Double Strategy Review: Stellaris & Offworld Trading Company (First Half)

Double Review: Offworld Trading Company, and Stellaris (Part 1)

2016 is shaping up to be something of a renaissance for the strategy genre, with XCOM 2, Offworld Trading Company, and Stellaris already out and the king of the genre - Civilization announcing its next iteration for the end of the year. It’s delightful to see many different minds in the genre delivering unique titles that look worthy to stand the test of time.

Of the two new releases, Offworld Trading Company and Stellaris, the former is easier to explain and so I’ll begin my review with it.

A view of the commodities on sale on the left, the rivals' stocks on the right, and the black market in the bottom right corner. The tutorials do a great job explaining it all

Offworld Trading Company is easily the best capitalism simulator I’ve played till date. It captures the raw essence of competition, and is a love letter to the terrifying power of compound interest and accumulation. Through intelligent (and bloodless) competition, you work to nudge out (and ultimately buy out) your competitors through capturing and commanding the Martian economy.

Games follow a distinct rhythm, an opening land rush gambit to capture the best resource spots for yourself, a hectic building up of industry that determines what products you want to sell to succeed (while dealing with interference from the competition), and a late game frenzy to buy out the competition while fending off hostile bids on your own business. The bigger you get, the bigger you can get; having more resources means you can capture key resources ahead of your opponent, and eventually there comes a point where it’s an exercise in futility to compete with an opponent who played their cards right, where the gap between your economy and theirs cannot be bridged. That’s that hard part of capitalism. On the other hand, seeing a plan come together and being in a position to dominate the market is a unique high, this is a game that makes you feel smart when you succeed.

The rough part of capitalism comes in the form of a ‘black market’ where players can buy one-use abilities that technically involve non-price competition and give your team one time advantages, or stymie the opposition (options include inviting pirates to shoot down their transports, or perhaps inciting a strike at their factories, or better yet, a mutiny). The cost of each of these abilities increases every time any player on the map buys one, which means that as games get longer those who can’t afford to fight back commercially will not be able to afford sneaky tricks either due to inflation. Goes to prove that you can cheat to win, till you can’t afford to pay the piper. If you take the moral high road and don’t use underhanded tactics against the opposition, they’re less likely to target you, until the moment you start getting ahead. At higher difficulties, I doubt it’s practically sane to play all clean (those who disagree haven’t had their patent office mutiny just before they were about to finish patenting teleportation) (Also, this is why we need disincentives to be stringently enforced to penalize crime and promote fairness – to prevent a descent into chaos).

The campaign mode makes you think very seriously about what area to expand business to: who are your opponents, what are the unique features of the area, which country owns the site, do you have the technology you need to succeed? Everything is a tradeoff

Every action has a reaction, expanding your Base gives you more land but increases your food and water requirements, selling too much of a commodity reduces its price (hence the need to diversify), building a launch pad makes you a target of sabotage and explosives, and so on. The game succeeds in portraying every decision as part of a larger whole.

The titular off-world trading comes in the form of an end game building - the launch pad - from where you can send rockets carrying your goods to off planet colonies, where the prices for those goods are far higher, and not linked to the price on Mars. The hard earned happiness after a spike of funds from a rocket launch (think boat shipments from Tropico) is the fun part of capitalism.

A successful buyout of the competition

The post game helps understand what works and what doesn't

It's not easy to stay ahead in this market

You can make out exactly where the competition lost all chance of winning

Offworld Trading Company launched through Early Access and is the better for it - the polish shows in the smoothness of the design. The game has a very welcoming and well-paced tutorial, skirmish modes, co-op modes, and a lovely campaign mode which expands on the core dynamics through linking 7 maps with carry over progression (a good performance on one map makes the next ones easier and vice versa). The campaign’s final level, where the four strongest companies fight it out for a monopoly on Mars feels like a perfect conclusion to days of commercial rivalry, and I strongly recommend the experience.

Each character has a personality which adds color to the game

Due to the nature of how losses magnify faster than gains, at times it’s just better to restart, and this is a cause for serious frustration when your gambits fail and you know there’s pretty much no way to fight back. In game terms, this means that this game will lead to rage-induced quitting. That said, the game is highly replayable and does what it sets out to do extraordinarily well – give you the feeling of being a bloodthirsty capitalist, and seeing corporate heads roll. Changing the setting from Mars to Earth in 1910 (Offworld rockets replaced with freight ships) would not change the experience one bit, and that is a testament to good, focused design.

Like Civilization V, the experience gets better and more enjoyable as you get better (and start figuring out what works and what doesn’t, hint: never be energy negative), when you challenge yourself to higher difficulties (there’s a whole spectrum), and the fights become more lively. This one’s a keeper.

>Stellaris review and wrap up in Part 2

Double Review: Offworld Trading Company, and Stellaris (Second Half)

Double Review: Offworld Trading Company, and Stellaris (Part 2)

A battle over a Ringworld

Stellaris channels the spirit of exploration and randomness, it bravely throws open the doors to a giant galaxy, with 1000 star systems and over a dozen initial space empires being a MEDIUM game map. Alien races and anomalies are procedurally generated, and each playthrough is distinctly unique from an interplay of your starting choices (species, home planet, form of government, weapon preference, space travel method, and more), and where you start (edge of galaxy vs middle, in the middle of an armada of enemies or relatively unoccupied space).

Your choice of traits defines which forms of government your people can choose from

A 1000 planet medium sized map

As a new series from Paradox Interactive, seasoned masters of the grand-strategy genre, Stellaris marries Paradox’s meticulous approach to multi-layered simulations from its flagship Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings series with real-time 4X gameplay to make the hybrid that is Stellaris. Thankfully, due to the nature of this hybrid, Stellaris is a lot more accessible to newcomers than the earlier mentioned offerings, to the extent that I felt familiar with what I was doing around six hours in (though I’m still uncovering new systems I’d overlooked 20 hours later). Believe me when I say that this accessibility is a major achievement for the studio.

