James DeRosa: An Introduction and an Invite

As I sit at my computer desk, cursor bar blinking, I'm slowly realizing how hard it is to find the right words to make this introduction earnest and complete. James and I met through video games, in a small town, a lifetime ago. Our early encounters were filled with debates about who was who's bitch. Respect was metered out begrudgingly, in inches. The years have weathered such harsh sentimentalities which were more like France circa 1916 then a friendship. What broke this? More video games....and some non-Tekken hanging out.

Well, I'm proud to say The Sophist has found another voice. I hope you embrace him as you have me, dear readers. I give you James DeRosa.

~Aaron R

Here's a confession: I have never been a PC gamer. Some of my earliest memories involve video games. I remember being four years old, sitting in my living room, trying to make it as far to the left or to the right as I could in Pitfall - I always swore that the right path was harder. It was a console game. It was always a console game. From the Atari 2600, to the NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, and finally the Wii.

My mother always thought it was important that we had a computer, and our first was an IBM PC that ran DOS and had no hard drive. It's worth noting that around the time Doom was big, my mother bought an IBM Aptiva, running windows 95, with a Pentium, 16 MB of RAM and maybe a 1 gigabyte hard drive. I clearly remember standing in Circuit City, trying to get her to agree to buy the computer with the highest specs possible so that I could use it for games. She was insistent that the computer's primary purposes were the Internet and school work, and that the specs didn't matter. After a while, however, she relented and we took home the best computer on the floor.

She was right. I had an SNES - and in a year or so would have a PS1 - and while I purchased the Doom games, a few LucasArts titles like Sam and Max Hit the Road and Tie Fighter, and, unfortunately for me, Cyberia, I quickly abandoned the PC platform. It was mostly because of how much I liked platformers and the Final Fantasy series. For the next ten or eleven years, I never really touched PC games, outside of ones I would play on my friend's computers. I checked in every now and again making sure to play Half-Life and Counterstrike, but, by and large, I stuck mainly to console gaming, cultivating a palate informed mostly by Japanese developers.

PC games, and further, Americans games, have always seemed, to me, less refined than their Japanese counterparts. I couldn't wrap my head around why any gamer would want to deal with persistent glitches, endless patching, and constantly being forced to upgrade their systems to play the newest games. Eventually, it got so bad that I would disdain anyone who proudly proclaimed themselves a PC gamer, assuming their tastes to be less about refined programming and precise gameplay, and more about bleeding-edge-graphics-whoring and killing shit. This is a trend that I feel is almost, thought not wholly, gone on the PC scene.

With the advent of HD, I have been unable to move into the new generation of consoles because I simply cannot afford it. I refuse to buy an HD console until I have an HD TV to back it up. Granted, I have picked up a Wii – a decision largely attributed to the fact that the system often looks better on an SD TV – and have played one of the best games ever created (Super Mario Galaxy), I won't feel as though I have joined the next generation of console gaming until I move into HD gaming.

So I find myself in a strange place. I haven't owned a PC since I moved out of my mom's house 8 years ago. I haven't bought (or had bought for me) a PC that could play newer games for over ten years.

I recently went back to college, and I needed a computer. So there I was at Best Buy, standing in the same place I had over ten years earlier, convincing myself to break my budget to buy the best PC I could for games. But shouldn't it be for school work and Internet? The answer is still the same.

Fuck no.

Not when I haven't played Bioshock yet. So I purchased a AMD triple core with 4 gigabytes of RAM and instantly modified it with a new power supply and an expensive graphics card. I also bought a pretty sick 22” screen panel to go with it. To be fair, I could have done a lot more; getting a quad core, a 10000 rpm hard drive, or hell, building the thing from the ground up would all have yielded something a bit stronger, but as it is, I can play every game I have bought so far at full spec.

And it's strange. This is where I am now... for the first time in my life, I'm a PC gamer.

I NEVER thought I'd say that.

Which leads me to why I am here explaining this to you. With the imminent release of Fallout 3, I have taken it as my charge to do The Sophist's first retro review. Fallout. I am about halfway through it currently, and I thought I'd introduce myself, mostly for the purpose of making it clear that there is now someone contributing to Aaron's brainchild.

So, it should be up within the week, and I invite you to check it out.

