Long Division: Doubling the Party Rather than Splitting

So a little while ago I posted about the Pokemon RPG I have been running and the problems we ahve encountered.  The most significant problem was that the party had irrevocably divided, separating in to two opposing groups.  I thought it might be worth posting about the result of the decision we made, so you have a little more of the story.  After some discussions, the group has opted to create two full parties rather than divide time up or sacrifice a group.

This decision was only partly due to a desire to follow both sides of the story and to maintain their characters.  A major factor was the lure of character creation.  Given the option to create new characters, new stats had been written up before decisions could be taken much further.  Since the players now are far more familiar with the world, creating new characters was an interesting challenge for them, and all of a sudden, the decision had essentially been made.  The new characters must be played.  So now we switch.  Every week we swap between the good-ish characters who are aligned with Brock, Blaine, Sabrina, Alakazam, and Gaston (Misty’s replacement), and the morally questionable characters who are aligned with Koga, Vincent (Giovanni), and a few other mysterious entities they are not familiar with yet...

We have now had a session with each group since the divide, and it’s going relatively well.  Both groups are poised to investigate Cerulean and Lavender respectively, and the next session for each should be filled to the brim with adventure and plot (I hope).  What is more important to me is that both groups seem to be relatively cohesive.   I asked that the new characters would be generally in line with the party they were joining; I really REALLY didn’t want another split.  Two parties are quite enough.  They are each working together relatively well, although the MQ party nearly fractured at the start as two characters met by trying to commandeer the same vessel.

I like this setup now.  It’s complicated, and I have to try and keep them both on the same timeline; having one group several days ahead of the other really is not conducive to coherent plot.  This hasn’t proven too difficult so far, but it may do.  What it does mean though, is that between the two groups, the players a) get to explore different moral paths, seeing the roads they could have taken and b) get to be involved in much more of the plot.  As there are several factions in this conflict taking place, there are a lot of things going on which the players may never be aware of.  For instance, they are only now starting to notice the problem with the Elite Four, and there is a mysterious stranger who the party will be meeting again very soon.  Yes, I am letting things drop for the benefit of the players that read this.  Good times.

Anyway, it requires extra management but the two-party system is thus far proving rewarding.  I can’t wait for both groups to continue, as things are getting exciting, and hopefully I will improve as a DM as a result of all of this.  I did realise while writing this that if I had been more on the ball I could have just pretended like this was the plan all along and not looked as incompetent.  We live and learn.

Improbable Island: Probably the Craziest Thing on the Internet

There are a lot of games that I eventually gave up on, not through any fault of the game.  Improbable Island is one such game, left behind due to a hectic schedule, and a desire to tear myself away from the internet for a while.  However, the game itself was a delight, and having recently checked it out again, they’ve made some good additions to it.

It's Hare-brained... get it?

Improbable Island is a browser game (if I have the terminology right), and so is simply a website, with no software to install or whatever.  If you’re reading this, you can probably play Improbable Island.  It’s also free, making it another bonus.  On top of that, it is advertisement free, bonus again (it survives on donations).  It is a solid RPG, in that you kill monsters to level up, buy new equipment, and unlock new races/equipment/etc.  Also, there is a large role-playing community, with many players creating complex and improbable personas to interact and create a number of sub-plots on the island, beyond the central story.

Basically, Improbable Island is a bizarre island filled with crazy monsters generated by a terrifying machine.  You and the other residents of the island have been press ganged into fighting the war.  And it’s being recorded for the entertainment of the world.  Awesome.   The introduction to the game explains it with far more style.  However, with the amount of improbable energy permeating the island, you don’t necessarily stay human for long.  Players can become zombies, mutants, midgets, robots, and others.  Your equipment ranges from the excellent – body armour and chainsaws (and that’s just to start with!) – to the totally inane – pink frilly panties and butter knives.  Your mission is to survive and destroy the infernal device creating all of this madness.  You probably won’t succeed.

The joy of this game is threefold.  First, the basic game, its mechanics, the world you can explore and the story and characters that shape it are all fantastic and can keep you entertained for a very long time.  I would happily play it again just for the game itself, without anything else.  Second, the other players make an entire other half to the game, creating guilds, houses, communities and vastly creative story lines and sub-plots which give the island a depth which you have to pay attention to discover.  I played the game for months before I discovered some of the intricacies the greatest players were weaving.  Finally, part of the joy of Improbable Island comes simply from its... improbability.  The creator of this website is originally British, and has a brilliant wit which is shown in every facet of the island.  This does mean that people from other countries may not always grasp some of the jokes, but I think everyone can enjoy it.  The monsters are insane – from Paper Tigers to Santa Claws to Your Own Tongue – and every element, every click in the game is filled with surprise, uncertainty, delight, and yes, improbability.  There really is no other word for it.  Ok there is... randomness probably fits too.