How you can react to other races is dependent on your traits

As for the game’s rhythm: you start out from a single planet of sentients beginning to explore the galaxy and send out science vessels to map out nearby space, occasionally encountering a random anomaly which can be researched for growth benefits and also some exceptional writing. You expand your empire through colonizing new worlds (and spinning them off into independent territories which you do not need to manage directly), fighting wars of conquest, researching new technology, and forming uneasy alliances with your galactic neighbors. In the end game, one of three different galactic catastrophes strikes (Zerg swarms / Intergalactic Invasion / Sentient AI Rebellion), which cannot be negotiated with (only fought). This last minute throwing down the gauntlet and testing the strength of the empire you’ve built makes for a thrilling conclusion (do not take this challenge lightly, defeat is very possible). A typical game easily spans upwards of 15 hours.

Highly Militaristic nations can decide to shout down the 'Zerg'

 If there’s one thing Stellaris nails, it’s role-playing at scale. The conversation choices, science options, and responses to random events are tailored to your empire. A militaristic nation will be able to tell the Zerg to go back to whatever galaxy they came from, where all others stay quiet. You can encounter Russell’s Teapot in the game as a random event, and researching it gives Spiritual races the confidence that their beliefs are correct (there is a god), while materialistic races are unable to understand anything from examining the teapot and use the time spent examining it to understand society better (they cannot comprehend a god, so work at making society better). There’s also a good deal of sci-fi homages, with ring worlds (Halo), Hyperlanes (just waiting for a Mass Effect conversion), multiple fundamentally different travel technologies, and a look at various issues in space- slavery, sentience, genetic modification, psyonics, governments and elections, aging - all within the game’s systems.

The choice of FTL technology significantly changes the play experience

Unfortunately, diplomatic options are limited and this restricts most of your interactions with other nations to armed conflict. The combat engine in the game is simplistic (perhaps intentionally to allow real time management at scale), and does not allow prioritized targeting during battles, the only choice you have is to call the retreat if required. An over reliance on the violence of action is a current shortcoming with the base game, especially given that combat does not feel intuitive, and the only useful guideline is to send in stronger fleets with a variety of ship sizes. The UI also stumbles at time to carry the immense weight of the number of systems to manage (leader, colonies, sectors, species, and many, many more), though it’s much simpler and more accessible than other Paradox works. Tech trees are slightly confusing, and there’s no fleshed out overarching galactic council or spying. I wholeheartedly expect to see fixes to many of these issues over the next two years between the mods and in-house DLC. It is a great game, edging towards exceptionality, and will cross that threshold with DLC, like most Civilization games before it.

One version of how the Pyramids came to be, can happen while uplifting a less developed race to space faring status

To summarize, Stellaris brings grand-strategy to space in a meaningful way that is approachable to enthusiasts without being oversimplified for experts. Buy it now for a great platform, or later when DLC is out to get a better fleshed out experience.

Space warfare against the Zerg, I mean Protheryn

Wrap Up

Comparing Offworld and Stellaris, both are excellent strategy games but with radically different scopes. Offworld is far more approachable, where Stellaris is far more robust. Offworld does what it sets out to do exceedingly well, while Stellaris will achieve far more than its designers intentionally planned (as with Civilization IV and V before it). Stellaris demands long stretches of your time, while Offworld is highly enjoyable in bursts. If you’re on a limited budget, this article should have nudged you one way or the other, personally I’d say both are meaningful additions to a strategy gamer’s stable and both push the envelope further for the genre.

Games purchased on Steam, playtime OWTC: 10 hours, Stellaris 20 hours

XCOM 2 Hit Chance 100%

Ray the Ranger, callsign: Deadpool, introducing us to XCOM 2

XCOM 2: Hit Chance 100%

XCOM 2 is a masterpiece of modern gaming. I’ll go ahead and get that out of the way.  

XCOM 2 is the highly nuanced and brutal successor to 2012’s exceptional XCOM: Enemy Unknown by Firaxis. It ups the ante in almost every regard over the original, while remaining very faithful to what XCOM stands for – brutal gameplay, persistent challenge, constant tradeoffs, and juggling strategic and tactical concerns. XCOM 2 adds massive levels of replayability to the mix through an excellently crafted random events and customization systems, fully randomised maps in nearly every mission, and strong 3^rd party modding support. Where 2012’s Enemy Unknown would start following a predictable path after the first dozen challenging hours, XCOM 2 never gives you a minute of respite or undue familiarity, and is stronger for it.

A major change is to the pacing of the game, in Enemy Unknown enemies would attack only after you saw them, which made gamers advance across the map at a glacial pace to avoid ‘revealing’ and encountering too many aliens at a time. Given the pain of losing a character, this strategy made tactical sense but led to a repetitive experience over time. Firaxis saw this behaviour and how it took away from the experience and improvised - now most missions (over two thirds) are under a strict time limit. Miss the timer, and the mission is a failure – the target gets away, or your evac has to abort, leaving anyone left behind. Your payout from the mission is lost or much lower, and your squad has a hole in it now. However, if you run too far ahead too quickly, your troops risk being caught in the open and attacked. Advance too slowly, and you may still fail due to the timer. This constant prodding is an excellent way to keep battles tense and constantly challenging, no action can be taken for granted at any point in the game.

Firaxis also understood the connection gamers had with their squad characters, so they added a wonderful character pool feature which allows players to design and share their custom characters who can appear in the game as soldiers, NPCs, or even random civilians across maps. This time around, the range of customisations on offer is substantial, and modders continue to add more. Through all this, I ended up with a squad with Danaerys (GoT) as my Psi Op, Trinity (The Matrix) as my Hacker, Mikasa Ackerman (Attack on Titan) as my gunslinger (bad dice roll, should have been a blademaster), Captain Picard (Star Trek) as Heavy Weapons, Big Boss (MGS) as demolitions, my friend Ray as the Blademaster, and myself as the long range sniper. Oh the stories!