~James D

Warhammer Online Part Two : A Difference of Design

Now that you understand my perspective for Warhammer Online, by reading part one, I can delve into more complex issues involving this title. Though, let me preface this article with a few statements. I understand that people can get very touchy when games, or more accurately, MMORPG's get compared with World of Warcraft. Don't believe me ask the guys at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. While, I can sympathize with some of the more even tempered reactionaries, that is where my support ends. The Fact is there are obvious similarities in the interface and basic structure of these games that can not be ignored. I'm not implying that Relic was being lazy by not creating a drastically different structure. This decision was intentional and grants many advantages, chief among them a preexistent knowledge of the basic interface. By giving the player this familiar base, it allows Relic to make, more important, design choices without forcing the player to relearn strange and new basic mechanics. While I will be referencing WOW in this article, the purpose of such will be to show differences in design and how these choices affect the end product.

If WOW is, in most core design, a game of player versus environment; WAR is a game of player versus player. This core difference of design principles shows itself in almost every aspect of these games. In WAR the enemy is the opposing faction, not some dragon enjoying a nap while waiting for some group of adventurers to try and steal her phat lootz. Yes, both titles have PVP but unlike WOW, it is the main focus of the experience in WAR. This difference of focus spiderwebs to permeate the entirety of the experiences enjoyed. This is most apparent in career abilities and gear optimization. By choosing a PVP focus, WAR must make a sacrifice on the PVE front.

WAR does not have PVE instances instead it ops to have “public quests.” These act as scripted events that require players to work together, much like in an instance environment, without the necessity to recruit a viable and competent group. If you want to participate in such a quest all you have to do is go to the part of the zone where it is located and start helping out. The game calculates how much you have done throughout the three phases of the event and upon completion tallies these points which get added onto a roll that decides who gets loot. Also, this loot is handled in a much less frustrating manner. When you win such a loot roll, you are awarded a bag which contains a choice of about four to five pieces of loot which are all viable for your career. This circumvents the Mage running around with a purple bow yelling “Look guys, I'm a Hunter...Pew Pew.” And even if you don't find an upgrade through this means, you gain influence by just participating, which can be used in town for three more loot choices.

What I'm trying to provide by bringing up Public Quests is to reinforce this difference of ideals. In WOW, for most people, the war between the Alliance and Horde isn't much of a war at all. Most of the time this “war” is an annoyance when questing or a way to blow off steam between “more important” raids. For WAR this conflict is what is important, it is the end game. I don't mean to sound redundant, but all of the design choices focus on this fact, case and point: sometimes when you slay a member of the opposing faction you can get gear loot drops. I'm just waiting for someone to ask where I got my new helmet, “I shot some dude in the face for it.”

So, should you play this game? Have you ever tried to infiltrate and murder people in Ironforge? Have you tried to burn South shore to the ground? Have you ever felt disdain if your guild asks you to switch to a raiding build? Have you ever yelled at a friend when a noob went un-pwned? You get the idea. But, I think Conan the barbarian said it best when asked, “what is the best in life.”

PS: I realize that this post could have gone on a lot further but I really didn't want to have a giant four page, or more spread. So, If you have any questions feel free to E-mail me or comment. If I have some demand for more on this I will add another post on those subjects.

Oh, and stay tuned for the final installment.

Warhammer Online: Part One

Before World of Warcraft, I had never played an MMORPG. To be
more truthful, I felt an unmerited disdain for the idea of
playing an MMO. My logic was, why the hell would I ever play a
game that was not only so open-ended, but more so,
specifically, a game that you couldn't beat? The idea of paying fifteen
dollars a month for the right to never see an end to the
narrative... no, thank you. Oh, let's not forget the stigma of
being an MMO player. Before World of Warcraft, when someone
said the acronym "MMO," my brain conjured images of Everquest
weddings and the morbidly obese. My idea of an online
community was limited to the servers I would hang out in Day
of Defeat or some other first person shooter. Even back then I
prided myself on my knowledge of video games, and I understood
that you can’t bitch about 'em if you never tried one.


A situation much like this is why I tried WOW. Let me explain
further. Me and my then roommates decided to throw a party in
our new apartment. We had a small problem: The downstairs
neighbors. I only saw one of them a handful of times in the
vestibule section of the entryway, right inside the front
door. She always seemed very shy and awkward. See, we were
friends with some local DJ’s, and we expected a decent turnout
at this party. We really didn’t feel like having any police
complications. We did have one thing going for us in this
department. Our first floor neighbors were young. So I
decided that I would venture downstairs and invite them to the
party, that way they wouldn’t want to call the cops. They
didn’t answer, so I left a note on the door.


