BICYCLE STORY

By Ewan Miller, Illustious QC.

New bicycle commuter routes will soon grace the city, as part of the Melbourne’s first major bicycle plan since the 1980s.

The plan also guarantees special lanes for cyclists in large scale road projects going forth.

The new strategy, which was unveiled today, will comprise of $18 million every year for the next six years with a focus on routes going into the city’s centre.

Cyclist lanes on William Street and La Trobe Street will be bolstered, in an attempt to make CBD cycling safer.

VicRoads also confirmed that it’s investigating a reduction of the speed limit to 40km/h in the CBD, to further safeguard cyclists and pedestrians.

These changes follow the Brumby government's introduction of public use bicycles into the CBD last year. Photo by AndrewRobinson10.

The plan also includes plans for routes linking six “activity centers” around the city into the CBD via new routes, alongside various additions to the city’s off-road trails.

These will involve  extending the off-road Federation Trail from Altona to Yarraville; creating a Pipe Bridge over Merri Creek in Northcote and widening and improving the Gardiners Creek off-road bike path from Hawthorn to Kooyong.

Bicycle Victoria chief executive Harry Barber said the strategy was great for cyclists around Melbourne.

“For the first time in Australia, bike riding has been formally recognised as part of the core transport system,” Mr Barber said.

http://www.timetoast.com/flash/TimelineViewer.swf?passedTimelines=126068

Flotilla

On GAF, at this moment, there is as always a debate raging about “Art Games” and what constitutes one such title and whether or not title X,Y or even an entire genre is “pretentious”.  The entire argument is extremely frustrating to see again and again in 2010, being kept on life support for years after it had any life in it.

The arguements which really “get my goat” have always been those that relagate the “Artistic” movement to sidescrollers and those that propport that a lack of overt narrative means that the game is “all style and no substance”.

Enter Flotilla, made by Blendo Games who may or may not  consist of more than Brendon Chung. Although how one could be more than a game designer who’s being designing since the cretaceous period is beyond my feeble mind.

It’s not a side scrolling platformer, it’s a a combination of Rogue like sensibilities with Homeworld-esque combat.  It also lacks an overt overarching narrative. Hell, it even has a co-operative mode for people to play together. Surely it can’t be an art game? Surely its memorable music and distinct graphic style make it a poser to “meaning”.

This would be about the most incorrect thing you could say to me, assuming that you, the reader, were to exist. The game has a simple narrative, much like most resonant works of art. You’ve contracted a terminal illness and have a less than ideal lifespan ahead of you.  This is all you get at the game’s genesis and armed with this context, you’re forced to tackle the world head on.

And tackle it you shall, for the galaxy is a fascinating place. You quickly become inundated with more wit and charm than you know how to deal with as you encounter a plethora of characters in your travels. Perhaps you feel the urge to fight your way across the galaxy, conquering those beneath you in those oh so satisfying battles. Or perhaps you simply want to explore the hell out of everywhere and experience all the craziness that life has to offer. Well, you can and do. Then you die. Death is sudden and without warning in addition to being brutally final. You feel sad about the whole thing.

However, the kicker to the art is yet to come. Once you die you’re given a score and place on the leaderboards.  You get the high score (this is my understanding) by waging a successful war throughout the galaxy. For everyone who I’ve watched play the game, their enjoyment is largely derived from the non-sequitur encounters. Trying balance your enjoyment in your last three months against your vain desire for a legacy?

Art.

Dead Space 2 Gamescomm Trailer Analysis

The latest footage from Dead Space 2, EA’s only public surviving legacy of its new IP project, has me worried. It’s a contextless clip of Isaac strapping himself into some sort of industrial mech which is is then launched into the cold vacuum of space in which he dodges arbitrary colonial detritus through what seem to be rocket boots.

While the first Dead Space may have been a fairly derivative survival horror, drawing strongly from established zombie and science fiction plot elements and Event Horizon for it’s visual style, it was a solid implementation of those ideas. It maintained its atmosphere pretty damn well with the exception of a few “boss fights”, which seemed gratuitous.

This trailer however, seems to completely abandon the tenants which made the atmosphere so good. In it Isaac resembles Iron Man more than anything else, nimbly dodging through space debris at insane speeds, in stark contrast to his low key escapades in the first game.