The Pledge

Ah yes, early game accuracy. It makes sense given that my solder had no training in combat up to this point

XCOM2 pulls off an interesting twist on the story till date. Firaxis mentioned that 60% of players in XCOM lost during their first playthrough, and took that to be the canon ending for the game - the Aliens winning and taking over Earth. Your victory in XCOM was retconned to have been a simulation run in your head while you were being used as a wetware computer used by the aliens to learn human tactics, after your base in XCOM was destroyed. In the present, 20 years since the fall, XCOM is a rag tag insurgent force, fighting back from the margins, always a step behind in manpower, technology and resources. The Aliens have kept humanity alive and governed under a totalitarian state for reasons explained across the game.

XCOM pledges to make you feel like humanity’s last defence from extinction, and to its credit, the game mechanics communicate this brilliantly. You are always short of strategic resources, time during missions, your people are often wounded or worse, and the aliens are merciless. For the first fifteen hours, you are thoroughly overwhelmed by how badly undermanned you are, how fragile the resistance is, and how each upgrade you gain is at the cost of another one.

Too many missions ended this way early on, with a lot of my team healing from their wounds. Side note, mission names are randomly generated and a lot of fun

The Turn

Before my team blazed through here, this building had a shortage of windows. The ability to tactically destroy the environment is excellent

Emergent storytelling is something XCOM2 does exceptionally well, by throwing up so many elements of structured randomness, every person’s playthrough will be different, and every encounter is memorable. Unlike the original wherein missions started to fuse together in my mind, I can look back at a screenshot from any of the 40 missions I completed in my 40 hour playthrough and remember exactly what went right and wrong and what I should have done better. It’s a game that doesn’t hold your hand and demands that you keep up pace. However, at the same time, it’s put in a lot of effort to not be unfair either, when enemies are dropping in you know exactly where they’ll land. In between turns, you can hear which enemies are hidden from the sound of their footsteps/treads, and hit rates / hacking success is transparently visible.

In sync with the resistance theme, your team start most missions in concealment, and until a soldier is detected or until you launch an attack, the enemy will mind their own business, patrolling the streets. The feeling of setting off a successful ambush is thrilling, and the action camera does a great job of putting you into the moment.

Dark Events: You can never stop them all, and they will change how you play the next month's missions

Mission diversity has further improved, and you usually have a choice of missions you can undertake at any given point of time – VIP rescue, supply capture, hacking an enemy terminal, shutting down a relay station, and many more. Notably, you can never counter all the activities aliens are running, and often have to make a trade-off between which mission to take - each has its own rewards, difficulty level, troop readiness, and negative outcome. Each mission you take prevents that negative outcome, however the mission that you can't prevent will go ahead and trouble you, such as by reducing your funds, spawning more enemies on missions, or other negative modifiers which materially affect your experience.

Each weapon has a fair number of customization slots. Each weapon can be named, and if the operator doesn't survive, it can be brought back to base and passed down like a legacy. Neat

The four key soldier classes have been rebalanced and tweaked, and snipers are no longer head and shoulders above other soldiers by the endgame. Specialists now have the ability to hack enemy robots, and a successful hack is a gamble - a failure means the enemy is boosted, however the risk reward most often makes it worth it. Assaults are now rangers with blades, and excel at recon while under concealment.

Maps are well designed, and the scenery is incredibly chewy - have an enemy getting a good angle on your troops from a roof? A good grenade/rocket will send them falling through the floor (and often to their swift demise). It's a good time to be a grenadier in XCOM.

Captain Picard takes the fight to our robotic overlords

Soldiers react to the world around them and likewise. Successful soldiers have wanted pictures against them put in the world, and will respond if moved next to them. Based on their attitude, soldiers react differently to your commands and to making successful or unsuccessful shots. Tragically, their final moments are also haunting, my own character’s last words were ‘Not like this.’ (It was at that moment I broke down and couldn’t continue, I had to resort to save scumming from that point on to make it through, and even then at great pain. I do regret this, and missions became more frustrating and less rewarding, but I just couldn't let him fail) After a successful mission, everyone on the flight back is overjoyed. If a few teammates didn’t make it back, the mood and the music are more sombre. If there was a sole survivor, they return traumatised, with their head in their hands. There’s only ever a hair between your team winning and losing, and the game makes you live on the edge’s knife, making every victory heady, and every loss damning.

The base at the start of the game, with space for facilities being cleared

Base management is slightly simpler this time round, with managing energy levels and your small crew of engineers being the main challenges. New systems this time round include hacking, making contact with rebel networks across the world, and revamped skill trees. The bonus for having all countries on a continent is random at the start of each campaign, as is the layout of your bases’ interiors, meaning that no playthrough is ever the same.

Hacking usually has a risk of failure, in this case my operative had lots of experience working in her favor

In the first game, the main challenge was preventing nations from leaving the XCOM project, which became easier with time. Here, the main challenge is preventing the aliens from finishing their top secret Avatar project, which they are constantly making progress towards. Progress is measured on a doomsday meter, and if you aren’t actively working to stop their efforts by taking down their research centers, the aliens can win at any point in the game (yes, even very close to the ending). It’s worth mentioning that the core loop of get scarce resources – slightly improve teams or base – fight off enemy missions – prevent progress on the Avatar project – is so strong, the game feels it could be played forever. The story missions add to the flavour and context of what’s happening, but it’s the core loop that sells the game.

A view of all the different things being juggled during a normal day on the Avenger. The doomsday clock is at the top of the screen

The Prestige

When you decide you’re finally up for the final missions, you better be extremely confident in your team, the final missions are a major spike in difficulty and will be more punishing than most games I’ve come across. The ending is satisfactory coming after a very hard fought battle which will challenge your tactical prowess to the hilt and make you feel amazed that you made it through. The story’s conclusion, though not cathartic, was fair, and that’s fine by me. If anything, I will say the story was overpowered by the strong systems holding up the game, and that’s alright.

