2202: Three Games I’d Like to See Made

Posting my piece about Neptunia games I’d like to see the other day got me thinking more broadly about other interactive experiences I’d like to indulge in, should they ever be made. (Or perhaps they already exist, in which case please do let me know in the comments and I will investigate!)

The following games either don’t exist at all, or the last time they were properly explored in gaming — in my opinion, anyway — was far too long ago for my liking. So here we go, then:

A proper spy game

I downloaded Sid Meier’s Covert Action from GOG.com a while back when it was on sale for some ludicrously low price, and discovered that it was an immensely satisfying, fascinating game with a number of distinct facets. I wrote in detail about the game a while back, but for those of you too lazy to click through, the elevator pitch is thus:

You are Max (or Maxine) Remington, an agent. A Dastardly Plot is about to unfold in the world, and it’s up to you to stop it. Ideally, you will find out what is going on before it happens, arrest everyone involved and follow the trail of clues to find the Mastermind behind it all. You will then repeat the process until all the Masterminds there are in the world are behind bars — or until you give up at the ludicrous level of difficulty the game escalates to on its higher settings.

Covert Action incorporates a variety of game styles ranging from puzzle (phone tapping) to code-breaking, car chases and top-down action-stealth-adventuring. While clunky by modern standards, it’s an extremely clever game that, in true Sid Meier tradition, is busily simulating a whole bunch of things happening in the background while you appear to be doing something relatively simple. None of it is pre-scripted, either; each case you get is randomly generated, so there’s no easy way to find the solution other than putting in the hard graft yourself.

To cut a long story short, we need a new Covert Action. There have been spy-themed games, sure — the most memorable of which for me is, without a doubt, Alpha Protocol — but these tend to be more scripted and action movie-like, rather than focusing on the interesting but perhaps less glamorous aspects of the job. I want a spy game where it’s rare you’ll pull your gun on anyone; I want a spy game that’s more about setting up surveillance and investigating than shooting terrorists; I want a spy game where it feels like I’m a spy, not an action movie hero. (To put it another way: I want a spy game where it feels like I’m old-school James Bond, rather than new-school James Bond.)

A good Star Trek game

There’s plenty of space games around, since they’ve been making a bit of a resurgence over the last few years. With the success of Elite: Dangerous and the anticipation for No Man’s Sky, the time is surely ripe for a new Star Trek game to hit the market.

Oh, there are a couple of relatively recent Star Trek games around, of course, but neither of these quite scratch the itch I have. Star Trek Online is a massively multiplayer online RPG, with everything that entails — including lots of grinding and free-to-play monetisation that requires you to pay up for the coolest ships rather than earning them — while Star Trek Timelines is a mobile game with everything that entails — including lots of grinding and free-to-pla… you get the idea.

Neither of these games are particularly bad as such — though Star Trek Timelines’ use of the obnoxious playtime-limiting “Energy” system that I really wish would die a horrible death is something I find hard to forgive — but neither of them are quite right. Both have good aspects: Star Trek Online has a great feeling of taking your ship around the galaxy, exploring uncharted areas and engaging in battle, while Star Trek Timelines presents you with some interesting non-combat scenarios to deal with, albeit only in text form. The trouble is, neither of them go far enough in simulating what it’s like to be a crewman on a Starfleet vessel.

There are a few approaches I’d like to see a new Star Trek game take. Firstly and perhaps most obviously is a starship bridge simulator. I know these exist and are available on GOG.com, but with modern technology it would be possible to do something far more impressive — and perhaps even multiplayer, a la Artemis Starship Bridge Simulator.

Another possible approach is something along the lines of Spectrum Holobyte’s elderly Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity, which combined starship operations (including combat and power management) with point-and-click adventuring down on planet surfaces. While the combat and engineering sections on the ship ended up feeling a little superfluous when compared to the game’s narrative aspects — particularly as you could put them both on automatic without penalty — the whole thing felt suitably authentic as an interactive episode of The Next Generation, and ripe for updating.

