terrible things, and people die when you don’t. This wraps up my gamelog for this game, but I am going to keep playing. Even if there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel for this story, I want to see how the choices I’ve made affect the ending. If nothing else, I want to see if I can keep the main character alive long enough to even get there. Given how things have gone with him, it’s going to be quite the challenge. Thu, 15 Feb 2018 09:35:30 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6606&iddiary=11674https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6606Game Log 2, Part 2 – This Is the Police This play session was less eventful than the last. There weren’t as many story snippets, and the gameplay has started to get tedious. Still, the game keeps throwing hard choices at me just by nature of its mechanics. Every situation I have to send police for requests the best officers, and I can’t afford to send the best all of the time. Meanwhile the mafia keeps asking for favors and threatening me when I don’t help them out. A couple of times I just went straight down the corruption rabbit hole and did what they needed so they didn’t show up and murder the main character in his sleep. The kicker here is that city hall is barely any better. Between “fire all black cops” and “use firearms on a feminist protest,” I’m realizing how terrible the situation really is for the city, and for the main character. The two organizations that can make or ruin me (the mafia and city hall) are both awful. No one is giving quests, so to speak, for acting like a decent human being, and with resources stretched thinner as the levels go on, it’s getting harder and harder to get by while doing the right thing. This game reminds me of Papers, Please in some ways, but the more dangerous, stressful, evolved version of it. In Papers, Please, you could do the right thing all the time if you played your cards right. In this game you can try to do the right thing, and it still ends up with people dead. As hard as that makes the experience of playing, I admire that the game just goes for it in that regard. I just hope there are more plot advancements next time, or the day-to-day gameplay is going to get even more tedious moving forward.Wed, 14 Feb 2018 13:17:33 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6606&iddiary=11642https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6606Game Log 2, Part 1 - This Is the Police When I started This Is the Police, I had no idea how much of a downer it was going to be, but I quickly found out that the game doesn’t sugarcoat anything. The story is miserable, most of the choices you make are between one bad option and another bad option, and the main character is hard to like. It took a while to get to the actual gameplay, and once I was there I lost officers left and right. Yet despite the grim nature of it all, the game is strangely engaging, throwing complicated moral questions at me rapid-fire. For example, should I send fewer cops than recommended to a crime in progress because another crime may happen soon after? Do I fire the elderly cop because she can’t do her job properly anymore? Do I give someone a day off to help their friend, keeping them loyal to me, but endangering the city? Needless to say, the game is a high-stress experience. I got through the first week or so in my first play session (the game covers 180 days according to an early cutscene), and ended up faced with a choice: Do I agree to help out the mafia to save my friend’s life, or do I let him get murdered for being in a situation he got himself into? I considered helping him, but decided that I’d rather not have the complication of dealing with the mafia while trying to balance the needs of the city and my employees, so I told him no, trying to think of the bigger picture. As a result of this choice, I got to close out the session with a graphic picture of this friend and his family all dead, and a call from the mafia saying I was going to work for them anyway, or else. This result really got to me, and made me want to go back and try the other option. I actually felt culpable for what happened, which often doesn’t happen for me in games with moral choices. I suspect that it worked here because there wasn’t a clear ‘good’ or ‘evil’ choice presented. Each one appeared to have its pros and cons until after the choice, when I found out nothing good came from refusing to help Kendrick. It was quite the emotional ride, and I’m interested to see what happens next. Tue, 13 Feb 2018 23:25:21 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6606&iddiary=11629https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6551Game Log 1, Part 3 - 1979 Revolution: Black Friday This play session wasn’t as intense as the last. After almost getting beat up due to forgetting about the quick time events in this game, I ended up wandering around a theater for a while, reading everything, talking to everyone, and fighting with the directional controls as the camera changed angles. I got stuck in the theater for a while, lost as to what to do next until I finally found the exit in a corner. I nearly got beat up again here due to an unlucky picture of the protagonist’s SAVAK brother in a book the previous aggressor had on hand, but this time I was saved by the plot as Bibi (one of the leaders of the group in the theater) came to my rescue. The whole scene in the theater was a nice break from the action before it, and the game seems to be pacing itself well. After I got rescued, the action picked up again, with the authorities finding the theater. The speaker from the event outside asked me to quickly