Today’s (actually yesterday’s) exercise in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge, is to write a “list post.” So here’s my attempt to comply.
Nihilism is a worldview that holds there is no value or meaning in life, it just exists. Here are my top 5 retro-games that exhibit this worldview.
5. Defender
I’m defender of the planet. The aliens waves never stop. The aliens get stronger if they merge with those I’m pledged to protect. Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill most of the inhabitants to prevent the super aliens?
4. Donkey Kong
I dodge barrels, fireballs, and springs. I climb oddly configured construction sites all to stand face-to-face with the object of our affection who is continually whisked away by a big gorilla. Why won’t she run away with us? Girl, he’s not even paying attention to you. Get out of there!!!
3. Night Driver
Where in the world am I driving to? Why does this road never end? Why did I pay to play this? Why did I think this was fun?
2. Asteroids
You are alone, surviving a never-ending onslaught of asteroids and the occasional alien ship who may help or hurt your cause. Deep space is a lonely place, but at least you’re armed.
1. Pac-ManA never changing maze, bad guys chasing you, and a incessant siren blaring. Your only reprieve is an occasional power-pill that lets you turn the tables on the bad guys for a short time. This is the bleak world of Pac-Man.

Dodge is kind of a throw-back game. It’s basic space shooter reminiscent of Space Wars and Asteroids. However, one big difference is that your ship has no weapons.

No Weapons!?!?

In this age of weapon power-ups, how can you have a game where the player doesn’t even have a weapon? Well, in Dodge, you do exactly what the name implies, you dodge the weapons that the enemies fire at you. The weapons are torpedo-ish in that they follow you for some amount of time before either hitting something or exploding. Your objective is to maneuver in such a way the the weapons hit the enemies instead of you.

Weapon Less Fun

I must say, I rather enjoyed the first five or so levels. Avoiding the weapons in such a way as to make them hit the enemy was an interesting change to trying to hit the fire button as fast as possible. But after that, things got a little tiresome. My hand and arm started getting tired from the keyboard movements and while there were some weapons advancements by the enemies, but nothing that really changed the game.

Worldview

This game is pretty basic nihilism. There not much point other than to avoid, destroy, and survive. There’s no narrative, grand story, or objective. In this respect, it is very much like those early arcade classics. I don’t know whether it was an extension of the worldview of the creators or a way to get kids to keep popping in quarters.

Summary

Dodge is well executed and pretty fun for a short time killer. It’s lack of objectives and physically tiring keyboard controls make for limited replayablity.

The Last Stand is a zombie survival shooting game. The goal is to survive until someone can come and rescue you. You start the game alone with a hand gun and a barrier. Zombies approach you and you need to “kill” them before they knock down your barrier and kill you. If you survive a day, you can either look for other survivors (they can use weapons to kill zombies), look for better weapons (to kill zombies faster), or fix any barrier damage.

Is Killing Zombies Fun?

It’s not for everyone, but The Last Stand was entertaining. The actual killing of the zombies wasn’t all that interesting to me. Because of the side perspective of the game, shooting is not a precision exercise. You aim the gun in a general direction and the bullets hit whatever is in the way. This shooting mechanic puts more emphasis on how fast you can shoot than how accurate you are. This then puts focus on finding better weapons and survivors. Testing different strategies for allocating time was what kept me interested.

Is It Hard?

The Last Stand isn’t very difficult. It feels more like a casual game, just not in your typical casual game genre. It was easy to pick up and not to difficult to beat. One problem was that I first played it on an older machine and this actually made it easier to win. When I went to a faster machine, I had to adjust strategies a little, but was still able to beat the game.

Worldview

So I could go a lot of different directions on this one. Zombies and the undead don’t really lineup well with a Christian world view. Neither does the kill or gore. It also has the common American themes of individualism and progress. I’m going to put the best construction on things and point out something very Christian. You can’t win this game by defeating the zombies and you are rescued in the end. This is analogous to what Christians believe. We understand that we can’t defeat sin, death, and/or the devil; we are rescued from them by Christ and His perfect life, death, and resurrection. The Last Stand doesn’t preach the Gospel, but its victory condition is inline.

Summary

While not a game for everyone, The Last Stand is entertaining for those looking for a little shooting, a little resource allocation, and a lot of good ol’ zombie killing. And with a little stretch, you can find a worldview that doesn’t stand in opposition to Christianity.

I don’t play nearly as many games as I used to, AKA life before two daughters. But I do love old school computer RPGs (CRPGs) like Baldur’s Gate, et al. I know Eschalon – Book I is over a year old (I can tell from my old saved games), but I thought I’d review it as part of my plan to write a review every Friday.

Classic

Eschalon – Book I is pretty much everything I enjoy about old school CRPGs . You start a character by selecting an origin (race), axiom (alignment), and class. These choices can affect your stats and skills. You then roll, and re-roll, your stats and tweak your skills (lock picking, unarmed combat, heavy armor, light armor, etc.). This is all pretty standard for CRPGs with Eschalon’s tweaks to give it’s own take on character development.

From there, you proceed to go on quests to find items, deliver messages, defeat enemies, etc. Once again standard stuff, but that’s what I enjoy about the genre. The game isn’t overly long, I mean I didn’t have to abandon my wife or daughters to finish it. Not to say I felt short changed, I think it was quite appropriate in length.

90%

One thing about playing CRPGs is that I like to complete them to about 90%. I don’t want to just blaze through the game to say I beat it, but I don’t mind if I haven’t completed every side-quest. Eschalon – Book I fell right into this sweet spot. There were plenty of non-essential quests to help explore the world, but I never felt I missed out on anything when I checked my quest log and there were a few that were unresolved.

Feature or Flaw

One feature that affects the way I play a CRPG is the save system. Most games use a slot system, but some older games use save points. The reason the save system is so important to me is because I like to… “optimize.” Sure, call it cheating, gaming the system, whatever. I’ll play recklessly/carelessly knowing that I have saved recently. In Eschalon – Book I you can use this to optimize your search for items. It seems that many treasure chests and barrels randomly present items the first time you open them. So if you save before you open a chest and don’t like the contents, you can restore and open it again in hopes of getting a better item. The process can be tedious, but beneficial. I didn’t start using this technique until later in the game. I don’t think it gave me a hugh advantage, it just allowed me to accumulate gold a little faster.

Worldview

So here’s where my reviews are going to differ from the standard game review. I want to explore the worldview that Eschalon – Book I puts forward. In the old days, anything you could fight was a bad guy and any items you found were treasure. This pretty much locked the player into the role of good guy hero. As in most modern incarnations of the genre, Eschalon – Book I allows the player to make choices like stealing from merchants or killing innocents. This falls pretty much in line with our cultures notion that choice is supreme.

There didn’t seem to be a whole lot of repercussions for living the dark life. I guess if there were I would have felt less satisfied as it would have required me to play an evil role to get to the 90% threshold I spoke of earlier.

There does seem to be an attraction by a lot of people to play these games as an evil character where they make all the bad choices. As someone who already understands his fallen and sinful nature, I actually prefer to see the good role as the one that is more in the realm of fantasy and that’s why I think I derive such pleasure in playing the hero. I know in the real world there is only one that is a virtuous and good as the hero of these games. And that is Christ who died as savior of the world.

Summary

Eschalon – Book I is par for the course in pretty much all respects. Not a whole lot of the unexpected, just a very well executed CRPG. If you are a fan of the genre and you haven’t picked it up, please do. If you aren’t a fan of CRPGs I can’t say that there’s anything for you in this game.

That’s it for my first Friday review.