<.<

ahem ahem

presenting THIS SHIT WON'T FLY: Notes on Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
(it's awesome, and if you disagree, you're wrong)

The whole "adventure archaeologist" concept can only carry a storyline two ways: ancient magic and ancient machines. At some point, the game has to involve exploration and portray the setting you're exploring as an antagonist of sorts, and your other two options are dangerous nature and angry natives: one is not actiony enough and the other is fucking racist.

An ancient civilization built on magic in a story set on real Earth offends my aesthetic with its vagueness and anti-rationalism. Personalizing the source of magic presents three further terrible options: brown people's evil gods, aliens, and Jesus. Finally, technology, as a collective endeavor, is simply a better basis for an ancient civilization than magic.

The fantastic element also explains why you're adventuring instead of participating in a proper expedition. However, if you lean on it too hard, you fall into truther territory; here's where the Nazis come in handy, justifying the need for urgency and the antiestablishmentarianism. The real historical Nazis also conveniently had a well-documented interest in archaeological woo. (Note to modern Nazis: please get interested in a better class of conspiracy theory. Illinois Jones and the Pizza Parlor on Mars is going to suck.)

The similarity between FoA and The Dig is not the fault of the former. Rather, it's The Dig that's adventure archaeology in spaaaaaace and with less polish. Also, I haven't played FoA in years, but I don't remember any alien suggestions in it. The design of the machines and the art style in general is as "grounded" as possible, so if there is a throwaway line about aliens, that's less a fundamental failing and more an accidental brain fart. The city is under water and under ground; it's made of stone and runs on lava; it looks nothing like either the overused slick chrome future or the efficient brutalist forms of modernity. If this shit ever flies, it will only be by contradiction, for the sake of a plot twist.

The three paths design of FoA is far better than alternate solutions. One, not every game can support the paths system, because it requires non-stupid reasons as to why the adjacent alternate solutions that we know exist don't work. Two, and I apologize for the quality of the metaphor, locking the player into a single facet of the story increases its conceptual volume and its realness and lived-in-ness. A series of sequential non-contradictory options with identical beats is a string of polyhedral beads. A three paths design is a huge solid body.
(I don't have anything against options, branching storylines and CYOAs; it's just that in this particular game, when you travel to a mysterious ruin, end up on different sides of a door depending on if you got there by plane or submarine, and have to then proceed by either a waterslide or a nuclear-powered train, it's better than if the options just dumped you in a room with every path open madlibs-style.)

Last but not least: Fate of Atlantis doesn't have Jesus in it. Western media is generally too chicken to use Jesus without resorting to religious propaganda, and TLC is not an exception. The inherent stupidity of the religious wordview not only prohibits other potential stories, it turns upon itself, because supernatural elements that carry an existing religion's taint are by construction unknowable. The adventure then becomes a metaphor for regaining one's belief in Jesus; the "answers" the religious cockblock presents could have been easily acquired by going to church.

Fate of Atlantis isn't just good, it's perfect, like the exact solution to a well-determined system of linear equations. The Indiana Jones movie trilogy is a rather ingenious patch that tries to make the obsolete genre compatible with the modern world, and Fate of Atlantis actually succeeds and achieves perfection.

Not quite true.

FF4 DS is actually quite different from a gameplay perspective, and while it is difficult (likely harder than the original Japanese version), it's difficult in different ways. For example, the CPU boss is rather easy in the original; sure, one unit can heal the body faster than you can damage it, and if you kill both parts, the boss will kill 2 of your characters (but you have 5, and Phoenix Downs are absurdly cheap in this particular FF), but you can easily figure out the strategy and win (the attacker unit only does 10% of your max HP in damage). In the DS version, the Attacker is so strong it will likely kill most of your party on its first action, making this boss now dangerous (and changing the strategy needed to defeat it).

There's also another boss that is easy in the original version, but in the DS version, now has an attack that reverses damage and healing, which can make the boss fight quite dangerous, especially if it happens when you're about to cast a big healing spell on your party.

Also, the US version of FF4 was called FF2, not FF3. The GBA port is based on the original version (actually on the Wonderswan Color version, which is based on the original), but due to bugs, ends up much easier. (The WSC version does have a rather interesting soundtrack, and I wish SE would have made it an option in the PSP Complete Collection.)

That’s the interesting point about AoM (vanilla): you actually learn a couple things about the mythology of some historical cultures. Like you can learn some things about history in the Age of Empires games.

It would have been much better in my opinion to add a fourth historical civilization and its mythology to the mix, instead of a fictional civilication and some more Greek mythology…

I remember when the AOM expansion was announced. I really, really wanted it to feature the Celts (my favourite "obscure" mythology), but I didn't count on that because everybody associated Celts = Norse. The Atlanteans were a huge surprise (and a disapointment at first), but I ended up enjoying them because their playstyle was unique and at least their gods were the titans from Greek mythology and not entirely made up.

