Steam has had an assortment of sales over the last week or so.  One of these sales had Clive Barker’s Jericho marked down to just a couple dollars.  I loved Clive Barker’s Undying, and it’s been a while since I played a shooter, so I picked it up.

Roughly 10 minutes after starting the game I was pounding my keyboard in frustration.

It was immediately apparent that this game was originally developed for the consoles and then ported over to the PC.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing…  It’s pretty common these days…  But it makes for some vaguely odd UI decisions.  The main menu was designed to be navigated with a gamepad, not a mouse.  Yes, there was a cursor, and you could point and click…  But it really worked better just navigating the menus with the arrow keys.

Now, I realize that WASD is kind of the default keyboard layout for a shooter.  It’s what everyone uses.  It’s what Jericho defaults to.  But it isn’t what I like to use.  I prefer to use ESDF.  I can comfortably rest my fingers right on the home row, with the little bump under my index finger to ensure I’ve got them on the right keys without even looking.  I’ve got plenty of other keys around those movement keys too…  More, I think, than if you’re using WASD.  And, since this is a PC game, I can re-map my controls to pretty much anything I want.

Then I started up a new game…

You get an intro cutscene kind of thing, but from the first-person.  You see your arms and legs moving around as you answer the phone in the middle of the night.  You’re being called up to go save the world.  Then you’re on a helicopter with the rest of your team, being briefed on the mission.  Then you’re landing outside of some ancient ruins in the middle of a sandstorm.

Now, I find the whole first-person cutscene thing kind of annoying.  The idea in a first-person shooter is that you are that character.  That you are the one making the decisions.  If you take control out of my hands and make my character do things without my input it messes with that premise.  Suddenly I’m not in control.  Suddenly I’m not that character.  If you must have my character do things without my input you really ought to go to a regular cutscene and show the whole thing in the 3rd person.

The next bit continued to be annoying by taking control away from me.

They start out the tutorial by telling me how to move around…  But, for some reason, I’m stuck moving at a snail’s pace.  We’re in hostile territory, there’s a sandstorm, everyone around me is sprinting for cover, but I’m just slowly moseying along.

We enter some kind of building or tunnel.  There’s another first-person cutscene while we examine some carvings in the stone.  Somebody makes a joke about being a god.  There’s a tremor or earthquake or something.  We all run for cover.  I fall down a chasm.  And then there’s this sudden-death event where I have to hit specific movement keys to pull myself to safety.

This is a little unusual in a PC shooter…  But it’s a port from the console, so I guess it’s forgivable.  Still, if I wanted to play some kind of button-mashing rythm game I wouldn’t have bought a shooter.

Anyway, I have to push the right-strafe button to grab a rock…  Then the left-strafe button…  And then I fall to my death.  The game helpfully rewinds to the part where I first fell down the chasm, so I don’t have to start the level over from the beginning.

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

After going through this a few times, I figure maybe they want me to use the arrow keys, instead of my movement keys.

Right…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Dead…  Rewind…

Nope, definitely doesn’t help to use the arrow keys.  It isn’t even noticing when I hit the right-arrow.  I must just be doing it wrong, not timing it right or something.  I go back to using my movement keys.

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

Right…  Left…  Dead…  Rewind…

By this point I’m pretty frustrated.  I double-check the controls to see if there’s some other button I should be pressing during these sudden-death things.  Nope, no such luck.  So I check on-line…

Over at GameFAQs there’s a number of threads on this very subject.  Turns out there’s an issue with the control mapping.  The game assumes you’re using WASD during those sudden-death things.  If you aren’t, it won’t work right.

So I re-map my keys to WASD.

Right…  Left…  Right…  Up…  Right…  Safety!

But now I’m having to play with WASD instead of ESDF.  Not a huge deal, but not as comfortable or intuitive as I’d like.

So, now we’re wandering through these ruins, looking for survivors or something.  We come across some monsters.  They’re obviously monsters.  They look like some kind of zombies with a sword for an arm.  Very obviously not civilians or contemporary soldiers or friendly people.

Somebody (me?) is yelling for people to hold their fire.  Yelling that we’re US Marines.  Put down your weapons.  Put your hands up.  We’re friendly.  Etc.

