Back to normal?

Well, two days ago marked the official start of a new era in United States politics. That sounds a bit melodramatic, but the past four years have felt much, much longer. And I know the problems inherent in, and responsible for those four years won’t just go away overnight, but we can hope they were ultimately an aberration. Which brings us to today’s word.

ergodic, adj. – the tendency for a system to even out to a baseline value over time

Learned from: Oxenfree (Playstation 4, Mac, Mobile, PC, Nintendo Switch, XBox One)

Developed by Night School Studio

Published by Night School Studio (2016)

Disclaimer: The definition above is significantly simplified. The exact meaning is rather technical, and seems to vary slightly depending on which dictionary I use to look it up. This is perhaps fitting, considering the term in the game applied to a theory of thermodynamics.

Oxenfree is an interesting horror-themed adventure game. Sort of a sci-fi, coming of age, ghost story…kind of. You play (mostly) as Alex, a girl who gets invited to a party on an abandoned island one summer. Once you’re there, you and your friends accidentally make contact with…something through your portable radio, and end up in a struggle for your lives against the entities on the island. Much like today’s word, this synopsis is over-simplified, but I don’t want to give spoilers, because the narrative really is good, with dialogue choices that seem to matter, and some really neat twists.

Anyway, at one point, you discover the notes of someone who was researching the entities, and it’s in this person’s study that you find, among other things, books on ergodic thermodynamics. You know, just a bit of light reading while your friends are getting possessed, and reality itself is warping around you.

Damn teenagers, always on their radios, opening rifts in space-time…

Have a very scary solstice

December is chock-full of holidays, and regardless of their individual religious connections, there’s a very good reason for that: the winter solstice. During the darkest time of the year, when the days–let alone the nights–are freezing, and light seems to be fading from the world, people needed an excuse to be happy. Even before 2020. Today’s word isn’t the happiest, but it does fit, thematically.

fuliginous, adj. – sooty, smoky, dirty

Learned from: Darkest Dungeon (PC, Mac, mobile, Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, Switch, XBox One)

Developed by Red Hook Studios

Published by Red Hook Studios (2016)

I have a certain fondness for games that are punishingly difficult: Dark Souls and its ilk, the Shin Megami Tensei series, etc. Darkest Dungeon is no exception. Your characters are as likely to go insane from the stress of exploring your family’s estate, as they are to die of actual physical damage. Pathological fears, obsessive compulsions, and strange fixations can cripple them more than any injury or disease. And sometimes when one of them succumbs to this stress, they have some colorful, almost H.P. Lovecraft-level purple prose to accompany it–such as the occultist who cried out about the pull of the “fuliginous abyss” calling to him, or something like that, before he lunged for the clearly evil altar in the middle of the room.

So yeah, your characters will occasionally do things that are outside your control, and those things can sometimes lead to the death of your entire party, like when they activate a ritual to open a rift in time and space, and some tentacled horror picks them apart, one by one. As long as you don’t mind setbacks like that, it’s an incredible game.

Pay to win

A friend of mine recently talked me into trying out Crusader Kings III, since it was on sale on Steam. And while I’m still just getting started, I’ve already learned quite a lot from this game, like dukes wielded more power and governed more land than counts (who were on the same level as earls), and that all of them outranked barons. And that’s just something I picked up from the tutorial section, along with today’s word.

scutage, noun – a tax imposed by a Medieval lord, in place of military service

Learned from: Crusader Kings III (PC, Mac)

Developed by Paradox Development Studio

Published by Paradox Interactive (2020)

I never knew just buying your way out of fighting was an option, until I played Crusader Kings III. I’d always just assumed that if your king went to war, and raised the call to arms, that was that (short of some Game of Thrones-style political scheming and treason). But it seems in some situations, if a baron, or count, or whatever thought that some of their able-bodied men would be put to better use tilling the fields or something, they could try to arrange payment of scutage in lieu of providing troops.

This is interesting, because the idea of rich people simply buying their way out of their obligations and responsibilities is most assuredly an outdated relic of the past, along with witch burnings, and treating all diseases with leeches. Right?

“While I like taking over new lands, I do also like people giving me money….”

