| 13/7/06:
Gordon Wee Man My household acquired a new
computer recently so I've been shirking my duties
to catch up with modern gaming. As soon as my
last magazine payment came in you may have
noticed a rumpled and unshaven fedora-wearing
blur streaking through Brisbane to the
Electronic's Boutique in the city centre to buy
the last copy of Half-Life 2.
I've played it
through now, and Episode 1 as well, and I'm not
going to give complete reviews or fawn over the
awesomeness because there have been plenty of
institutions who have already done just that. So
instead I'm just going to talk about one aspect
of the game(s): the characters.
There are few
games indeed that cause me to forge an emotional
attachment with its characters. Prince of Persia:
Sands of Time managed it, and I'm a cissy for
James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2 (although the
rest of the cast can suck on a pyramid-shaped
tailpipe for all I care), but I think Half-Life 2
is the only one to do it so consistently, and
with such depth. Great care has been taken to
make the NPCs seem like humans. They have
lifelike and realistic animations. They talk like
normal people. They have consistent personalities
and behave appropriately to their situations and
surroundings. It's at the point where I really
want them to succeed because they're actually
likeable. I pity Dr. Kleiner as his attempts to
tame a headcrab fall short of the mark. I worry
when Barney shows up with a haggard 5 o'clock
shadow and want to see him take a load off his
feet and have a cup of milky tea.
Even the game's
villain seems to have genuine depth, and does the
things he does out of apparent fine motives
rather than any inherent evilness. All in all,
the NPCs in Half-Life 2 have become so advanced
that it makes it all the more silly that Gordon
Freeman never says anything.
The story
appears to be becoming extremely character-based,
and no matter how much humanity is injected into
the others, the central figure remains this sort
of black hole of a character with literally zero
personality. Gordon Freeman must have once
possessed the ability to speak, surely, or he'd
never have gotten employed at a top secret
research centre. So for him to never say anything
throughout the entire Half-Life series just makes
him seem stubborn. I know you can argue that the
player is supposed to project themselves onto
Freeman, but if that's the case, why give him a
name? A backstory? An iconic appearance? All the
other characters have known him for years, we
can't really project ourselves because Freeman
has a known history and reputation. Hell, he's
the fucking messiah figure for the oppressed
masses.
Half-Life 1 was
just about running and gunning, exploring and
surviving, and most friendly NPCs (a) had the
same face, voice and personality as most people
in the facility and (b) didn't last more than
five minutes before they died from explosive
kneecap death, so Gordon's silence didn't stand
out so much. But now, the expressiveness of all
the other characters in Half-Life 2 emphasise the
silent protagonist, turning proceedings into a
parody of the concept. On several occasions Alyx
Vance tries to lighten things up with a joke,
only for Freeman to respond with grim phlegmatic
silence. What makes that even more frustrating is
that Alyx is quite obviously infatuated, warm for
his form as it were, which absolutely everyone
seems to be aware of (players and NPCs included)
except Gordon himself. All he'd have to do is
make one sign of emotion and the HEV suit would
be off faster than you can say 'don't forget to
reload'. And then she'd be Gordon's girlfriend
and could call him adorable pet names for the
rest of the series. "Shoot that zombie,
would you, pookie muffin?"
Let's get off
this subject before I grow a vagina.
And another
thing, if Freeman had a voice, he could perhaps
have the decency to answer some unspoken
questions the world no doubt has, like where he's
been for the last umpteen years when he could
have been, you know, stopping the human race from
becoming enslaved in the first place. Perhaps he
could have told everyone about the mysterious and
sinister G-man who seems to be manipulating
events and whom only Freeman could possibly know
anything about. But no, he's just too shy to let
other people in on what could be critical
intelligence. At the very least he could have
written it down.
I guess it's too
late to give Freeman a personality now he's been
categorised for so long as a silent protagonist.
What perplexes me, though, is how the other
characters remain enthusiastic about things with
Gordon in the room. You know how it is; you're
together with a few friends having a chat and a
drink, but there's always one guy who's
determined to be miserable. He never joins in the
conversation, just sits there, arms folded. Soon
his presence causes the talk to die down and
everyone just fidgets in the awkward silence,
hoping to God that the fucker will leave. He's
like that guy from that one episode of Father
Ted.
