[Personal] Perfect Memories

It seems there are two good ways of making me feel old these days. One is to speak to younger gamers; the other is to browse XBox Arcade. When these two things meet, it is... well, I find myself looking for grey hairs.

I met a friend on Sunday who could neither be described as old or hairy, but definitely a gamer. So naturally, while chatting about job prospects (incidentally, I've been pitching articles; hurrah? Fingers crossed for the prospective freelancer here, please) and mutual friends we also tend onto games.

They're like our war stories - "I remember when...", veterans telling each other about the where and when and how. The thing is, we talk about different generations of gaming; he looks back at the N64 as his starting point whereas I remember it as the flashy gadget that made my NES look even more like a breeze block. At least it was good common ground, remembering the brutal unforgiving nature of PvP in Perfect Dark where respawning involved returning empty handed, ready to be gunned down by the fully-armed guy who'd just tagged you before.

It's weird that we miss that, when things have moved on. At least, we think we miss that - years of Halo/Call of Duty/Epic Testosterone Shooter have changed what we expect from a game (largely to expecting something easier); and we both have the cartridge and console to hand if we wanted to play. We talk of the game fondly, and could go back and relive it whenever we choose. Consciously or not, we choose not to.

I cannot deny having some great memories of filling an Easter holiday running and re-running the game on Agent and Secret Agent difficulties (before hitting what felt like a wall with Perfect Agent - though I've seen videos of people running missions and just ignoring enemies... it makes me feel like a fool in retrospect!), but I'm not sure I'd be able to do that again. I won't deny that there is something about old games that appeals in a way new ones don't, but at least part of that I'm sure is the "I remember when..." moment. If we try to relive them, we may find the experience bitter-sweet if the memories turn out to be wrong.

We both had that, veterans remembering weapon functions and snipe points and how bizarrely natural the trident shaped joypad actually was. But at the same time... To me, Perfect Dark seems like too "new" a game to have on XBA* - I'm used to browsing around at Golden Axe and Final Fight, things I remember paying 20p to play in dubious establishments on the route home from school (the best place was at a cheap restaurant which twice had people thrown through the window. Never when I was there I should mention, but I feel it establishes the general quality of venue for arcade machines locally at the time). In my mind something from the 32/64 bit era has kept that buzz of being "advanced", and somehow isn't old enough to be retro for me.

I think he didn't feel surprise in the same way, and it was more the surprise at having a blast from the past return instead... yes, I feel old. But the memories are nice, so it's old in a good way.

* = And with that said - yes, my mind blew when I saw that Resident Evil 4 is available now too.

[Random] What's the story? Tell me another...

How many plots are there? Lots of minds greater than mine have queried this, and come back with a lot of different numbers - there are three proto-stories, or seven, or a different seven, or... ok, I say greater minds than mine, but the lists of 20 and 36 story ideas seems to be reaching a bit. The fewer you can think of, the more I can respect, else it becomes like when I watched Big Trouble in Little China as a 12 year old and decided there were about 30 different groups all fighting each other (just because I recognised Lo Pan, the Three Storms and the Wing Kong as separate entities didn't mean they were different sides. No - it just followed basic narrative, good guys and bad, and now I want to watch it again...)

Story telling is such a fundamental human trait - we use it to entertain ourselves, to inform ourselves (the news is, ultimately, telling us stories about what has happened in the world), and even to make ourselves better people (at least, that's the hope - parables try to mark out "right" and "wrong" actions, but the value of the story is entirely down to the story teller. Or the news organisation). But this isn't a writing blog. It's a gaming one. But after writing my last (admittedly less interesting than hoped) entry, I realised how stuck on rails the narrative is in games.

The Six Plots of Gaming

1) Player vs enemy force

The easiest one to identify - success is simply down to being the last one standing. It worked for Space Invaders, it worked for Street Fighter, it works for pretty much every boss fight ever - challenge your ability to deal damage. When LotRO wants 10 orcs dead from an area, this is all you are doing. 

Less obviously, it is also the other cars on the track in Virtua Racing or Ridge Racer - winning is about overwhelming them at their own game. Assuming it is racing and not time-trialing (see Plot 3 there), all you are hoping to do is be the one that succeeds at their expense.

