Snakes of Avalon is a new indie point-and-click adventure game in the classic Sierra/LucasArts style. You may have noticed the word “indie” in the previous sentence. This means that the game was produced as a labor of love by a small team for no money.

As is typical for this type of production, its artistic ambitions are much loftier than most commercially produced fare. It takes place in a nuanced world with a rich atmosphere, and it’s about something larger than its plot. As is not typical of this type of production, the technical aspects are very slick.

Let’s start with those technical aspects. The stand-out feature here, without a doubt, is the sound. Sound is the most important, but perhaps least valued, aspect of any medium that includes it. Most people don’t notice if a movie or a video game has good sound, but bad sound can distract the viewer and ruin the entire experience. It’s a relief then that the sound in Snakes of Avalon is crisp and clear. The voice acting is about what you’d expect from a video game, which is to say it’s not perfect, but for a game of this pedigree it’s fantastic.

The sound design is brilliant, taking cues from classic film thrillers to create a feeling of paranoia throughout. But best of all is the music. It’s composed by Thomas Reign, who has some substantial indie game credits on his resume (most notably, to me, is his work for Wadjet Eye Games). Here he provides a jazzy, boozy score that has a hint of intrigue, which enhances and is perfectly in line with the world of the game.

Snakes takes place in one room, a dive bar. The aesthetic is built to reflect this. The bar is a dirty mess of a painting, and its patrons are crudely drawn cartoons. I’m a bit of a design snob and I have to admit that I was turned off by the character designs. This may be an instance where Snakes‘ artistic integrity works against it. There is a reason the characters look unappealing; they’re unappealing characters. But whether that choice was intended to be a reflection of the protagonist’s view of his surroundings or a comment on the sort of folk that frequent dives like the titular Avalon, I worry that the casual viewer wouldn’t stick with the game long enough to realize it. The presentation of the artwork however, like the music, is pristine.

These elements, the sound, and the visuals are used to set up a unique and surprisingly deep world. There’s a sense of dread permeating throughout Snakes. The dirty bar, the dangerous patrons, and the sleazy music all make you uneasy enough, but then the game’s surreal sense of humor and reality challenging plot instill you with a sense of straight up dread. For example, when you look at a particularly ruthless looking woman at the end of the bar, the protagonist remarks “I think it’s a species of mantis.”

Something evil is happening in Snakes, and you’re not completely certain that it’s from our world. I was thrilled then the game went straight up psychological horror, Kafka-style, in its third act, but I found the ending to be a bit too light and silly. The game’s creators cite Hitchcock and “trippy” films as inspiration. That’s easy to believe as the tense atmosphere that it sustains feels more based around the story that’s being told than the gameplay.

The gameplay isn’t forgotten, however. The puzzles have a unique, surreal logic to them. Many of them only make sense if you turn off your brain, which is appropriate for a game that takes place in a world of drunks. I have to admit, however, that this style of puzzle left me wandering aimlessly a number of times. When I finally figured out how to proceed, I was frustrated by the fact that there would have been no way for me to arrive at that solution other than blindly clicking on objects. Again, I understand the artistic reason for this, but I can easily see many players being turned off by it.

My concerns about players not giving Snakes the patience and thought it deserves probably speaks more to the artistic merit of the video game medium than to gamers themselves. Adventure games are often hailed as the best genre for storytelling, but I have often found the stories told, while enjoyable, to be light to a fault. Grim Fandango is probably the only time that I’ve found the story of an adventure game to transcend its gameplay; to be a story worth telling in any medium. So I was very pleased to find that Snakes of Avalon has a rich story with layered themes, and would recommend it to any gamer who might enjoy the same.

You can download Snakes of Avalon for free here

You can view the Snake of Avalon blog here

I usually write a one paragraph review of any movie I watch or video game I play.

In the interest of making this obsessive compulsive behavior productive, I’m starting a feature called Lightning Round Reviews. It will be bursts of short but deadly pixel critiques.