So, fast forward back to the party. Now understand I may be a total
nerd, but I have had long years of practice hiding this fact
from others, especially in situations involving members of the
opposite sex and with parties. You can imagine my surprise
when a complete stranger comes up to me at about one thirty in
the morning, while I'm getting another beer, and says “sweet
Nurgle army.”

Yes, I play Warhammer 40K. Apparently I looked like I just
found out someone finger fucked my cat, or so I'm told.


Some time later, me, this stranger, who I find out is my
downstairs neighbor, and some like-minded folk, are talking
about nerdy-ass shit in a side room, so as not to disturb the
general debauchery going on downstairs. Our talk of 40k blends
into talk of video games. We do the obligatory jousting match
of which games have more merit, trying to find out the other's
tastes. Then, it happens. I ask what him the question, "What
are you playing right now?" He says, "World of Warcraft": I
shudder. Oh shit... one of "them". This is when the conversation
turns ugly. I started listing the reasons why these games are
bullshit, but he stood his ground. Then, he pulled his trump. I
should have seen it coming, but I was too drunk and felt too
strongly on the subject. He says, “Say what you want about WOW, but you don’t know because you never played it.”


What the hell could I say? He was right. Twenty minutes later,
I was holding two free ten day trials. The plan was only to
play the game for free for the allotted ten days, thus giving
me an informed out in future conversations. Yeah, well, two
70's later, I kinda ate my words.


The real point of this post is to show that I have a really unique perspective on critiquing Warhammer Online. I have only ever played one other western MMO: WOW. During my tenure in the lands of Azeroth, besides leveling two characters to the level cap, I was very active in the two guilds I belonged to, and I experienced almost all of the end game content, both before and after the expansion. Now, before you start thinking that this will limit my view on the genre as a whole, let me pose this question: aren’t most people who grab WAR going to be of the persuasion that they would decide to pick up WAR in the first place? That's agreeable to most journalism outlets, whose first reaction is going to be “Stick the MMO guy on it.” I don't want be that; I play games outside of MMO's, RPGS, and Warhammer. The MMO versions stands on its own however. (It is worth noting, that I play the table-top RPG. Granted, my experience has been mostly in the 40k universe, not Fanstasy, I have always been a big fan of both universes). I, actually, have recently started a Skaven army for table-top Fantasy, and I have always been on top of the fluff for Warhammer Fantasy. So these combined create an interesting lens to view this new title.

Part two: First Impressions Coming Soon!

Death of the Brodeo

I originally planed on filling my intro paragraph with as many games journalist and internet cliches as humanly possible while still allowing it to be intelligible. Then I realized only true fans of Shawn Elliot and the 1up podcast “The Brodeo” would really understand the joke.

Upon hearing that Jeff Green was leaving(the 1up network) to work for Maxis, my heart did feel a tad heavy. Though not just because I was sad that I wouldn’t read or hear from one of my biggest inspirations anymore. I was happy for him. Mr. Green had worked for Ziff for seventeen years, working that long anywhere is incomprehensible to me. I was sad to see him go, but at least he decided to start a new blog where I could continue to read his work albeit through the lens of new game designer Jeff Green. And, I still had my biggest inspiration Shawn Elliot. So you can imagine my dismay when I read this on his 1up Blog:

Once, I was a green grocer. I worked with a fool for whom everyone was a fool -- as in, “Hey, fool. This one fool was wearing JNCOs.” Every day on the job, he explained how, in a Jackass world of action without consequence, he would demolish the joint by driving a bulldozer in and doing donuts. He didn't hate his job. Haggen, our workplace, wasn't one Caterpillar sale away from catastrophe. What he didn't like was that if he wasn't working there, he'd probably have to work at a place he liked less.


Hopefully you're wondering what this has to do with me leaving a job I love (yes, I'm leaving). Everyone dreams of dramatic exits? I dunno. Unlike The Fool, I'm happy here, where I wanted to come when I was a clerk and part-time teacher. I feel guilty giving up what others would give an organ for. I did get a damn good offer, though.


I'm going to make a game with one of the industry's most talented and impressive developers. Tune into tonight's GFW Radio for details.