identify who stabbed him from the group of people I’d found around the various rooms, and I had no idea who it might have been, so I picked randomly. The next scene was back with the interrogator, and he brought up the lovely revelation that the guy I picked was killed shortly after and buried in a shallow grave. This understandably freaked the protagonist out, and the interrogator tried to make the case that the camera I used to get a bad quality photo of the stabbing was, in fact, a murder weapon. After the interrogator left, the protagonist’s brother got angry that I didn’t cooperate with the interrogator earlier, telling me that it was my job to ensure their family was safe. With that, the chapter ended, and I concluded my play session there.Thu, 18 Jan 2018 08:56:46 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6551&iddiary=11539https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6551Game Log 1, Part 2 - 1979 Revolution: Black Friday If I had to describe playing this game in one word, it would be intense. I picked up where I left off last play session – in the streets during a massive demonstration – and continued to wander around and take photographs. Like last time, I read every snippet of history I could find, and tried to interact with everything I could. At this point, the tone of the game had switched from dark and terrifying to bright and energetic, with upbeat music and commentary from the protagonist’s friend. It stayed that way until I finally reached the front of the protests, at which point the army came in and grabbed the main speaker. Another friend of the protagonist threw rocks at the soldiers, then someone chucked an explosive, and from there it all went nuts. After running for my life and nearly losing my camera, I had to pull shards of glass out of a man’s head and bandage him up, and then grab any evidence that he had been there, since it turned out he was the speaker that nearly got hauled away. The game then cut back to the interrogation room the story started in, which I had mixed feelings about. I was glad it happened in a narrative sense, since it made the first scene there make more sense – they needed to establish the place so they could go back there throughout the story – but the scene and choices that followed were rough. I had to pick between spilling all the secrets to the interrogator, or watching my character’s brother get tortured as he begged me to cooperate. The choices were timed, and the timer ran out as I freaked out over which one to pick. As the scene went on, I started to notice something strange about the interrogator. The “learn more” button said that he is based off of a real person, but the way his actions in the game fit so perfectly with the narrative made him feel less than real. An archetype, in a way. I have to wonder if this might be a danger of converting history into a structured narrative – it removes it from real life enough that it doesn’t feel real. Though doing this might help people become emotionally invested, and thus able to remember facts more easily, does it diminish the sense that the things depicted more or less really happened?Wed, 17 Jan 2018 19:15:59 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6551&iddiary=11503https://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6551Game Log #1 - 1979 Revolution: Black Friday As I started playing 1979 Revolution, I was struck by the opening few screens and the main menu. The sounds and imagery instilled a deep sense of foreboding, which carried over into the game proper when the first scene turned out to be the main character getting captured by what I assume were the authorities. Next up was a tense interrogation scene in which I threw some tea on the ground and promptly got stuck with a cattle prod. Knowing that this game is based in real events makes moments like this far more chilling, and causes even the lighter moments to carry more weight. Following the interrogation scene, the game jumped backwards in time, and I ended up in the streets during a massive protest, taking pictures of the event. I noticed as I took these “photographs” that each picture taken in the game corresponded more or less to a real photograph of the real events. This also lead me to discover the “learn more” button on the photograph screen, which takes you to a screen with a bit more historical information than the pictures’ captions on the previous screen. I ended up reading everything there, trying to get as much information and context as possible for the things happening around me in the game. It felt a bit like reading a lore book in that it was interesting (as reading lore books usually is for me), and enhanced the experience, but it was also out of the way enough to ignore if one wanted a more streamlined playthrough. Given that many edutainment games I’ve played have fallen flat on their face in this regard, either setting the “learning” and “playing” so far apart they might as well be separate or so close together that the educational content bogs down the gameplay, I was impressed by this game’s execution. Decision making has so far been hard in this game, particularly in the beginning, which seemed to start at the end of the story, asking me to make choices regarding previous events that I had no knowledge of. Though starting a story in medias res can be compelling, in this case it was just awkward as I scrambled for answers that I hoped would match my choices to come. Still, the parts of the game I did see for this play session were compelling, and I’m eager to see where it goes next.Tue, 16 Jan 2018 22:59:00 CSThttps://www.gamelog.cl/logs/LogPage.php?Log_Id=6551&iddiary=11474