A Storm of Swords has been the hardest book for me to read so far, a lot of crazy things happened to my favorite characters and I felt like I was getting punched in the gut throughout that whole book. I really love the ending of Storm of Swords though, it's really weird and spooky.
One of the things I didn't mention in the blog that I really appreciated was some of the random events. Not all of them are homeruns but there are a few of the random events that lead to really crazy moments that stand out from other open worlders I've played. Did you ever come across a couple in the wilds, one of them is dead, the other is weeping, and if you stay around long enough the surviving person will commit suicide with a pistol? The first time I saw that I was stunned and I didn't know what to do or where to go next because I was in a little bit of shock at how raw and sad that event was, and how I was totally unexpecting something so thematically serious. Overall I thought the tone of the world, characters, and story was just comedic enough to be charming and have a nice flavor, but it was very successful in painting a picture of a very beautiful but harsh frontier.
I've really enjoyed A Feast for Crows, there's a lot of small moments that are compelling and interesting to keep up with, but overall since this is an epic series with so many moving parts I definitely feel like the book is paced really slow in the big picture. I've enjoyed all the chapters and developments but as a whole they don't seem to progress things very much, just a great deal of building. The personal dramas with characters are fascinating but I feel like the big dramas and overarching themes and grand schemes are unfolding really slow so far. I'm still really into it though, I'll like to see where it goes and how the TV show handles it.
Driving around in GTA games was always so boring to me, but I think that because of the setting and execution of all the various congruous elements I end up enjoying riding around in Red Dead a great deal. Riding around the wilderness is always the best time to see the sunrise, see the geographic vistas, and come across the cooler effects and systems of the game.
There was one afternoon I was playing the game where I spent like 45 minutes riding the train all around the world and interacting with it anyway I could (hopping onto it from horseback or riding on top, sitting in the cabin looking out the window, etc).
I talk a little about both games in my newest blog. I've had a hard time trying to reason out exactly why Spelunky is so good, smarter people than me have discussed it at length but it's been tougher for me to nail it down.
I feel that Spelunky is just about a perfect game, one of my favorite platformer puzzle games ever. It doesn't appear to be a puzzler on the surface, and it isn't marketed that way, but when you get into theory and break down what you're actually doing, the game is more about solving puzzles around you and surviving, the platforming is more or less just the means to an end. People that try to play it like an actual platformer end up not surviving very long and it ends up being more frustrating than it should. It's all about looking around your character, thinking 2 or 3 steps ahead of yourself, and then using the exact mechanics and skills needed to get to where you need to go. A little bit like Dark Souls but they certainly have a lot of differences too. I really enjoyed the process of getting better at combat in Dark Souls and developing adequate timing and logic for what strategies to use for different situations, and Spelunky has that same kind of satisfying learning experience except magnified and purified so that it is the game.
So far I've died 850 times total (the game keeps track for you lol) and I've never been mad at the game or wanted to quit. I've been furious before but it's always because you usually immediately see what went wrong and how you made a stupid choice or performed a move poorly. Spelunky's systems and rules are consistent and the mechanics are tuned for expert players so the game doesn't cow down to anybody or hold your hand, it lets you learn all the nuances on your own, develop your skills, and the way the levels are designed to be short and the rapid way you can get right back into the game after a death makes you want to keep getting better. Make it just a little bit further next time. All of that says nothing of the great music, cool visuals, mountains of secrets in the game, and the replayability that the procedurally generated levels offers.
That's awful, I should be able to make better sense of it than that and explain it better, but I'm new to this kind of game design so I'm still wrapping my head around what the game is doing right and how it's doing it, let alone describing it.
That promo is really cool work Justin. I've been playing Spelunky every night for a while now, then if I can stop I try to fit in a little bit of Red Dead Redemption.
Roughly 8 weeks till Dark Souls 2, Chris. That is all.
Sounds cool Vic, you'll be doing Ghosts on your PS4 I assume? That will be 10pm my time I think, I'll see if I can check out the stream at some point.
I'm glad 2013 is over, and still glad to be tuning into you guys. We all held onto our butts and made it through.
Over the break I bought a variety of games and novels so that I have a small stockpile of things to consume over the next few months, but over the break Spelunky was the only game I was really into. Spelunky gets 2013 GOTY, maybe GOTY for any year ever. I've been thinking out a blog discussing my 5 favorite games from the last generation and I'm pretty sure Spelunky would squeak into that list.
My real GOTY was Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Smarter people than me have elaborated wonderfully the reasons why that game was so profound for many of us, namely Drew Dixon at GameChurch in their GOTY write-up. Brothers is the first game I've played in a long time, maybe ever, that made me feel like the mechanics were essential to the story they were telling. Despite being an action adventure platormer Brothers never felt gamey in the way people often use the term when discussing story driven games. Like, "The Last of Us has such an incredible story, but these gamey parts remind you that you're playing a video game, slap it on easy and plow through to enjoy the better parts..." or "Bioshock Infinite's story is amazing, but you know these gamey parts aren't always hot, you just gotta shoot all the cops and get through to the important stuff..."
The game design and story are so interlinked and dependent on one another that Brothers will remind you that you're playing a video game, but in the best ways possible. Brothers is the perfect example of what games can do that other mediums can't, and it's an incredible show of mechanics being an essential part of a story driven game. I thought the controls were going to be a gimmick and what I found instead was quite enlightening. And all of that says nothing of the great visuals, solid pacing, complete lack of fluff & fat, and the total dedication to a personal story in a strikingly expressive world.
Brothers was my favorite from last year. Nice to see it mentioned there.