It is reminiscent to me of the tonal shift between Modern Warfare and it’s sequel. For me, Modern Warfare’s tone alternated between the somber, serious atmosphere of missions such as “All Ghillied Up” or the AC-130 Gunship and the desperation of the “Cargo” Ship or the game’s final chase sequence. However in the sequel, (which I haven’t played) people remark upon the great tonal disparity in the sequel between the more solemn moments and the more fantastical. Kieron Gillen writes on RockPaperShotgun;

“As others have noted, the most disturbing part of No Russian is its context. A few seconds previously you’re involved in a high-speed James Bond chase involving snowmobiles. A few seconds later, you’re mowing down civilians. That tonal shift isn’t brutal. It’s laughable. At best, you’re comedy. At worst, you’re cheap exploitative trash. Modern Warfare leans towards the latter.”

This seems like it could easily become the case with Dead Space 2 if the latest trailer is indicative. I cannot help but wonder if having spent the last thirty seconds playing Iron Man in space might undercut future tension about the seriousness of a Necromorph ambush.

Keep in however, that the spaceflight moment is provided with no context at all and that Dead Space 2 is supposed to have a slight tonal shift from the first game, to reflect Isaac’s new role as “hero of the Ishimura”.

Perhaps this second chapter is intended to feel completely different to the first. Perhaps it is all about Isaac’s ability to cope with being the sole idol for humanity, particularly considering that his image is being used to prop up a Unitologist government. Perhaps at the end of the game, the player and Isaac must abandon the Unitologist’s aid (such as the rocket boots) and strike out on their own. Perhaps then the third game could be again different, as Isaac leads civilians in an uprising against the Unitologists of the time who are deliberately unleashing Necromorphs on society.  Dead Space could become “The Saga of Isaac Clarke” perhaps, where the games are linked by a character’s narrative rather than by atmosphere and mechanics.

However, one cannot have their cake and eat it as well. I sincerely hope that whatever tone Visceral Games has chosen for Dead Space 2, that they stick to it. The a snowmobile is fine in a game about snowmobiles.

This is not conducive to "rocketeering".

Gateways (Half Life 2 Mod) Review

Gateways is a throwback to simpler times. While most Half Life 2 mods imitate the finely crafted levels of Valve’s masterpiece this one throws all pretense out the window in the hope of creating the most interesting combat scenarios that Half Life 2’s gunplay can deliver.

The mod begins by informing you that as Dr. Freeman, you have been captured by the Combine and must escape. Here’s where things get a little strange; at the start the mod has you running through astoundingly narrow corridors, looking at captured zombies in cages and pressing buttons to make something unpleasant happen to them. There are an awful lot of Source mods which funtion as a sort of electronic zoo, whereby you walk about and the mapper shows off his ability to make something interesting to watch.

That is not Gateways and the mod’s beginning minute is a complete misrepresentation of what this mod is about. It is completely incongruous with the true Gateways and is really quite a turn off compared to the rest of the mod, which is of a much higher quality than the opening few minutes.

Gateways is the antithesis of Half Life 2. Where Valve want the player to be immersed in something believable, Gateways is about presenting you with a visual spectacle of enemies and abstract environments. Each area you enter makes less sense than the last, yet the combat grows more fantastic each time. While some of the scenarios, such as killing combine soldiers arrayed Brady Bunch style along one side of a giant cube, are not terribly interesting, these are far outnumbered by more interesting encounters. In one level, I went from fighting hundreds of Antlions simultaneously to ducking behind stalagmites on a circular staircase, being shot at by combine turrets in a middle tower. Upon ascending to the top, I found a crossbow which I then had to use to knock over every turret on my way down. Outside the opening level the design is always interesting, although it never really moves beyond creative uses of func_brush (primitive blocks).

The mod is above all, extremely cathartic. It feels so good to be let loose with Half Life’s combat system, in a way that Valve never lets you be. Whether fighting hundreds of enemies or playing skittles with them, this mod never lets up with the intensity and the edge to the difficulty makes it quite the workout for your reflexes.  The game’s breakable wall mechanics are a both janky and gratuitous, but you’ll quickly forget about such complains as you suddenly need to test which weapons work underwater.  The game is broken up into four sections which you can tackle in any order, which makes progression feel all the more satisfying as you complete the Antlion level with a weapon you unlocked from the combine level.