Kirby: Canvas Curse

Nintendo, 2006
Okay, so, the obvious selling point of Canvas Curse is the method with which you control Kirby. In what passes for a storyline in a Kirby game, Kirby has lost his extremities and, now being basically a ball, is stuck in an eternal roll. You use the DS’ stylus to draw rainbow bridges to alter his course and tap on him to attack. That’s a really cute idea, and the reason this game is consistently rated as one of the DS’ best.

I had a hard time with the game at first. Maybe that was personal though; I like to take my time and look around in a video game, and the controls in Canvas Curse dictate that Kirby never stops moving… ever. It can be a bit overwhelming at first, and gives the game a steep learning curve.

Once you get over the novelty of the controls, you’re left with a fairly standard (if not slightly below par) platformer. Only once is the fun concept of this game used playfully; one of the final levels takes place in a zero gravity environment and you have to guide Kirby from the orbit of one tiny planet to another. Had this type of inventive thinking been more prevalent in the game, it could have been a classic. Extra points off for extremely unappealing artwork.

Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars (Director’s Cut)

Ubisoft, 2009
The DS “Director’s Cut” of the classic “Golden Era of Adventure Gaming” game Broken Sword is above and beyond a mere port, as the lengthy title implies. It had a lot of new material created for it. This new material, mostly consisting of the opening portion of the game, is absurdly superior to the material ported over from the game’s original 1996 release.

From the dialogue to the puzzle design, and especially the great animated artwork by Dave Gibbons, I wish the whole game could have been remade. The rest of the game is still okay, but the characters lack personality and the story is flat. It’s a bit too long, and I found myself getting bored and referring to the walkthough towards the end just to be done with it and get myself through some of the oblique later puzzles.

The Dig

LucasArts, 1995
The Dig is a great example of  the type of immersive, atmospheric and subtle storytelling that video games are capable of, but rarely venture into. It takes place in a rich world consisting an absorbing setting and great sound design. Unfortunately, it’s just too slow. I understand what they were going for; A slow burn mystery that gradually gets deeper as you move along. The developments just take too long to unpack themselves. This pace might have worked if it were a book or a movie, but as a video game it was too much effort and time with not enough result. I lost interest and stopped playing.

Pokemon Diamond Version

Nintendo, 2007
Playing Pokemon is like slipping into a mild, pleasant coma. Everything about it is so enjoyable, from the adorable design to it’s RPG-lite setup, that it’s easy to get completely lost in it’s alarmingly large and detailed world. Of course, when you wake up you wonder how you could possibly spend so much time doing something so pointless. As far as guilty pleasures go it couldn’t be better.

Little Wheel

OneClickDog.com, 2009
As a browser based adventure game, Little Wheel is a sight to behold. Visually, it’s a simple but effective strategy; Three dimensional models flattened into black shapes combined with lighting effects to create a visual landscape that your imagination is just as responsible for as the designers.

Not to say that that the game is lightly designed. The character design, colors and music all work together to create a pleasant atmosphere for the short run time of the game (which clocks in at about twenty minutes). The actual game design however is a bore. White circles tell you what to click on, making the gameplay basically a paint by numbers affair. If you’re likely to be entertained by a tech and visual demo from a promising small game company (and there’s nothing wrong with that), this is a must play. But if you’re looking for an engaging game experience, look elsewhere.

"REAL adventure is waiting for you, DS."

I’m the type of gamer who mostly plays old Sierra and LucasArts adventure games. Some people might not even consider me a gamer at all, in fact. I didn’t have a console until very recently. My circa 2002 computer may be running like a champ, but it had some lagging problems running Psychonauts… in 2005. So, modern computer gaming is also out. I was lucky enough to be visited by the Wing Damage Fairy a while back, who blessed me with a DS.

I was excited about rumblings of the DS being the promised land of adventure gaming; I’d read on many a message board and blog that since the console’s point-and-click stylus interface was ideal for the genre I would have a bevy of adventure games to choose from once I had a look around. I was bummed to find out, however, that there is not, in fact, a whole lot of quality adventure games on the DS. At least not the kind I’m looking for.

Read after the jump to see my findings.