Trinity vs an Archon, scary in close ranged combat

The Aftermath

After completing one campaign, you can take your newfound skills and start it all over again to see how much better you can do or try new strategies and teams, and given the excellent procedural generation systems in the game, it would be a worthy challenge. You can also share your squads online for other players to download (mine’s available if anyone’s looking) and add their roster to your own. Where the base XCOM2 is already better than it’s predecessor after that has had multiple expansion content, XCOM2’s expansion content will be joining by July or so, and I eagerly look forward to a magnificent game getting even richer in content. At the same time, user created mods are expected to further expand the variety of the game and that is another great thing. The game also has a multiplayer mode, however I’ve had a hard time connecting to servers from India, so I can only say that it’s an extra reason to play.

Danaerys vs. a Sectopod

For specific demographics:

Price sensitive: Go for it, it can easily be replayed for hundreds of hours.

Genre sensitive: Fair story, challenging but fair gameplay, an excellent addition to the Turn Based Strategy Genre

Replay enthusiasts: Go wild, the makers of the Civilization series have brought a level of replayability from there to here, and it’s wonderful.

Diversity seekers: There’s a good amount of new content here for players both within the genre and from outside

Those with older systems: Graphics intensive, however can work ~30 FPS on old systems, and this isn’t a game where FPS materially affects your turns.

Art lovers: A lot here to love, the details in the world, the new look of a number of enemies, there’s a lot of quality art direction at work here

Difficulty Seekers: Knock yourselves out

Final Verdict

A paragon of the genre, and a worthy successor to the throne, I recommend XCOM2 as a must buy to serious PC gamers

In case you haven't played XCOM: Enemy Unknown - The Complete Edition, I'd recommend you do that first, and then pick up XCOM2, by which time the technical wrinkles should also be sorted

Game: XCOM 2 (Base Edition)

Developer: Firaxis

Launch Date: 4^th February, 2016

Time for one playthrough: 35-45 hours

Time Reviewed: 41 hours

Get it on: Steam or a boxed copy (Not available on consoles, this one's a PC Exclusive)

Price: $60 or INR 3000 on Steam, INR 999 on Amazon.in

Side Note - Technical Glitches: As of launch, the game suffers from poor optimisation and is not too comfortable running at high settings. While that does not affect the quality of gameplay itself, it is still something I do not appreciate. Yes, it is an exceptional game, but I do prefer games come out well from the start. In a bit of good news, Firaxis is expected to work on improving the performance over the next few months, and I eagerly look forward to that.

For more on the Pledge/Turn/Prestige/Aftermath Review structure, check out: http://criticalh1t.blogspot.in/2015/06/the-prestige-and-meaningful-game-reviews.html

X COM: Enemy Unknown Complete Edition Review

X COM: Enemy Unknown (after its Enemy Within update) remains one of my favourite games to date, and I’m happy to say that it is not obsolete with the arrival of X COM 2, both games retain their individual flavours and I would strongly recommend a newcomer to first enjoy a playthrough of XCOM: Enemy Unknown: The Complete Edition before diving into its more challenging yet refined sequel. In case you don’t know about Enemy Unknown, I’ll do a quick review ahead of my X COM 2 review

In Enemy Unknown you are the commander of a multinational human resistance force, X COM, defending earth from an unexpected alien invasion. The game plays at two levels – the strategic and the tactical. When not fighting a tactical ground battle, you manage your bases’ resources, acquire and research new technology, and build the infrastructure the resistance needs to wage a rough, uphill war. You send squads of 4 to 6 soldiers of various classes (Assault, Sniper, Heavy Weapons, Support, MEC) to fighting off alien activity in turn based, tactical skirmishes around the globe. If you start losing battles, the coalition of nations paying for X Com lose faith in you and slowly withdraw funding or leave the project entirely, leading to a death spiral. Keeping panic caused by successful alien activities down is the name of the game. If too many nations think you’re not worth investing in because you can’t get the job done, it’s game over, the aliens win. It’s entirely possible to over invest in getting better equipment for your troops while letting nations panic, leading to the uncomfortable situation wherein you’re winning battles but will lose the war a few months down the line.

Your team of soldiers will most often be outgunned, and as time goes by you will encounter stronger and more versatile enemies. While at no point does the game give you a free ride, battles are hard fought victories, the first few months tend to be the hardest, where you’re up against aliens with plasma weaponry and advanced armour with mere conventional human guns and Kevlar vests and backing nations are very jittery about the attacks. As time goes by and your troops gain ranks and better abilities, and your R&D churns out research that puts you on par with the aliens, and you get better at defending the world. the tide slowly turns, and it feels wonderful to fight the underdog’s fight on your own terms. 

The soldier rank system deserves special mention, at each rank increase, soldiers can choose from one of two perks which highly mold their combat style – long range stationary sniper vs. mobile rapid sniper, explosive weaponry vs good anti-armor capabilities, and the like, adding layers of tactics to how you build and run your squad. In both XCOMs, soldiers who killed on the battlefield are permanently gone (unless you cheat and reload an old save file), and every single person lost due to a lucky enemy shot or bad tactics on your part is like a punch in the gut. Every soldier has a name, limited facial customizations, and a country of origin. Losing a single one hurts at an emotional and tactical level - you’re now one good soldier short (and it takes considerable time to raise new ones up the ranks), and the enemy is as strong as ever.

A typical playthrough can last from 25-35 hours, and lasted a month of real time for me. It was a good month, the progression inside the game always made kept me wondering about how the next day's battles would be. Right now the game is available at huge discounts during sales, and can be purchased on the PC, the XBox 360, and the PS3. The iOS and Android ports don't have the same feel as the main versions, so I do not recommend them as strongly.