It was tempting to add Halo here too - it seems an obvious choice... then I realised that Halo is part this, but more a part of -

2) Player journey

... you see, a lot of the fights in Halo are actually avoidable. This is something learned playing the original in legendary difficulty- if in doubt, leave the soldiers to die, and keep running. Yes, some fights are essential (so, taking Plot 1), but ultimately the game wants you to make it from Point A to Point B, and confuses you by putting a gun into your hands.

The same could be said for R-Type, or Vigilante, or Shadow Complex (one of the best games I've played in recent years - but ultimately, it's still about gaining ways of moving from Point A to a previously inaccessible Point B).

You are ultimately fighting the environment - or not fighting if you can (and choose to) avoid it. These get disguised in a lot of ways - to speak to someone at a different location, whether it be next to them or on the other side of the world; to collect an item out in the wilderness; or just not get blown up as the screen scrolls you ever closer to the end-of-level boss.

3) Player vs the clock

A classic - just needing to do as much as you can before a timer ends. This can be achieving set goals, or merely staying alive. Think of Gauntlet - for all the running around, for all the monster generators, there was only one thing that mattered, your "health" constantly depleting. But it wasn't health - it was a portable timer, raised with food and lost with everything else... and disguised as Plot 2.

(and of course, let's not ignore the flip side - working to beat those best lap times in Sega Rally or Gran Turismo. It's not about the cars, it's not about the track - it's about the clock. Success is measured by it)

It's always been a staple of arcade gaming, where the need to get one person off a cabinet to allow another paying customer a go is key. You don't want an expert who can maintain eight hour at the controls, if only because they don't have the same facilities as astronauts and the clean-up required will be disgusting.

Yes, multiple Plots meet here - a "kill Tim the Accountant of Doom in the next 5 minutes" quest will involve Plot 2 and Plot 1 as well. But the involvement of a timer in so much of gaming means it is a content Plot device.

4) Player vs logic

Perhaps a harder one to categorise - this is solving puzzles. When you worked out what to do with that chicken with a pulley in Monkey Island, it was this. When you worked out how to avoid being shot in Portal, it was this. Success is measured in overcoming puzzles, rather than going out guns blazing - it's more like playing solitaire, knowing how the deck is arranged and so working out where to place the cards. You can learn how to win, rather than train for it.

A lot of games fit in moments of logic - those puzzles that you have to solve somewhere between Point A and Point B - but often these are moments tacked onto other plots. Others pose themselves as logic puzzles, when in truth they are linear (for example,  you do not have to actually work out who is poisoning the mine in Baldur's Gate - just follow the steps the story tells you. You cannot lose the game by getting the wrong culprit, or failing to find the problem at all).

5) Player recognition

... Tetris. See shape, fit shape, repeat. It's not an issue of logic, it's about making something happen almost faster than you can consciously realise. It's how you fit colours together in Columns, or pop those bubbles in Bust-A-Move, or generally prevent your head from exploding while playing Warioware... Things may try to cause you pressure - getting faster, getting closer, getting bigger - and you can't stop and consider a move (otherwise it'd be Plot 4).

At its heart, this is all that drives the craze in music games like Rock Band - they are a form of Quick Time Event, just like those driving so many fight scenes in Shenmue - where you know you have to perform an action at just the right time... Stop and think, and you'll likely fail. It needs to be intuitive. Like fitting tetrominoes together.

6) Player aquisition

Success measured by getting something... It may be money, it may be items, it may be slightly more convoluted by making something, it may even be that poxy Amulet of Yendor which I never even got to sniff in years of playing Rogue-likes. Not that I'm bitter.

It could even be pursuing something more in the meta-game, such as points, or XP. Most RPGs do not rely on saying "you must be this level to enter" - rather, they are Plot 1 and Plot 2 cases, more pressing you to gain levels so you are able to survive and fight better. But not every fetch-and-run quest is about travelling; the crafting quests in games like Atlantica are completed when the key item is made, whether the materials involved looting bosses or simply visiting the market. The same goes for LotRO, and I suspect many, many other MMOs I've never had the time to experience...

... so are there others? Perhaps. I hope so. It would be a shame if a passive form of entertainment - story telling - could have more forms than an active one - gaming. We are supposed to be involved after all. Though perhaps the comparison is itself flawed. Games do need, and have, a sense of narrative, but the experience is obviously something different from being told a story*.