For all those who have yet, or do not care to listen to said podcast (September 17th GFW) Shawn has landed himself a gig as an associative producer at 2k Boston. Meaning that he is going to be working under Ken Levine, and with the crew that made “BioShock.” So, my as of yet healed wound has not only be reopened, but deepened.

Now that all that melodrama is over with we can head over to the more heartfelt and sentimental. When I said that Shawn was my greatest inspiration I was not just hyper-dramatizing my sense of regret for not being able to read or hear his insightful critiques. What Shawn was doing and more importantly pushing for, in the field of games journalism, was ultimately what pushed me over the edge in my decision that I wanted be in this industry. His blend of philosophical discourse and jokes involving the use of fleshlights will be sourly missed. Though on a good note, word on the street is that 2k Boston is working on a new X-com.


And with this announcement it has been decided that the Brodeo is no more. Let me level with you all for a second, I listen to way, way, way too many podcasts. My favorite of the many that I subscribe to has always been GFW radio. The open forum format felt so much more natural and gave more incite and led to real discourse. For fear of sounding like some type of sycophant and becoming too verbose, I will just leave this post with a simple: Good luck to all members of 97.5 GFW radio “The Brodeo,” you will be missed.

Oh, and if you’re a fan of terrible internet humor check Shawn’s twitter. It’s internet gold.

Direct2Drive

Direct2Drive is IGN’s downloading service, designed to allow customers to...well download games, So we anti-social, travel fearing types don’t have to venture into the great unknown in order to do more venturing into some of our favorite fantasy lands. Well, this service is apparently all very theoretical in practice.

OK, let me start over. I have deliberating on playing Warhammer Online for some time now. After abruptly leaving Azeroth some one year ago, I felt the mental fortitude to partake in another MMORG. I have been keeping my keen eye on this title for quite some time. As a long time fan of the Warhammer mythos, and after a lot of research, decided this may be the MMO to re in-vigor me to the genre.

So, I linked up with my old guild, from my glory days in World of Warcraft and made my preparations to grind and slaughter my way into the history books once again. Warhammer like many MMO’s have a deal for all those who want to get a head start by being able to have a few days of time with the game before it is released in stores upon pre-ordering it. Cool right? Well yes, that is what I thought too. The only way for me to do this was to download it from IGN’s download service: Direct2Drive.

This is where things go horribly fucking wrong. I fill out the little information sections, e-mail addresses, security info, and so on, double check everything. Then brimming with anticipation, click on the little purchase button. ......thinking about selling me something......thinking some more.....your purchase has been denied. OK, no big deal I’ll contact customer support so we can fix this little mishap. Wait a second, no contact information. Then the realization hit me, I gotta e-mail some fucking computer somewhere, that has little understanding of the English language, and somehow trick him into acting like some weak fact simile of a slightly compassionate human being. So, I send the little Misanthrope 9000 an E-mail. This is his response:

Thank you for contacting Account Services at IGN. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We are a no-card-present mercantile and in order to protect your credit card must handle this responsibly.

NO ORDER WAS PLACED - Your transaction was declined.

The following reasons for purchase failure may apply to you. Please review these carefully to ensure your success purchasing:

1. First contact your bank to ensure your limit accommodates your purchase price. Also make sure that you and your bank match information. Should you have moved, you will want to update your mailing address. Banks decline your use of the card when the address does not match their records.

2. Are you traveling? Some restrictions apply to downloads. You may not be eligible in the country you are currently residing in regardless of your mailing address.

3. Are you the card holder? It may be best to have the card holder with you when using their card to ensure accuracy.”

At this point, I call my Bank. Where thankfully, I am put in direct contact with an actual human being. I ask about the problem I'm having with my online purchase, and get this, she informs me that there are not one but fucking six pending transactions from Direct2Drive. At this point, I lose my shit. And send this E-mail to the now “official” IGN Misanthrope 9000:

IGN:

Upon getting this E-mail, I called the customer support center for my bank. During this call, I was informed that indeed the transaction did go through, not once but, Six times. I would like to point out that A: I have not, as of yet, gotten a single copy of Warhammer Online. B: Did in no way want to own six copies of this title. I have to admit, I am extremely frustrated at this time, due to this little mishap.

If you could please confirm ONLY ONE of this purchases, along with erasing the aforementioned other five it would be greatly appreciated.

I hope this matter can be rectified in an extremely timely fashion.