And nobody can shoot.

I try shooting at the obviously monstrous things in front of us, and I can’t.  It just will not allow me to shoot at these things until the little cutscene thing has played out.  Eventually we decide they’re hostile, and everyone opens fire.

Now, the first problem I have with this, is that they’re obviously not friendly.  It makes me wonder what kind of idiots these Jericho folks are.  They’re actually willing to believe that a bunch of rotting zombies with swords for arms might be friendly.

The next problem is that you’ve once again taken control away from me in order to facilitate your storytelling.  Bad idea.

If you really have to tell the story your way, leave the first-person perspective.  Move out to a third-person camera and show me what’s going on like a scene in a movie.

If you want to stay in the first-person, let me make my own decisions.

What’s worse is that this could have been done much, much better.  The game should have left me in first-person perspective, while somebody yelled for us to hold fire.  There also should have been a real possibility that the critters were friendly…  Maybe some dust and smoke obscuring them, maybe they look like soldiers at first.

Allow me, the player, to choose whether I hold fire or not.  If I wait too long, have one of the monsters kill someone.  Just for the moment, give them some crazy-powerful one-hit kill.  This makes them obviously hostile and we’ll all open fire on them.  And after the firefight you can use the downed team member as a tutorial opportunity to show me how to heal folks.

And if I’ve played through the game before, or am just suspicious or violent or whatever, let me open fire early and prevent that person from getting struck down.

Anyway…  We deal with our first batch of monsters.  We wander around some more, kill some more monsters.  I’m shown how to order a group to stay put or to follow me.  We wander some more, kill some more monsters.  Enter the bunker, kill some more monsters, leave the bunker.

And it quickly becomes apparent that the game is incredibly linear.  Not just in terms of storyline progression or general map layout…  But in terms of giving you basically only one way to get from point A to point B.  Even when you’re outside, you may as well be confined to a corridor.  You’ve got just one path from here to there.  They might as well put you on rails.

And, speaking of rails, that’s what the combat reminds me of – a rail shooter, like Time Crisis or House of the Dead.

You walk down the corridor from one place to another…  And along the way some monsters pop out.  Your team takes up defensive positions and starts shooting.  You start shooting.  The monsters slowly approach you.  You slowly gun them down.  Eventually you run out of monsters, and you move on the to next encounter.

It feels like a rail shooter, where you stand in one place and kill enemies as they come at you.  Then, after running out of enemies, you move up to the next scene and kill some more.

There’s no fluidity to the combat.  No running and gunning.  No diving for cover.  No maneuvering for advantage.  Just stand there and keep shooting.  And you can’t even approach the enemy from a different direction, or ambush them, or anything like that – because you’re stuck in the corridor from point A to point B.

Also, like a rail shooter, you don’t have to worry about ammo.  One of your team members periodically rewinds time in your gun back to when the clip was full.  There are no ammo pickups to look for.  No hidden caches of supplies.  No feeling that you might find yourself having to use your gun for a club because you’ve got no bullets left.  Sure, it’s probably possible to run out of ammo…  But it would only be a momentary inconvenience.

So, you’re going along on rails, shooting things.  And there’s really no health to worry about either.  You either get struck down in a firefight, or you don’t.  You’re basically always at full health.

If you take a few hits in a fight you can get knocked down.  If there’s nobody around to heal you then it is game over…  But usually you get healed.  And then you’re right back to shooting, good as new.  No lingering effects or anything.  So, as long as you’re standing at the end of the firefight, you’re just fine.

So, there’s no ammo to worry about…  And no health to worry about…  Which greatly diminishes any suspense or fear you might have going on.  And what little suspense left is completely demolished by the fact that you’re walking down a corridor from one firefight to the next.  It feels more like I’m going through a haunted house at a carnival than a battlefield full of demons and monsters.

So, I’m being forced to use WASD to move…  Except that movement is kind of superfluous.  They could just put me on rails and move me from one firefight to the next.

And, frankly, my participation in the firefight is kind of superfluous as well.  The rest of my team is shooting away without my help.  I don’t really need to tell them what to do.  And if anyone gets killed they just get healed back up.  And the monsters take so many shots to kill that it isn’t like my one gun is going to make a huge difference.  I could just sit back and sip my coffee while the rest of my team does the fighting.