So, these individually or in combination together make up gaming. Except for whatever I may have missed... and if you see what that is, let me know! :)

* My original analogy was comparing games with stories to the small smile felt on seeing the sun for the first time after heavy rain... with a brick. Nothing to do with each other. But the difference isn't that severe - they also have a lot in common.


EDIT: I shall undoubtedly edit this as thoughts occur, opinions change, and games (hopefully) give me new experiences I never foresaw. The first two are more likely.

EDIT: ... and removed two unneeded paragraphs from the intro. Wow, I write too much.

[Personal] A Taste of the Epic

I was unwell the weekend just gone - I'll spare you the details, but I will say I found myself grinding harder into various games than usual to keep myself distracted from some discomfort. Well, "various games" is an overstatement. I was playing LotRO with more dedication than I have in months.

I seem to have drifted into MMOs over the last couple of years, when (and if) I have time to play - RPGs have always appealed to me, perhaps due to an interest in seeing how to use probability to recreate the world around us, and perhaps due to simply being able to disengage any sense of boredom if I see progress... Fighting huge numbers of easy-to-beat monsters isn't a problem if I can see an end goal of a few extra XP or some crafting materials... I am probably the key audience for most of the generic MMOs going right now.

MMOs work by drawing you in, getting you to do repeated tasks over and over, always promising better rewards. Really, quests are just a structure to keep us focused on the what, where and why. If you stop and consider what it is you're doing... Well, in LotRO, whenever you get to any new area, the first set of quests run like this:

"We're cold - can you go and get us some boar/wolf/bear/kitten hides?

... while you're at it, we're hungry, can you get some meat from those animals too?

... also, we are under threat! Can you go and kill some bandits/goblins/orcs/door-to-door salesmen?"

Don't get me wrong - I'm enjoying the process of doing these things; but when you think "Lord of the Rings", you think of long journeys to remote places, and epic battles, and... well, Peter Jackson's movies have a lot to answer for. Watch the trailer for the trilogy, and on the whole you want the experience to be this. Frodo didn't take a break to make a lynx-meat sandwich; Aragorn didn't stretch his legs in the morning by taking broken daggers from goblins. It wouldn't have made good viewing.

But anyway... I finally did something in game that had that feeling, something Epic! My guy was ready for his class's level 50 legendary skill quest - I spoke to the quest giver, and was basically given four goals to achieve, monsters to find in all four corners of the world. Yes, they were still "kill these things and loot items", but journeying to the most remote corners of the world, places I hadn't seen yet, fighting or avoiding monsters that were generally bigger and nastier than anything I'd dealt with before... Yes. This was my adventure.

The sense of satisfaction when I returned, after several hours of working away at it all, spoke to the quest giver, was huge... although slightly dampened when he essentially said "Ok. Well, here's the second quest...". This was further dampened when it turned out this involved looting monsters who were in an area that I couldn't reach, due to the inconvenience of instantly dying when passing a key spot on route. Still, the good news was a different quest chain let me survive... so, spend a few more hours doing that one, feeling that bit more special for doing so.

More monsters. More grinding. More loot. More victory. All with that end goal in mind - all this work for that Legendary skill! How special it must be! Several hours later, I return...

"Not bad. Ok, here's the third quest." So be it, I have a hero to help ascend to further awesomeness...

When, best part of a day later I handed these items in, I did feel I had really worked to achieve something. It was something that had more of a sense of direction that just helping hungry hobbits eat to excess (seriously, there seem to be so many "hobbits want food" quests that I'm surprised there is a single animal left in the Shire. I also noticed a lack of Elves in the area, and have my suspicions).

It was pretty much the experience I hoped I'd have from a game like this. Seeing new places, facing new challenges...

... obviously, it is impossible to sustain this sort of content for every player for all of the time, which is where the mundane grind comes back in. But having this sort of experience, something that gives a sense of personal achievement rather than just a few silver coins, some XP and a few crafting materials... Yes. More, please.

Addendum: Oh, the skill - useless. I tried it once, realised it was rubbish (at least, for the way I play), haven't bothered using it again. So, that's what all the effort was supposedly for...

... at least I can appreciate the journey, if not the destination.

[Opinion] I was waiting for this...

So, the UK has just come through some of the worst rioting it has seen in decades. For the average person in the street, it is now time to rebuild, restart, regardless of the unfairness of being the victim to someone else's actions. And there have been a lot of victims. It is naturally still a main topic of conversation in the news, and so politicians are jumping at ways of attacking each other for things they have said and done in the past, while a whole industry of social commentators is being supported by the media to fill space laying out the blame.