While there is a good diversity in the number and types of missions and enemies, the game tends to get a bit repetitive in the mid to late game (around 20 hours in) as you are often replaying familiar maps, and by that point have a fair understanding of where the enemies are coming from and what they can and can’t do, as well as faith in your own team's skills. Nonetheless, the game does a great job of making you fear the destructive power of the aliens, and cheer every success your team makes against a vastly superior invasion force. The Complete Edition of the game includes the base game along with the exceptional Enemy Within expansion which increases enemy diversity, adds a human rebellion sub plot, and gives you access to better abilities and a new soldier class, definitely go for the Complete Edition, it’s a far better experience. 

Finishing the fight in Enemy Unknown makes the events of the sequel much more personal.

Game Review: Remember Me: A great game concept hidden among hours of the same old

Remember Me: A great game concept hidden among hours of the same old

When in Neo-France, a screenshot with the Eiffel Tower is obligatory

Remember Me is a beautiful looking futuristic dystopian platformer/brawler/puzzler with an exceptional lore that you will probably never enjoy to its potential. While the game deals with meaningful questions, ‘What could the world look like if you could store, share and repress memories?’ it fails to leverage this angle, and most (admittedly good) backstory is relegated to hidden lore finds which are a chore to locate, and which you likely will not find all of within a playthrough, artificially depriving story lovers of their lore, while rewarding game environment explorers who most likely could care less for it.

If anyone would ask for a game where the art is incredible, but the game part itself is deeply flawed to a fault, this would be at the front of my mind. Across the 11 hours the campaign lasts, expect to be let down by torturous design choices in combat and platforming, which isn’t to say that it’s unplayable, only that it’s very grinding in its nature.

Despite the game’s plea in its very name, to be remembered, there are exactly and only four sequences you will genuinely care about. However, those four are such exceptional representations of the creativity of gaming as a medium that they will remain in my mind as a standout innovation, and as such I was coerced to bear with the lackluster 10 ‘in between’ hours just for the one hour of gaming delight of those sequences. What separates these Memory Remix segments from the rest of the game, and other media as a whole? You actually have to play the game to enjoy them, watching a YouTube video cannot do them justice. In my opinion, if the designers had just made the entire game around those type of sequences, added more, and fleshed out the concept further, it would have been an entirely different game altogether, and much the better for it.

The Pledge

Begin as a clueless, mind-wiped prisoner in the Bastille of 2084, see the world for what it has become in the face of memory altering and sharing technology, and instigate a revolution to return the world to the natural order of things while restoring your memory along the way. Achieved through jumping around town through strange shortcuts, defending yourself at every turn in a world where law enforcement seems to have forgotten about guns, and everyone knows Kung Fu. Mixed martial arts is apparently the fighter’s weapon of choice in 2084 and most enemies are all too happy to show off their haymaker, which feels out of place in the future. A mind hacking mini-game would have made more sense. Anyway, after escaping from prison and finding your tools, you use your unique memory hacking skills to change people’s point of views for your advantage, and steal memories from others where required.

The Turn

You will be performing multiple acts of infiltration and sabotage across the city, under the watchful eye of a mysterious handler whose personal motivations are suspect (are they exploiting your mind-wiped memory for right or for wrong). This for the most part means jumping, shimmying, and punching your way around town while facing the odd boss fight. Explorers are rewarded with health and mana upgrades, and the aforementioned lore packages.

The Power Attacks menu, also a very inconveniently timed combat segment that makes little sense other than 'Oh story's ending, might as well throw in another fight'

Unfortunately, both platforming and combat feel like a chore, and you will be bored soon by the repetitive nature of your actions. Again, and again, and again. Pathways are mostly linear, though there are a couple of moments where you are confused about the next step and after a short wait, the game points you in the right direction. There are around 14 types of enemies, which will make you vary your approach, but not radically. Combat depends on landing combination attacks on enemies, and demands motion. Unfortunately, with no block feature and dodging cancelling your combos, this again makes fights last longer than they should. You unlock special charged moves which then have inane wait times to retry, which will force you once again to either wait (during combat), or try and land combos that reduce timers. A chore.

He probably isn't coming over to shake hands

My least favorite boss fight of recent memory

Boss fights are typically not fun, and the punishment for failing a mandatory Quick Time Event (QTE) segment at the end of a boss fight is being kicked back the moment before the QTE, with the boss back to their last heath bar. This forces you to retrace a painfully dull combat sequence again and again, requiring inane requirements just to re-trigger the QTE. Should you die doing this, it’s back to square zero or the boss’s most recent health bar. At one point two thirds through the game, I seriously considered just quitting because of the frustration of such a badly designed boss mechanic. At the end, the lure of the memory remixes forced me to carry on.

The first time you experience the sensation of playing with memories, an excellent and novel game element

The Memory Remixes remain the shining highlight of the game, wherein you watch a short video sequence, and rewind it to find moments in which you can change a circumstance – the location of a box or the safety on a gun – and create a newly fabricated memory, changing the world view of the target individual radically. The designers did a great job in making your tweaks feel impactful, and a clever input mode in this mode and its outcome – making permanent allies out of enemies - makes you feel a bit like an operative in a super-secret futuristic crime unit, in a good way. Whoever came up with this concept deserves a pat on their back.

One of the possible outcomes of playing with memories

Non-exploration driven puzzles range from extremely simple to slightly challenging, and you will end up questioning the intellect of both security system designers in the future, and game designers in the past. At times, you will find a screen indicating the location of a Cache of hidden upgrade parts, which often takes more time to memorize than it takes to find the part. Worse, you may not find anything resembling the target description before you find the last passageway locked off due to progression, not a fun design choice, again.

At every step however, the vistas are beautifully detailed and you will find yourself stopping from time to time to enjoy the look of the entire game, which is very pleasant on the eyes – colorful and grand at the same time. This is definitely a game that looks better than it plays.

