Category: Spel / Game

When I grew up I believe I managed to read every book by Jules Verne that was available at the local library, including mostly forgotten titles such as The Purchase of the North Pole and Dr. Ox’s Experiment, but the favourite one was Around the World in Eighty Days. Hence, I felt great excitement when I had a chance to play the game 80 Days which is based on that book. The game started with a spinning globe with a number of cities marked, but I noticed immediately that it is spinning in the wrong direction. I saw that as a bad sign, that maybe the game lacked attention to details (such as having the sun rising in the west), but apart from that bad mistake I found 80 Days to be extremely enjoyable.

London, 1872
I have entered into the service of a new gentleman.
It would seem he is a gambling man.

The story starts very abrupt. You play as Passepartout, the valet of a certain Phileas Fogg who has just made a wager to travel around the world in 80 days, and you have to pack a bag in a hurry in order to get on the evening train to Paris before you even know how to play the game. Already on this first train it is clear that the 1872 in this game is much more steam-punk than the real version of 1872. The world is rapidly changing thanks to fantastic machines and strong empires are growing everywhere around the world. This makes the journey difficult to plan since you do not really know which routes are more convenient than others. The first time I played the game I actually managed to return to London in the afternoon on the 80th day, so I beat the game immediately. However, there were so many adventures and encounters along the way that I wanted to follow up on, and so many more wonderous places in the world I wanted to explore, so I needed to play the game again, and again, and again.

80 Days is more an interactive story than a game, but since there are so many choices available it does not feel restricted. The writing is excellent. It is condensed, but still it manages to be both detailed and evocative. The characterisations of the multitude of characters encountered are made with finesse, and the adventures along the jorney often takes unexpected turns. In fact, the writing is actually the only really good thing in this game, but it is so good that it defines the game. I really enjoy 80 Days.

What defines a human? This question seems to be a common theme nowadays. It is also the main drive behind Read Only Memories – a point-and-click adventure with a stylish retro design and a focus more on story-telling than on puzzle-solving.

The story is set in Neo-San Francisco just before christmas in 2064. The city is filled with people with various levels of cybernetic augmentation and genetic modification, as well as ROMs (Relationship Organisational Managers) which are performing the more mundane tasks in society. You are a struggling to make living as a journalist and have to take on boring review tasks, in this case for a smart headphone. After writing the review, and a good night’s rest, you find a tiny ROM in your room. He/she/it calls him/her/itself Turing, claims to be the first sapient machine in the world, and is in need of your help. This is the beginning of the adventure. The world is about to change, and you may influence in which direction.

Read Only Memories should be considered an interactive story more than a game, and as such it is great. The retro aesthetics feels natural since it is well known that the future looked better a couple of decades ago. The pixels feel a bit too large on a big screen, making the text difficult to read, but this is only a minor technical remark. I enjoy the story and the characters in it, but for me the best part is actually the world that is seen behind it all. That is where most of the depth in this game lie, and I think it could work quite well as a setting for some old-fashioned analog role-playing.

New Rush City är en storstad där brottsligheten är fullständigt under kontroll. Att det är så beror på att ett löjligt stort antal superhjältar håller till i staden. De är så pass många till antalet att de har svårt att hinna först till eventuella brottsplatser vilket anstränger relationerna mellan superhjältarna. För att komma tillrätta med den besvärliga situationen har kampen för att hinna först utvecklats till regelrätta varvtävlingar i stadsmiljö där man objektivt kan avgöra vem som egentligen är snabbast och därför är den bästa hjälten. Eftersom superhjältar tål det mesta så är hjälpmedel som raketer, dynamit och eldbollar också tillåtna för att även belöna snabbtänkthet vid sidan av fotkvickheten. Bara en kan vara snabbast!