Still, hopefully this can be laid to rest, as the Daily Express has incitefully worked out that the things the Daily Express doesn't like (video games, single mothers, reality TV, pop videos) are the cause. Ok, I'm over-simplifying - there are also things about police powers (though you'd hope society ultimately works due to a desire for it to work, not out of a fear of the police), and street gangs - but I feel over-simplifying is a legitimate response to an article that is over-simplified itself.

There's a lot I could write about this piece, how it lays a lot of blame in a "nodding head, that sounds right" way and doesn't actually cite a single piece of evidence. Or how it lays (again by inference) the idea that most of the rioters were children, when the statistics show a majority were legally adults. But this is a gaming blog. Let's take on those comments about games.

She lays out the blame there very quickly - the first paragraph draws a parallel between the events on the news and games. Incidentally, when she says

With hooded youths in pitched battles with police, all reason gone and high on destruction, I felt for a moment as if we had stumbled into a real-life violent video game of the kind that so many of those involved are addicted to.

... I'm curious where this fact has come from. So many of those involved are addicted to? It is a very, very specific accusation. A citation would be nice, to let us know that this isn't just an opinion taken from a blurred sense of reality.

I'm not going to fault Ms Frost on drawing that parallel though - it is natural to draw parallels between things we know... I would try and explain Baudrillard and his philosophy of the Simulacra, how living in a mediated society the lines distinguishing what we see at real and fiction become blurred. It's a big topic, but in summary it is not new to see something real and immediately associate it with something unreal that has been seen before. An important distinction must be made, though - this doesn't mean it is as simple as cause-and-effect.

Anyway, she carries on

These horrific games where points are given for burning, shooting and killing, where the graphics are so realistic you believe that they’re real scenes of carnage, where those who play fantasise they have the power of life and death, are so brutal they completely desensitise anyone taking part.

Research shows that within 15 minutes of playing one of these games young men become highly aggressive and lack empathy in normal situations. It is not too fanciful to suggest it’s a short step from being immersed in this war-like world to taking that nightmare mindset on to the streets with all the consequences of anarchy and violence we saw rip apart cities.

Once again, lacking references - so I'll help out. A 2006 study done by Iowa State University seems to be one of the most commonly referenced ones in recent years for desensitisation, and I don't pretend it is the only one. However, it would be equally wrong to pretend that it is voicing a unanimous verdict - there are other studies that have found the exact opposite, and it is extremely convenient to ignore this, as Ms Frost does.

Yes, I'm here to defend games from these accusations, but I'm not going to pretend people haven't disagreed with me. There's far more out there, on both sides of the debate. I just don't feel that using the media to just state that one side of an argument exists is valid.

Personally, I have played games for over two decades. I have racked up enough virtual kills to (de)populate a fair sized country, and I recognise that games are all about active participation - I perform the actions, I cause the consequences - and yes, I have the power to avoid dealing with these consequences by pressing an off switch. I've even let real life spill into games, burning off aggression after a bad day You know what? I wasn't out in the streets causing chaos. For all the on-screen bloodshed I've caused, I still know the difference between right and wrong, and between an unreal or real person's well being.

I think blaming games is extremely superficial... ok, that's an easy thing to say when faced with an article which, as I said at the start, seems to thrive on applying superficial blame on the parts of society disapproved of by the newspaper's key readership. But the violent games = violent people argument only holds up for a while - if you read some of the articles which do cite games as an influencing factor in causing aggression they also often add the clause that it more significant in increasing aggression in those who already have tendencies that way. Not all studies do - but enough.

Some people playing games become aggressive - or indeed, actually violent as the article in the Express tries to connect - while some don't (for example, Call of Duty: Black Ops was the biggest selling game of 2010; sales to date have reached 25 million copies. Even ignoring the safe assumption that due to second-hand copies, game lending between friends, piracy and even good old socialising with a console round someone's house far more than 25 million people have actually played it... well, I don't believe anyone will seriously try and claim that all 25 million people referenced will be going out more violent people than before, else the riots would have been the least of our worries).