So, about the Archon series…

I realize with my last post, I jumped into the sequel without talking much about the game that came first, though I have learned words from both of them. In an odd, meta-narrative way, this is actually fitting, since I did play Archon II before I ever gave the first one a shot. Since they’re both pretty fun games, with different things to offer, I felt I should give the original some attention. Which brings us to today’s word.

manticore, noun – a mythical creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, also (sometimes) the wings of a bat

Learned from: Archon: The Light and the Dark (Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Amiga, PC, Macintosh, NES, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, PC-88)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1983)

In many ways, the first Archon is a much more straightforward game than its sequel. It has the same system where if two units land on the same square, the screen shifts to an abstract representation of the battlefield, where you fight in real-time, but there’s less environment variety. Instead of elemental planes, you’ve got what amounts to a chessboard with white and black squares. The gimmick comes in the fact that the board undergoes a constant day/night cycle, where the Light side is stronger during the day (and on white squares), while the Dark side is stronger at night (and on black spaces). There are also in-between squares that shift colors along with the time of day. This injects a bit of strategy, where your most mobile units can get to the enemy leader faster, but taking them to their max range in a turn might leave them on the wrong-colored square as day/night is approaching.

And oh, are there a lot of unit types. From basic soldiers, to trolls, to shapeshifters, to the manticore. The description of it above comes from Arabian mythology, and I have to admit, it’s pretty cool…but at the time, I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at. The thing was just a vaguely quadrupedal mass of blue pixels, with something that looked as much like a satellite dish as a tail. Not exactly frightening. Thankfully, my parents had an encyclopedia with a better illustration, and from that point on, my imagination filled in the blanks better than any graphics of the time could have (cheesy as that probably sounds).

archon

If this looks like an old album cover, you’re not entirely wrong. Some games from this era came in what were essentially record sleeves.

1,000 Points of Light

By this point, I’m sure most of you know about the situation in Australia. If somehow you aren’t, the continent is on fire. Millions of animals have died, thousands of people have been displaced, and as of right now, the fires show no signs of stopping. Today’s word should be self-explanatory….

inferno, noun – an intense, uncontrollable blaze

Learned from: Shadowgate (Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Amiga, CD-I, Game Boy Color, Macintosh, NES, Palm OS, PC, mobile phone)

Developed by ICOM Simulations, Inc.

Published by Mindscape (1987), (Kemco, 1989 for the NES)

Far from the real-world horrorscape that is Australia right now, opening a door to find just an entire chasm full of fire seems downright passe. Shadowgate was known for being unpredictable. Each door, or hatch, or hallway could just as easily lead to a wizard’s laboratory, or a dragon’s hoard, or a bridge over a sea of flames. The sheer variety of scenes led to an equally broad set of creative solutions in order to progress.

Sadly, there’s no icy crystal orb we can shatter against the ground to put out the infernos raging across Australia. Indeed, once you see some of the photos from the area, it can be easy to feel like there’s no solution at all. And for any one of us, that’s true. Fortunately, fixing this–or any other problem of this scope–doesn’t fall on the shoulders of any one person. The most any one of us can do is what we can. If you’re inclined to spit in the face of impossible odds, and do all that anyone could ask, this article has a list of things you can do to help, at the bottom. Again, no one person could be expected to do all of them, but any of us could do at least one.

Creepy stuff knows no season

I know Halloween was awhile ago, but recently on my way to work, I walked through a scene straight out of a horror movie. But first, today’s word.

eviscerate, verb – to disembowel; to remove the entrails

Learned from: Quake (PC, Mac, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, mobile)

Developed by id Software (PC), Lobotomy Software (Saturn), Midway Games (N64)

Published by GT Interactive (PC), MacSoft (Mac), Sega (Saturn), Midway Games (N64) (1996)

Quake had a lot of personality, from the Lovecraftian overtones, to the goading messages taunting you whenever you went to quit the game, to the death messages unique for every monster that could kill you. The most memorable one for me was, “You’ve been eviscerated by a fiend.”

At the time, the graphics were pretty much first-generation 3D. Character models were blocky, animations were stiff and jerky, and blood was just a spray of square red pixels. Obviously, they couldn’t effectively display every unique death with the technology of the time, but flavor text like this really lent a vivid level of detail as to exactly what happened to your character…and now, to continue the story.

So, I pass by a cemetery on my way to work, which is enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. I’m going along like normal, until something catches my eye along the fence: a beachball-sized area of the fence itself, where it looked like something had been either pulverized against the side of the fence, or else staked on the spikes at the top. The main area was a bloody mess, with bits of hair and actual flesh still clinging to the posts. It had dripped down the fence, to a patch of grass the size of a coffee table–I should clarify, it had soaked a patch of grass the size of a coffee table. And as I followed it off the grass, I realized I was standing in a smear of blood that trailed all the way down the hill, occasionally meandering to the edge of the sidewalk and pooling. As if whatever it was had dragged itself as far as it could, before stopping periodically to regain a bit of strength, before forcing itself onward.

It was too late in the year to be a Halloween prank, and there was far too much blood for it to have been a bird that flew into the fence or something (and again, hair, not feathers was sticking to the metal). At the time, I was at a complete loss, but rather freaked out; after some consideration, the best explanation I have, is that a deer tried to jump the fence, and didn’t make it…yet managed to tear itself off the spikes, and continue on its way…which is pretty horrifying, in and of itself.

