TOM FRANCIS
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Showing Heat Signature At Fantastic Arcade And EGX

I’ve been away the last two weeks, showing Heat Signature first at Fantastic Arcade in Austin, then at EGX in London. I’ll show you what that all looked like below, but first I’ll embed my EGX talk so you can play that and look at the photos during the boring bits. From about 5 minutes in, you can see Heat Signature with some of the new art and music. Continued

Should I Hit The Weak Spot For Massive Damage Now?

Well, there drains my enthusiasm for the Wii. The footage of the actual games for it is deflating. Okay, those games were not handpicked to be ones I might like, but what kills me is that Red Whatever is clearly the sword-fighting game hinted at by that first Revolution teaser. And it looks simplistic, abstracted, toothless, phoned-in. I’d hoped the elegance of the controller would allow for more elegant games, but I think I missed Nintendo’s point. It’s just about making it intuitive, not about making it more precise or adding a dimension. In fact, the various reticules the motion sensor controls in those games lurch around just like a thumbstick. One was blasty and repetitive, one was basic and limited, and one looked like Virtua freaking Cop.

Still, I’m optimistic about the vegetable-chopping game.

Shopstorm, A Spelunky Story

I’m so amazingly goddamn rich. A string of gold-studded and jewel-encrusted Mine levels led straight into the Jungle, where two levels in a row left a Bone Idol trivially close to the exit. I barely had to nudge them to get out $40,000 richer, long before the ghost they trigger showed up. And now I’ve found the Black Market. Continued

Seriously, Buy Braid

Braid is a Mario clone with a time-rewinding gimmick that lets you go back as far as you like to rectify any mistakes. Actually, scratch that.

Braid is an homage to Mario that uses the reversal of time as a central game mechanic to remove the frustrations of platform gaming. Well, no.

Braid is puzzle game that starts from the basic concepts of Mario – most prominently jumping on enemies’ heads – but uses this merely as the basic medium for puzzles that require you to manipulate the flow of time.

And although in its 1st chapter this only amounts to reversing time to correct mistakes, from the 2nd chapter onwards you encounter enemies and objects that don’t go back to how they were when you rewind everything else. On the one hand, these elements are harder to deal with because they keep on going while you’re backtracking.

Braid is a platform puzzler in which you have the power to reverse time, but each of its six chapters interferes with, subverts or adds to this ability to completely reinvent the way you play.

On the other, it allows you manipulate how they synch up with the rest of the world, which actually gives you greater control over them. If there’s a rewind-immune door, for example, you can use up a key unlocking it, then rewind time to before you did so. The door will stay open, but you won’t have used up the key.

 

The 3rd chapter links the flow of time to your position in space, so you have to keep moving to the right for time to progress. If you move to the left, time goes backwards. While you’re standing still, the whole world is frozen. This is madness, because it means that if a patrolling monster is in your way as you climb up a ladder, you can’t wait for him to move out of the way. He will always be at that point in time when you’re at that point in space.

 

The 4th chapter allows you to use your rewind ability to co-operate with another copy of yourself. Yeah, the copy is created when you stop rewinding: he runs off and does what you did the first time, while you’re free to do something different simultaneously. Exactly. So if a switch needs to be held to keep a door open, go and hold it, then rewind time and walk over to the door… …and Mr Unoriginal will run off obediently and pull the switch just like you did.

One time I had to put this guy into position to pull a switch that wouldn’t be there until he came to replay my actions. So when I was standing where the switch would be, I just hammered the Use button to make sure my copy would get it. Then when I rewound and stood on the platform it was supposed to raise, the thing just gibbered spastically up and down – that idiot was hammering his Use button, and each press was reversing the lift’s direction. Dick.

The 5th chapter lets you drop a ring that slows time intensely for things near to it, and slightly for those further away.

With it, you can re-synchronise every clockwork element of Braid’s complex levels.

It’s the most

Flexible

Your toolset gets.

There’s one puzzle where three or four of us discovered we’d all approached it in different ways.

Mine involved killing myself over and over again by repeatedly headbutting monsters in the ass to keep them locked up in a cubby hole until I was ready to kill them.

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Serenity

The following piece is bristling with devastating spoilers, so only continue if you’ve already seen it or don’t intend to.

Opera is rubbish. Space opera is only mildly better. No-one turns out to be anyone’s father in Serenity; royalty are not involved. There isn’t even a struggle between good and evil, and it has characters instead of charicatures. That, vaguely, is why it’s better than Star Wars.