It started out promising. WingDamage-a Claus gifted me a copy of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and I loved it, despite it not being a straightforward adventure game. I was thirsty for more. After a basic Google search I had assembled a sizable list of games to check out. I was drawn to the game Trace Memory. I liked the look of the art and it’s plot. A ghost story that takes place on the ominously named Blood Edward Island? Yes, please. But what I found when I played the game was an easy-as-pie adolescent drama that lasted two brief evenings. I had caught wind of these flaws in online reviews of Trace Memory previous to purchasing it, but my optimism had blinded me to them.

Going back over my list of possible games, they all seemed a little off. Professor Layton is apparently a puzzle game in adventure game clothing. Reports of diminished graphics and a poor interface have scared me off of Syberia. Middling reviews have caused me to shun Insecticide. Ugly art, and the threat of the same developer that released Trace Memory, kept me from checking in to Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (although this review of it almost made me change my -bad pun alert- tune). Time Hollow gives off a tween vibe similar to Trace Memory. Hey wait, the Secret Files games look good, I’ll take them! Ah, no, not available in the US. Of course. I felt like I was spinning my wheels, so I set my DS down for a few months.

I recently came back to it, and found a game that looks okay. Broken Sword: Director’s Cut. It’s ported from PC, but it looks like it was redesigned for the DS and not just clumsily shoved into a new format. It looks like it makes good use of the DS interface, which is important to me.  I’m not a big fan of straight forward dramas however, which it looks like Broken Sword might be, and the comparisons to The DaVinci Code are kind of scaring me. But I clearly have to take what I can get here.

If I were the Don Corleone of the Adventure family on the DS, I would get Dave Gilbert on the case. I would play Emerald City Confidential or any of his Blackwell games on the DS in a heartbeat, and they’d look great on the shelf. I’d get Telltale with the program. I can’t imagine Monkey Island or Sam & Max not making a total killing if properly ported. I don’t think the Days series would do well on the DS, but wouldn’t an original Yahtzee game blow everyone’s minds? He really knows how to make limited graphics and sound sing. I think any of these entities would make a big splash if they released something on the DS, a system that I don’t think gets a lot of high profile, original releases that are of interest to the mainstream gaming community. There’s endless potential here, and I’m dying to seeing it realized.

Don’t get me wrong, the DS is a great system. It’s got a fun personality, a unique interface and a lot of games that make it worth having. I think it’s the only system I’d really want to have. But I am disappointed that it doesn’t have more of the specific type of adventure games I was hoping for.

Am I totally off base? Are there some amazing gems that I’ve missed? Am I wrong about any of the games that I dismissed above? Am I a cranky old man, asking the new world order to get off his lawn?

Let me know, internet.

Hey WingerDamagees. (Is there a good phrase for the readers of this site yet?) This is MrColinP, taking a quick reprieve from my temporary Wing Damage exile to let you know about a series of LucasArts themed illustrations that I just completed for the great LucasArts and post-LucasArts centered news site MixnMojo.com. It’s been a dang eventful and joyous few months for MixnMojo and the fans of what they cover, what with the new Monkey Islands, the imminent arrival of Brutal Legend, the comparatively quiet release of A Vampyre Story and the just previewed DeathSpank.

MixnMojo is running a series of retrospectives on each of the classic LucasArts adventure games and were nice enough to let me do illustrations for three of them. Three of the best ones, actually. Links below the break.

There are two links for each illustration. One for my blog entry on that illustration, and one to the article it was created for where you can view the illustration itself.

Day of the Tentacle:
My blog entry
MixnMojo article

Full Throttle:
My blog entry
MixnMojo article

Grim Fandango:
My blog entry (including lots of way cool wallpapers!)
MixnMojo article

Cool! Which is your favorite Wind Gamagers?

"Dramatic Recreation"

Inspired by this website, my buddy Ben and I made some real life Mario blocks out of cardboard. Click thorough to watch us do it.

Here’s Ben cutting 16″x16″ squares out of boxes we got from the back dumpster of a liquor store. Back dumpsters of liquor stores should always be your first stop for all of your cardboard needs.

Here I am making a 16″x16″ grid for the spray paint stencil.

We decided to make the stencil out of something thinner than cardboard, to give us cleaner edges. We used a giant calender, available free at many Asian markets.