Which leaves only those sudden-death things to keep me on my toes.  But they aren’t really sudden-death…  They’re more like sudden-inconvenience, because at worst you’ll rewind to the beginning of the sudden-death event and be given a second (third, fourth, fifth, sixth…) chance at it.

I don’t even have to worry about forgetting to save and losing an hour’s worth of progress if I die because the game saves automatically for me.

So, basically, I’m left with some kind of interactive story or movie…  Except that all the interactive bits feel like an afterthought.  It feels like all the gameplay elements were bolted-on at the last minute.  It feels like they just want me, the player, to get out of the way and let them tell the story.

Now, I certainly don’t have a problem with storytelling.  One of the things that I liked so much in Undying was the terrific story.  I thoroughly enjoy a good story in my games.

But they still have to be games.  They have to be something fun to play, not something that you sit back and passively absorb.  That’s what differentiates a game from a TV show or movie.

And, ultimately, Jericho fails to be something fun to play.

There may be a terrific story there.  There might be some amazing visuals.  There could be some awesome dialogue.  I’ll never know.  The awkward gameplay mechanics have ensured that I’ll never see anything beyond the first hour or so.  I’ve already un-installed it and have absolutely no desire to give it another try.

Caught another episode of 30 Days last night.  This time they sent a nice atheist lady to live with a Christian family.

First off, I kind of think they could have picked a better atheist to send to the Christians.  This lady didn’t seem terribly well-informed or passionate.  In comparison to the Christian they sent to live with the Muslims, she just didn’t seem to care a whole lot about her belief system.  She seemed kind of quiet and meek, and I was really hoping for more fireworks from the clash of cultures.

But, it was still an interesting show.

The atheist lady seemed to have fewer problems dealing with the Christians than they had dealing with her.  They seemed to take her very existence as a threat.

At one point she took her new Christian friends out to meet some other atheists.  One of those atheists asked the Christians how they’d feel if their money was printed with “there is no god” – the Christian responded with “my money says In God We Trust.”  He said that over and over again.  He just wouldn’t or couldn’t process the question.  He couldn’t even contemplate what it would be like to carry around money printed with a statement he couldn’t agree with.  Eventually the atheist gave up and simply said “The difference is that I’m willing to respect your choice of religion, but you aren’t willing to respect mine“, to which the Christian suggested that if it really bothered the atheist that much he could move.

Why is that always the suggestion?  They were both born in the US…  The both pay their taxes…  They both get a vote…  Why is the atheist’s viewpoint any less valid than the Christian’s?  Why should the atheist move, and not the Christian?

There was another scene where our atheist lady was at a Bible Study group, and they asked her what documents she based her beliefs on, which I found bizarre beyond belief.  As if you needed some kind of external document to validate your experience of the world.  Like you need some consensus in order have an opinion.  Like  you can’t trust an individual human being to collect data and interpret it themselves.

And then they accuse the atheist of being anti-Christian.  There’s nothing anti-Christian about atheism.  Atheists don’t believe in gods.  Nothing supernatural.  How can you be anti- something that doesn’t exist?

Eventually the atheist’s family comes to visit her…  And the Christians express plenty of concern that the children aren’t getting “both sides of the story.”  The problem, of course, is that there aren’t two sides to the story.  If you insist on presenting both an atheistic and theistic worldview, then the story doesn’t end with Christianity.  You also have to talk about Islam, and Judaism, and Janeism, and Hindu, and Buddhism, and every other -ism out there.  Because they’ve all got equally valid claims to authenticity.  They all state “this is what my book says, and I choose to believe it.“  There is no objective reason to believe one rather than another.

It’s funny…  Because the Christians said they were eager to show the atheist what real Christians were like.  They wanted to tear down some stereotypes and show her what God’s Love is all about.  But the atheist didn’t really seem to have a whole lot of stereotypes to be tore down…  While the Christians had plenty of them.

Just noticed that Dragon Age is updating a publicly available profile over on BioWare‘s site…  So, in case you’re curious:  clicky!