But no. Freeman
comes in and everyone's all like "IT'S
GORDON FREEMAN!!", stopping just short of
letting off party poppers. Then everyone's
talking to him really earnestly and inviting him
to borrow their super-advanced guns or play with
their robot buddies. All I can say is that Gordon
Freeman either has the most expressive face in
the world or secretes some kind of
pleasure-inducing pheromone from his beard.
- Yahtzee
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5/7/06:
Special School
Alright lads,
who's for some Trilby's Notes Special Edition
action? All the fun of Trilby's Notes, with the
following extra features:
- Author
commentary as per usual!
- Extended ending sequence!
- Full soundtrack in midi format, with composer
notes and prototype tracks!
- Books of Chzo in word format, with additional
chapters!
- That's it. You need more?
As per usual
just donate at least five dollars to
my Paypal account and specify that you want the
Trilby's Notes Special Edition, and I'll supply a
download URL. But don't be naughty and give it to
other people because I'll change it whenever I
remember.
Oh, and those
boring cheapskates who are stuck with the plain
jane free version can also now download a new
version, which fixes the wine bottle bug and
Mbouta walking around when not appropriate bug.
Roushi has already updated his link so if you
have a mirror then please update yours.
Addendum
7/7/06: The new issue of Hyper out now
has an article by me in it. Buy it if you want to
read an article of mine. You know, the sort of
thing you don't get on this website anymore.
- Yahtzee
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3/7/06:
The Two-Faced Thief
I'm currently
working on a Special Edition of Trilby's Notes
while I recuperate in preparation for starting on
the last game of the series, and hopefully to
bring some money in so I can buy food for my tum,
and it occurred to me that I've been seriously
neglecting my website with all this adventure
game shit. So I thought I'd kill some time in
between writing commentary to do a little update.
For want of a
subject, let's compare the main character sprites
from 5 Days and Trilby's Notes and see just how
much the loveable gentleman rogue Trilby has
evolved.
My, what a
difference four years make. If it weren't for the
hat, the tie and the general aura of unflappable
style you wouldn't believe they were the same
guy. Let's go through the ways Trilby has grown
up.
- 5 Days Trilby
seems to be shaded better, because he was drawn
during the Odysseus Kent period when I was trying
to make my graphics look at least to some degree
professional. TN Trilby is not shaded at all
because he was drawn after the GFW period when I
realised that most people didn't give a toss and
just wanted a fun game.
- In the latter
game Trilby seems to have taken to standing with
his feet further apart than before, indicating an
increase of confidence in his poise and
masculinity. Note also that his hair no longer
covers his ears. This cocky fellow feels he has
nothing to hide.
- Conversely,
though, he doesn't shine his shoes as well as he
did in 5 Days. Perhaps all that research into
John DeFoe he had to do left him little time for
personal grooming, and the walk through the
forest to the hotel can't have helped his
footwear any.
- The healthy
skin tone and square jaw in DeFoe Manor is
replaced in the Clanbronwyn Hotel with a much
weaker chin and paler complexion. You see this is
an older, more troubled Trilby, less inclined to
sneer confidently in the face of danger. And his
face may be thinner because he decided to omit
pies from his diet. Pies reminded him too much of
the Welder.
- I can't decide
in which game he looks more physically fit. He's
definitely chunkier on the left, but that could
just be because he's wearing baggier clothes. His
shoulders seem to be broader in Notes and he
found a better tailor, one who understands the
importance of darker greys when you're a
shadow-creeping master cat burglar.
- In doffing his
blazer for his second game Trilby confirms the
hint given in the first game that he wears a
black waistcoat. Any old twit seems to be able to
wear a suit these days but waistcoats have always
been the mainstay of STYLE. And snooker players.
- It's hard to
tell with this resolution but in 5 Days Trilby's
tie seems to be a more vibrant blue. In Notes
it's become a bit more bland and grey. GREY LIKE
HIS SOUL.
- And most
notably of all, Trilby seems to have finally
tracked down an actual trilby hat to wear by the
time of Notes, rather than in 5 Days when he had
to make do with a blob of papier mache sitting on
a plate.