Here’s a screenshot of Photoshop with an enlarged Mario block in it. I gridded it off to find out how many pixels high and wide it is (16 for both), and which pixels are which colors.

Here’s what the physical grid looks like for the brown color. Looking at the Mario block in Photoshop I could tell which pixels were supposed to be brown, x’ed them out and then cut out the x’ed squares with an X-Acto knife.

Here’s that same grid all cut out.

Here I am starting the spray painting process. After laying down the base color of yellow (and brown for the top and bottom squares), we put down the colors. There were two grids- one for black and one for brown.

Lining up a stencil…

And here they are all finished! You can see the stencils laying on the ground there too. Honestly, they’d make really nice flat wall hangings, but we came here to make a cube, so…

Weeks later, we tape them together from the back.

A flaw in our plan: How do we tape the inside of the last square? Gordon can’t figure it out either.

But he can jump! Dun-dun-dun dun-dun dun. Dun.

Here’s some pictures of the finished product. Because we stuck so closely to the source material, I think we ended up with one of the best looking Mario blocks on the web:

In it’s natural habitat.

Sorry. You ain’t getting no goofy pose out of me.

"Burn it all down, Colin..." "Yes, Colin. Make them all pay!"

I’ve been playing adventure games since I was pretty young, and I believe they’ve wired my brain to deal with obstacles in my everyday life in a unique and efficient way. Traditionally, this “adventure game logic” has helped me to solve simple tasks, but recently I’ve been confronted with a new adventure game that is making me wonder what other parts of my life this type of problem solving can be applied to.

Although it now exists pretty much only as an aspect of various other types of games, adventure games were once one of the most popular video game genres going. In them, the player followed along with the story and solved various puzzles in order to advance the sequence of events. So, to use the most overused and basic example possible, if the player needed to get something or someone that was locked behind a door, they’d have to find a key to open it.

Adventure games operated under this principle almost exclusively; King’s Quest, Day of the Tentacle, Myst and even Doug TenNapel’s surreal The Neverhood all held fast to this basic formula. You were introduced to the characters, then you’d find objects and use them to advance the story. You would often use the objects you found to overcome an obstacle that was holding the main character back from the next step in their journey. Finding a battery to use for your phone to call for a ride because your car broke down or finding a list of ingredients to make a magic potion that would let you grow wings and fly home. That sort of thing.

As time went on I started to notice myself utilizing this same type of logic in my everyday life, kind of like how Tetris players see tetriminos everywhere they go. After a problem would present itself I would start to scroll through a mental Rolodex of all of the immediately available objects (known to adventure gamers as their “inventory”). “Okay… can’t shave at the sink because my girlfriend keeps too much stuff around it and I don’t want to get it covered in hair… Where would it be okay for me to get stubble everywhere?… The shower!… But there’s no mirror in there… I can grab the hand mirror out of the bedroom and hang it from the shower head!” or “We had to put the couch on it’s back to get it through the front door, but it’s too heavy to lift and we don’t want to tear the back up dragging it across the bottom of the door frame… we can fold up the tarp that Mark lent us last week and put it under the couch, and then just drag the couch out by the corners of the tarp!” A problem solved using a series of items, letting the events of the day advance.

And so it went for a long while. Then, I was given a copy of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. I remembered seeing it mentioned on the Internet as a bizarre adventure game. Apollo Justice (actually the fourth in the “Ace Attorney” series of games) is not what you would conventionally think of as a video game, but is actually what’s called a “visual novel”. Most of the time you’re not “playing” in any sense of the word, but reading conversations between the judge, defense and prosecution and cross-examining witnesses with elaborate dialogue trees. The game is Japanese both in origin and tone; the courtroom is a dramatic, flamboyant place where particularly intense revelations are met with shielded eyes and wind-blown hair. It has a complete disregard for the way the legal system actually works.

Everyone, including people on the stand, yell “Objection!” whenever they feel like talking. But what’s really interesting about the Ace Attorney series is it’s variation on the classic adventure game formula. In order to advance in the story, you don’t need to solve an incidental puzzle. The story IS the puzzle to be solved, and your ability to process and interpret all of the information contained in it determines your ability to succeed. For example, in order to get stubborn witnesses to tell you more of the story, you have to find the evidence (or rather, the object in your inventory) that you know will force that particular character’s hand. In this way, the Ace Attorney series integrates it’s puzzles directly into the story of the game. Traditional adventure games’ puzzles are action based. Ace Attorney’s are story based.

