Negative Feedback

Credit of course to the guys at Penny Arcade. Now, I'm all for tradition, but fucking with it is just so much more interesting!

It's funny how a game can have a totally differant play experience despite having the same mechanic. For example, take these two tiles: Blocky and Little Farm. The former is a free to play web game, and the latter takes the same core mechanic, gives it a narrative, some progression elements and asks nicely for you to buy the full version. Hard to tell which one I enjoy more to be honest, sometimes a game that stands strong on it's core needs only to be stripped down to that mechanic and polished for the sake of actually realeasing it for play. The amount of effort put into story, art and extra code almost feels like a waste when I play Little Farm after Blocky. In all honesty, it's a web game, not something I'm going to invest precious couch time in.

In a way, this raises the issue of big budget vs. indie games. Speaking from experience, I have been very disappointed in the titles I've actually dropped fifty bucks on compared to smaller titles that I'll play to meet the same ends as their richer brothers intend to. Maybe the marketing has built them up too much or I'm too indie-biased, but I just cant get into the big budget titles these days. I see that Eschalon was generally spearheaded by one guy and Mass Effect had a multi-million development team. But, I cant even finish the latter because I'm so bored with it, this situation is very unsettling. something is just not right here. The experiences both games offer are differant, granted, but this is just one of the many examples out there.

This week's three games are: Exile/Avernum series, Gomoku, and Warhammer: Dawn of War series

The Exile/Avernum series is a classic computer-style RPG where you lead a band of adventurers through the subterranian depths of Exile. What it lacks in polish, it more than makes up in it's massive scope that can take in the realm of hundreds of hours to finish (the series that is). One of my favourite games to play when killing time on my laptop. Get the demo here.

Gomoku is a strategy board game where the two player's take turns trying to line up 5 stones while blocking their opponent, the same core mechanics as tic-tac-toe (the two are likely historically related). This is a classic example of a solid core mechanic being the sole driving force behind gameplay. Seconds to learn, limitless complexity and the list goes on.

Warhammer: Dawn of War is a series of computer-RTS games adapted from the tabletop version (Warhammer 40,000). The series has a stronger focus on strategy and less on the economics behind the resources (in a less obvious fashion as World in Conflict). It's connection with the tabletop is what gives it such a unique flavour no matter how framilar you are with most RTS games.