I hope you
enjoyed this little voyage of discovery. And I
hope you're saving up your pocket money for the
special edition. Original soundtrack, commentary,
some of the Books of Chzo in a convenient text
document and maybe some other stuff? Hells yeah!
- Yahtzee
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26/6/06:
Trilby Is Not A Girl's Name
OK, I guess I'm
ready to release my new game now. Click on the
nice picture below to go to the page I set up for
it.
Click here you big twat!
So,
the game's called Trilby's Notes,
so all those clever people who figured out that
all the screenshot filenames began with TN were
right - those were the game initials. It's a
direct sequel to 5 Days A Stranger set four years later,
and telling the story of how Trilby re-acquired
the idol of John DeFoe prior to launching it into
space prior to 7 Days A Skeptic.
Here's
the big thing, though: the game uses a text
parser. Don't hit me. I made it use a text parser
for several reasons: (A) because the game is
presented as Trilby's written account of the
event, so typing commands feels like you're
typing up the document or something, (B) as an
homage to the AGI and SCI0 Sierra games of
yesteryear, and (C) because I've never done a
text parser game with AGS before. I had my
testers try out the parser exhaustively so
hopefully it's somewhat intuitive.
This
is also an opportunity to expand the X Days A
Sauerkraut storyline. John DeFoe is all very well
but I wanted to tell something slightly more
epic, so I'm trying to work what's already
happened in 5DAS and 7DAS into a larger plot.
This game is intended to set up one more sequel
where hopefully all the loose ends will be tied
up, but don't expect it any time soon. I'll
probably do it, I just don't know when.
Oh
yes, and this was also in answer to all those
people who wrote asking if I'd do another game
with Trilby in it. The character seems to be
quite popular. Hopefully you'll like him in this
game with his more casual, blazer-less look and
less ugly hat.
OK,
here's the link to the page
again. If you're impatient, here also are direct
links to the file: Mirror 1 Mirror 2
- Yahtzee
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21/6/06:
Are You Still Here? Addendum
Well, I've
finished the game, I'm just waiting on my music
guy. And then I have to get some people to test
it and I've got no idea at this point who I'm
going to request that service from UPDATE
YES I DO YES I DO TESTING HAS BEGUN PLEASE STOP
VOLUNTEERING NOW
So while we're
waiting, I figured I'd do a Chris & Trilby comic and post another
screenshot to keep tongues wagging.
- Yahtzee
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17/6/06:
Are You Still Here?
Yeah, I haven't
updated in a while. What are you going to do
about it, motherfucker? Oh yeah, you know your
place.
I've been busy
working on another free adventure game for you
ungrateful jerks, if you must know. Here's a
sneaky peaky.
How
much longer will I be working on it? I dunno.
I've just about finished the basic game but
there's a lot of tweaking and teasing to do
before I release it. I'm also waiting on a guy
who's doing some original music for me. That's
right, I have exhausted RPG Maker. Give me a few
more weeks. A month at the most.
- Yahtzee
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3/6/06:
Some Shit About Buses
Well, the latest
incarnation of Chris and Trilby has three strips,
let's hope I can keep the pace up. Meanwhile, in
another world, another universe, I wrote some
shitty essay about hailing buses. Here it is.
- Yahtzee
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24/5/06:
The Cruel March Of Time
Today marks the
completion of my twenty-third year on this foetid
planet. Who would have thought I'd make it this
long without dying of mercury poisoning or
swallowing my own tongue or something like that.
To celebrate this occasion, I'm trying one more
time to get into Chris and Trilby again. New strip is up,
as you may have already noticed. I put it up last
night when I was very tired, so it may be a bit
weird.
If you'd like to
get me a present for my birthday, feel free to send me money and tell me what to buy
with it, so I can blow you off and use it to buy
hats instead.
- Yahtzee
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19/5/06:
BBC Poo
For want of
something to write about, I figured I'd do that
thing again where I take the piss out of the
first five stories on a popular news site. After
all, it's pretty good for sharpening my satirical
improv skills, and it's completely no fun at all
for the reader, so I can be sure I won't be
nagged about bandwidth costs anytime soon.