I later found that the reason that they denied my credit card was because I was using a free e-mail account. Yup, that’s right. Some time later, after I tried (to no avail) to shake the cold fury that was growing inside me, I contacted my bank once again, and they fixed the duplicate transactions. I mean this is a site, that in its customer support drag icon’s, the sixth in the list of possible fuck-ups is “duplicate/mistaken charges on my credit card.” At this point if your saying to yourself, it is just a freak occurrence, you might be right...or you could take these dudes advice as well.

On a side note: it is at times like these that I can understand why in film robots and humanity can never really get along, and end up starting wars in the future. Imagine if you went to 7-11 at three A.M. and you really wanted some Taquitos and some damn robot gave you the run-around. Oh man, you better pray, that we do not see robots in my lifetime, cause if one gets lippy with me, years of pent up anti-robot aggression is gonna be let loose. And then you know what we got? A future where you gotta send your friend back in time to make love to your mother. Oh, and a terrain that is apparently only human skulls.

Archibald J Pennypincher's pick of the month

Archilbald Pennypincher is a man who understands the value of a dollar. He has decided to go to great lengths to scour the internet in search of the greatest free games available. So here is the first installment, enjoy.

GemCraft - (Armor Games) Created by Gameinabottle

Gemcraft is one of those examples of free flash entertainment that rival if not surpass some of what is available upon other formats.(XNA,XBLA,PSN) Gemcraft is a tower defense game where it is your charge to stop waves of incoming monsters from destroying a hapless village. But lets not be too reductive; where this title really shines is in its mechanics.


As a Gem wizard(might be the nerdyist thing to say aloud) you must place towers in the allowed sections of the path and then fill them with gems to attack. Each color of gem has a passive status effect such as poison or splash damage. Unlike some of its cousins in the genera such as Desktop Tower Defense, or Protector; Gemcraft allows you to move your attack nodes ala gems to another tower in real time. You can also destroy a gem by turning it into a gem bomb for a burst of damage. These mechanics coupled with the ability to combine gems to create a stronger gem with attributes of its parents allows for a surprising amount of depth.

To make this game even more interesting is its RPG elements. Your wizard levels up after scoring so many cumulative points. These levels award points to allocate to the game’s tech tree. While the tech tree is a bit on the shallow end of customization, it does allow for some interesting configurations especially during the mid game when points are more limited but skills are not.

The guys over at gameinabottle.com have a very good thing going for them, and I believe have the ability to revolutionize the tower defense genera. But, its not as if this title is without faults, chief among them being an uneven difficulty. The first epic level for example is by far the hardest level in the entire game, and I could see becoming a big hurtle for people who do not fully understand the leveling structure at that point. This coupled by the last ability in the tech tree being a bit overpowered, causing the later levels to become unnecessarily easy. My only other serious criticism is in the bonus points gained at the end of a level. More specifically the shear amount of gem bombs and combination you have to complete to achieve a gold award. Why I criticize this is because if found myself, mostly in the mid game, just creating a metric shitton of level one gems and needlessly carpet bombing everything in sight.

All and all though, Gemcraft is truly a gem of the flash community.(Oh, man I had to use that one)

1up Style score: A-
IGN Style score: 8.9

Gemcraft is available at Konngregate, Armor Games, or Gameinabottle.

Top Five Most Anticipated Games

The idea of this post is to show a more in depth look at your humble author. Considering the amount of exciting titles being shown at the various conventions, this list wasn’t an easy task to complete. The more I think about it, the more I want to add some form of an addendum, but I won’t. I didn't want to over think my decisions too much either. So I wrote down my list as quickly as possible then wrote in the text later.

5 - Fallout 3 "Bethesda Softworks" (PC, PS3, 360)

I have to admit, while an unpopular opinion, I was not a fan of Oblivion. The world was just too generic fantasy for my tastes. While huge in scope, Oblivion seemed overambitious and dare I say, a bit hollow.
Fallout on the other hand has my hype-o-meter at almost a fever pitch. Post apocalyptic 1950's aesthetic, yes please. Toting hundreds of endings, and decisions that affect the world in real and game changing ways, including the possibility of destroying an entire town. I have a feeling that Fallout is going to push the envelope in new and interesting ways. Oh, and E3 best in show doesn't hurt either.

4 - Heavy Rain "Quantic Dream" (PS3)

Not much has been shown as of yet on Heavy Rain but already I am way excited. Made by the team that created "Indigo Prophesy" . Playing a cop who is investigating a serial killer, Heavy Rain has become a must watch in the upcoming months.

