Ubisoft about the new single player DLC for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations:

Explore the mysterious pasts of Subject 16 and Lucy Stillman in 2 hours of all-new single player content, using the innovative narration style and puzzle-platforming gameplay pioneered in Assassin’s Creed Revelations’ present-day Desmond sequences.

Considering that the modern day sequences with Desmond are widely regarded as the worst part of the game, it is hard to understand why Ubi would expand on that. Dare I say that those missions might be easier to create since they take less new video content?

Anyway, the part I quoted is easily the most cynical description of video game content that I’ve seen lately, especially by a game’s own developer.

In my opinion the modern day sequences were a frustrating, infuriating and way less interesting part of the game than the renaissance sections and I will not be giving Ubi my money for those. Even though I initially said that I would pay for more of Assassin’s Creed. I meant more of the better part, not more of the worse part.

I think one of the commenters (Ghoul Vs Barbra) on trueachievements.com had exactly the right answer to sum this mess up:

Yep, that’s what all of us have been clamouring for. I just pray the next DLC pack is going to be nothing but the innovative Den Defense mode.

TRAUMA. Right now my mind is racing to find an acceptable excuse why I’ve put off writing about this game for this long a time. ¹

I first came across TRAUMA after having subscribed to the blog gamedesignreviews because I thought that Krystian Majewski’s trilogy about the shortcomings of Mass Effect’s interface design ² was interesting. Somewhere between all the other posts Krystian wrote about the indie game that he was developing, posted about its progress - about the good and bad times.

I was curious, being my ever curious self for one and wanting to make games myself too. Also there are a whole lot of other quality articles on that site but that is not what this article is about. After having followed the process quite some time there came the beta. For a reason I can’t remember I wasn’t on the Internet at that time - when I saw he started a private beta for the game I immediately mailed him with a request. I was granted one. I still have that mail.

At that time I was very excited about the fact of being in a private beta - probably more than about the game. Anyway. I have to admit something very evil right upfront: My first thought while starting up TRAUMA was “meh. Flash.” Enough with the prejudices though.

The essence of TRAUMA’s story is easy to grasp. There’s a girl who had a car accident and is now in hospital where she has four recurring, metaphor-laden dreams. You have to experience those dreams and help her through them, all the while getting to think about the questions that are asked by the almost ghostly voice-over as well as those that your own mind will invariably make up while playing. Really, it’s a sort of journey - not only through the girl’s dreams as also through thoughts and doubts that might open up in your own mind.

I found out about the movement by either clicking on different photos or drawing those beautiful light symbols. The game gives little hints how you are supposed to solve certain situations and I’d argue that from a gameplay point of view everything is obvious, if not always intuitive. I never struggled to grasp any of the concepts which can be boiled down to “which tool solves which situations” ³. TRAUMA is not about the puzzling. TRAUMA also isn’t about ultrahigh textured graphics either - though Krystian did an impressive job editing all these photos he took himself. TRAUMA, with its surreal atmosphere, its subtle soundtrack, its countless hints that everything you see might just be another metaphor for some deeply troubling thought in the girl’s mind - it has some similarities to the recently released Dear Esther I’d say. It might work better for you if you don’t consider it just another game on your huge pile but as an experience.

It took me about two hours back then to finish the game and dig up every last hidden photo save one. I sent feedback that spoke quite highly about the game, I remember. There came a second beta which was less interesting for me since there were improvements but nothing particularly astonishing that might have blown my mind. Time passed. Fast forward to Gamescom 2011 where I met Krystian during a little break and congratulated him on the release.

He’s an interesting person to talk to. He’s nice, polite and interested in many other genres and games than you might think. He’s as prepared to talk about some mainstream titles, movies as well as elaborate on the latest indie hits or events in the dev scene.

Several months later I decided to pick my copy - as in virtual copy on STEAM that is - up again and have a second run, just to see what changed from beta to release. Sadly my memory is quite bad and the only thing that I remember - that is very rememberable though - is an improved hint system for collectibles as well as an option to check already found ones without leaving the current level. Still I found the game very enjoyable even during the second time.

So, if the beta has long passed and the release was also some time ago, why do write this article right now? Because Krystian just released a new improved version of the game and that made me think you should try the game too.

Should you play this game: Yes.

Next edition of Notebook Dump. Ready… aaaaand Action!