I guess one of the main issues with the Star Trek license is that there’s not a current TV series running to tie it in with, so it would probably have to be an original work, perhaps with guest appearances from established characters. That’s not an issue for me, so long as it feels like Star Trek, but for some fans it may not be acceptable.

I believe there is talk of a new Star Trek series of some description coming soon, though, so it will be interesting to see if anything interactive comes of it. Anything’s better than that dreadful third-person shooter that came out for consoles a year or two back and was promptly completely forgotten about…

A game about running a school

There are tons of management games out there, but outside of an extremely peculiar mobile game by Kairosoft called Pocket Academy, I don’t recall all that many that focus on educational institutions, and I think this is something that would be ripe for the interactive treatment.

SimSchool, as we’ll call it, has a considerable degree of scope to be a much more “personal” strategy game than many other management sims, since although running a school does include the standard stuff like budgeting, staffing and training, a key part of what keeps a school running effectively is interpersonal communications, rapports and morale.

In SimSchool, you’d play the new, young headmaster of a school that was struggling, and you’d have a certain amount of time to set things right. In true strategy game tradition, you’d be able to set up various conditions at the beginning of the game such as the affluence of the area the school is in, the size of the school, when it was built, its condition and suchlike, and have the game create a challenge for you accordingly.

As you worked your way through a campaign, you’d not only have to perform managerial duties to keep the establishment in the black and keep an eye on the day-to-day operations of the school, but you’d also have to interact with students, staff and parents in order to keep them happy. There’d be dialogue sequences in which you’d have to negotiate things and determine the best way to handle problem children — sometimes you’d even have to convince the local authority that the decision you’d made was the right one for the greater good. And, on the harder difficulty levels, you’d also have to contend with various “disasters” that make your life more difficult — this is a Sim game, after all!

My time working in schools was hellish, and I have no desire to return — but that doesn’t mean I don’t still find them interesting places. A game like this has a lot of scope to be an interesting twist on the strategy-management genre, and I’d certainly love to play it.

#oneaday Day 539: Rogue Agent

I mentioned a few days ago that I’d started playing Alpha Protocol, one of a number of low-cost acquisitions from the recent Steam Sale, now sadly (or perhaps not so sadly — everyone’s credit cards likely want a bit of a rest) over. I’ve spent a bit more time with it now, so I’d like to share some further thoughts on it.

Roundly panned on its release for its dodgy AI, “crap” combat, bugs and gameplay flaws, Alpha Protocol is a game that many people passed by — and unfortunately, due to its mediocre review scores and poor sales that resulted from said review scores, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a sequel. And that’s a real shame, as look past the few flaws there are and there’s actually a very good game.

Things start well, with a sequence that introduces you to the main game mechanics, including shooting, sneaking, gadgets and conversation. It’s pretty early on that you’re faced with the game’s distinctive conversation system, somewhere between Mass Effect and Fahrenheit in its execution. Possible approaches or “moods” of conversation fill a Mass Effect-style wheel in the middle of the screen, so you’re not quite sure exactly what protagonist Michael Thorton is going to say, but you have an idea of the general gist. The twist is that there’s a pretty tight time limit to decide what to say next, cutting out any of the usual agonising over decision-making in morality-driven RPGs — here you have to think on your feet, take what you feel is the most appropriate approach and then deal with the consequences, which could range from someone liking you a bit more to subsequent missions being markedly different.

There’s a pleasing variety of ways through missions, too, with experimentation being rewarded with Achievement-like Perks which bestow specific bonuses on Thorton throughout the game. In some cases it’s possible to talk your way around a firefight, even getting potential enemies on your side as allies at times. In others, it’s possible to create noisy distractions and then use the ensuing chaos to sneak round. And it’s also possible to go in guns blazing if that’s your approach too.

The combat may not be the best in the world — the sticky cover system is a bit cumbersome when enemies move into close-quarters range, for example — but it’s certainly not as bad as some reviews I’ve seen have made out. The problem, I think, is in people assuming it’s a third-person shooter when in fact it’s executed like an action RPG. In many ways, as it happens, it reminds me of titles such as Deus Ex and even older late-90s titles such as Mission: Impossible on the N64.