Det finns förstås ingen som helst anledning att bry sig om bakgrundshistorien till SpeedRunners. Det är ett spel där upp till fyra spelare springer, hoppar, svingar sig och klättrar runt ett antal olika banor med blandade hinder och svårigheter. Har man släpat efter så pass långt att man försvinner ur bild har man förlorat och är ute ur racet. Den som är sist kvar har vunnit racet, och den första som vunnit tre race har vunnit tävlingen. Mer komplicerat än så behöver inte ett spel vara.

SpeedRunners är ett mycket underhållande spel som är perfekt som partajspel men som fungerar lika bra att spela online om man inte kan skrapa ihop ett fyrkompisgäng. Det är riktigt skojigt att bara hoppa in och köra några race mot slumpvist valda andra online-spelare när man har några minuter till övers. Det är ett härligt driv i spelets hela design, både grafiskt och musikaliskt, som gör att det inte känns särskilt tröttande även om man ibland tillbringar en hel del tid bland spelets olika menyer. Styrningen känns så gott som helt rätt. Med lite övning lär man sig efter ett tag hur man tar sig runt de olika banorna på tillfredsställande sätt, bara för att senare få se hur bättre spelare gör det på bättre sätt. Som tur är kan man då kasta ut en gyllene krok som rycker ner dem från deras höga hästar. Man har helt enkelt skoj!

The time it takes for “anything” to become a classic depends largely on the the nature of this “anything”. A literary classic is rarely younger than 50 years and in architecture maybe 500 years is typical. The time perspective is a bit different for computer games. Grim Fandango is certainly a classic game, and has been for some time, although it is not yet even twenty years since it was originally released. More recently the game has been remastered, receiving the new title Grim Fandango Remastered in the process, to reach both a new audience and, naturally, the old and nostalgic audience that is firm in their belief that “games were better in the 1990s”.

Grim Fandango is an adventure game set in the Land of the Dead. Manuel (Manny) Calavera is a travel agent at the Department of Death whose work involve selling transportation to recently departed souls so that they can reach the gates of the Land of Eternal Rest. If the newly dead has lived a good life he/she/it can get access to better travel packages, which also would give Manny a better provision. However, for some reason Manny’s clients are always on the bad end of the goodness scale while his colleague Domino Hurley consistently gets the good clients, which leads to Manny stealing a promising client, Mercedes (Meche) Colomar, from Domino. Something strange is going on, though, since even if her heart should be pure enough for the best possible travel package, only the worst one is actually available. This realisation starts the epic adventure which takes place over four years (four acts in the game) and where Manny navigates through crime and corruption among the dead.

The whole game is soaked in a film noir atmosphere, complete with an adapting excellent soundtrack that follows the different settings in which the adventure takes place. The style of the characters, on the other hand, is based on Mexican calaca-figures. This contrast between the atmosphere and the styling makes the visual appearance of the game very distinct. And I like it. I also like the story, which manages to be original while still keeping the traditional elements in the film noir genre. I believe I am not the only one who enjoys this experience. It is clear though that the success of the game builds mainly on its atmosphere, its soundtrack and its story. On the other hand, the games suffers somewhat from the typical problem of all point-and-click style of puzzle based adventure games I have played: it seems to be extremely difficult to construct puzzles that are neither far too simple nor far too unintuitive. I found that I solved many puzzles in the game more or less by mistake, and only afterwards understood the logic behind them. There were also a small number of situations where I had to seek online help to be able to get further, but these situations were all of the type that I had missed an object I could interact with somewhere, or that there were an area I had not realised I could access. At least I am proud to be able to truthfully say that I solved at least the fourth act in the proper manner.

What is most noticable for the player from the remastering process in Grim Fandango Remastered is that the graphical representation of the characters has been modernised as well as the controls. For me, the most important remastering effort is that the whole soundtrack has been fully orchestrated (using Melbourne Symphonic Orchestra). There were some minor glitches in the game which are not expected to be found in a game that has had almost twenty years to mature, but I only encountered one that forced me to restart from an earlier save. That is a minor issue in a game that I truly enjoyed.