3 - Prince of Persia "Ubisoft" (PC, PS3, 360)

Just based on art direction alone this game deserves to be in this list. The decision to reduce the amount of fighting, which was always the biggest flaw with the series, by giving each area a sort of boss that you must battle throughout only further proves that this game has the potential to be even greater then any of its predecessors. My only slight concern is with the prince's snarky dialogue from the Leipzig gameplay trailer.

2- Dawn of War 2 "Relic" (PC)

To be fair, I am a huge fan of Relic. I was on the original Dawn of War beta. I love Company of Heroes. I am also a fan of the Warhammer 40,000 lore. So really this game, at least for me, is a perfect storm. Considering the direction that Relic is taking with real time strategy, I will be dumbfounded if this game is anything but fucking amazing. Oh, and they got the Tyranids in there too.

1 - Mirror's Edge "Dice" (PC, PS3, 360)

Hate all you want on E.A., but without them we wouldn't get this truly original idea from the makers of the Battlefield series. From first hearing about this way back in the form of just rumors till now after seeing some pretty awesome gameplay videos, all I can really say is "wow." A first person parkour game, that not only has no H.U.D., but looks more intriguing every time a new trailer is released.

Spore Creature Creator

Meet Jiveasuarus. He was created via the spore creature creator as you might have guessed from the title of this entry. I recommend anyone even remotely interested in Spore to download this free trial. My only problem with the creature creator is that (now I only used the free version so my options were very limited) all the creatures seem to look reptilian and or a reptile/insect hybrid. I wanted to originally make a more humanoid creature. Well I might go and get the full version here in the near future. So look for more on Spore here!

If your interested in finding my creatures on Sporeapedia I'm listed under "TheSophist"

Memorial Day

Memorial Day, for most Americans is just a reason to have a cook out. Not that I don’t advocate such activities, who doesn’t want to commemorate soldiers who died by sitting around drinking to the point that you are not embarrassed that your uncle is wearing that “fuck the chief” apron, Eating a week worth of calories in a single sitting? Well, I wanted to memorialize a different kind of solider today, an unsung hero, the video game soldier. I understand that this is an American holiday but I also did not want to restrict my observance to just digital Americans that have fallen.

This Post goes out to Peter. Peter decided to join the Wehrmacht to defend the fatherland from the evils of the western world. How proud he was standing next to his brothers. It was only one man they whispered down the ranks. A single Paratrooper from the 101st Airborne, they were many he was but he was alone. Peter did not believe the wild rumors that this paratrooper single handedly took the town of Carentan. They had several MG42's, Panzershrecks, and assorted small arms; defensive emplacements consisting of metal barrels and sand bags protected them from this futile American’s attempt at thwarting the thousand-year plan. The last things Peter would have remembered were his friend Hanz, who grew up in the same village on the Austrian border, diving behind one of their defensive barrels only to see it ignite causing small pieces of his beloved comrade to cascade down his face and green fatigues. Peter was frozen unable to conjure any of the training in which he was given. All he could do is stare and wonder as he watched his brethren fire volley after volley of automatic fire at the lone American, only to see when they did find their mark(which was not often) that the American beast did not slow or even flinch in his methodical massacre. Peter finding little strength before his brains became so much chunky red paint upon the back wall was to utter a single word....”Alarm.”

The truth is the number of digital soldier who have died in combat have vastly outnumbered those who died in actual combat. That is why I would like you to join me in a silent prayer for all of the hapless villains of gaming. For Peter and Hanz, for the countless Terrorists and Counter-terrorists locked in their deadly struggle to plant and diffuse bombs in seeming uninhabited and strategical unimportant locales. To the various foolish alien races who decided that invading Earth was somehow easy, or a good idea. Why, I memorialize these poor souls is simple, they could not have possibly known that one man/space marine/scientist was not a man but in fact a W.A.S.D. ninja, a quick save knight, a man blessed with a complete lack of conscience, and an endless reservoir of resolve.

Portal: The Flash Version Map Pack Review

Published by: WeCreateStuff.com
Made By: Hen Mazolski


What first got me interested in Hen Mazolski was his Flash Version of Portal which I found at www.kongregate.com. This semi-popular game never really snagged my attention past a momentary, “Oh, well that is neat.” The Controls were a little flimsy and while adding in some cool new elements, such as electric platforms and laser kill walls, I never really gave it much more then a five minute fancy.