The vistas are gorgeous throughout the game

Just here for the art

Look at all those meaningless art assets, less of these and more ReMixes next time, please!

More of that lovely art design

The Prestige

At the end of your journey you regain your memories, and gain conviction for your actions. Through skillful memory manipulation you have the opportunity to change the worldview of key individuals and help bring back a sense of reality. As expected, there is a twist at the end, but all is wrapped up in time for supper and few loose ends are left behind. There is a fair bit of emotional poignancy in the ending, and that is to its credit.

The Aftermath

End of story, the only option forward is to replay from the start.

For specific demographics:

Price sensitive: If you want to try out an amazing new mechanic hidden behind hours of waiting, go for it on sale. Otherwise, there are better ways to spend your time and money.

Genre sensitive: Good lore where available, visuals say a lot more than anything else in this jaunt. This won’t be a must experience of sci-fi/memory enthusiasts any time soon, but it is still a competent manifestation.

Replay enthusiasts: Not much to see here, maybe a few more lore items if you care, otherwise you really don’t want to be replaying this one.

Diversity seekers: If you’ve played a lot of games, you will love the Remixes, and pretty much not care about the rest

Those with older systems: Fairly graphics intensive, will not be kind at 1080p with older systems, usually an insane amount of polygons on the screen

Art lovers: A lot here to love

Final verdict

A flawed game which many will skip, but hiding a few moments of excellence seasoned gamers will remember fondly

Game: Remember Me

Developer: Dontnod Entertainment

Launch Date: 3^rd June, 2013

Time for one playthrough: 11 Hours

Time Reviewed: 11 Hours

Get it on: Steam 

Price: $30 on Steam, has reached $6 during sales

For more on the Pledge/Turn/Prestige/Aftermath Review structure, check out: http://criticalh1t.blogspot.in/2015/06/the-prestige-and-meaningful-game-reviews.html

Games for Every Age

Hello everyone,

I've talked to a lot of people in the interim since the last post, and a common question that I've come across is 'what games should my kids play?' A fair question, and for which, this (limited) post. There are also a few FAQs at the end for those who have further questions. Please note that almost all of these games can be enjoyed at any age, the ages mentioned here are sort of minimum requirements (for humans :) ). Side note, I've played most of these myself, and am recommending from experience.

Kids less than 5 Years old
Outdoors, physical, kinetic games that help build real world motor skills and social skills. Outdoor games are and will remain a consistent recommendation at all ages (not just for kids).
Indoor games that help simple logical reasoning.

Below the age of five, I strongly discourage kids from playing video games before they have fairly well developed notions of real and unreal. The last thing you want is for kids to learn early on is to take orders from others without asking why.
Puzzles, simple board games (snakes and ladders-esque), and pattern detection games like snap are far more age appropriate for this age group

Kids 5 till 8 years old
Beyond outdoor sports, now kids have the mental reasoning capacity to start learning more complex games. Chess and simple versions of monopoly can enter at this age. Among books: Where's Wally

Regarding video games, I'd recommend avoiding mobile gaming due to its ubiquitous presence, making kids eager to play games anywhere they go (at an age where they don't know better). Instead, I recommend playing games on dedicated consoles / a PC, which can be monitored and regulated in terms of time spent. At this age, kids will be able to play the games, but often will not be able to grasp the full depth of them, hence I won't recommend most challenging genres such as strategy yet.
Great games are the Mario series (pretty much anything in this), Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien, Angry Birds, many simple Disney games
While I'd recommend avoiding online games, Neopets.com and Miniclip.com do offer fairly kid friendly environments

Kids 8 to 12 years old
At this age, kids will enjoy more diverse experiences and become mentally able to comprehend games better, allowing me to recommend more serious titles. and a whole new world of challenging and engaging games opens up. Among game systems, Nintendo's Wii U or a PC would be preferred at this age

Must Plays: Spore, Bastion, Portal, The Legend of Zelda series, Minecraft, Portal, Portal 2,
Brothers: A tale of Two Sons, Fable 1, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Zoo Tycoon, Sid Meier's Pirates, Sid Meier's Ace Patrol, Disney Infinity, Lego Games (Lord of the Rings, Batman, Jurassic Park, Dimensions, Avengers), The Oregon Trail, Contraptions: The Incredible Machine (1 and 2), The Oregon Trail, Kinect Sports, Kinect Adventures, Never Alone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, World of Goo, Threes, 2048

Teens 12 to 16
This is the last age group at which I'd recommend games in general, as beyond this point, more specific tastes develop among games.

Civilization 4, Super Smash Brothers, Gunpoint, Professor Layton Series, The Talos Principle, Kerbal Space Program, Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends, Valiant Hearts, Kingdom Hearts, Age of Empires (1, 2, 3), Age of Mythology, Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, Child of Light, Rise of Nations, Need For Speed: Most Wanted, Patapon, Braid, InfiniFactory, Rogue Legacy, Plants Vs Zombies (1 & 2), Final Fantasy (1, 4, 6), The World Ends with You, Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic (1&2), Transistor, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Monaco, Steamworld Dig, Legend of Grimrock, Mark of the Ninja, Tropico 4

Kids at heart, and teens above the age of 16

The Witcher 3, The Witcher 2, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Civilization V (The Complete Edition), Deux Ex: Human Revolution, Valkyria Chronicles, 80 Days, Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, Alter Ego, Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Sims 3, Project Cars, FTL, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil's Survivor, Metal Gear Rising: Revengenace, Dishonored, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, DotA2, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Saints Row (The Third, 4), BioShock (1, 2, 3), Wolfenstein: the New Order, Borderlands, Telltales- A Game of Thrones, The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, The Walking Dead, XCom- Enemy Unknown Complete, This War of Mine, Invisible Inc, Spec Ops: The Line, Total War: Shogun 2, Wargame: Airland Battle, World in Conflict, GTA V, GTA IV, Shadow of Mordor

FAQs

PC/PS4/XBox One/Nintendo?
My personal choice: PC + Nintendo, you miss the least games.
Only one? PC
Only one console? PS4

What is the most cost-effective platform?
PC Gaming, this is a no-contest

Mobile Gaming?
Avoid Free To Play games like the plague. Most do not respect your time at all, unlike most paid games. The hidden currency that games really cost you is time, not money. For those who understand the difference between the two, don't sell your time short with a bad game.