I only just recently found out about Ace Attorney, so it’s effects on my decision making process have yet to be determined. Honestly, I didn’t really think it could be applicable. When would I encounter a dramatic mystery that I could use evidence and testimony to solve? Am I going to track down the people who smashed my car window, or find the parent of the baby that was left on my doorstep? I didn’t see it happening. But then, a few days ago, my girlfriend got sick. “What could have made me so sick?” she groaned. And my mind started turning in that familiar way: “What time did you start feeling this way? What did you have for dinner? Have you eaten that before? Did you have wine? How many glasses? Do you usually have that many?…”

In the spirit of DC comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths and Marvel Comics’ Civil War, comic creator Erik Northfell and I have crossed our characters over in the most epic way possible… Wii Bowling to the death! Okay, no one dies. But we did make a cool poster out of it. Click through to see the complete poster in all of it’s glory.

Northfell and I have been online comic buddies for a while. I really love his character design aesthetic, and the plots and concepts that he comes up with for his stories. Beyond being really unique and imaginative, he writes stuff that I’m really interested in; magicians in a world that appears to be ancient Egyptian and post apocalyptic simultaneously, a mysterious man who catches the last flight onto a planet about to be obliterated by a dying sun and populated by those too poor to book travel off of it. The basic premises of his books are completely unique and intriguing. Also, I think Erik’s and my work shares some common aesthetic and thematic ground that made the idea of some kind of a collaboration seem like a natural fit.

After batting around a few ideas, we decided to make a poster that would cross over Thad from my comic Dead Man Holiday and Mark from Erik’s comic SOL, under the premise that they would be playing Wii Bowling together. We looked at some old boxing posters for inspiration, drew our characters, Erik worked his typographical magic on it and it was done. Really, it was all an excuse to get to make Miis for our characters. You can purchase the poster for $2.99 on this IndyPlanet page. You can also check out this entry on my blog to see a cool behind the scenes sketch!

Purchase this poster HERE! Only $2.99!

"A Man Out Standing In His Field"

Technology is evolving at an exponentially faster and faster rate, but because it happens over time, it’s easy to be aloof to the ways it changes our day-to-day tasks. Those of us who are of an age that we can remember when things were “different” don’t often take the time to step back and try to remember what was in fact different about our experiences a few scant years ago. Those younger than us, infuriatingly, seem to completely take for granted the things that have developed in our lifetimes, and have no appreciation for how different things are. Other than communication, the aspect that technology has had the greatest effect on is probably entertainment. And just like any other form of entertainment, the lowest common denominator is a big seller. I’m talking, of course, about the genre of games hated by those who take video games seriously, “casual games”. Here’s a rundown of the casual games that I’ve been playing recently, when and where I play them, and what it all means.

myFarm (playSocial)

“myFarm” is a farm simulation game playable on Facebook. In it, you get a 15 x 15 grid of digital land where you can plant and harvest crops for in-game credits and buy animals and trees for your homestead, or send them to your friends as gifts. Initially, myFarm was a lot of fun for my problem solving brain; I got to think about which ones would be the most profitable and how to most efficiently organize my land. I got pretty good mileage out of this for the first couple of weeks. Figuring out how to get off the ground financially, organizing everything, saving up to buy trees and houses.  It was all good, engaging fun. But after I had a halfway decent farm put together, the game became a chore; harvest, plow, plant, harvest, plow, plant. A big part of this is probably due to the limited extras available for purchase in the game. Once your fields are full and you’ve bought a couple of houses, there really is nothing else to do. With more variety people could decide which type of farm they wanted and experiment with different types of setups. But with such limited extras, the gameplay follows a pretty short, linear path.

I would play myFarm mostly when I was wasting time on the internet, after I had done all of the things I was really interested in. I had already checked my email, the big comic book news sites and my news feed on Facebook, and was looking to make that sweet Internet space-out time last just a few more minutes. After a short while it became too tedious to even occupy those brain dead intervals.