I heartily recommend this to anyone with too much time on their hands.  Get in there, take up the fight with the Improbability Drive, join a guild, create a story, and discover the wonders of Improbable Island!

Video Games Live: Suddenly Orchestras Are Cool Again

I’m a violist.  That means I play the viola, not the violin.  They’re very different instruments.  But that’s beside the point.  I’ve been playing in orchestras for a long time, and I’ve learned to really enjoy classical music as a result of it.  While I enjoy playing in concerts, I find listening to an orchestra concert far less entertaining.  Sitting still for an hour and a half is not my idea of a good time, so I can sympathize with how orchestral music has been declining in popularity in recent years.  However, there is one concert series which I think is bringing orchestral music back in a big way.  Today’s post is going to be about Video Games Live.

Hosted by Tommy Tallarico, this organization has travelled several times around the world putting on high-energy, awesome concerts of music from the full spectrum of video games, starting with Pong and going all the way up to present day.  Beginning with this introduction, they then go on to perform a selection from about 50 different games.  They don’t have a travelling orchestra, however.  Instead, they send the music ahead to the local city orchestra and give them a little time to prepare before they arrive and set things up properly.  I imagine it must be an awesome experience to be playing in that orchestra.  It’s not often that a professional orchestra gets to play with electric guitar accompaniment and a full light display with screaming fans jumping around.

That’s the thing I love the most about these concerts: the atmosphere.  Instead of everyone sitting around and listening politely to a group of musicians perform a recital of some of the great works from video games history, everyone is cheering and singing along and calling for their favourite songs to be played next (the most recent VGL I attended had to do Chrono Trigger as an encore because the fans were demanding it so loudly.  Yay).   The host, Tommy, is great fun, and he knows how to keep people excited.  He also joins in sometimes, as when they did the Castlevania music he stepped forward on the electric guitar, which was quite awesome.  Also impressive is the one musician that does tour with them: Martin Leung, more famously known as the Blind-folded Pianist.  After attaining global Youtube fame for playing the Super Mario music on the piano while blind-folded, Video Games Live asked him to come on tour with them and perform Mario, Tetris, and other songs with amazing ability.

There’s nothing like a full orchestra to give you the full experience that you were meant to receive with video game music.  The VGL version of Kingdom Hearts is beautiful, and seeing a live African choir performance of Baba Yetu from Civilization IV is fantastic.  I’ve said before that a lot of older music was designed with simpler music technology and so the simple melodies that became so iconic in Mario and Zelda were the result of necessity more than anything else.  Hearing the modern versions played live though, makes you wish they had had this ability all along.  I cannot recommend these concerts highly enough.  Outside the concert hall there are many different game stations set up and there is always something cool happening in addition to the actual concert itself.  Boredom is extremely unlikely.

Tour Dates: http://www.videogameslive.com/index.php?s=dates

A Week in Gaming: An Awful Lot of Running to Do

This week I have been playing quite a lot of games, and while I could probably manage a post about each one, they’re different enough that I thought a bit of comparison would be interesting.  It’s been a very Xbox-heavy week, and I’ve finally gotten to play 3 games which I’ve wanted to play for a while.  My time has been spent divided between Left 4 Dead 2, Fable II, and Assassin’s Creed II.  A group of sequels, all of which are a lot of fun.

I played Fable the least this week, so I’ll start there.  Most people by now are familiar with the format of the Fable games.  Take a young hero through an epic quest where every decision is a moral one.  The nicer you are, the more saintly your appearance becomes.  The more evil you act, the more demonic you appear.  It’s a very impressive game series, and from what I understand, the story is quite compelling, and the good people of Lionhead have made the morality of the tale highly questionable and difficult to necessarily find the right path.  I’m enjoying the game so far.  The combat system flows well and is fun to play whatever weapon I’m using, although magic is just spectacular.  The lack of MP costs means that magic is cheap, easy, and really, really cool.  It’s a fun game to play, but I’m not sure that it bests the other games I’ve played this week.

Left 4 Dead 2 never really appealed to me.  I’m not so into the whole zombie genre, and things like House of the Dead and Resident Evil always slightly repulsed me.  However, the pure fear that comes from playing a Left 4 Dead campaign, the surging adrenaline and shiver down your spine as you hear the weeping of a witch far too close to you, is truly gripping.  It’s a tough game, where you have to work very closely with your small group of survivors to continue to be survivors and not more victims.  One of the cool innovations in the game is that all of the particularly dangerous zombies have their own sound that you can hear as they approach.  While this early warning system is very useful, it does add to the terror of the experience as you spin around wildly looking for the threat you know must be close.  This is an adrenaline-packed challenge, as you fight through hordes of zombies (which move MUCH faster than you expect them to) in the hopes of finding an escape from the menace.  The AI is pretty decent, both on the zombies and your allies, and it allows for some very clever tactics.  Though the game isn’t so much to look at, it grips you by the lungs and leaves you breathless throughout every level.  The moment when the door is closed on another safe house, you suddenly realize that you’ve been forgetting to breathe.  No matter what the actual game was, the effect it has tells you all you need to know.  Epic.