• Symbols that look like men dragging their butts around - Failbook
• The Oatmeal tried to watch Game of Thrones - The Oatmeal
• There’s obiviously demand for a Pokemon Game on iOS judging by the success of this fraudulent app (If Nintendo gets around to publish one then by all means, count me in on that) - Ars Technica
• Maybe games should offer more help to players? This article elaborates on that topic - Ars Technica
• There’s an interesting article discussing the growing number of dialog boxes on iOS - Macstories
• Students at the FH Salzburg developed a roboter that keeps you company while jogging: article in German - FH Salzburg
• Enjoy a selection of ridiculous hats - The Satorialist

Personally I’ve completed the Single Player Achievements for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and finished my playthrough of Revelations. I also enjoyed a bit of Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis and called back Sheogorath from his vacation in Skyrim. I also played quite a lot of Multi Player in the Mass Effect 3 demo. I even got around to watching a Let’s Play of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

I’ve come around converting my list of played games to markdown and [uploading it to the site. Somehow I’ve also had time to read Brendan Keogh’s “I think they’re mad”: Inside a 48 hour battle to build the best video game. I think the whole article was published before on Ars Technica, but to be honest, Ars is a website that I’m proud to support, as all of the articles I’ve read so far were really good. That means I’ve no regrets having paid for the ebook on Amazon.

Flash for Linux only in Google Chrome:

According to a blog post by Adobe, after the 11.2 release, Flash Player for Linux will only be available through a new “Pepper” API as a part of Google Chrome, and won’t be available as a separate download anymore. However, Adobe will continue to offer security updates for Flash Player 11.2 for Linux for five years.

Theoretically speaking, the new API is good news. Practically speaking, this means that eventually every non-Google Chrome browser’s plugin official plugin will be outdated.

Google will provide the “Pepper” Flash Player implementation for all supported Chrome platforms, including Linux (x86/64).

I see what you did there. Other people would have said “we only support it in Google Chrome.” but obviously “all supported Chrome platforms” sounds much nicer, especially since sloppy reading makes that “all supported platforms”. Oh yeah, and in case anything is still not entirely clear: Nothing besides Google Chrome supports the Pepper API anyway.

[…] use an alternative like Gnash or Lightspark (which hopefully will become more reliable) […]

That has to be some kind of elaborate joke of Andrew. Gnash hasn’t been a valid alternative for as long I can think. Lightspark - though a great and promising project - was as far experimental as it could get, the last time I checked.

[…] hope that in 5 years, Flash won’t matter and HTML5 will be used everywhere.

Well, yes, let’s hope. That means the web won’t use proprietary Flash anymore. Will that make the web a more unified place? Yes. Will that make the web a more open place? Probably not.

Why do I assume that the disapperance of Flash will not necessarily lead to a more open web in general? I’m looking at proprietary extensions of HTML5 here.

I’ve thought about a little piece to sum up what can be learned from Deadly Premonition. So far I’ve arrived at the following conclusions:

Controls

“Tank controls” are outdated. You don’t want to use them for controlling a person. You actually don’t want to use them at all. I also assure you that you don’t want to use them if there’s a possible change in the camera angle, like the camera suddenly changing to a position over your head. This change will make the player lose focus for a moment and the momentum is broken since he has to rethink what exactly the game character is facing right now since the point of view is no longer an over-the-shoulder one. If - for a reason I might not be able to imagine and really don’t want to guess - you use tank controls make sure the rest of the game fits this scheme or is that good that it doesn’t matter. Believe me though when I say it’s easier to avoid them altogether. Tank controls are especially bad from a bird’s-eye view.

Loading Screens

The loading screens in Deadly Premonition are generally okay, except for the fact that they’re infuriatingly intrusive at times. It is most noticeable the moment when you get from cutscene to boss fight to cutscene to exploration (might not occur in that order, see end of game). The moment you’re eagerly beating a tough opponent into submission in order to progress with the story and have a loading screen block your path. Queue some of those in a short period and a certain level of frustration is almost guaranteed.

I really try to see the other side of the medal here. Sometimes the engine may already present before you start developing your game. Sometimes the engine may be built and somehow abused into doing something it wasn’t developed for. Still, the immersion breaking that the loading screens are doing are probably not for the best.

Telling Your Story

There’s a significant difference between foreshadowing - which can improve a player’s emotional investment in a given story - and spoiling your own game - which can be particularly harmful to a game as storydriven as Deadly Premonition. I’ll try to give a good and a bad example directly taken from the game.