Here are a couple head scratchers from Oblivion:

1. When you save your game, you do not get to enter a name for the saved game. That seems like such a basic feature for PC games (and was present in earlier TES games), yet it's not an option here; your saves are just called "Save 1", "Save 2", "Save 3", etc. with no option to change them.

2. There's no option to delete spells from your spell book; this is especially annoying if you make a mistake when creating a custom spell.

Also, for Daggerfall:

There's only 6 save slots, down from the 10 that Arena provides. Considering that Daggerfall isn't exactly known for being bug-free, this is not a good change. *falls through the floor* (Then again, why do many PC games have limited save slots anyway? It makes no sense, seeing as hard drives provide practically unlimited space for saves.)

Generally I felt like you, e.g. I didn't like how Warcraft 3 had 3D polygon graphics.

But Age of Mythology did it right, it feels like a 2D game even though they are 3D graphics. The only thing that annoyed me a bit was how buildings, towers, walls etc. don't snap into place like in Age of Empires 1-2. Hence it was harder to make e.g. perfectly lined rows of towers etc. as some of them would be one or two pixels off.

It was not a biggie, but I would have preferred if it had had that same "snap-in" effect.

Trine 3: Changed it to 3D, which I didn't like at all. It worked beautifully with 2D in the first two games, and both were better for it.

Football Manager 2013 (or thereabouts): Tied themselves to the steam mast, which is why I stopped buying the games. Used to be a beta tester for them, so I let them know in no uncertain terms how much I disliked them whoring out, but prostitutes like money, and nothing would sway them.

Witcher 2 (aye): It's a great game, don't get me wrong, but I didn't like the obviously consolitis. The inventory is a massive mess compared to the wonderful inventory of Witcher 1, and the popup action menu stuff doesn't work as well as in the first game. Why they removed the group combat I'll never know, but it was a bad change. They also introduced quick-time events, which is a cancer to any game. Thankfully I could partly remove them by putting the QTE option down to easy, but they're still there.

Civilization 5: The game is terrible, they made so many bad choices it's actually kind of hilarious once you get some distance to it. But probably the worst one was to change to a one-unit-per-tile mechanic, which means the whole map becomes a logistical nightmare.

Mass Effect 2: Making the game while dangerously high on acid, so they probably thought people wouldn't spot the gigantic plot holes and the utter lack of a story outside of companion quests. Like so many other games, this too suffers from a bad case of consolitis, and removing many of the options that made the first game great. Then they somehow managed to make even worse changes for the third game, which is a feat in itself in how to lower the bar so low that ants would struggle to pass beneath it. Quite unlike the plotholes, which were large enough for Sovereign to comfortably fly through.

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who felt that way about the game. I always really disliked the style of the second game and while I never read the comics I had my suspicions that the game was rather designed to resemble those than the Alien films (which were clearly the main inspiration for AvP 2000). I also really disliked the colourfulness of the sequel, particularly in the jungle levels. Those were like the worst possible choice for the game.

However, if I had to list a single devastating change in that game it would be that it's completely scripted, from start to finish. It primarily affected the Marine campaign, which were always my favourite in the series. The fact that every single xenomorph spawn in AvP 2 was pre-defined and there was no threat at all if you stayed still almost ruined the game for me and the jumpscares got old really quick. It can in no way compete with that feeling of constant threat in the original game and the knowledge that you WILL die if you don't keep moving. And a xenomorph suddenly and oh-so-unexpectedly breaking through a vent as you walk down a corridor is nowhere as disturbing as having your motion tracker beep away because there actually IS a xenomorph somewhere in your vicinity, even if you may never encounter this particular one. And sure, the spawn rate of xenomorphs in the first game was utterly ridiculous and the game was often frustrating as hell and just unfair but it was an intense and rewarding experience that the sequel didn't even get close to.

I still can't quite believe that Rebellion made a much better game than Monolith in the same series.

Ah thanks for the clairification, the GBA FFIV and the DS FFIV remain the only FF games I EVER had interest in.

Okay... I believe I got GBA, FFIV, DS, FF, but I'm not sure what does EVER stand for?

I was just highlighting the word EVER, its not an acronym.

I really liked the 3D mechanics but would rather have liked a complete game in 2D indeed...

And they kept 1 unit per tile for Civilization VI... when even Jon Shafer, lead designer of Civ V, admitted it was a mistake.

Mass Effect 2.

1. They simplified the combat so that you could only play the game as a regular cover-based shooter.
You did not have to think that much about tactics and strategy, or your team's gear. Just get behind cover and shoot, the AI did everything for you.

2. They removed the big explorative world and replaced it with something that felt dramatically smaller in comparison, attached with no sense of exploration.

3. The storyline too changed from an epic Star Trek or Star Wars adventure to something much smaller and far less captivating for the imagination.