What does that prove? Well... nothing. It can be summed up with the entirely non-committal statement "Video games may or may not cause violence, in some but not all people". And if they may cause violence in people with underlying aggression issues, might it be more productive to consider how to deal with these aggression issues than make sweeping statements about the games themselves? Otherwise, we'll end up sterilising society to protect ourselves from the ambiguous (and usually rather patronising) "some people" who aren't equipped with the social or emotional skills to distinguish between real and unreal.

It's too tempting to find simple answers to the cause of the riots - something quick and crowd pleasing, and unfortunately we're getting that from too many people and organisations with the power to influence us already. It especially doesn't help when those who have the power to project their voices loudly use that to forward their own ideals, above any actual debate.

I'm cynical. I foresee lots of superficial decisions coming soon. This just highlighted the sort of thinking that some of them will come from.

Addendum: one extra paragraph worthy of note

And those horrific video games which I mentioned earlier must be brought under control. Their content should be subject to censorship and the age at which they can be bought tightly controlled. Shopkeepers should demand proof of age and where they ignore this and break the law by selling them to children they should be fined.

Except... here in the UK, games are reviewed by the BBFC, and given legally enforceable age ratings and censorship rulings.* Shops nigh on always have publicly visible signs saying they will ask for proof of age; if they sell something to someone under age, they are open to fines of up to £20,000 and there is an additional threat of potentially two years imprisonment. There is already a structure in place to deal with under age sales. The tone of this paragraph makes it sound like any child can walk into a shop, and walk out with any game regardless of content. No. This is not how it works.

Plus, as the average gamer is now 37 (I thought it was 35, and found articles supporting this... from two years ago. Go, maths), and as cited the majority of rioters were adults, does this really have anything to do with anything? No, this comes back to the inference that it is about children in the streets, which is not supported by the facts.

* = it should be noted that the law is mildly ambiguous here - games are not legally required to be rated, but that exemption can be removed depending on the content. To quote the BBFC's FAQ on the subject

Under the Video Recordings Act, most video games are exempt from BBFC classification. However, they may lose this exemption - and therefore require a formal BBFC classification - if they depict, to any significant extent, gross violence against humans or animals, human sexual activity, human urinary or excretory functions or genital organs, or techniques likely to be useful in the commission of offences.

Or to look at it another way - games do not need to be rated, except for the ones that do - and any game with enough violence to shock the Daily Express is already going to have had that exemption removed. To all intents and purposes, games are rated, it is just a technicality that makes it seem optional.

[Opinion] Keeping it real?

It's tempting to start posting reasons why I haven't updated for a few days, things which explain how life away from a gaming blog have been... but this isn't really relevant. The reasons are good, but would only qualify as excuses here. Better to get back to a decent routine...

Unreal life

It was tempting to describe the things that were happening as "real life" - those things which happen away from a computer screen and can't be controlled with a joypad or mouse... and perhaps more disappointingly, can't be as controlled by experience or a learned ability. It's a shame the tools we use to cope are so different, really.

Yet that isn't exactly the case. Gaming is about exercising imagination, living a life different from our own - they are an escape, a piece of fun or a wish fulfilment. Yet we don't look at films or books in the same light, that sense of experiencing a reality or a life away from our own as something else.

Perhaps it is how we look at games - we are not passive viewers, we have to get involved, without actually taking the risks of getting involved. Street Fighter players don't go out and get into brawls; Gran Turismo players aren't street racing; and despite the anxiety of the wider media, Doom and Modern Warfare players are not passing time between actual shoot-outs when they're playing. With MMOs, there are obviously more factors - direct competition with other people, artificial time-sinks to keep people returning - but ultimately they are still about finding something fun.

I've never been a huge MMO player, though I've certainly done slightly more than dabble (Atlantica Online, DDO, LotRO, Guild Wars... I've never approached The Big One - as all the others are either free-to-play, or non-subscription, maybe that just says I'm a cheapskate!); it seems to be even more common there - if someone is busy, it is "real life". Yet MMOs are surely the most real of all gaming forms - it's ironic to think of the game as not real, when you have to recognise that the people you're speaking to, and so the means of communication, actually are.

Games are real - obviously, not tangible, and likely not productive (although there are many other things which fail that test - trips to the cinema, a night out clubbing, watching a sunset, or a huge number of hobbies would fail there as well, for example), but they are taking up a part of a person's life. They can define part of who a person is, give them a way to relax or take over time that is needed for other things too. Gamers play games; this doesn't mean they live to eat, sleep and breathe games (although they may do, too - though this is more about self-control and time-keeping) but they are still a part of their lives, something that contributes to the person they are and part of that understanding that lets gamers form their own sub-community. How can something not be real when its made to be so?