Quake seems downright tame, by comparison.

04a-fiend

Far less bloody than what I (literally) walked through.

Because it feels like I’ve been living under a rock…

October ended up being a very busy month for me. Besides the joys of homeownership requiring a lot of attention, I also got put in charge of training at work, which is pretty stressful for an introvert. Throw in Halloween commitments, and figuring out logistics for some things later this year, and it really does feel like I’ve been locked away for several weeks. Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to today’s word.

undercroft, noun – a brick-lined cellar

Learned from: The Letter (PC, Mac, Mobile)

Developed by Yangyang Mobile

Published by Yangyang Mobile (2017)

Given that it was October, I wanted to play at least one horror-themed game, and I’d picked up this visual novel on Steam during a sale awhile back. It plays out through the viewpoints of several characters, but the story centers around the sale of a huge mansion with a checkered past. Obviously, something is Very Very Wrong (TM), and you get to see the various characters get wrapped up in the supernatural events over the course of a…rather plodding plot. It starts out fairly strong, but there are some characters I honestly didn’t like enough to care whether they lived or died, and the story unfortunately spends as much time with them, as with more likable members of the cast. It also doesn’t help that the game is riddled with typos and grammatical errors, as well as the fact that it sometimes doesn’t seem to know what tone it wants to have (e.g. the property is the “Ermengarde Mansion,” which seems like it should indicate a lighthearted tone full of puns and memes…except they never really do anything with it. It just sits there like a turd in a punch bowl).

Anyway, the first character you play is the real estate agent who’s hoping to find a buyer for this problematic property. In showing one set of potential clients around, one of them notices a trapdoor in the kitchen that leads to the undercroft. But surely nothing horrible would ever happen in a dusty old wine cellar beneath a trapdoor, right?

letter

Belated happy Halloween, and all that. Sadly, this game is a lot less scary than this image would imply.

Have fun storming the castle!

By now, you’ve likely heard about the…situation with Blizzard. If you haven’t, here’s the short version: Following a championship match of Hearthstone, one of the players used his post-game interview time to deliver a political statement advocating for the liberation of Hong Kong from China. Blizzard had a fit, took back his prize money, and banned him from competition for a year–and essentially fired the commentators that just so happened to be on the stream at the time, even though they tried to get off-camera when they realized what was happening. (These bans were later scaled back to six months, but still…) In the following days, things only got worse, as Blizzard delivered conflicting press releases to Western and Eastern audiences, failed to enact the same penalties to streamers who did the same thing (because they were on Western streams), went against one of their own company tenets that everyone should have a voice, regardless of who they are or where they’re from, and in general have just kept digging themselves a deeper hole.

And yeah, I get that they’re a company, and profits are quite literally the bottom line. And China is a huge market. But the undeniable message here, is that Blizzard (an American company, mind you), is fine with denying people freedom of speech, in favor of the promise of profits from an authoritarian regime. People are understandably angry about this, I’d say. You might even say that Blizzard is under siege by its own (former?) fans. Which brings us to today’s word.

ballista, noun – a medieval siege weapon in the shape of a large crossbow

Learned from: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (PC, Mac, Playstation, Sega Saturn)

Developed by Blizzard Entertainment

Published by Blizzard Entertainment (1995)

Once upon a time, Blizzard was a respectable company, making games full of heart, charm, and love of the medium. Warcraft II was a perfect example of this, with a ton of little details and Easter eggs (Christmas lights on the trees and buildings in the winter maps, units that would say funny things if you clicked on them a lot, etc.). And while the orcs and the humans had different looking units, most of them functioned the same. Goblin sappers and dwarven sappers both blew up the same amount of terrain; trolls threw axes and elves shot bows, but they had about the same range and damage; catapults and ballistae both flung heavy projectiles over about the same distance, etc. The handful of differences were in the magics wielded by each side, and that actually imbalanced the game pretty heavily in favor of the orcs, but it was still a fun game for its time…back when Blizzard actually cared about making things fun, instead of just profitable.

blizzard_china

I can’t take credit for this image, but it sums up the current situation quite nicely.