Bad: Some trading cards have content and description that might spoil your joy because of the revelations they present at a point of the game where you will almost certainly not know the information presented. You gain insight in personal details of chacters which you might not yet know or gained the trust of.

Good: There are some parts that are inaccessible for story reasons, but the game paints you an entirely different image why things are not not ¹.

UI Confusion

The gamer playing the Let’s Play already pointed out a fatal flaw of the ingame UI - the map markers. I am quite aware that permanently marking some optional important locations apart from the main goal was probably an idea born from good intentions. The current implementation - using differently colored map markers for various targets - is lacking in thoughtful design. That is most evident when having bought all of the Spirit Maps and having cleared all of the related combat areas does not clear the markers from your map.

A solution to the problem might have been a map system which let’s the player choose what things he wants to display (or filter out). A fine example can be found in the Assassin’s Creed series². There the player can choose to filter by categories or by map marker type. - Or simply the removal of the markers upon completion of the related objectives.

Consistency

Consistency is very important³. I’m quite sure that the mismatch of colors between the quest text and the item description in a certain scene is merely a development oversight. I’m however not so sure how that managed to get through quality control because fixing this is probably only as little effort as exchanging one string in the code (or localization files).

Non-optional minigames

Many games which feature mini games deem it to be a great idea to shove them into the user’s face at least once per playthrough. While most of the time I’d argue that is not the best practice to force a user to do something that is not considered part of the core gameplay there is a high chance that users might miss such a optional element entirely.

Digital Actor Concept

The concept of using “digital actors” seems quite interesting. On one hand one might argue that it’s essentially a recycling of previous material, but on the other hand there are real life actors who have played many, many different roles in their careers quite successfully.

I am not so sure how players of both or all games in which a characters stars feel about this reuse though. It might be interesting to check for emotional investment upon recognition of an existing character with a certain level of depth to his back story and traits who previously starred in other games⁴.

Leaderboards

Purely story driven games without any competitive aspects don’t need leaderboards. Maybe you’re having fun implementing them and tracking certain things like playtime and the number of times the player shot himself in the foot, but a statistic is enough to show you care and not enough to make people wonder why you’d build a leaderboard around those activities.

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Deadly Premonition pt.6 (Conclusion) is part 6 of Deadly Premonition (Let's Play):

1. Deadly Premonition pt.1
2. Deadly Premonition pt.2
3. Deadly Premonition pt.3
4. Deadly Premonition pt.4
5. Deadly Premonition pt.5
6. Deadly Premonition pt.6 (Conclusion)

Some days ago I reached out to some of my beta readers for a kind of extended brainstorming session for a particular interesting scene of the novel I’m currently working on. The motif was “graduation ball”.

My findings after having summarized and consolidated all of the notes were quite interesting. While there were some common themes like “dance” and “buffet” there were also associations that couldn’t have been further from each other. I think that gave me the opportunity to take a better look into the whole scenario from a few different angles besides my own pretty romantic concept.

While quite some unpleasent associations came up (like excessive alcohol consumation and violence as well as physical pain and emotional stress) some of the participants seemed to share an equally or similarly romantic view of the whole ball idea.

At least two participants mentioned the opportunity of relationships changing during the ball night or new chances revealing themselves, often combined with the aforementioned dancing. Another popular idea was the introduction or familiarization of new faces during that social event.

Something that struck me as particularly sad was people losing their enthusiasm or joy about balls after having been on their own, where mostly working is very important and the aspect of just being glamorous and pretty is overstated when compared to reality. Mind you I’m not speaking from experience, since I had little to do on my own graduation ball.

Personally I’m looking forward to the ball as the scenario my characters are in requires them to wear uniforms most of the time. While I’ll go back to writing in a short time I want to share a translated part of a conversation I had while explaining how I work.

Alex: I want a nice opportunity to display the ladies in dresses instead of uniforms.
Alex: a ball is the perfect chance for that
Alex chuckles.
Alex: I’ve a quite vivid imagination about that. My actors are puppets that have to be dressed, styled and coached in order to play their parts in the novel
Alex: There’s a puppet house in my head in which they’re to play their roles
Alex: actually a damn huge puppet house - more like a puppet town.

Attention, notebook dump incoming. Brace for impact.

