Infinite Marketing

WARNING TO ALL.  THIS POST CONTAINS MANY MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BIOSHOCK INFINITE AND BORDERLANDS 2.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.  I REPEAT: SPOILER ALERT.

Okay I'm just going to start with the fact that I loved Bioshock Infinite.  I may have been a bit scathing in a previous post, but don't mistake that for me thinking that Bioshock Infinite is not in fact fantastic.  And who could forget that ending?  I'll bet no one could.  Infinite parallel worlds, infinite possibilities, all similar but all linked.  On top of that, the ending was a brilliantly subtle marketing ploy.

Irrational Games set up their ending perfectly to allow them to make as many more Bioshock titles as they feel like making while keeping them all connected.  Not that I'm complaining.  I love the Bioshock series and am happy to see more.  Furthermore the great part is they can do something completely different with the next game while keeping it continuous in universe.  Infinite realities with big differences but some things staying consistent, aka general mechanics, strong plot lines fueled by ideologies, and philosophies taken to their extreme.  I'm excited.  We're all excited.  But that's not what I"m talking about today in this post.  What I'm going to talk about is how they did it so cleverly.

Bioshock Infinite's ending was a beautifully perfect way to cap off the story.  In addition it gave plenty of creative freedom to allow for entirely new worlds.  Rapture and Columbia are just the beginning, at least that's what Infinite's ending promises.  However it does not come right out and say this.  It blends the message smoothly into the ending, subtle and sweet.  Now lets compare this to another game that did the same marketing ploy except in a way that I don't find as smooth or lovely, Borderlands 2.

At the end of Borderlands 2, they show the locations of a bunch of vaults that have opened up on a bunch of other planets.  They give no doubt in any player's mind that they're going to stop making Borderlands games any time soon.  Which is fine.  I love the Borderlands games.  However the way they presented it just didn't feel right.  It rubbed me the wrong way somehow.  It was too obvious, too in your face about how they were going to do more and more and more.  I don't know maybe it's just me,  but Borderlands 3 seemed like a given after the extreme success of Borderlands 1 and 2, did they really need to throw out that they have plans for an indefinite number of games in such a blunt manner?

I think the key difference between these two games is just in how they approached the same marketing ploy.  One was subtle and you may have even missed that they were advertising, the other was blunt and in your face about making sure you knew there were plenty of games to come after the fact.  A wise man once said the best marketing ploy is the one that no one notices, because if you did everything right it will be as if you did nothing at all.

Thanks for reading!  As always, comments and sharing is appreciated!  If you have any games you'd like me to review or topics you'd like me to discuss, post em in the comments!

Gamer out.

Review: Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

This one has been a long time coming.  My friend got this for me around Christmas time and I told him I would review it as soon as I beat it.  Which is a deal I actually have ongoing.  If there is a game you would like me to review and I do own it, you can request it and I'll get right on doing so.  If I don't own it, you can send it my way and I shall drop what I'm currently playing for fun to get through it for a review.  But anyway on to Bloodlines.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (here on out referred to as Bloodlines) is a marvelous RPG from Troika Games, published by Activision.  Based off of the World of Darkness Live Action Roleplay and tabletop system, Bloodlines has you playing as a vampire in the World of Darkness universe.  The whole idea of the World of Darkness system is that you get to play as the things that go bump in the night, you are the monster and loving it.

The Tremere clan.  Blood sorcerers. 

As far as character creation goes, Bloodlines gives you plenty of options.  There are seven "clans", or races, of vampire that you can choose from.  Each has it's own strengths and weaknesses and special abilities that they can employ.  Nosferatu are sneaky and physically powerful and can gain more blood from animals than other clans can, however they are physically disfigured and therefore cannot improve their looks or have any skill in seduction.  Tremere have special access to blood magic.  Toreadors are socialites and are amazing at talking their way through situations.  Malkavians are plain crazy and are one of the most interesting clans to play (apparently there is literally a point where you can talk to a stop sign).  However if you don't know anything about any of them and just want to dive right into the game, there is an option to take a personality test that will generate a character based on your answers. The amount of replay value that this system provides is incredible.  Each clan is completely unique in terms of how they play and the experience you will have by playing as them.  In addition to gameplay mechanics being different for each, characters in the story will respond differently to your character depending on what clan you play as.

 Which brings us around to the story.  The story is fantastic.  It's engaging, rich, and actually makes you think about what you say to various NPCs.  There is a lot of politics going on in Bloodlines between the clans, and if you want to stay ahead you need to be careful about what you say and to who you say it.  Dialogue and your actions throughout the game will change the ending, but only in the sense of what options are available to you.  Otherwise it is still a push button to choose ending, which honestly is fine for this game.