If you think it was difficult growing up as a human, just consider how it would have been growing up as a monster. Your life starts in a tank of slime and while growing up you gain different amounts of personality traits (bravery, cleverness, ferocity, honesty, and kindness) and the respect from other monsters based on the desicions you make as monsterling, adolescent and fully grown monster. If you are sufficiently respected you may continue your monster career as an elder, or you get recycled in the tank. You may even go on to achieve great accomplishments in the diplomatic interactions between monsters and men. You can write monster history!

Monster Loves You! is a cute little game, or rather a cute little interactive story, where the choices you make matters. It is very nice in small doses, but after a couple of lifetimes the little adventures you experience starts getting a bit repetitive. The same can be said about the music. It is interesting that the way some choices influence the personality are not immediately obvious, but that they start to make sense after a while when more is learnt about monster life. The storyline is inventive and clever and the monsters are cute to look at. Monster Loves You! offers a relaxed escape from the human reality.

Återigen får jag tillfälle att fundera över vad som gör en människa. I Left 4 Dead 2 befinner vi oss i efterdyningarna efter en pandemi. Någon slags sjukdom som förvandlar vanliga människor till zombieliknande monster har spritt sig över världen. De smittade blir extremt blodtörstiga och de ger sig på friska människor så fort de får möjlighet. En del smittade har dessutom skaffat sig förmågor som närmast kan beskrivas som övermänskliga, och dessa använder de gärna i sin jakt på friskt blod. Fyra överlevare (Coach, Ellis, Nick och Rochelle) verkar vara immuna mot smittan och de befinner sig på taket till ett hotell någonstans i Georgia, USA, och nu ska de försöka ta sig därifrån för att leta upp något ställe som kan anses säkert. De är förvisso immuna mot smittan, men de är förstås känsliga mot det fysiska våldet som de smittade har för vana att utöva på de friska.

Grunden i Left 4 Dead 2 är för de överlevande att ta sig från punkt A till punkt B med ganska få variationer på temat. Ibland måste de hålla stånd tills något räddningsfordon dyker upp, ibland måste de samla bränsledunkar för att fylla på tanken till fordon eller elektriska generatorer, men i regel handlar det om att skjuta och hacka och motorsåga sig fram genom horder av smittade på väg mot en ny kort andhämtning. Frågan är om det gör överlevarna ett dugg bättre än de smittade. Med tanke på att varje smittad varelse en gång varit en normal människa med allt vad det innebär av familjeliv och minnen känns det väldigt rått att bara ha ihjäl alla man ser (det blir snabbt flera tusen) i stället för att försöka förstå hur smittan fungerar och kanske hitta något botemedel för de redan drabbade. Lyckligtvis verkar smittan bara drabba fullvuxna, eller i varje fall är det bara de vuxna som blir våldsamma.

Spelet fungerar mycket bra. Styrningen känns rätt, och svårighetsgraden kan man ställa in så att de flesta borde känna att det blir utmanande. Det blir emellanåt lite mastigt med alla lemlästade och sönderskjutna kroppar och allt blodstänk, framför allt i kombination med det slafsande ljudet av kött som faller i backen, men man trubbas av så småningom. Spelet är i första hand ett samarbetsspel där man tillsammans ska ta sig igenom köttmassorna, och därför är det synnerligen trist att spelets sämsta sida är dess spelare. De spelare som jag har parats ihop med när jag har försökt samarbetsspela har alla varit barnsliga, elitistiska eller bara korkade så det har inte varit särskilt trevliga upplevelser (om man tittar på spelets “gemenskapscentral” på Steam förstår man vilken typ av spelare som dominerar och vilken jargong som gäller). Det går att spela solo också, men då tappar man en viktig dimension av spelet. Man får helt enkelt anstränga sig för att hitta ett gäng medspelare man trivs med för att till fulla kunna uppskatta spelet.