I’m sorry, I love sci-fi, I happily endure the trashy bits and the awful acting, and lightsabers are awesome; but ultimately, I like things that are actually good. I prefer to genuinely enjoy something than keep my tongue in my cheek. Specifically, it was when I was crying, laughing and biting my fist at the same time that I decided Serenity is better than everything else.

The crying bit was the only one that owed itself partially to the preceding series – no-one could watch the film and not like Wash by that point, but for Firefly fans he’s an old friend, and his loss is absolutely wrenching; all the more so for being completely unexpected (sorry, people who ignore spoiler warnings). Usually when a character dies on-screen I’m praying we’re not going to be insulted by some flimsy device to bring them back or pretend it didn’t happen – revealing it to be a cheap trick to toy with an emotional involvement it never earned in the first place. This was the first time I was hoping for one of those, however dumb – it was the first time I’ve cared more about the character than the film itself.

Probably the most audacious part of Wash’s death isn’t the permanent loss of by far the best character, it’s that you’re laughing when it happens. If the surprise death in LA Confidential is jarringly sudden, it pales in comparison to this. Wash dies mid-gag – a good gag at that – and immediately after doing something brilliant. It’s cruel, but it’s not callous or cynical writing – it’s an acknowledgement that main characters don’t automatically get fifteen seconds of extra life after fatal incidents, that they don’t always go out sacrificing themselves, that the timing isn’t predictable. Violent death is quick and horrible.

There’s barely a minute’s grace before the jokes start again. It ought to feel incongruous, but then the humour was never flippant to begin with – most of the jokes revolve around the fact that they’re all going to die almost immediately. It was always a diversionary device for the characters with the funniest lines, so it’s never more appropriate than in the wake of a tragedy. As ever, it’s Wash’s inherent reasonableness and Jayne’s nihilistically pragmatic approach to machoism that compete for the most laughs, and you have to wonder again why no other sci-fi is anything like this funny.

The tension – the fist-biting bit of my emotional cocktail – is partly down to the stepping up of the scale of the story. Firefly was always about a bunch of fugitives trying to stay off the radar and make money; Serenity is the first time their story has spilled over into something affecting the whole universe. The personal scale of Firefly’s plots was part of its charm, but Serenity proves that a plot which connects that to the truly epic can be even more seductive. And the perfect link between the two has been very carefully set up throughout the series: River. It always made it clear that she was significant in some way, finally discovering this significance – and its magnitude – brings Serenity’s universe into focus.

The Alliance isn’t cosmetically unlike Star Wars’ Empire, but the context is crucial – in Serenity, the Rebellion’s already been quashed. There’s no war, if you don’t like them you just have to stay the hell away from anything resembling quality of life. And though the Alliance is the bad guy, it’s not the only one, and in the intro to Serenity you actually get their perspective (and it’s not that much less reasonable than the outlook of a patriotic country today). When the crew’s ploy forces the Alliance to face their figurative demons literally, both Mal and his nemesis lament the loss of innocent life – an unpleasantness other sci-fi feebly avoids with clones, drones and aliens.

That nemesis is another application of the fierce intelligence with which Serenity hacks away at sci-fi convention. An empire is led by bureaucrats, not a samurai and an electric pensioner. The guy you send to capture a sensitive target is your best black ops man – neither a freelancer nor a government official. Someone who is actually employed to do this sort of thing, and ruthlessly, spectacularly efficient at it. He’s stylish, certainly – the killing of the scientist in his first scene is one of the most macabre screen assassinations in memory – but it’s an elegant application of necessary force rather than a superfluous flourish. And when it comes to killing everyone the targets have ever known, that luxury is dropped without hesitation. Like every good agent, his violence is committed in a passionate belief in the cause, and the same understanding of the necessity of secrets, under-handedness and technically illegal operations that a real spy needs. This guy reassures his victims that they’ve lead a virtuous life before he executes them. He’s not evil, not even cruel, just ruthless.

It’s also brilliantly refreshing to see an a bad guy who, when the girl sneaks up behind him during the hero-nemesis fight, turns round and kicks her really hard. Nemeses are sick of getting knocked out with vases! If you keep doing that shit, women of action films, they’re going to have to hit you quite hard!

It’s not just rare for sci-fi to be this intelligent, it’s rare for something this intelligent to be so emotional. Memento and LA Confidential, though unquestionably cleverer than Serenity and utterly gripping, never put my engagement with the excellent characters to use in making me feel things. Or at least, what they made me feel now seems vague and academic compared to the wonderful trauma of watching Serenity. It has brains, heart, and space zombies.

Seeking A Composer For Tactical Breach Wizards

Update: Applications are now closed! It’ll take some time to go through them all.