Today I'll be
using the BBC News website, to give my satire a
much needed injection of class. I'd just like to
clarify that, as I write this, I have absolutely
no idea what'll be up there and once I've
finished I will do very little editing. You're
getting pure unfiltered me here, ladies and
gentlemen. I'm kind of like nicotine in that when
I'm pure and unfiltered I'm one of the deadliest
poisons known to man.
Let's a-go!
Doubts
over Iran nuclear capacity
My god, I
thought, glancing at the headline. Could it
really be that someone with half an ounce of
sense is joining in the whole middle east war
fiasco? Is America finally going to be told to
stop being so bloody stupid and put their toy
soldiers back in the box before someone trips
over them? But no. The story says that Iran's
nuclear programme isn't very advanced because
they had to borrow some bombmaking gear from
China. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's kind
of like saying 'Hey, that gun toting madman in
the mailroom is nothing to worry about! He had to
borrow his guns from his friend! How dangerous
can he be?' I could be completely misinterpreting
this. I don't keep up with world events. My idea
of news is finding a dead possum on the street
outside my house.
CIA
nominee defends wiretapping
Oh here we
fucking go. 'How could you possibly hold petty
privacy issues over SECURITY for all the little
puppy dogs and bunny rabbits? They might drop a
bomb on a petting zoo tomorrow and maybe we could
have prevented it by listening in on people we
don't like and then won't you feel stupid.' Of
course, they clarify that they will only wiretap
people suspected of terrorism, but something
tells me you can get suspected of terrorism these
days by brushing past a muslim on the Subway or
getting sand in your shoes. God damn it, I spent
a year drawing a webcomic about a cartoon
terrorist, do I have an FBI file? Is this why my
new neighbour across the street never leaves his
black unmarked van? All this shit probably
creates more terrorists than it foils. I know if
I found a boom mike in my flower bed I'd feel
like blowing something up too.
Tuna
fish said to be inscribed with Koranic verse goes
missing
Okay, I had to
go over this one a few times. Here's the idea as
I see it: a fish with scales that appear to have
naturally formed into a verse from the Koran was
caught in Mombasa, and now some blighter has
pinched it. Frankly, I'm relieved. Life with a
magic preacher fish is a whole lot more
complicated than life without. Maybe now we can
all get back to checking the pavement for oil
stains shaped like the Madonna or something.
I hate these
sorts of miracles, 'cos they always get a lot of
coverage and all the religious types get really
excited about it, but no-one really has the balls
to bring up all the ten million billion other
fish that get caught every year and that don't
come free with the teachings of the prophet. If
God's so great, why doesn't he scribble all over
every single fish in the world? Use them to
serialise Bible 2 or confirm how much he hates
fags? If Jesus helped little Timmy survive
toenail cancer, why couldn't he have gotten off
his fat hairy arse to cure everyone else in the
ward? Or for that matter, everyone else in the
universe? If you ask me, finding words on a fish
is about as exciting as finding a joke on your
lolly stick.
Saddam
Hussein's latest 'novel' goes on sale in Tokyo
Oh, so that's
why I could never get a novel published. I
thought it was just not up to standard or
something, but it seems all I had to do was kill
roughly everyone I've ever met and then they'd be
falling over themselves to deliver publishing
contracts in the scented arse cracks of beautiful
virgins. And I like the way the headline writer
at the BBC website put inverted commas around the
word 'novel', I guess he's a touch bitter too.
I'm pretty sure he wasn't going through his
Creative Writing course at university thinking
'someday, I'll be the best BBC website headline
writer ever!'
Apparently this
'novel' is about a tribe ousting an invasion
force. Given that Saddam finished it just one day
before he fled Baghdad that's kind of laughable.
Like David Icke writing a book about how not to
be a complete pillock.
Junk
food banned in school meals
In their
continuing quest to (a) place government control
on every single aspect of everyday life and (b)
suck what little fun remains from childhood, the
UK Ministry of Education has banned unhealthy
food at school dinners. If school meals are still
anything like how they were in my day, presumably
the only thing left will be the plastic tray, and
that's the kind of thing that can get stuck in
your teeth.