The third game I’ve finally played this week has been Assassin’s Creed II.  I’ve watched a fair bit of Brotherhood being played, and I liked the look of it.  Of course, the Assassin’s Creed games have been a desire of mine for a while, because how could it not be?  Running across rooftops and jumping off buildings is just a fantastic way to spend your time, even if you’re ignoring the main plot.  The games are just fun to run around.  The combat is moderately tricky, but certainly feasible, and fairly impressive to see.  Climbing and free-running is intuitive yet still a solid challenge, especially some of the sub-levels, like the Assassins’ Tombs.  I’m even told that the story is, at least in parts, historically accurate, which is fun.

Basically, Fable II is a very pleasant game to play, and you can get a lot of entertainment out of it.  Left 4 Dead 2, however, is far more exciting.  On the other hand, it is also a fairly draining experience with all of the adrenaline it gets pumping.  Perhaps Fable is a good game to relax with after the terrors of the zombie apocalypse.  Assassin’s Creed II is a bit of a mix of the two.  It has a lot of the excitement and thrills of Left 4 Dead, but never the same gripping fear which is so exhausting.  Instead, even when half the city guard are chasing you down the back alleys of Florence, you’re still relatively relaxed and enjoying yourself, rather than panicking and firing wildly as L4D2 tends to prompt.  All 3 games are definitely great fun.  It’s just a matter of what you’re in the mood for.  For once, I’m actually impressed at the range of games available on the Xbox 360.  My opinion of it is officially raised.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl: Always the Right Decision

For a blog called the Subspace Emissary, it seems a little silly that I haven’t done a post on the game that it comes from.  I have already talked about the difference between Tekken and Soul Calibur, Namco’s pair of fighting games, but I have to admit, neither of them is my real favourite.  As you may have guessed, my favourite is the inestimable Super Smash Brothers Brawl.  It remains true to the basic formula of the fighting genre – choose your character, choose a level, fight.  However, there are a number of innovations which make Smash Brothers unique amongst games.

The damage system, where the more damage you take the further you get flung back with every strike, is certainly uncommon.  I don’t know of any other fighting game which has the same damage system as Smash Brothers, and with the number of healing items that can be obtained during a fight, it means that there is a serious advantage to playing characters who can recover well from being kicked off of the map.  Kirby and ROB make excellent choices for this.

The items themselves make sure that every character, and every player, has a solid chance for victory.  Jigglypuff may not be the most impressive character in the game, but if it gets a Homerun Bat in its hand, that ball of fluff becomes an absolute menace.  There are healing items, traps, weapons, bonuses and assists which if used well, make any character a real threat.  The items make references from across the Nintendo catalog, from Pokeballs to Bob-ombs.  However, it is worth saying that while there are some characters which have been shown to be more effective than others, overall there are very few characters that could be said to be completely useless.

The Smash Brothers series is in its 3^rd instalment now, and it has only improved over time.  The levels have multiplied, gotten more complicated and come in all shapes and sizes.  The cast of playable characters has increased almost exponentially, now including even non-Nintendo characters like Snake and Sonic.  The graphics as well are truly outstanding.  Mario has never looked better.  The combat system however, has remained almost identical through the whole series, and the simplicity of the technique list has ensured that the game becomes far more about the skill with which you use them rather than how many techniques and combos that you can remember.  I think this makes the game easier to pick up and that adds to how fantastic a party game it is.

To be fair, not the best boss ever designed, but he looks fantastic

More than any of the improvements and additions to the Brawl instalment, I think that the main adventure mode, the Subspace Emissary (there it is!) is the most impressive.  Comprised of a long train of complex side-scrolling levels, mixed with puzzles and battles, the Subspace Emissary tells the story of how the various characters unite to stop a massive threat to the world they live in.  You eventually play as pretty much every character in the game, so it is a great showcase for them.  The cut scenes as well, make the game very special.  Some of them are just fantastic.  On top of that, it can be played co-op.  Smart thinking.

The number of different modes of play available for single player, combined with an even further expanded and improved multiplayer, make Super Smash Brothers Brawl a triumph for Nintendo.  No matter what you want to do – challenge yourself on boss mode or Allstar Mode, have an entertaining adventure on Subspace Emissary, or just have fun with your friends on either co-op adventure or the standard brawl, Super Smash Brothers Brawl is always the right game for you.