So, the next time you can't get on to speak to your guild somewhere, it's not real life pulling you away - it's another part of life pulling you away. It is about prioritising, not disregarding.

In short, I'm arguing that games are real - you just need to reconsider what real is.

[Review] Dungeon Master (PC, 1992)

I recently described Dungeon Master to some friends as being (in my opinion) one of the greatest games ever. I should try and support that claim...

For starters...

Dungeon Master was initially released on the Atari ST in 1987, followed by the Commodore Amiga, leaving the PC waiting until 1992 until its release (I have seen mention of a 1989 release on the PC in the US - being UK based, I cannot confirm this myself). The downside to such a wait was that it had been overshadowed in the meantime - games taking inspiration such as the Bloodwych (1989), Captive (1990), and most notably the Eye of the Beholder series (1990 onwards) had already been released, and the standards of what to expect had been raised earlier in 1992 by Ultima Underworld.

In many ways, it was released on the PC far too late. However, it also says a great deal that all this time later I still find it playable.

The basics

The game is at heart a dungeon crawler - you begin as a disembodied spirit, reviving and controlling a team of (up to) four adventurers who all preceded you into in the dungeon, before falling prey to the dangers therein and being trapped in mirrors as trophies by the dungeon's master Lord Chaos.

The dungeon itself is viewed first person, using a tile-based grid and 90 degree flick scrolling. While this was pretty standard for the time - the Wizardry series (1981 onwards), Bard's Tale series (1985 onwards) and Might and Magic series (1986 onwards) all used this and had established themselves as the inspiration for many others - Dungeon Master added huge levels of interactivity. Doors could be opened by clicking small switches, heavy objects could be left on floor panels, dropped items were recognisable on the floor and could be returned to later, and secret doors could be tested for by "knocking" (clicking) on sections of wall.

However, the game's main claim for being ground-breaking wasn't this detail - it was due to also being played in real time. By removing the usual allowance for thinking about your next turn for as long as was needed, the game created a sense of tension. Lighting could burn out, resting could allow monsters to find and attack you, and sources of both food and water had to be established before starvation finished the job the dungeon's inhabitants were starting. It also meant that stopping and listening to the environment was a good idea - the sound of doors closing in the distance behind you, monsters walking around, traps firing, and switches getting triggered could provide clues as to what to expect. It was, in short, offering far more immersion than games had given before.

Don't go alone

When building your team, each character can be either resurrected (retaining the generally low levels they've acquired in the game's four professions) or reincarnated (starting as a blank slate, although the levels forsaken also give them slightly higher starting stats), although in the longer term this is of less importance compared to how easy they may be to improve. There is no traditional level system - every character can ultimately use every piece of equipment, cast every spell and create every potion, and the four professions (fighter, ninja, priest and wizard, fulfilling pretty much the standard roles you'd expect in a CRPG) can be improved concurrently.

Experience is a hidden statistic in the game - you are never shown how much work you have done, or how close to improving you are - although it is raised through practice rather than success. If you chose to stand in an empty corridor and swing a sword around, you would slowly improve as a fighter, and it is not improbable that the first level or two of the priest and wizard professions are gained without actually successfully casting anything...

Magic is cast by using basic runes - the symbolic meaning of them is given in the manual, allowing you to experiement with effects, although scrolls explicitly listing key spells are also found lying around as you progress. The combinations usually follow a certain logic - [power] + [fire] creates a small amount of light, while [power] + [fire] + [movement] throws a fireball ahead of you. As all runes are accessable from the very start of the game, it also means that as long as you have the mana needed, you can use the combinations you learned in previous runs as you play through again - not quite legacy play, but certainly a way of speeding the earlier section of the dungeon.

Where it goes right

As well as fighting monsters, establishing safe areas to rest, and finding how to restock food and water all creating a sense of living in the dungeon, the detail of the dungeon allows for varying traps and puzzles - most as simple as variations on "find the key for this door" or "avoid the fireballs being thrown from the wall", although others could be more cunning, such as needing to walk around a room in certain directions to be allowed to progress, or walking across a floor where every step opened and closed pits around you.

