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Feb 24th, 2015 at 23:27:30 - The Walking Dead: Season Two (PC) |
The illusion of choice which I mention in the previous game log only continued, this time with Clementine having to find tools to stitch up her arm after she's locked in a shed by a group of survivors. Sneaking into the house is straightforward with no real penalty for trying to break in. Once inside the house its almost impossible to get caught. Trust me I tried. This is where I feel the game simply plays off the illusion of choice and the idea the player won’t test the system. I also encountered Anna, a mentally challenged little girl, whom my character decided to be best friends with. Later her father scolds the player for taking advantage of his daughter, I felt that if I had made a different choice I would have merely been rewarded with a slightly different dialogue option. The first real choice I felt I had to make was to choose between Pete or Nick. Clementine goes to collect fish from some fish traps with Pete and Nick, they stumble onto some zombies and Clem must choose to help one side or the other. This all happens turned a quick time event so the player is forced to make an instinctual choice less they just push ‘esc’. Despite Nick being a dick and almost shooting the Clem I chose to save him. Thus letting Pete, Nicks uncle, whom had been bit by a zombie die. In my mind it was whats a little kid going to do anyways? One of the things I keep thinking about is how the game tries so hard to be a TV show, yet fails to capture the emotion of the actors resulting in unintentional comical moments which are meant to be serious. On the flip side it tries to be a game but comes off as one giant quick time event which is usually considered a bad design tool, like invisible walls.
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Feb 24th, 2015 at 23:16:00 - The Walking Dead: Season Two (PC) |
The Walking Dead: Season Two by Tell Tale Games is an interactive-ish narrative where you play through one long never ending quicktime event guiding a child through a zombie infested post apocalyptic world. To be honest I really wanted to like this game, I’ve heard great things about Tell Tale Games. The game starts by introducing you to the player, Clementine a little girl no older than 14. It then guides you through a series of choices that are essentially set on rails, I took this as being the game introducing me to its systems and showing me what I could expect down the line. This was the whole scene with Omid and Krista, and then with Krista in the woods. As the game introduced all its major mechanics, push buttons when prompted, click on objects, and test players reading comprehension through timing dialogue choices. These felt to me like workings of an extended quick time event, which for me are one of the most insidious design creations ever. The game does try and create moral dilemmas through and setup choices which make you wonder if you are choosing the right path, this does lend to some intrigue. For example while looking for food my character meets a stray dog, when food is found I offered to share the food. This resulted in the dog attacking my character for the food. Clementine proceeds to kill the dog and this sets up the next part of the story getting tools for stitches. After doing some poking around it seemed to me that there no matter what choice you make the dog will attack and thus the designers only create the illusion of choice.
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Jan 28th, 2015 at 12:36:06 - This war of mine (PC) |
Did I let Picasso die? Or at least the equivalent game version of Picasso. While rummaging through an abandoned squat for supplies I found a poor starving man begging for food. All of the clues so far indicated that a talented artist lived there. Normally you don't bring food scavenging as it just takes up useful space. The man informed me he would surely die if someone didn't help him in the next few days. I left the squat with plenty of construction supplies for myself and headed home. My group wasn't in the best of shape either with food running low at that time, so I proceeded to scavenge for food elsewhere the following nights. I number of days later I returned to to the squat to collect supplies and feed the starving man if he had made it this far. He was dead. Another scavenger had covered the body and spoke some harsh words for me however never directly said I was responsible for the poor mans death. Did I let Picasso starve to death? With the lack of a save system there’s no easy way to see the alternate possibilities without restarting the entire game which at day 20 and nine hours of game time just isn't feasible. The lack of a robust save system raises the stakes and gives the player a sense of consequence to their actions. This in turn adds more intrinsic value to the moral dilemmas the player is faced with.
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Jan 27th, 2015 at 15:47:38 - This war of mine (PC) |
All I wanted was some food and I ended up with an assault rifle, ammo, and a warm fuzzy feeling for doing ‘the right thing’, the downside I was covered in a dead soldier's blood. At night you scavenge the city for supplies and I chose the Super-Market which was clearly labeled ‘Danger’. Upon entering the grocery store my character overheard a conversation between a soldier and young woman looking for food. It became clear this soldier was looking to rape the young woman and it was up to me to either stop it or go about my business rummaging in freedom since the soldier was occupied. I chose the former and when the soldier was marching the woman away I sneaked up with my recently crafted kitchen knife and murdered the soldier. The young woman ran off terrified.
When I went back to the store the following night, as its impossible to loot an entire location in a single evening, I was greeted by a friendly scavenger. This friendly informed my character that the young woman made it home and is safe all thanks to some stranger. Now I must point out I got extremely lucky as there are no save games and the soldier could have easily killed my character with a single volley of bullets. The game pits doing the right thing against large amounts of risk and consequence. It captures the moral difficulty of decisions people must make when placed in extraordinary situations. This blurring of right and wrong are backed up by the path of least resistance being the utilitarian path where the needs of the people whom are dependent on the player come first.
This entry has been edited 6 times. It was last edited on Jan 27th, 2015 at 16:03:07.
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lawboy has been with GameLog for 9 years, 9 months, and 28 days |
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