Jamdat Bowling 2, demo version (EA Mobile)
Tetris, demo version (EA Mobile)

These are the free game demos that came on my girlfriend’s phone (I have still never really owned my own cell phone). I’ve played them many, many times over, and the sting of the demo ending before I’ve even hit any kind of a stride never really fades. I spend at least as much time reloading the games as actually playing them.

“Jamdat Bowling 2″ is simple and straightforward. You set the position/ speed/ curve variables, which you have to catch while in motion to give the game some sense of action, and then you throw the ball. Within the first couple of weeks I had it pretty much down pat, able to throw a strike every time, and was playing such boredom induced game variants as “Let’s see if I can hit the pins with the ball rolling as slow as possible” or “Let’s see how much of a curve I can set and still hit the pins”. After a short amount of time, that too became old. Graphically, the designers chose not to take advantage of the visually rich world of bowling culture, which is just sad. The best thing that this game has done for me is to allow me to whip out the phone and declare that I’m going to “Jam dat”.

The Tetris game is surprisingly solid. The controls aren’t horrible, maybe even good. All I can do on it is see how many lines I can get before the timed demo runs out (five), as you’re not even allowed even enough time to see if the algorithm is intelligent or just random. If I had the full version I might even enjoy it, but I don’t have a clue if it would measure up to Jonah’s lofty standards.

I play these cell phone games when I’m in public, waiting for something. At the mechanic, the doctor, waiting outside a store. I don’t think I’ve ever taken out the phone because I had the urge to play one of the games. I would probably greatly benefit to make the modicum of effort required to find some mobile games that I would actually enjoy. Does such a thing actually exist? This looks like it could be good, or at least down my alley.

Casual games are so frowned upon, regarded with such disdain, that I almost feel ashamed to admit to playing them in this article. Why is this the case? Most of the time, I think it’s from people that are defensive about video games being perceived as silly, and feel that casual games are “bringing the form down”.

Well, show me the medium that is comprised of nothing but work of merit. It doesn’t exist. And anyway, doesn’t mindless entertainment have its place? There are times when I need nothing more than to zone out on something completely innocuous, and I know that it’s relaxing me in a way that will make my time after more focused and productive. But I think there is something evil about casual games. I don’t think they utilize your free time in the same way a hollow television show or movie does. You’re working when you play a game, even one as mindless as Bejeweled. I feel like casual games rob me of the moments when my mind should be quiet and reflective (i.e. bored), filling them with pointless busy work.

So, if it’s not possible to make a video game that’s so bad it relaxes you, is it possible to make a casual game that’s so good that it’s actually entertaining to play? Is it possible to create a small, simple game that has substance? I think good games of this nature have existed for decades in what is now referred to as “retro games”. Back when all that could be created were small, simple games, designers strived to get substance into them. It’s a reductive process, starting from the top and working down; “How can I get this big idea into this small game?” Now, it’s an additive process. I feel like casual games are built on the question “How big can I make this small idea?” I’d love to see small, simple games make a comeback, but like my quiet moments in the doctor’s office, they just don’t exist anymore.

"One of the sexier pixel vixens, for sure"

And what am I doing writing for this blog?

Well, the short answer is that I was asked. The long answer… is longer. I thought I would spend my inaugural post for Wing Damage exploring my relationship with video games, to explain my perspective to the readers, and to introduce my n00by self to my fellow contributors. A lot of the points that I bring up in this entry will be expanded on later, so I guess you could say that this entry is going to be my Wing Damage thesis statement.

First, hopefully without boring everyone to death, I should outline my history with video games. I had earthy, borderline hippie, parents. I’ve eaten more than my fair share of beans with rice and lentil soup. Not really the type of parents that go out and buy their kids a Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo. But they did get me a computer, as they had been told that it could be used for educational purposes. I got a few games and immediately latched onto the one that had absolutely no educational value; Jill of the Jungle.