The root of the problem

So, today is 9/11, and I debated whether or not to make a post. After all, it was a terrible event, the effects of which still resonate strongly with many people–myself included. It’s one of those “where were you when” moments, that people carry with them for the rest of their lives. But at the same time, it wouldn’t have felt right to say nothing at all, considering this year, an entire generation has been born, and gone through school since it happened. A generation who’s too young to even have witnessed the towers coming down, and might still be asking themselves what would drive people to do something like that. One could argue there are many reasons, but I’d posit that a strong contender is hatred of the Other. Which brings us to today’s word.

odium, noun – intense hatred or contempt

Learned from: Odium (PC, Mac)

Developed by Metropolis Software, Hyperion Entertainment (Linux)

Published by Monolith Productions (Windows), Linux Game Publishing (Linux), e.p.i.c. Interactive (Mac) (1999)

Known in other regions as Gorky 17, Odium is kind of what you’d get if you took an early Resident Evil, and made it into an isometric, turn-based strategy game. You control a team of commandos, sent to investigate some weird goings-on at a top-secret research lab in Poland, only to find it’s been overrun by biomechanical horrors. It wasn’t a terribly good game, but it was a deceptively difficult one. Even the early monsters frequently hit you for at least half a health kit’s worth of damage, which doesn’t seem too bad at first, when supplies are plentiful. But soon you’re entering combats with your troops at half health, just to try and conserve what few healing items you have left. It doesn’t help that new (harder-hitting) monster types are introduced in almost every battle, giving you even less time to breathe and find your footing.

I never got far enough to discover why the game was renamed Odium for the US release, but the word seemed fitting. Hatred of the Other stems from ignorance and tribalism. When the only people you feel you can trust are from your own group, that tends to engender a sense that anyone outside that group is somehow untrustworthy/unclean/evil. And sadly, 18 years later, rather than bringing all of us together, one need only to look at the political climate in this country to see that tribalism has only gotten worse. Except this time, it’s from within our own population, instead of from without.

I know it sounds vaguely hippie-ish to say that a nation can’t survive if its citizens are at each other’s throats, but we’ve seen what happens when that sort of fear-mongering takes hold elsewhere in the world. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how prolonged exposure to that sort of thing will end up within our own borders.

A wise, green alien once said that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. And despite Yoda being a muppet, he’s right; hatred leads to all sorts of terrible things, like flying planes into buildings, or driving cars into crowds of people, or shooting up schools. So, on the anniversary of this particular tragedy, I implore you to remember it by trying to rise above what caused it. There’s a lot of shit wrong with this world, but hating people of a different religion, or race, or political leaning isn’t going to do a damn thing to make it better.

odium

Just like slapping an edgy title on a mediocre game won’t make it any less disappointing.

Cool story, sis.

I got into a friendly argument with a friend of mine about retro-styled games recently, where I said one trend that should stay dead and buried is full-motion video. We both grew up during the initial FMV fad, but I actually owned a Sega CD, and remember all too well renting things like Corpse Killer and Surgical Strike, and being very underwhelmed. I’m also a bit disgruntled that this style of game seems to be making a comeback.

His argument was that the medium has come a long way in the past twenty years, and there’ve been some good FMV games made recently. I didn’t believe him, which ended with him gifting me a copy of Her Story on Steam. Which brings us to today’s word.

glazier, noun – a craftsman who cuts and fits glass

Learned from: Her Story (PC, Mac, mobile)

Developed by Sam Barlow

Published by Sam Barlow (2015)

Some people would be hard-pressed to call Her Story a game, but if visual novels count as games, and this has more interactivity than many of them, then it fits the bill. You’re kind of just thrown into the interface, which is a police database that you can search through, using keywords. Each valid keyword gives you video clip(s), which might contain other keywords to search for, until you piece together what happened in the case. It’s an interesting (if cumbersome) format, and only one actor ever appears on screen in an interrogation room, responding to questions you never actually hear. Your mileage on the story itself might vary, depending on how much themes like motherhood stir you (they don’t do much for me, personally), but as an experiment, it was a decent mystery doled out piecemeal. I’ve certainly played worse games, but I don’t know if I’m exactly on the FMV renaissance bandwagon either.

Anyway, as you’re cobbling together a chain of events, you eventually learn that some of the characters worked at a glazier’s. Soon, the theme of mirrors and reflections becomes prominent in the story, so it’s of more metaphorical relevance than anything directly relating to the case. It gets a little heavy-handed by the end, but at least Sam Barlow tried to be artsy and sophisticated.

All in all, I can’t necessarily recommend spending money on Her Story. It’s a very short experience (I “beat” it in less than two hours), and there’s not really any replay value. At least something like Sewer Shark, as flawed as it was, had enough gameplay to feasibly make it worth revisiting. And that’s a flaw with FMV games–the director only recorded so much footage, and once you’ve seen it all, if there’s nothing else to the experience, there’s no point in going back. Unless it’s a really good set of clips, but let’s face it: Most FMV titles are more Sharknado than Avengers Endgame.

herstory

For what it’s worth, this actress delivered the lines she was given pretty well.