• Federico Viticci of MacStories has a great idea of how to implement file storage for iCloud
• Nice suggestions on how to improve your writing by using the correct terms and grammar - via lifehacker.com
• Ars Technica had a very amusing parody review of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
• It’s been a little while since MacStories had an article about suggestions for a change in Nintendo’s policy, but it’s still a good read
• There has been some talk about pre-owned game revenue sharing and x360a.org had a great article explaining the difficulties

In more personal news: I’ve finished two more books that I bought during the winter holidays. Jenna Black’s Dark Descendant was not that exciting and has a slightly similar background to the Mythos academy series I’ve read already. Shortly after that I tackled Nicole Peter’s Tempest Rising which I really enjoyed. The book made me laugh quite often - which is always a good sign. At least if I’m not laughing out of pity or it is a cynic laughter caused by utter disbelief.

I’m not quite sure that there had to be quite that much sex in it. Honestly I would probably have exchanged the most of it for more story. I see you rolling your eyes there. As much as some sexual thrill can improve a book it can also destroy the flow of the book if there’s - to put it bluntly - fucking where the protagonists ought to be doing something to help the story come along (sorry, I couldn’t resist that pun).

I think my biggest issue of yesterday’s experiment was the fact that I don’t want to like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

From the very first moment I saw a video preview on that particular title I disliked the visual style it uses because it reminds me in a very bad way of World of Warcraft which never succeeded in creating any kind of immersion for me. The very fact that the title also seems to be modelled in a potential MMORPG world just enhanced that feeling of oddness which repelled me. However, it was the story which I deemed to be completely and utterly uninteresting after hearing the first bits that seemed to be the biggest factor of despise for me. Let me say this very clearly: Usually I’m only drawn to games which deliver an interesting narrative element which is presented at least fairly well

That being said I’ve to admit that I do like Amalur. Make no mistake, the world still fails to impress me with narrative if not with visual diversity. The side which makes Amalur great is its combat - and I’m by far not the first person to notice this. It is pleasently fluid although it got a little grind-y after a while and I’m sure - although there are a lot of different weapons and styles - that more than one finishing animation per class might present it as less of a chore than it currently feels to me.

Now, for some thoughts on the demo itself. I have to wonder why the dev’s chose to show my three difficulty levels if there’s only one available and why it’s not the one available which is marked as default. Also one might argue that normal should be the default instead of casual.

• I like the fact that in the character editor there’s a slider for tattoo intensity. By now quite a few new games feature this, but it’s worth pointing out since it adds uniqueness to your character if you’re able to give him some backstory without him looking like he/she just strolled out of the tattoo shop.
• I have no idea who came up with the popular guesture of characters pointing their fingers at me. What I do know is that it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable and it’s weird considering that people of different races (and therefor cultural believes) use it in the same way.
• After extensively playing Skyrim¹ I enjoy Amalur’s comparatively short loading times. On the other hand that might be because I have the feeling that by now I’ve seen all of Skyrim’s loading hints.
• Reckoning offers to skip cinematics, with no frills added, seemingly no delay and no second guessing (“Do you really wish to skip this great expensive cinematic although you’ve pressed at least three different buttons to skip it?”). I mean… you just have to admire that.

So alltogether I enjoyed the demo which consistent of the game’s first section until you are set free into the vast world plus an additional 45 minutes in which you are free to do whatever you wish. In certain boundaries that is, considering the demo weights about 2 GB.

Mass Effect 3

There’s not a lot to say about the Mass Effect 3 demo yet since:

1. The multiplayer section is available from 17th onwards.
2. The first section basically is the game’s opening which was already spoilered and described to death by both trailers and the story itself.
3. The second single player section I’ve by now seen the fourth time and played the second time. I’ve seen the walkthrough with and without developer commentary, played it at GamesCom 2011 and now with the demo.

I did notice that the uniforms looked more detailed than in ME3’s predecessors.

One thing I could not quite wrap my head around was the fact that in the second sequence I’m not given a sniper rifle despite me playing an infiltrator which is treated as sniper/assassin type by players. I’ll blame it on the missing rifle that I died during my playthrough.