I wonder,
though, is this just a general guideline schools
have to follow, or is feeding junk food to kids
completely criminalised? Like, could a teacher or
dinner lady hypothetically be sent to jail for
giving a schoolboy a Chewit? Could the headmaster
of a boarding school go down if Chubby Yelvertoft
from form 12A sneaks a bag of lard into his dorm
room and feasts on it late at night? It strikes
me that that is a system the children could very
easily abuse. "Oh, you're giving me a D- for
this assignment, sir? Perhaps if I suck on this
Twix for a while you could be persuaded
otherwise."
- Yahtzee
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10/5/06:
Byond Help
Lately I've been
messing around with Byond a lot. It's a program, or more
accurately a community, where people make a
variety of simple tile based multiplayer games.
I'm being drawn more to the RPG side of things,
where I spend a lot of time messing around on a
game called Space Station 13 where I get to run
around in a blue jumpsuit asking where everybody
is and how to take my backpack off until I get
bitten by a rabid monkey and killed.
Byond has a
built-in developer environment so pretty much
anyone can make games with it. Of course, to do
that requires learning how to, and all the fiddly
programmey bits, something I really cannot be
arsed to do. So I figured I'd just write up some
ideas for games and maybe someone else will do
all the hard work I can later take credit for.
Pride
and Prejudice: The Game
This is a pretty
simple one. The game is set in a large country
mansion. Half the players are the delectable
Bennett sisters and the other half are handsome
male suitors. The object of the game is to
successfully woo someone with your special
'wooing sticks' and create a successful marriage
that creates happiness for both families. But oh
no! One of the male suitors is assigned the role
of 'Cad', whose objective is to elope with the
most gullible sister and take off to a London
slum in order to decimate the Social Rank score
of her and her entire family. And then her mum
has hysterics or something. The advantage of this
game is that you can flirt with the people who
are playing girls with a reasonable degree of
certainty that they are girls in real life. And
come to think of it, you can flirt with the
people playing men also with a reasonable degree
of certainty that they are girls in real life.
Because you see no boy will play this while they
still have both goolies.
One True
God
Each player
takes control of a wandering nomadic warrior
tribe in a large desert section of Ancient
Arabia. At the start of each round one of the
players is told that his tribe worships the One
True God, and must crush the peaceful unbelievers
and heretics who dare to share a desert with
them. The joke being of course that in actuality
all the players are told that they worship the
One True God and the game spirals into an all-out
war for supremacy. In the end everyone gets wiped
out by the Christians and the entire squabble is
rendered ultimately meaningless. The final joke
comes when the players come up to heaven and find
that all their gods were the same god wearing a
variety of different moustaches, who now points
and laughs at them.
Hire
Stephen Fry
Each player
takes the role of an American film producer who
sneaks into Stephen Fry's medieval castle in
order to attempt to convince him to take a role
in their new American-produced but English-themed
blockbuster movie. Dig up treasure in his back
garden to pay him an enormous fee! Fawn
obsequiously over his well-known brand of awkward
upper class Britishness! Or just whack him over
the head with your special hiring stick and
bundle him into a sack! It's no holds barred in
your quest to bring a small amount of imagined
class to a typical Hollywood excretion. The
player taking the role of Stephen Fry gets to
choose between three available 'attitudes', and
the other players have to figure out which one he
picked. The attitudes are 'Only Does Comedy',
'Moving Into Straight Acting' or 'Stephen Fry Is
Secretly A Mass Murdering Sex Fiend'.
- Yahtzee
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30/4/06:
The Happy Prince
Whoa, an update!
With some actual content! Wonders never cease
here at Fully Ramblomatic!
Yeah... been
kind of busy with work, and in the pursuit of
work, lately, to update the site much. And yes,
now I'm a gaming journalist, playing video games
all day counts as work. Speaking of, I've got
something a bit high concept for you today. An
article in which I use the hilariously angsty
names of combat moves from the latter two Prince
of Persia games as titles for emo poetry.
Prince of Persia: Emo
Warrior
When the words
are blue and underlined, that means you can click
on them. So stop reading this bit and check out
the article.
- Yahtzee
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