So fast forward a few months and it seems that Mr. Mazolski has been busy converting all 40 plus levels of his flash game into the actual engine of Portal. Now this prospect really piqued my interest. Directly upon reading this exciting news in Kotaku I raced over to his site www.wecreatestuff.com and promptly downloaded it. After the simplistic install process of dragging a few folders I was ready to face the trials of Aperture Science once again. The Map pack fits seamlessly into the bonus maps section of the original, but is less of a map pack and more of a second story mode. You play as another test subject forced to run jump and shoot your way through Gladdos’ little maniacal romper room. This version reuses a lot of your nemesis’ dialogs, which considering she is a computer, Who sole purpose to run people like mice throughout her “tests,” ends up being more endearing then distracting. Though there are a few times that I am almost 100 percent certain that Hen somehow flawlessly adds in some new dialogue for Gladdus. This game also boasts a (while not in any way official to the cannon) development in the plot that connects the Half-Life series with Portal. This prospect while initially very frightening to me like someone deciding to rewrite purposely vague parts of some holy text so that it sits better with his narrow little world view. But fear not, having completed it I can safely say that it was if not official at least it was tastefully done.

Now onto the meat and potatoes of this mod. Considering that it uses the same engine and assets as portal there is no real point to talk about things such as graphics, physics and so on but there is still a lot to pick through in this mod. The new challenges that you face in this such as the previously mentioned electric platforms, walls of killer lasers, and some strange force field that allow you to shoot though but can’t move through are neat but are not all that much of a hindrance to your progress. Hen’s level design as a whole throughout this is top notch his puzzles are smart, inventive, and have a feel very similar to Portal’s. My only real fault with any of the puzzles, or mostly one in particular is that Portal being more of a puzzle game set in first person and less of a first person game with puzzles. I get very frustrated when I figure out how a puzzle is supposed to work but just can’t implement it. Now this is the point I preempt any thoughts of “ I bet he just sucks and is blaming his lack of skillz on bad design.” While this portal is designed to be more challenging, which I applaud, lets call a spade a spade. There is a puzzle where after finding that you do not have the requesist materials on hand to “properly” finish it you have to shoot yourself up a small tube to reach a ventilation shaft. This became for me less about how to shoot myself correctly and more about how not to throw my keyboard through my monitor. But I digress, considering the 3 plus hours of orange and blue holes in reality fun that this free game contains I can’t really rag too much on one testy, maddening, should have been caught by the testers, puzzle. Now that my only real gripe has been satiated we can move onto my second lesser gripe, the last boss/encounter.

SPOILER ALERT...WELL KIND OF. The last boss which surprise ,surprise is Gladdos again. My problem is not with who is the last boss, but rather how in theory it was such a good idea that fell short. Gladdos sometime after the events of the original, decides that it would be prudent to get some kind of giant robot suit thing. While in retrospect it ain’t too shabby of an idea...Anyway back to the point you see this newly acquired battle suit and do the only logical thing when faced with a blood crazed, anti-social, smart mouthed, science bot wrapped in some armor you might have seen in Robot Jox, which is to promptly shit your pants and run from it. This could have been a very cool if they would have just made said robot a little faster, after your 2nd or so jump away from her you don’t really have that impending doom feeling anymore and I just ending up jumping up and down and taunting her. But after you get through your little gauntlet you just end up in a Aperture Science parking garage. At this point you gotta trick her into shooting herself with her new fangled ray gun. SPOILERS ARE OVER. But all in all it’s not a bad encounter by any means, I’m just a little disappointed that you couldn’t run from her and use her own puzzles against her or something, cause that would be some serious poetic justice.

Now comes the really hard paragraph. This is the conclusion, where I sum up what I thought about complex game in an overly simplified numerical denomination/ letter grade which in turn you digest and decide to buy or not buy this game. But guess what kids? Your shit out of luck this time cause all this gonna cost you is 40 megabits worth of hard drive space. So by normal rational this game should get a 1000 out of 10 or some such nonsense. There is no reason to miss out on this great mod. Hen’s level designing skills are at a professional calabur. So after reading this promptly go to www.wecreatestuff.com and download this. And while you are there get “Nightmare House: Remake” it’s some of the best fifteen minutes of gaming I have had in a while.