Despite feeling janky and poorly made throughout the mod, Gateways is a pretty solid one and a half hour kill fest. The first time you press a button and enemies spawn you’ll feel pretty underwhelmed by the mod’s lack of ambition, but soon the inventive ways in which those enemies spawn will win your heart and the game will be impossible to put down for it’s duration. The visual fidelity even begins to seem charming in how appalling it is and the entire experience feels like a glorious throwback to when Id ruled the shooter roost. 9/10

Portal Memories Review

This review is for the first “episodic” installment of the Portal Memories mod (for Portal). According to the team behind it, the mod operates under a “play as it grows” structure, meaning that there will be more content every few months which is good as the first release it pretty short and the design suffers for it. The entire episode consists of four maps and will run you perhaps a quarter of an hour to finish. Being the first episode, the developers seem determined to wean players back into the Portal mechanics by only giving you the power of blue portals, meaning that the puzzles are somewhat simplistic.  There’s a clever moment where the mod will surprise you by doing something that is both logical and unexpected, but it’s largely pretty simple stuff.

This doesn’t prevent one of the levels from being excessively difficult however. The level dangles across a precipice and it’s frustratingly easy to slip down to your death five or more times, attempting to complete a fairly simple puzzle.  What makes this even worse is that you usually fall onto a walkway below, however there is no way to either climb up from this walkway or throw a portal down to get yourself back into the level, forcing you to commit suicide. Which is pretty demoralising by the third time.

The game's "hub world"

The levels all look fantastic, a great deal of work has gone into making the chambers look visually striking. Although Valve deliberately eschewed having a lot of detail in Portal, Memories revels in having detailed chambers and it looks stunning. Particularly (and ironically), the perilous drop I complained about earlier is a real treat to see. What few animations are in the game are of surprising quality as well. The mod does recycle GLADOS’ AI cores however, which means you’re forced to listen to the blue core spout cake memes again.  The mod is mercifully free of rehashed lines from the original game however, so you can thank the team for that.

Despite the simplicity of the whole thing, I really enjoyed my short time with Portal Memories, even when I was repeatedly plunging to my death in a certain level. It’s attractive, has a nice core premise and an undeniably satisfying progression structure.  I am more excited about the mod’s second installment however, when they will not only be implementing more challenging chambers but also introducing the Portal 2 theme of the mod, which is designed as a bridging device between the two games.  8/10.

The mod is ~100mb and can be found here.

As good as the mod looks, it's the Portal 2 inspired areas which are most impressive.

New Bioshock DLC “biggest challenge ever faced”

Two new pieces of single player DLC for Bioshock 2 are coming to PSN, Games for Windows and XBL later this year, 2K Games revealed today.

The first installment is the “Protector Trials” pack, which features six maps based on  existing environments in which one defends a little sister from splicers, like in the story.

The hook to the pack is the three “unique” difficulty modes, which the announcement promises will “push players’ mastery of weapons and Plasmids”, in addition to “never-before-seen” concept art.

Also announced was new story content, which would provide players with “new tools” and “extend the lore and fiction of the failed utopia under the sea”.

The “Protector Trials” is slated for release on August 3rd, while the narrative content is to come within in the coming months.

Play WoW and get Starcraft 2 free in Korea

In addition to being the Lead Producer of Starcraft, Chris Sigaty is also a god of metal.

Starcraft 2 will be free to existing World of Warcraft subscribers in Korea, Lead Producer Chris Sigaty announced a recent event in Seoul.

The caveat of the announcement is that people will lose access to the game if they let their WoW subscription lapse.

Described as “a way of giving something back to such a supportive and skilled community of players”, this is one of a number of innovative payment schemes available to Korean Starcraft players.

While the game can be bought outright for approximately 60 USD,  it’s also possible to rent the game for either a month (8 USD) or a single day for a dollar sixty.

While these options are a result of the Korean (and wider asian) gaming culture’s emphasis on “PC Bangs” (internet cafes), it’s worth noting that microtransactions (originally an Asia-centric model) are now being used in such western AAA titles as Lord of the Rings Online.