Vampires DO NOT like fire.

So the story is good, what about the gameplay?  Gameplay is great.  The game can be played in first or third person, though sometimes it forces you into one or the other, namely first person when using a gun or other ranged weapon and third when using a melee weapon.  Honestly what I love the most about this game's gameplay is the fact that there is so much variety to it.  One level you may be busting in and knocking heads together and defending a location, another level may play out like a survival horror experience.  Then you're on to an investigation to track down a serial killer, then you need to manipulate someone into doing what your quest giver wants, then you may be off to steal an artifact without being noticed and without killing anyone.  This game is all over the map in terms of mission types.  But the great part is that it does all of them very well.  The variety does not affect the quality of each experience.  In addition, there is no set way to do each mission.  You could stealth your way through, talk your way through, even just bust in and start shooting.  It's up to you on how to do it, and the game will reward you for going the extra mile and finding creative ways to do missions and completing side objectives.  This adds even further replay value to the experience, testing out all the different ways you could go about doing a mission.

Blood sorcery is fun.  

In more specific terms of gameplay, most of the mechanics work really well in bloodlines.  Sneaking can actually be effective and the HUD provides a meter that tells you how likely you are to be spotted if you haven't been already.  Powers are fun and effective, having everything from mind control, to invisibility, to summoning spectral animals, to supernatural strength, to animal forms, even blood magic.  Everything has a purpose and everything works well, and as your powers and stats increase you really feel the change and the power growing.  Which brings me to character advancement.  Bloodlines uses a point buy system instead of the traditional level up system of most RPGs.  Each mission will give you experience points which you can then spend on improving stats, skills, or special powers.  You can also spend these points whenever you like, so if you encounter a challenge that you need more sneak for, or maybe need to be stronger, or more persuasive, or you just can't afford that new gun you want and need some more bartering, or can't quite open that lock, you can spend some points that you have lying around to get you past the challenge.  In addition to this we have the blood system.  Everything in Bloodlines revolves around blood.  You need blood to fuel your powers and you need blood to quickly recover health.  You can get blood by drinking from blood packs or directly feeding on humans or rats (though rats are not very effective, unless you're a nosferatu).  To feed on someone you can grab them, sink your fangs in, and have at it.  But if you want to do it this way you have to be very careful that you do it when no one else is around.  There is a system in place called the masquerade system.  If you are seen doing vampiric things outside of a combat zone, such as feeding or using obvious powers, you will violate the masquerade.  Each time you violate the masquerade, the world becomes a bit more dangerous.  Hunters will start coming after you and such which is a bad time for all involved.  You can get masquerade violations back by doing certain quests.  If you're in a combat zone, you're not at risk of violating the masquerade ever so go nuts.  However, if you really need blood and have a high enough seduction, you can seduce people to feed on them.  There is a good reason for all this feeding outside of the fact that you need blood for your powers.  If your blood drops to really low points, you risk going into a frenzy.  When you're frenzied, you lose control of your character entirely and an AI takes over that will fight and attempt to feed at all costs.  As it should sound, frenzy is really bad.  But you can avoid it by having a high humanity.  Humanity reduces the risk of frenzy, and the lower your humanity the greater the risk of frenzy.  You can get humanity from certain quests where you do "good" things for people, but you can lose humanity by killing people outside of combat zones and doing other "bad" things.  It sounds like a lot to keep track of, but it is relatively easy to do so and adds up to a very unique and enjoyable experience.

However, while this game may be excellent, there are some aspects that are not so excellent.  The main thing is combat.  The combat is...well lets just say it's pretty bad.  The gunplay is loose and iffy.  It doesn't really have a satisfying punch to it and gunfights turn out to be either you popping up out of cover to fire off a single shot, hope you hit, and drop back down before you get return fire to the face, or running backwards trying to fruitlessly hit an annoyingly fast melee combatant who will drop your health like a rock if he gets within striking distance.  Melee combat isn't much better.  If you're in melee combat you're already right up in an enemy's face, giving them an easy target to go for.  If you're going for ranged opponents they will just keep running away and unloading into you, making your health drop quite significantly before you can get a hit in.  The best you can hope for is to knock them over as part of your three hit combo and keep wailing on them and chaining knockdowns together.  In addition, the melee combat does not have much variety.  It pretty much boils down to mashing the attack button and hoping you can knock your opponent over.  The developers tried to mix it up by saying that you do different stuff if you hold down a movement key while doing your attacks, but they just feel like animation variations on the same three hit combo.  Overall, combat pretty much just boils down to exploiting the system as much as possible.

