Remake II: Return of the Nostalgia

So X-COM: Enemy Unknown is out and we've all been playing it. We all know that *spoilers* it's good. So let's skip that part.

I played the first one back in 1994, and frankly it terrified me. It's perhaps not the exact word for it but it's suitable enough. It was dark, both in tone and colour, with shadows and areas hidden from sight where anything could be hiding - this felt like such a departure from most of the stuff people where doing at the time that it stuck in my mind. I can't recall anything gripping my attention at much until Carmageddon in 1997. I'm sure there were but they don't come to mind.

Remakes and reboots and spiritaul sequels are not new, of course, but it seems as though they are more prevalent each wave and sometimes more dividing.

I'm down with the new Tomb Raider, I've given $100 to the new Carmageddon, X-COM worked out well and is undoubtedly going to lead to more, I still even have/had hopes for the X-COM 3rd-person shooter (whether it ever comes back to life and gets done or not). Let's do this stuff, people. Let it ride. There can be bad results, as there will be with everything people do, and if so then let's learn from those mistakes and make the next one better. If they work out, let's expand on those.

I'm envisioned (and mostly written) masses and masses about this, but cut it to the short version; not everybody will like remakes, preferring the original. Others with welcome new things with open arms. Both are fine and you don't have to yell at the other side if you don't agree with them.

...Paved With Good Intentions

I really should write more.

We all have things we mean to do but don't for some reason or another.
An immediate example is I should be asleep 3 hours ago.

So we've got Dishonored out today, and XCOM is coming in a few days (for those of us outside of North America). I've still to play more Sleeping Dogs and Borderlands 2 and may do some of the tonight, which was kind of my plan for last night but I ended up staying in Minecraft for far longer than planned after thinking up a method of producing a shaped lake with ice, then making the contraption to produce said ice in a sustainable fashion. Which did not work due to some version inconsistencies (our server is a version behind the current which would have allowed the functionality desired). I've barely touched Torchlight II.

There's a long list in my Steam games of similar stories. Sometimes I joke to myself that I'm saving it all for retirement; something to do to pass the days. Then again, will Steam be around? Will the games work with whatever OS we're using? Would the tech be compatible? Would I want to play them, when we'd be plugging the new ones right into our brains?

Eating Flesh Is No Longer Fresh

I think I might be a little done with zombies.

Actually I'm going to engage in some bad writing as I'm making a statement before then immediately contradicting it, because that's maybe not exactly true.

I'm mostly done with zombies.

It had come to be a couple months ago after I'd noticed there was a continued release of things zombie themed and yet there wasn't much excitement to go with them. It's not that I don't appreciate their appeal, of course - they are perhaps one of the few, maybe the only, bad guy that we can all agree on. We can accept that what they do is bad, their motives are bad, there's no compromise or reasoning, nobody is going to be too annoyed if we kill them as they're already dead.

I can't think of anything since Left 4 Dead 2 where I can say I was really interested in zombies, but even then zombies could be replaced by something else and you'd nearly have the same deal. You just need something to shoot at - let's say slime aliens from Dimension F - you'll still have the guns, decisions over which bombs to take and when to use them, and wondering why that one guy it trying to use a first aid kit at 80% during the gauntlet run. It wouldn't be the same, granted, but you get my point.

Then we have The Walking Dead.

I've read some of the graphics novels (yes, I use that term rather than comics, where appropriate) and a little of the TV show but not much. I have planned to go back to them, but again that sense of "ah, yes, zombies again" lodges itself in my "it's not A.D.D. but it might as well be" centre of my delicious, juicy brains. Time passed, as it will do so when you're putting things off for no reason, and soon after The Walking Dead game from TellTale Games appeared I'd checked in with one of my favourite Minecraft video creators for his Let's Play with himself and his wife and I very much dug how it was not so much about the zombies but the people. One Steam Summer Sale later and it was time to get stuck in. I especially like it's altering storyline stemming from your choices in what you say and what you do. A lot of games with decisions to make, I'll not have much interest in going back to and trying out other things, yet with this I was playing through and even in the first few events I'm catching me thinking maybe I should have told somebody to go screw themselves instead of asking them where they got such a swell hat, or wondering what would happen if took the wax lips from the tremendous dangerous-looking yak rather than hypnotising the quarrelsome rhinoceros. Will I go do these things? I'm thinking probably not right away, but I will do at some time, perhaps after the final chapter is out.

I was going to analyse cliches and easy-outs, but it's 3am and I'm done for now. So time for something relaxed...

Discussing discourse

I don't feel right refering to Dear Esther as a game. Not even an interactive story, as there's not any interaction. You walk the path, it will queue narrative. It will sometimes be different narrative, but the destination is the same.

I'd played--er, run throu--WALKED through the original mod years ago and it stuck with me. I was annoyed with the slow walking back then as I still am now, and a few set pieces are a little different than I seem to recall, but the new one didn't seem to resonate with me as much as the original. Was it because the increased fidelity perhaps didn't mesh with the starkness of theme as much as the original version did? Maybe since I knew where it was going it didn't have the same effect as it would have otherwise.

It's still a fine product, mind. I'd be interested in seeing more things in this style as time goes on. I just don't think it's something we'll be seeing much of.