I finished the quest to unlock Shale, and I’m pretty happy with him so far.  He reminds me a bit of HK-47 from KotOR.  He’s got the same kind of disregard for life.  The same kind of malicious streak.  The same kind of insulting humor.  He’s also missing memories…  And I suspect there’ll be quests available to restore them, which should prove interesting.

I also completed the Soldier’s Peak quest…  Was a little disappointed in that.  It was interesting enough, especially with the darker slant on the Grey Wardens…  But I guess I expected more.  Maybe it’ll be more impressive if wait for the place to be fixed up or something.

I was curious enough after playing through the origin story for my Dalish Elf character that I decided to roll up a couple more new characters and see how they start out.

First up was a Dwarven Noble.  Amazing just how bloodthirsty and treacherous they are.  All sorts of backstabbing and double-crossing.  Within the first 5 minutes I had the opportunity to have  several people executed just for talking to me.  Amazing.  I can’t wait to get back to Orzammar and take revenge on the bastards that got me exiled.

Then I rolled up a Human Noble.  Very nice, peaceful, idyllic start…  And then everything hit the fan.  Again, betrayal.  Again, I can’t wait to get back to seek my revenge…  But this time it’s going to be in the city of Dennerim.

Very cool stuff so far.  And I still haven’t gotten around to the Awakenings expansion yet.

So, I’ve been playing Dragon Age again.

This time around I rolled up a Dalish Elf, an archer, instead of the Casteless Dwarf MeleeRogue I had before.  And I’m really impressed with the differences.  Sure, I’m still playing a rogue.  The mechanics really haven’t changed much.  I’ve been putting points into archery instead of melee skills…  But I could pick up some swords and start swinging them if I really wanted to.

What’s impressed me is the difference in storylines.

My Dalish Elf started out in some wooded area – out hunting with a friend, or something.  We ran into some humans how were ranting about a demon in a cave, so we went to check out the cave.  In the cave we happened across the remains of some human architecture, some elven artifacts, and a tunnel that looks like it used to go down to the dwarven Deep Roads.  There’s a fantastic sense of history and untold mysteries.  A suggestion that all three cultures met in interesting ways, and nobody remembers when or why it happened.

We also found a mirror that somehow infected the two of us with the darkspawn taint.  Duncan found me, got me back to the camp, I healed up.  Then I went out looking for my buddy back in the cave.

Turns out the mirror was used for communication once upon a time, but it’s become corrupted by the darkspawn taint.  So Duncan destroyed it.  We never did find my buddy.  And then I left with Duncan for Ostagar.

And I’m left very curious about how the rest of the game will play out…

When I go to Orzimmar, for example, I will have no ties to anyone there.  I won’t have to worry about my childhood friend betraying me, or my sister marrying a noble.  I won’t have that added burden in the decisions I have to make there.  And I wonder how that will alter the story.

When I meet humans there’s always an assumption that I’m somebody’s slave.  There’s always that added friction.  It hasn’t amounted to much yet…  But it’s definitely there.

And when I go to the Dalish Elves, I wonder if I’ll see the same kind of ties in to my origin as I saw with my dwarf going back to Orzimmar.  Will the elves know me?  Will my buddy show up again, now corrupted by the darkspawn taint?  Will there be new side-quests, new moral dilemmas?

I’m also playing through some of the DLC that came with the Digital Deluxe version that I purchased.  Right now I’m working on recruiting the golem Shale into my party.

I really kind of expected it to be a very simple and straight-forward process.  Install the DLC, click a button, and I’ve got a golem in my party.  But that isn’t how it worked.  It’s actually been integrated into the world fairly smoothly…

I found a merchant out on the road, standing by his cart.  His mule had run off, he’d been having some bad luck, and he just wanted to get rid of a dwarven artifact – the golem’s control rod.  I took it off his hands.  He gave me directions to the town where the golem was.

I arrived in town to find it overrun with darkspawn.  So I had to fight my way through quite a few of them before I found the golem.  But the control rod didn’t work.  He didn’t wake up.

I went looking for more information in the basement of the golem’s previous owner…  Turns out he was some kind of important mage.  And the town’s survivors were hiding in his basement behind some kind of magical shield.