Via VG247 via IGN.

Kojima’s PS3 Reunion not to be

Metal Gear Production Manager Ken-ichiro Imaizumi has shot down rumours of a PS3 exclusive game to be announced by Kojima at this September’s Tokyo Games Show.

Responding to the rumour which appeared on CVG yesterday, Imaizumi tweeted: “I say it is just a rumour. I have no idea who made it up such a story”. This was quickly re-tweeted by Mr. Kojima himself.

The rumour originated from a “senior US publishing source”, who claimed the demo was originally for E3 but was pulled to ensure it was “bulletproof”.

This would have left Kojima Production’s E3 schedule quite busy indeed, having already unveiled a Snake Eater re-release for the 3DS and in-game footage of Metal Gear Solid: Rising.

It would have presumably given the company a reveal at the Sony press conference, the only platform without Metal Gear footage this year. Make of this what you will.

Via the folks at VG247.

Flickers of the Mind 2

I decided to make this a franchise, because that is what games are best at. So there.

I was washing the dishes and was thinking about my previous post and the possibility of a blog where readers posted design challenges and I turned out half thought out game ideas every day. The idea scared me as I’m just not that creative, however I wondered if when I applied myself I could think of ideas that do not come to me naturally over the course of time.  So I though about a game based on the tedium of washing dishes.

So the game opens with the player washing dishes at some restaurant and they’re forced to complete some fairly tedious mini-game where they mouse over all the areas on a dish which aren’t enjoyable. I’m imagining graphics which are akin to Cooking Mama or some other piece of gratuitous friendliness.  So the player has to wash these dishes for a day, then it awarded some money depending on their performance.  Throughout the day the player can listen to GTA style radio, with the traditional music or talk back stations.  Then when the next day comes about, the player is introduced to a stereotype of a nice and attractive girl, who’s also going to be washing dishes. Throughout the day the dishes game is interrupted with short dialogue scenes between the protagonist (not player) and this girl, who clearly have some sort of chemistry.  So after the day is over the background changes to some park where the protagonist and lady friend have gone together. The interplay between the two is flirtatious, funny and endearing without any concerns. The player should ideally be enjoying these sequences, at least in comparison to the dull job of washing dishes.

Did you know that "Washing Dishes" in Google Image search auto completes to "Washing Dishes Cartoon"?

The next day passes in much the same manner until the player washes some weird goblet. One or two plates after the goblet a waiter comes in and asks who cleaned the goblet, to which the player responds. He is then brought out to the restaurant, where the owner of the restaurant is amazed at how clean his special goblet is.  He then, unsurprisingly, bequeaths his restaurant to the player.  The game now transforms into a management sim of sorts as the player balances the money spent on the restaurant with customer satisfaction and profit etc.  However the player can now choose to spend time out of his management day and his profit on time with love interest, receiving an enjoyable date scene like the one before. At the start this is liberating, as the player is not only able to spend more time with the lady but also is free of the awful dish washing mini-game. However it soon becomes apparent that the player has to sacrifice his enjoyment (the date scenes) if he wants to succeed at the game’s stated objectives (building a restaurant chain).  If the player chooses to go against the games stated objective of building the restaurant chain then his relationship will flourish, while if he prioritises the chain then he’ll be able to take the girl out to increasingly expensive places but spend less time with her, which is what she ultimately values.  The dichotomy will obviously never be explained directly to the player and they must pick up on the trend themselves.  If they follow the business goals for too long then the relationship eventually breaks down. If the player patriotism the girl then perhaps the game ends with him having to sell off the restaurants and returning to the menial job of washing dishes, but married or something like that to convey romantic success.

That’s my attempt to use game mechanics to naturalistically teach, inspired by the tedium of washing the dishes.

Flickers of the Mind

Last night, up late and desperate for biscuits, I found myself navigating to the kitchen via the light given off by the lock screen of my iPhone, which is predominately white.  I’d held the phone up above my head and had to constantly rotate the little source of light, as it was not only fairly dull but also had a very low falloff distance. It did not illuminate the world around quite as much as give the outlines of things in an eerie blue-white. Every fifteen seconds the lock screen shuts off, so the there’s maybe half a second of complete darkness before I manage to again hit that button.  This struck me as a fun mechanic in a survival horror game grounded in real life.