All in all, this game is amazing.  I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs or the World of Darkness as a tabletop/LARP.  Actually, I would recommend this game to just about everyone, it has a little something for all gamers.  The only people I could think to not recommend this to would be to people who would get impatient with the less than stellar combat and might give up easily from some of the problems this can cause.

As always, thanks for reading!  Leave a comment on your way out and if you'd like me to review a game or discuss a topic let me know in the comments!

Gamer out.

To the Table: Tabletop RPGs and Videogames

Sorry guys it has been a long while since I posted last.  Various things have barred me posting including final exams, Christmas, and New Years.  But now I am back and bringing you more discussions and reviews.  And for my first post of the new year I have a discussion about something near and dear to me: tabletop RPGs and how they relate to video-games.

So for those of you who don't know what a tabletop RPG is I'll refer you to the image at the top of the post.  Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most popular and well known tabletop RPGs in existence, so if you know about that then you know what a tabletop RPG is.  For those of you who don't know what that is I'll give a brief explanation.  A tabletop RPG is sort of a mash up of board game, RPG, and improv acting.   Players create characters with stats, abilities, equipment, etc and play through a story created by another person known as the GM, or Game Master. Players use dice to determine if their character succeeds in a task, varying from spotting things to picking locks to hitting and doing damage in combat.  If it sounds familiar it should, a tabletop is very similar to video-game RPGs.

However there is a key difference: tabletops are a tad more free form and loose in terms of what you can do in game.  See in a video-game you're sort of locked in in terms of how much interactivity there is with the world.  The game developers determine what all you can do in game and you can't do much else.  In a tabletop the only limit is what you can imagine and what the dice allow you to do.  So if you are interested in video-games it is not too much of a jump to try tabletop RPGs and you would most likely find them highly enjoyable.  But now on to the real topic of this post: how tabletop RPGs relate to video-games.

There is a surprisingly large number of video-games that are influenced by or directly made using the mechanics of tabletop RPGs.  Many of them are regarded as classics in the video-game industry.  I'll name a few: Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Shadowrun for the SNES, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption, and the more recent Neverwinter and Shadowrun Returns.  All of these are based off varying tabletop systems and all are quite good games.  The video-game industry has a surprisingly long and lasting history with making tabletops into video-games.  There is good reason for this.  Tabletop RPGs provide developers with a world to work with and mechanics to translate into the game.  With these pieces already worked out the developers can just tell their story.

With these factors in mind, the tabletop industry makes a perfect wealth of source material for making video-games.  So the real question is why don't developers take advantage of this more?  They used to do it all the time.  There are tons of old Dungeons & Dragons based games and while games based off Vampire The Masquerade are few they are amazing.  But these are just a few of the vast number of tabletops in existence.  Tabletops can range from being high fantasy to dark horror to cyberpunk to steampunk to action/adventure to just plain old storytelling.  There is such a wide variety of tabletop systems that you could probably find a tabletop system for any sort of video-game you would like to do.  In fact there are tons of tabletop systems I would love to see made into video-games.

But this is also a two way street.  You could just as easily turn a video-game into a tabletop system and it would be gloriously fun.  It has been done before.  There is a final fantasy tabletop system in existence.  There is also a Pokemon tabletop that has been made and is quite fun.  There are not really any others that I know of, but there are plenty of video-games that I would love to see be made into tabletops.  For example, one of the DLCs for Borderlands 2 is basically a giant parody of Dungeons & Dragons, in which they made up their own tabletop system called Bunkers and Badasses.  That would be a fun tabletop to play!  And it could easily be done. Or how about a Legend of Zelda tabletop RPG?  Exploring and creating your own stories in Hyrule?  Playing as a goron, or a kokiri villager, or a Zora?  There are so many possibilities for turning video-games into tabletops.  In fact, if anyone could make these tabletops I would be extremely excited to playtest them.

In short, tabletops and video-games are very closely related.  They are both highly interactive mediums of storytelling and can mix between each other very easily.  Indeed, making more video-games based off of tabletops and more tabletops based off of video-games is a practice that should be encouraged and supported as much as possible.  As gamers it is our job to show what we want more of by showing our support and effort in making these things happen.

Thanks for reading as always.  I look forward to another year of discussion and review.  As always leave a comment in the posts and requests for reviews and topics of discussion are always appreciated.  Leave a comment about games that you think would make great tabletops or tabletops that you think would make great games!

Gamer out.