Looking back at screenshots of it while researching for this article, I’m struck by how bland looking the game is compared to my rich memories of the environments (certainly a testament to the evocative nature of retro, pixel-y games). From there, barring Duck Tales on my cousin’s NES, or every Ninja Turtle and Earthworm Jim game made for Sega Genesis at a neighbor’s, I didn’t play video games for years. Then one day, in an effort to get more out of his investment in a computer, my Dad showed up with a bargain priced CD ROM copy of Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers. He liked the cover.

I played it for a while, but didn’t really get it. I couldn’t find my way out of the ruins of Xenon, and would just wander around until I inevitably got screamed at by the weird zombie thing. Then the robot would come and shoot me. Not really fun. Then one day, possibly years later, I popped it in again on a lark and eventually escaped into the sewer system. The discovery was exciting and rewarding, and I was hooked right away. I got all of the other Space Quest games I could, and played them all the time, alone and with friends.

I got a few other adventure games over time. I played and enjoyed the Quest for Glory series, Doug TenNapel’s The Neverhood, and a number of LucasArts games (Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle). Around when I was in eighth grade, the person whose house I went to after school got a Nintendo 64. I still remember feeling motion sickness playing the first level of Shadows of the Empire; backgrounds had never rotated before. I was so in love with the system that I begged my Dad to get one for me. My Dad, fulfilling his role as a carbon copy of Calvin’s dad, said that he’d buy me one if I graduated from college with a BA or higher. A contract was written up, and names were signed. In college, I lived with a couple of guys who were dedicated NES players. We had an old system in our apartment and played a lot of Anticipation, Caveman Games and Beetlejuice. I stayed away from the more hardcore stuff, like the play through of every single Mega Man game, for example. Although, I was the clear champion of ski jumping in Ski or Die (I later found out that my fast button mashing skills approach that of Takahashi Meijin, the world record holder). After I graduated, I dug up my father and I’s contract and he made good on it by buying me the most beautiful and wear-free translucent green Nintendo 64 I’ve ever seen in my life. I played it a lot in those directionless post college days, and now have beat many of the people that shamed me in GoldenEye when I was in middle school.

Obviously, in terms of being someone who writes for a video game blog, I’ve had a very limited and offbeat history with video games. So what am I doing here? Even though I never played them a lot, I’ve always been fascinated by the prospects of storytelling in video games. I think the way they tell a story is a lot like my media of choice, comic books.

Comic books and video games are both active experiences for the viewer. When you watch a movie or listen to music, it’s a passive experience; you’re sitting there while it does it’s thing without you. But with comic books and video games, the viewer takes on a more active role; the viewer takes in the story at their own pace and is free to go slow or fast, stop or go backwards. In this way, comics and video games involve the viewer in the story in a unique and immersive way. This storytelling strength is what attracted me to adventure games. I’ve still never found a video game that even comes close to the storytelling levels that I know they can achieve (except, possibly, for Grim Fandango). I thought very little of video games that weren’t focused on storytelling before my NES college days, but then I realized that game-focused video games were just a completely different breed. They served only to entertain, and could be great at it.

Video games are now separated into these two camps in my head; “storytelling” and “arcade”. While most video games are probably a balance of the two, I think most of what is played popularly skews way on the “arcade” side of the equation. I could be wrong, but all of these historic war games, FPS in space and RPGs seem like they focus more on gameplay than story to me. Which is more than fine. Like I said, they have their place. But I’m more interested (in a “finding things to write about for an editorial gaming blog” way) in storytelling games. In fact, since I’m so unlikely to be able make a profession out of exploring storytelling in comic books, I would like to try and make a go out of exploring it in video games. I even have some actual experience designing characters and environments, and figuring out how to communicate with the viewer, for video games. I worked extensively on the Space Quest 7 fan game throughout college (it was written by Josh Mandel, the lead designer on Sierra’s Space Quest 6), and designed a UI for the impending relaunch of Chron X, the worlds first online TCG.

By writing for Wing Damage I’m hoping to focus a lot of my ideas about video games, and also to be exposed to a lot of things that I had no idea about. And I promise that future entries won’t be so marred in sentiment and theory; I’m here to have fun. I like Wing Damage’s focus on editorials over reviews, and look forward to the topics that my fellow contributors plan on busting out. I guess I’ve got to start playing some video games.