Metro 2033. Any excuse for screen shots.

Imagine your house suddenly goes black, one night as you’re up far too late suffering from “one more turn” in Civilisation or perhaps creeping yourself out in Metro 2033.  Hell, to make this topical you could even by watching the World Cup or E3. Whatever light you live by suddenly cuts out so you figure that a fuse must’ve blown out or something. You pull out your iPhone and the game teaches you the particulars of using it as a light source while you walk slowly to the fusebox, being careful not to trip on the stairs or whatnot. Upon reaching the fusebox you can see that it’s in fine shape, so you guess that the power has gone out. So you light the way to your bed and lie down, silently lamenting the loss of the enrapturing soccer game. As you lie in bed staring at the ceiling (as the player, you may look about here and open/close your eyes) after a few minutes you hear a sudden tinkle, the shattering of glass.  A man swears loudly. You can hear footsteps.  Grabbing your phone, you must now stay alive for the next hour through a mixture of stealth and escape until the power is restored to the area.  You crouch by your bed and dial 000 (911). Nothing, power must be out there too. Or perhaps they’re merely overwhelmed with calls. It’s academic to you though, as the man is getting closer. You tiptoe to the side door, hoping to avoid detection. It’s all going smoothly until he hears your key turning in the lock. You run out into your front garden and hide behind a tree. Your phone’s reminder to sleep goes off and alerts the man. You jump over the fence and fumble the landing, rolling your ankle and letting out an involuntary yelp.

I picture the game as having a more natural darkness than Doom 3, with object outlines visible while the entire thing stays pretty dark. The iPhone on the other hand is a whole lot dimmer and has a very quick cut off compared to the flash light. Less environmental light than Doom 3 as well, being in a blackout.

I envision the game lasting for only an hour or even less perhaps. The high level of anxiety I’m looking to instil in the player would become exhausting after too long and the longer the game goes for, the more cheap reasons why they can’t find anyone to help them I would have to devise, ruining immersion. I like this idea of very personal, one to one horror relationships that games cannot do due to their length.  The everyday scenario also appeals to me because it’s relate able and horror seems most influential when it’s devoid of any abstraction from the audience’s life. The iPhone mechanic would work well with move, although I wonder whether it would be scarier with the ball glowing in a way reminiscent of the iPhone in game, so that the player grabs glances of the environment around them or whether it be off to increase their immersion in the game. It could also work well with Kinect, assuming that the whole “it can scan objects” thing is still a feature, despite not being mentioned at E3.  The player could simply pick up a phone shaped object then, maximizing immersion. Shattered Memories has already proven that the Wii could do such a thing, although Motion Plus would be a requirement so that it need not be pointed at the screen constantly. A recalibration message every half hour might ruin the game.

Uncool part of "The Darkness"

Upon mentioning this idea in “the” Steam chat last night, someone pointed me to a game called “The Darkness” being  facetious.  The same guy also pointed me to “Tunnel Rats” when I thought up a subterranean game after watching the Daily Show a few days ago, when they interviewed a caver. Anyway, upon investigating The Darkness, I saw that it included the ENTIRE film of To Kill a Mockingbird and that some guy said that watching that through was the most authentic romance scene he’d ever been a part of in a game. I’ve clearly not played the game and I have no idea how the scene actually plays out and whether the player has any interactivity. However it’s a damn cool idea.

The cool part

Can you imagine a DS game where the top screen is a movie playing out in real time and bottom screen is a Mass Effect style dialogue between you and a romantic interest, watching it on your couch? Where the game last just as long as the movie does and has dialogue trees miles deep? Where over the hour and a half you really come to understand a person? All the dialogue is spawned off contextual things happening in the movie however it quickly branches off into other things. You might make your love interest laugh or cry, you might get into a fight or end up making love. Because this much time is allocated to a single character, they can be as complex and troubled as a real person and as difficult to read. To get the “best” ending, you’ll be required to really start to understand your partner and there would be no single approach that could work for the entire game.  It’s sort of glorified interactive fiction, not anything revolutionary. Still, it could be a cool thing.  Writing these ideas out really helps to flesh them out, so there might be more of these in the future.