I’m quite excited about ME3 and did - for a very short time - consider preordering. After looking at the preorder boni I stopped persuing that line of thought due to the lack of story-based preorder DLC. Also I’m not shelling out about 30€ more for the Collector’s Edition or whatever you want to call it just to get the bonus character.²

After downloading and browsing via the new iTunes U app for iPad I decided to check out one of the offerings my university (Graz University of Technology) - therefore the title¹ - contributes to the enormous iTunes U catalog, I was quite disappointed. I’m not entirely sure what to think yet since I’ve only checked out one episode about iTunes U’s usage at the TU but I’m like the popular video game critic Yahtzee there: If something starts out quite bad and only “gets better” (or “gets great”) after so and so many hours then it’s not only a bad start. More often it will be a start that leads to many hours of frustration with a product. Yahtzee mentions in his extra punctuation column about Dark Souls that he has been broken by the game and now starts to enjoy it. It’s a rather sad idea of how a game is supposed to trigger your feelings. Wasn’t the original idea about making games that are fun? But I’m rambling…

Back to topic. It may be a bit unfair to judge the whole series of the course - although I don’t understand the random information being a course at all instead of a podcast - I was a bit shocked about the quality of the episode I viewed. In case someone wants to post a follow up I’ll go with a numbered list this time.

1. There were problems with audio. Multiple, to be precise.
2. The volume levels were bad. During playback of the video things were too loud while the speaker was too quiet.
3. The speaker didn’t always talk into the microphone (at least that’s the impression you get).
4. Parts were absolutely inaudible.
5. The quality of the movie played back was very bad. And from a casual look I’d also guess that the framerate is off, but that might just be my impression.
6. Presentation technique:
7. During the intro the speaker is rambling. Being off topic and discussing stuff not important to the viewer.
8. There’s a direct plug for a textbook in there - though it’s not as offensive as it could be. Which is good.
9. There’s absolutely no reason to show the desktop in this case. The seconds switching applications should have been cut.
10. One thing that I’ve seen and despised a lot during presentations in class too is that switching back and forth between slides creates confusion. If you need the content a second time then show it a second time. Preferably on a new slide.
11. I’d suggest rounding the figures for downloads as that makes it easier to follow.
12. I’m not sure why they’re showing the iTunes description of your apps copy pasted into slides. That’s not necessary and a block of tiny text on the slide doesn’t really help anyone.

And last: Please tell me they aren’t snickering during 27:30-28:00 and I just misheard that for something it wasn’t. Because if it’s not just me I strongly argue to cut it.

One more thing: I’m not sure what exactly the common thing between app development and iTunes U as an additional offering were but it might have been a good idea to release both things as separate videos.

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Update: @mebner has pointed out that this content was not edited after recording in any way. That obviously portraits the whole presentation in a different way but some of my critisism still applies.

So, a while back I said I was going to visit Rox for a second impression with hopefully less chaos and more of great customer service. Would you be surprised if I told you that my next impression wasn’t that good either? At least this time I didn’t forget to have a non-alcoholic cocktail.

Well, I assume that it probably was at least partially my fault for going there on Thursday. But how am I to know that they offer a free beer for every customer that day? That is indeed a nice gesture. Unless someone doesn’t drink. That would be me. After having donated my free beer to Gregor we sat down at the bar in the innermost part of the non-smoking area. As you might have guessed, Rox was pretty full that day.

As I said before the menu has lots of variations of grilled meat, so I was not really sure what to eat since most dishes sounded pretty common. At last I went with the same as Gregor: Grilled pork chop with zingara sauce¹. Additionally there were grilled sweet pepper, onions, garlic and baked potato with garlic sour creme dip.

The food was good. Better than I initially expected, to be precise. It was a medium portion, not terribly much but also not too little. It took some time to eat due to the meat being burried under vegetables. Also it took quite some time for my cocktail to be served. If it takes longer for my drink to appear than for my meal to disappear - that’s a bad sign. Now that didn’t quite happen but it was fairly close.

About the atmosphere… I’m sure Rox has something to it for many people. It just happens that due to my preference for good food and a laid back scenery or some kind of lounge. So as I’m not really into the “bar” kind of entertainment I can only judge the place from a gourmet’s point of view. Although I wouldn’t call myself that. I just lack a better term for the moment. Obviously my opinion is just that: an opinion. You’re free to come to your own conclusion and I’d strongly suggest that you do. So…

Should you visit this place: No

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Rox (follow-up) is part 4 of Cuisine Notes:

1. Rox (opening)
2. Rondo
3. Torona
4. Rox (follow-up)
5. Propeller
6. Tribeka: Graz's young coffee culture