To Pay or Not to Pay?
Pay, please support the developers! For the price conscious on PC, Steam Sales come around Summer and December, and many amazing games are at steep discounts. Also, humblebundle.com is a great source of many great games, for amazing prices.

In the rare chance there's something left to ask, leave a comment :)

Part 2: How video games trace their origins to ancient storytellers

How video games trace their origins to ancient storytellers

Also, the road leading up to video gaming as a mass phenomenon

Part 2 of the 4 Part series on Gaming

Part 1: Why do we need Gaming?

The global gaming industry is pegged to rake in over $80 Bn¹ globally this year, making it a little more than double the size of the global box office, including Hollywood, Bollywood, and any other local cinema. You read that correctly, the stereotypical nerd industry which has typically been relegated to the side of our attention and been the maligned poster boy for escapism will earn more than the global cinema earnings of every movie launched this year. I’m not kidding². If that thought doesn’t make you think twice about the power of video games then this is not the right blog for you.

We are on the verge of seeing a wave of social acceptance for gaming, with the coming workforce and yes, even many of our politicians³, having grown up gaming and for a nice change, being proud of it. This will be a brave new time for the medium of video games, with more people being engaged, more stories being told, more subject matters and wider demographics being covered, and more lessons being learnt. In this context, it would be interesting to look back and the trace the steps that led to the creation of this industry as it is.

The journey through the evolution of gaming will be long and winding, starting from the need for gaming, and stopping near the doorstep of video games as we know them today. For anyone about to write TL:DR and move on, here’s the abridged version:

Gaming

Rooted in: The human need for a story

Adapted: As per the tools available

Expressed through: Various media

Provided: A diversity of unique stories

The Future: A platform for creating your own stories

Those who would like to read on and share their comments on what lies below are most welcome. Now we begin:

The importance of storytelling, and games as a unique medium of storytelling

As a species, we transcended our biological limitations through creativity, specifically through the creativity that allowed us to form and follow languages and the ability to believe in the unreal⁴. While our hardware – our bodies – haven’t changed much in the small evolutionary window of the past 3,000 years during which civilization kicked off in a big way (we’ve existed for more than 70,000 years), we’ve been able to become the dominant sentient creature on the planet through rewriting our ‘software’ – how we programmed our brains with social guidelines and followed them for the betterment of the many.

Our ‘software’ gave us the ability to communicate, to coordinate, to codify and pass on our knowledge. Common languages gifted us the adaptability to store vast resources of knowledge that would be of use to future generations – knowledge would no longer be lost with the passing of the thinker. Among the stickiest ways to transfer information, stories have had a profound and lasting impact on us. Their utility in transferring information is strongly linked to our overall evolutionary advantage, allowing us to reach the top of the food change and into positions of power in many natural systems. At the same time, our ability to believe in the non-real, allowed the set up of interlinking systems including money, governments, corporations, and religions – the inter-subjective systems that drive and guide us today. These systems are fuelled by stories: the story that paper is tradable and worth something other than paper, the story of an elected leader being better for the people than alternate forms of social guidance, the story that limited liability for large companies is the best interest of the economy, the story of god and how people can improve themselves by following His or Her guidelines.

Seeing how many of our fundamental human systems are built on the bedrock of stories, the creation of a form of media that allowed for interactive story telling was inevitable. Two way story telling most likely saw its inception with wise people trying to explain important concepts through sharing stories. If the audience members were sceptical of the original story, a crafty storyteller would have listened to the audience, gathered their thoughts, and woven their thoughts into the storyteller’s larger narrative while preserving the core message behind the original story. Seeing their own thoughts enmeshed together in the revised story would create something both novel and familiar to the audience, something new yet acceptable.

In this manner, pantheistic followings such as the Greek mythic pantheon ended up with many wives for Zeus- whenever a new set of followers were absorbed into the religion, the male god would be re-identified as Zeus, and his wife would now be added to the long line of wives of Zeus. In this case, the game the storyteller played was of communicating a new framework of social structures to the converts through a common language (the belief in a god who set systems to follow), and storyteller’s success lay in convincing the participating audience of the verity of Zeus’s power.

Stories grow through the telling and combining with others, with the underlying ideas growing stronger across the lifetime of iterations. Interactivity is the essence of improving stories, a unique feature video games are rich in.

What does a game require?

A few characteristics of games we can abstract are that they involve voluntary participation, involve rules with at least a minimum level of consistency, they tend to have a goal in mind, and they react to the inputs you provide. There are a few requirements for playing a game, and many forms of gaming have emerged using different combinations of these.

• Time. Being a voluntary activity, gaming can thrive in the time available either by design (sports/hobby hour in schools) or intention (a kid rushing home to play games after school)
• Commonly understood language: For communication and coordination of the rules and decisions among the players. Need not be written or verbal, simple signs can also work
• Intellect: The ability to understanding and implement rules. Different games require different minimum levels of intellect, ranging from the basic (Visual, audio, and motor skills- Punch Buggy Red!) to the extreme (Complex - understanding and exploiting compound probabilities requiring external calculation power along with interlocking systems - advanced D&D)
• Requiring the presence of players: Games need at least one player, a box of monopoly is not a game of monopoly if there are no players. Alone, a player is restricted in the number of games that can be played, unless artificial intelligence/machines are involved. The addition of more players opens up a vast range of possibilities. From two player chess to four player doubles badminton (with different court zones than one on one) to vast MMOs, the addition of players enables to deeper levels of gameplay and different and hard to replicate experiences. Most early games would have required the physical presence of the players. This requirement grew looser over time as new systems developed to bridge the physical gap between players (the rise of postal services allowed chess to be played over mail), and today technology allows people from all around the world to play the same game simultaneously.
• Additional/Prepared Resources: Games can have unique requirements – a standard ball, field, and goals for soccer. A computer with adequate hardware and compatible software for PC games, add a great graphics card and peripherals for VR. Same shaped, sized, and weighted blocks for Jenga. Each requirement limits the potential of the game (you can’t play soccer without a ball) and while flexibility is allowed (half field soccer), the resources on hand constrain the gamut of possibilities.