In fact, the whole game has the feeling of a late-90s stealth-action-adventure game, albeit one with Unreal Engine 3-powered graphimications. This isn’t a bad thing, as I’m of the firm belief that gaming — particularly PC gaming — in the late 90s and very early 20th century — was my favourite era of games. And to play something that seems to capture the feel of those games while bringing the visuals and cinematic presentation up to date? Well, that’s pretty much all I can ask for from a game.

I realise, of course, that the reasons I like Alpha Protocol may, in fact, be the same reasons why some hate it. Some may say gameplay mechanics should move on and learn from games that do the whole shooter-RPG combo “correctly”, like Mass Effect 2. And they’re probably right — Mass Effect 2 is, after all, excellent. But I’ve beaten Mass Effect 2 before, and I’ve never beaten Alpha Protocol — never played it before this last week, in fact. And while it lasts, I’m enjoying it a great deal.

So there.

#oneaday Day 534: Who’s Buying the Crap?

I’m pretty sure I already knew this some time ago, but I’ve come to the not-so-startling conclusion recently that I’m the one buying the crap games and listening to terrible music and enjoying awful films. It’s not a conscious decision to be contrary, but I do find myself more willing than some to give creative works that have been somewhat maligned the benefit of the doubt — and more often than not actually end up enjoying them.

The first time I recall this happening was one summer when I was home from university. I got very bored and decided that I was going to go to the cinema by myself, just pick a movie that happened to be on, sit down, watch it and attempt to enjoy it. It was partly borne from a desire to prove wrong the unwritten rule that going to the cinema by yourself is somehow shameful (if it is, why is watching a DVD by yourself OK?) and partly just out of a desire to get out of the house.

The movie I went to see? 2 Fast 2 Furious. It was terrible, of course, but I enjoyed it a great deal. And the reason for this was the fact that I didn’t feel “accountable” to anyone — there was no-one with me judging my tastes or making me believe that I should feel a certain way about this piece of entertainment that was bombarding me with nonsense. (“Wow, bro, it’s like a ho-asis in here!”) Judged entirely on its own merits and on whether or not it performed the function I wanted it to at that specific moment in time — to entertain me without making me have to think too much — it succeeded admirably.

More recently, I found similar joy in Duke Nukem Forever. The thing that annoyed me most about the vitriolic reviews scattered around the web was the fact that all the critics seemed to feel somehow “responsible” for their audience, like they had a moral obligation to dislike it because of its more questionable elements or its rough edges. I played it and enjoyed it — genuinely — and was surprised there weren’t a few more people willing to stand up and be counted, saying “look, yes, it is crass, it is rude, it is inappropriate, but for fuck’s sake lighten up.” But that’s by the by — if you found it objectionable, that’s your business, but it doesn’t make me wrong either.

Most recently, the recent Steam sale encouraged me to pick up Alpha Protocol, a game I’ve been curious about for some time. Roundly panned on its release for poor AI, questionable game mechanics and outdated graphics, most people seemed to think it was one to pass by. But for three quid I wasn’t about to let that happen. So far I’ve enjoyed it greatly. I don’t mind that the shooting and the AI isn’t great because I’m not very good at shooters or stealth games. What Alpha Protocol has provided for me so far is a 24-esque espionage plot with action sequences where I at least feel like I’m a badass spy, even if the execution means it’s quite difficult to mess things up, from what I can tell. The key thing about the game is its story, and for that, I’m willing to forgive its flaws — some may say too forgiving.

This is a pattern I’ve continued for as long as I remembered. Back when I bought CDs (oh so many years ago) I tended to purchase music on something of a whim rather than with the charts or peer reactions in mind. I bought things out of curiosity, because I liked the cover art, because I thought the singer was hot. And there’s very few of those decisions I regretted, because it gave me the opportunity to experience some things that many other people might never have been exposed to.

I’m cool with that. It gives me interesting things to talk about when people want to know about obscure games, cheesy music or crap films. Everyone knows Halo and Call of Duty are good. But how many people can vouch for the awesomeness of Doom: The Roguelike?