The mage guy is dead, killed by the golem years ago.  Only his now-grown child is left.  He knows the command word to activate the golem, but he won’t tell me until I rescue his daughter who has wandered off into the deeper recesses of the mage’s laboratory.

So I fight through some more monsters and eventually find the girl…  With a talking cat.  I’m going to assume that the cat is not, in fact, a cat.  I’m guess it’s a demon.  But now I’ve got to separate the girl from the demon and get her back out to her father…

And the reason I’m doing all this is not because I want a big ol’ rock guy fighting along-side me.  I’m sure he’s a decent fighter, but that isn’t my motivation.  I want to see what interesting things happen when I bring him into Orzimmar.  I want to see what the dwarves think of having a golem around.  I want to see if he remembers anything interesting when I go looking for Carridan’s Forge later on in the game.

I’ve also got a different party going this time around…

Previously I generally brought Alistair, Leliana, and Wynne along wherever I went.  Alistair was the tank, I was melee DPS, Leliana was equipped with a bow and did ranged DPS, and then Wynne kept us all healed.

Well, Wynne isn’t in my party yet…  And once she is, I’ll likely user her again for healing.  But I’ve been bringing Sten along for more melee DPS this time around, while I handle the ranged DPS.  And it’s resulting in some different conversations already.

All things considered, the game feels almost completely new at this point.

The first time I played Dragon Age, I was playing a pirated copy.

I grabbed some package and downloaded it.  I didn’t have any DLC installed because I didn’t have a legitimate copy of the game.

Now I’ve actually paid for the game.  Not just the retail version – the Digital Deluxe version.  The version that would, I assume, include some extra goodies.

Now, I realize that additional DLC has been released since the time the game first game out.  There’s the Darkswpawn Chronicles and the Feastday Stuff, for example.  And I’m fine with that.  I like to see a quality game expanded with additional stuff.  Add-ons and DLC and mods and whatnot.  That’s a good thing.

But it annoys me a bit when they’ve got DLC ready the very day the game ships.  This was the case with Dragon Age, because there were hooks in-game to DLC in the pirated copy I played.  The retail disc, right out of the box, had some NPCs that offered you quests you could only take if you paid for DLC.

It annoys me even more now that I have the Digital Deluxe version of the game, and it doesn’t include some of that DLC that was available on the day that the game launched.  It seems to me that a deluxe edition of the game ought to include pretty much everything available at the time.  But it doesn’t appear to.  There’s still DLC being offered, that I know was available when the game launched, and it is not in my game.

This kind of sours me on the whole DLC concept.  It seems less like a way to extend and expand a game, than a way to squeeze a few more dollars out of your customers.

We’ve recently started watching 30 Days.  It’s a series where they take somebody out of their normal environment and have them live a fairly different life for 30 days.  The few episodes I’ve seen have been very interesting.

The episode we watched last night (I have no idea when it originally aired, we just had it on the DVR) took a practicing Christian man and placed him in a Muslim community for 30 days.  He lived with a Muslim family, studied the Qur’an, attended services at the mosque, grew a beard, covered his head…  Pretty much everything he felt he could do without violating his Christian beliefs.

It was interesting to see how people reacted to him.

For his trip out to the Muslim community, they put him in a white shirt, covered his head, and gave him a planet ticket.  He didn’t have a beard, didn’t really look Middle Eastern, wasn’t wearing a turban or anything obvious like that…  And they were treating him like a leper.  Folks were looking at him funny…  He got taken aside for additional security screening…

Just a day earlier this guy was a generic, white, American, Christian.  Nothing wrong with him.  Any of these people would have happily sat down to have a beer with him.  But now that he’s covering his head and wearing natural fibers he’s a potential terrorist.

I was also amazed when they explained to him that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all worshiping the same god.  That isn’t news to me…  They all share the same Old Testament.  But this “practicing Christian” seemed absolutely shocked.  He did not realize that all three were based on the same foundations.

I didn’t think that was some big secret.  I thought it was fairly common knowledge.  And I’m not even a “practicing Christian”.

How can you show up to church every week and worship a god when you don’t even know the roots of your own religion?

Am I really that much better informed than the average American?  Are there really that many people who are oblivious to what they’re worshiping?  Is it actually that big a secret?