On the whole, we can simplify to say that the simpler the requirements, the larger number of potential players.

Different games, different requirements, different experiences

With these requirements in mind, games have evolved through various forms through varying the formula again and again. In recent times, we have witnessed increases in complexity of games, as well as increases in levels of player and viewer engagement:

• Verbal – Puzzles, find the odd one out, singing competitions
• Mental – Politics, finances
• Sports – Swimming, Running, Wrestling, MMA, table tennis, and many, many more
• Board games – structured board defining rules to force decision making down certain paths. Chess, Monopoly, Risk, Checkers.
• Prop games: Hula Hooping, three legged races, Tangram, Jigsaw puzzles
• Card Games – Standard deck (Blackjack, Solitaire) or customized (Yu-Gi-Oh, Uno, Magic the Gathering, Pokemon)
• Pen & Paper – List five things, simple RPGs, tic-tac-toe
• Book based – Where’s Waldo? Spot the differences
• Mechanical Machine dependent – Pinball, Test your strength, Physical Car Racing, Slot machines
• Freeform Construction Sets- Lego, K’Nex, Capsula
• Text Based MUD games, Choose your own adventure
• Electronic Games: Frogger, LCD pre-programmed games
• Alternate Reality Games: I Love Bees
• Video Games – Tetris to Mario to Call of Duty to This War of Mine to Minecraft and everything in between

Each game tells a different tale, a game of Golf played by Tiger Woods is a different story than finding Waldo after pages, different from making a Death Star (or anything, really) with Lego. The point of the earlier list is to point out that creativity has driven us to develop different many different forms of expression and through them, many ways of storytelling. That time you beat your rival at tennis in college will be a story that lasts for years, the time you got a very rare item in Destiny may as well. The point is that are many ways to have fun, and video games are a subset of the larger gaming world.

Video games are a uniquely interactive form of storytelling, putting the reins in the player’s hand by design

The uniqueness of video games lies in their ability to create their own virtual worlds, distinct from the real one. Video games have even inspired their own canon and lore, the visceral experience of Borderlands could not have been created through any other media. The outcomes of your choices in Telltale’s Game of Thrones is that much more personal than the outcomes of the events in the TV series, which are beyond our control.

Games work with three different systems: Our inherent abilities (twitch reactions in shooters), our trained abilities (getting better at FTL through learnings from your previous attempts), and a seasoning of chance (random high level loot drops). This diversity in requirements and levers differentiate games from static media (TV, Books). To be fair, there are scenarios where a linear story is the best at making a certain point, or at allowing common discussion of a topic. The smart post-modern Sci Fi thriller Black Mirror is able to show exactly the parts of the future that will make you question the present, through directing the exact order of events you see. This structured sequence makes it easy for viewers to talk to other viewers about their opinions on the episode.

Video games find ways to give players more options, breaking the narrative to its advantage, increasing intimacy with the subject matter and the investment in understanding its resolution. The recently released Her Story finds a way to take a linear narrative (a series of police interviews), break it into tantalizing bits (individual clips, think Nolan’s Memento), let you know how much you don’t know (videos seen vs. unseen tracker), and creates a whole new self-driven experience (the order in which you pieced together what happened through the order in which you saw the videos, the syuzhet⁵). Shadow of Mordor has the Nemesis system, which creates a unique story each playthrough, with every player experiencing a similar framework but a different individual story (A: Remember the time three orc captains caught up to me in that massive fight? B: No, I never faced more than one in my game). In our future, as the focus on the individual and their value of their individuality goes up, self-driven experiences that adapt to our decisions may be the way forward, led by the video game format.

Video games are evolving into a platform for creating your own stories, Rashomon at an industrial scale

Gently we are seeing a shift, with game designers starting to think of themselves as party planners instead of authors. Shadow of Mordor’s emergent gameplay was major achievement in making video games more of a system to make unique memories, instead of a clockwork mechanism that plays the same tune every time.  

Games already have the ability to adapt the experience based on the number of players, Guild Wars 2 bosses become more powerful dynamically if there are more players fighting them, creating unique experiences on the basis of the number of players. In the future, we can look forward to games that themselves are a set of rules, defining what experiences to show to the player, where there is no one canon story, where only what you believe to be true is, Rashomon at an industrial scale.

Games are strong in providing self-learning opportunities, and self-learning is among the most powerful forms of learning.  The voluntary nature of playing games means that the player plays intentionally to learn, and that is a powerful tool for a society. I believe that we are at a thrilling point today, with a medium that has come so far from a single storyteller trying to share their wisdom to a self-learning system that encourages the player to make a beautiful and precious memory.

The present landscape of video gaming and long term future of video games respectively will be covered in the two remaining articles in this four part series on gaming

1)      http://www.newzoo.com/insights/global-games-market-will-reach-102-9-billion-2017-2/

2)      http://www.statista.com/statistics/259987/global-box-office-revenue/

3)      http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/ted-cruz-and-the-rise-of-politics-video-game-generation/

4)      Thoughts well detailed in the excellent book: Sapiens, by Harari

5)      http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-27-her-story-makes-game-narratives-personal-and-that-feels-like-the-future