Update: We’ll continue taking applications for the composer position until noon Pacific Time on Wednesday this week! This link should tell you when that is for you.

Original post:

We’re looking for a composer to handle the music for Tactical Breach Wizards!

• This is a contract position for this project only.
• Remote, paid – let us know your preferred rate. Ask for what’s fair, getting this done cheaply is not a priority for us.
• See below for the scope and nature of the work.
• We expect to be working on the game for at least 1 more year, so that’s the rough time frame for working on this.

We don’t care about years of experience or prestige of prior projects, all we need is to hear some of your existing work – whether it’s personal or professional. You don’t need to have worked in games before – the game-specific concerns are outlined here so you can judge if they’re gonna be a problem.

Instructions for applying are at the bottom of this post, but first I’ll give as much info as I can about the job: Continued

Section 8, District 9, Station 10

Is a sci-fi multiplayer shooter out this week, extremely like Battlefield 2142. Battlefield 2142 was awesome, and so is this. You literally dive into the battlefield from orbit, with no parachute, then pound each other with raucous guns and squabble over objectives. Continued

Seat Quest 2010: The Return: Origins

Two weeks before the return flight: four or five bad seats. I don’t book any of them. Continued

Seat Quest 2010: The Lounge

Club World isn’t first class, but it makes it hard to imagine what is. Do their seats go beyond horizontal, into back-breaking reflex angles? Do they face out into the open air, to guarantee three miles of leg room? After the champagne, three course meal and brandy you get in Club World, is there a heroin course? Continued

Seat Quest 2010: The Flight

My first thought on the plane was “Oh man, Club Class on this flight looks just like the lowly World Traveller Plus.” Then, “Oh, that was World Traveller Plus. This is Club Class.” Continued

Scenes From Last Night’s Apocalypse

Six of us piled into Killing Floor. There were no survivors.

Martin is in trouble. This was our first game, before we’d actually found a stable server or invited anyone else to join. We survived the pistol round, albeit with no ammo, then met variously sticky ends out in the dark of the fields. Lesson learned: stay near the light.

The B is in trouble. He actually went on to survive this horror and complete the wave, which meant Martin and I – long since dead – were resurrected for the next.

The B is, once again, in trouble. Being the last man left alive is similar in pressure to Counter-Strike – you know your team are watching you in spectator mode – but more so, since their lives and the continuation of the game hinge on your survival.

This is a type of zombie that seems to have ripped off one of its arms and stitched it to the other, creating a weird sort of double-hand, between which he’s wedged a large blade. Or, you could just hold it.

CloakRaider likes knives. I didn’t realise he, Hypnotoad and Macca had joined us and were watching in spectator mode, until the wave ended and they were able to spawn in the game. We suddenly started doing a lot better with six guns firing.

“Dude, dude, dude, wait up, I wanna show you something.” After most of us had died, Hypnotoad was chased by this thing all around the map, ammoless, about three times, trying to lead him to the other remaining survivor to help.

It doesn’t hold them forever. A lot of good hole-up spots, though, have two main entrances. Welding one shut to deal with the influx from the other works well. It also leads to a tense moment when the first stream is exhausted, and all the remaining specimens are banging against the door, and you have to just wait ten seconds or so for them to breach it before everyone opens fire.

I was dead by this stage, almost certainly from a Flesh Pound.

Far too early to use a grenade, but there were just so many of them, in so small a space.

Oh God Flesh Pound. Flesh Pounds get angry when you shoot them, which makes them ultra-fast. They’re already ultra-deadly and ultra-tough, so this can rapidly ruin your day. I think the idea is for everyone to hold their fire until they’ve all got their main weapons out and fully loaded, then unleash at once. It’s rarely played out that way for me, and most of the ways it has played out involve me getting my flesh pounded by an angry Flesh Pound.

Salt Crust Loaf

I read this recipe, and thought: what if all six seed types were salt? Continued

Round Up Of Contemporary Television Dramas About Two Women Who Switch Identities

There are a lot of these, and I think I’m watching them all. Let me know if I missed one, I will watch basically anything with this concept. Continued

Rock, Paper, Shotgun

From a new gameblog entirely by people I happen to know. It will fail and explode and probably cause a quite serious outbreak of head-cancer, of course, because it’s not PC Gamer – the best and only worthwhile achievement of mankind so far. But still, I have to admit that’s a pretty good opening line for an article entitled Horrible, horrible game still clings to life.

Risk Of Rain: The Huntress Dies A Subtle Death

Made another video with the Huntress in Risk of Rain, this time with audible audio. She’s awesome.