The game also expects you to return to earlier sections regularly - the seventh level was only completely opened after working all the way down to the twelth, the layout of some areas changes as you progress, and opening up the two staircases giving easier ways of returning to higher levels felt like important progress.

Where it goes wrong

Obviously, by modern standards the game looks and sounds primative - though even for the time, the animation was quite limited. There are few sound effects - though the minimalism arguably adds to the atmosphere - and the only music is on the starting screen.

Some of the ways of handling the interface were also less than fluid - on picking up an item, you needed to open a separate screen to drop it in your inventory, which could often be an issue if it was grabbed while running from a monster or standing in a cloud of poisonous fog. Though again, this could also add to the tension and anticipation of a game being played in real-time - having to wait for the right moment to act.

Legacy

Dungeon Master had two official sequels - Chaos Strikes Back (1989 - essentially a stand-alone add-on disk, though only for the Atari ST and Amiga versions) and Dungeon Master 2 (1995).

More importantly, Dungeon Master is one of the key games when looking at the industry today. It was  named as being "a glimpse of the future" by Paul Neurath, one of the designers of Ultima Underworld, which also created a real-time dungeon but moved it into free movement rather than flick-scrolling; this led to other 3D world RPGs, most obviously titles like the Elder Scrolls series (1994 to present). However, Ultima Underworld also inspired John Carmack and John Romero to create Catacomb 3D (1991) and Wolfenstein 3D (1992), before moving onto Doom (1993) and setting up the first-person shooter genre as we know it today.

Following that path back, Dungeon Master played its part (although perhaps one not as immediately recognisable as Ultima Underworld) in setting up some of the most widely marketted and recognisable games ever, such as the Halo series (2001 to present) and Call of Duty series (2003 to present).

Far more importantly, it's still a very fun game in its own right, if you can forgive some of the signs of aging.

[Note (13/7/2011): as mentioned before, computer failure at home has left me unable to update here consistantly - when sorted, I'll return to this piece and add screenshots to illustrate what I'm saying]

[Opinion] Everything old is new again

I did intend on putting a review in here yesterday, but have been cursed with a bad week which includes computer failure at home. While I'm sorting a replacement, I went back to my slightly neglected 360; partly it was about getting my gaming fix, and more significantly about being able to catch up with some friends on there.

I hadn't spoken to my friend Zane - who does occasional video reviews on Youtube as DontMessWithLuigi - for some time, and a quick catch up-cum-discussion on video capture turned into a prolonged trans-Atlantic head-to-head session. So, with our modern consoles and high speed internet, what do we play? Street Fighter 2.

Ok, not exactly - we ended up playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix... and yes, writing that down is an eye opener. Jokes about the sheer volume of suffixes Capcom add to series' titles have been going around since Special Championship Edition in the mid-90s, and you have to wonder if Capcom is now in on the joke and playing it up? Certainly, their awareness of the community - getting the soundtrack done by the OCRemix community, and the artwork by UDON Entertainment (who do the Street Fighter comics) - is commendable.

Naming conventions aside, it does highlight a concern I have for the current state of the games industry - how little progression there feels to have been. For all the piles of shop-bought games demonstrating the power of the technology we own, we chose to play a repackaged version of something that came out over two decades ago. Ok, that isn't the concern for the games industry - the concern is that it highlights just how fun games don't age.

Things do feel stale - the current big titles to wait for all seem to be sequels (Modern Warfare 3; Halo 4; Gears of War 3; Uncharted 3; Mass Effect 3; Guild Wars 2) - and while I have no doubt they will all add to what their respective franchises can offer, it is hard to feel how any of them will make the overall industry progress. Using more advanced technology is fine, but if all we get is something repackaging much the same experience from a couple of years ago, it also opens up why we can just save our money to replay and re-experience that specific something from a couple of years ago (or indeed, decades).

Yes, it is perhaps contradictory to be thinking all of this, when the game that triggered the thought is itself a sequel. But even though it has offered us numerous sequels itself, it is a tweaked version which remains at heart Street Fighter 2 - it doesn't even feel the need to increment the number - that still catches both the attention and an evening of gameplay.

I've been playing Street Fighter since 1990. I don't think Zane would have even started school then. Once again, my life as a gamer makes me feel old as I look back on how much things have - and haven't - changed in the meantime.

His winning 35-11 stung a little too. A rematch is in order.