Monday, 14 September 2015

Please believe me, the river told me

I don’t read as much as I used to, at least not books; smartphones and tablets tend to take over of an evening or a lazy Sunday morning in bed, for catching up on social media, forums, or just swiping away at a game. Thank heavens for periods of WiFi absence, on holiday or in villages with limited mobile signal. A friend recommended Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London a few years back, but I only just got around to it, and it’s absolutely terrific; I ploughed through three more of the series within a week, and have the fifth queued up ready to go, but paused for a bit to prolong the enjoyment.

The cover quote sums it up neatly: “What would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the fuzz?” Trainee Police Constable Peter Grant stumbles across a ghost, learns about magic, and his life, in the words of Oscar Wilde, gets flipped-turned upside down. Melding police procedural (the depiction of the workings of the Metropolitan Police rings completely true) with the fantastical, Harry Potter meets The Bill would be one convenient shorthand, but firmly rooted in London and with a strong thread of humour throughout I’d perhaps opt for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell meets Hot Fuzz. There’s crime, magic, jazz, geek culture nods (including a mention of System Shock 2), hints of a Weird War II a la the Bitter Seeds trilogy; I’m not really doing them justice, but I’d heartily recommend checking them out.

Perhaps part of the reason I got so involved in a great story with likeable characters is that I’d just finished playing through Grand Theft Auto V (only two years after the original console release…) Game-wise, it’s absolutely top notch; graphically superb, with a well-realised city sandbox to play with including stacks of activities. Back in the 90s, a golf simulator was a worthy full price game in itself; in GTA V a fully wander-around-and-playable golf course is just one of myriad diversions around the place, and if you get bored of hitting balls with a stick halfway around you can always leap into a golf kart for low-speed plaid-trousered drive-bys, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t an option in Links 386.

Story-wise, though, it’s an absolute mess. It starts well enough, with Franklin, a kid trying to get out of the ghetto, meeting Michael, a retired bank robber having trouble adjusting to family life. Once the third character, Trevor, appears, it starts to fall apart. The story bogs down in a morass of spoof versions of government agencies making random demands while one or more of the central characters says “we do this then we’re out”, only to get dragged back in on the very next mission like some sort of criminal hokey-cokey. Trevor’s going to kill Michael, but he doesn’t, but he might, but he doesn’t, but he could… Individuals and groups turn up and are promptly forgotten, until the very final mission, which gives the impression of being sellotaped on to the end of the game after a QA report said “You remember this, and this, and this happened?”, and the writers went “Oh yeah… all right, well, if we add a mission where you kill this guy, this guy and this guy then that solves everything, the end, there we go.” Everyone is horrible; your characters are horrible, their families are horrible, the people on the radio are horrible… GTA’s skewed take on reality, things like the double entendre company names and spoof adverts, still raises a smile here and there, but overall it’s hard to like or even care about anybody. It helps if you’re at least rooting slightly more for “you” than the other side; Franklin probably got the closest, but his deeply emotional central character arc appears to consist of moving to a nice house.

The highlights of the game are the heists that you periodically pull off, multi-part missions involving reconnaissance, planning, preparation and execution; at their best they’re like playing through a classic crime caper, ruing the lack of Get A Bloomin’ Move On on one of the radio stations. Having three point-of-view characters didn’t help the already messy story, but in mechanical terms it works well, allowing you to switch between different roles during the preparation and execution of the heists. I’m sure they’d be great fun in GTA Online with a group of like-minded friends, maybe that’s the real strength of GTA V, but in single player it’s a shame that the strengths of the engine and gameplay aren’t complemented by a decent, involving story.

Friday, 4 September 2015

Death and the dice level all distinctions

It’s been a while since I properly grouped up with people for online games, MMOs have become a bit of an online Diogenes Club for me. Thankfully semi-regular boardgame gatherings keep me from turning into a complete gaming recluse; some of the games played since the last not-even-semi-regular update here include:

Kingdom Builder

Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) winner in 2012, it’s nice and quick to get to grips with Kingdom Builder. Each turn you draw a terrain card, and build three settlements on that type of terrain. The beauty of it is that victory conditions are determined by drawing cards at the start of the game, and the game board is built from four randomly selected sections, so each game (usually) requires a different strategy. Thematically it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense, the mechanics are rather abstract, but they’re good and solid, work well with two players, and the random setup makes it very replayable.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

I’ve only played this once so far, and would definitely like to give it another go. Each player constructs a castle one room at a time, and like Kingdom Builder there’s a random element to the way points are scored to vary things from game to game. Unlike Kingdom Builder the theme is integral to the game, loosely based on the titular Ludwig II of Bavaria, much of the fun is in trying to explain why the primary feature of your castle is a large theatre connected to the stables. It’ll need another few playthroughs to determine if the mechanics are as strong, but it looks most promising.

Discworld: Ankh Morpork

As the name suggests, a Discworld game set in Ankh Morpork. Each player assumes a hidden identity, each with their own victory condition, and sets about trying to take control of areas of Ankh Morpork, cause trouble, or (in the case of Commander Vimes) ensure nobody else wins before the cards run out. Much bluff and counter-bluff as players try to assess what the others might need to do to win. The mechanics don’t always meld completely seamlessly with the theme, but the cards feature masses of Discworld characters great and small with terrific art, and the chaotic nature of magic certainly fits well.

Unfortunately it seems that since Terry Pratchett’s death, the Discworld licence is not being renewed with publisher Treefrog Games, so Discworld: Ankh Morpork (and The Witches, their other Discworld game) won’t be reprinted. A bit of digging around turned up plans for a third game based on the gods of Discworld that sounded most interesting, but won’t now come to fruition, rather a shame. On the positive side, there’s a news item on their website about a second edition of A Study in Emerald, a game based on the Neil Gaiman short story of the same name blending Sherlock Holmes with the Cthulhu mythos that I’ll be keeping an eye out for, could be a good companion to…

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

An interesting one; a text-heavy collaborative roleplaying crime-’em-up in which the players take the role of Irregulars, trying to solve a case before Sherlock Holmes smugly reveals how obvious it all was. There are ten cases, each with a Fighting Fantasy-esque book of numbered paragraphs of exposition, but rather than the book instructing you to turn to section X, players use props like a map of London and editions of The Times to determine where to go and thus what paragraph to read.

Extensive note-taking is helpful as you try and pick out relevant clues and avoid red herrings, and investigations can be rather stymied if you miss what, in hindsight, turns out to be the crux of the case, either through your own foolishness (in our first case, we bumbled around London quite unhelpfully for some time before thinking of visiting the murder scene), or the obtuse nature of a clue (I mean really, if trying to leave a clue in your dying moments, smashing a display case and turning a figurine around would be some way down my list after, oh, I don’t know, writing a short note with the name of the killer…)

It won’t suit all groups, but if you’ve ever fancied yourselves as a whatever-the-collective-noun-for-Sherlock-Holmeses-is of Sherlock Holmeses, it’s rather a fun change of pace.

King of Tokyo

My most recent acquisition, based on searching boardgamegeek.com for a game that supported up to six players with a maximum playing time of an hour, for a quick warm-up or interlude on gaming days. Each player controls a giant robot/alien/monster aiming to rule Tokyo by defeating the other monsters, or getting to 20 victory points. Turns consist of rolling and re-rolling six dice, a bit like Poker Dice or Yahtzee, to accumulate victory points or energy (currency), heal yourself or damage the other monsters. Energy can be used to purchase cards with either one-time or lasting effects. It took about ten minutes from ripping the cellophane off the box to starting the first round, and turned out to be so much fun, we just kept playing it! An ideal family or party game.