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campiness to them that feels warm and inviting it s fanservice for a certain brand of geek and it s done with such a loving and earnest tone that i fell right into it sometimes you just want to walk your cyborg over to a bustling noodle bar kind of like the one in blade runner and take in the sights and sounds and the feel of that place and then maybe you want to crawl through a vent and hack a computer to find the keycode to a safe that you open and there s enough cash inside to to buy another praxis kit from the limb clinic so you can finally get the augment that will let you turn bots to your side and it just feels like home end of the day whatever a game lets me upgrade a nasty revolver and hold it in my cyber hands i m down forever apb reloaded free to play is increasingly a thing freemium even one might say i started to type i don t think this is inherently a good or bad thing but actually i kind of do think it s inherently a bad thing usually others have written more thoughtfully and at length about the freemium phenomenon but i ll just say here that i agree generally that constant overt monetization of every micro bit of a game is strongly deterimental to the player experience it s obtrusive and annoying i don t like it it s not inherently a good thing that s for sure but that said i have seen some of the advantages for instance if it hadn t gone free to play i never would have tried apb and if i d never tried apb they never would ve gotten a dime out of me in the end gamersfirst got 15 and i got about 30 hours of gameplay win win i think this mostly comes down to my abiding love for character customization i love love character customization especially in a modern non fantasy non sci fi setting like rock band or say apb a pvp focused mmo lite version of grand theft auto i d heard about its disastrous initial launch and the closing of realtime worlds none of which really screamed pay money up front for this but when apb was revived as a free to play proposition and showed up on steam i went for it and i m glad i did the customization suite is insane the tattoo editor alone is off the charts you can combine scale recolor and layer individual stamps into your own super complex designs then etch them onto your character aligned to the normals of the surface or properly wrapped around their arm or leg or waist flipped turned mirrored it s all there and it s not like oh a couple of designs you can have up to 50 separate tattoos with up to 100 components if you shell out for a monthlong premium subscription that s where they get you a month of premium is 12 bucks but they only sell gamersfirst spacebux in increments of 5 that s also how they get you so i shelled out my 15 and spent the remainder on new sheets of tattoo designs then i just went to town probably half my time in apb was spent the in character creator and i m not complaining the other half was spent in the actual game which is in fact quite good sometimes i ll get to that mechanically it mostly consists of you flagging on ready for mission while wandering a city district then being automatically grouped with other players and automatically pitted against a team of players from the opposite faction charged with either completing your own goals or stopping the opposing team from completing theirs it s plenty of fun jumping in a car with your teammate the other guy hanging out the window doing drivebys while you try to run over the enemy team and dive into the objective zone i daresay it s better multiplayer gta than gta4 was here s the sad part though i d probably still be playing it today if it weren t a complete technical nightmare apb reloaded must have one of the least efficient engines i ve ever encountered load times take forever but worse than that i would get enormous hitching and chugging all the time often it seemed to be tied to enemy player proximity possibly due to all that unique character customization being loaded into memory which was basically the worst case scenario oh there must be enemies nearby because i m running at 1 frame per second ah yes sounds of gunfire i m dead apparently the hitching wasn t so bad for the guys that killed me while i was lagged out add onto this the fact that your computer is unusable for about 5 minutes after you exit the client presumably while it cleans itself out of memory and exits all its processes and you have some serious recurring technical annoyances so after i felt i d pushed my character customization a fair way toward what i wanted and after a serious hitching related ragequit followed by walking away from my computer for 5 minutes while it was in its post apb recovery phase i deleted local content and didn t reinstall in a different world i would ve played more to unlock more pieces of clothing and accessories to make my character just perfect but the technical failures were too much for me i had to settle for my character being good enough but so it goes all things considered am i unhappy that the freemium model allowed me a low risk method of trying out this game and that i opted into paying 15 with 30 hours of gameplay in exchange no not at all annoyances aside so i guess i d say freemium isn t inherently a good or bad thing infinity blade jetpack joyride tiny tower here s the opposite side of the microtransaction revolution the dark side i got an ipad in 2011 in large part because i wanted to keep up with the games that have been coming out on it i started trying stuff out angry birds ad supported plants versus zombies which i d played on pc already but you know even grabbed a spiderweb software rpg to see how it played and then i got into the real freemium microtransaction territory and stuff got bad it s innocuous at first hey try it for free it ll be fun you know like a drug dealer in an afterschool special and it does seem like some harmless fun a simple set of mechanics some satisfying clicking and sparkly rewards infinity blade fight an enemy get loot and xp level up jetpack joyride get as far as you can without hitting an obstacle buy new gear beat your high score tiny tower build shops and apartments find people their dream jobs expand your tower they all make good first impressions but it quickly becomes clear that these games are shallow as a thimble one game design mantra is finding 30 seconds of fun in a firstperson shooter that s an engaging encounter with an enemy you encounter an enemy have 30 seconds of fun do variations on that a few hundred times over the course of the game and you ve got your core the more different 30 seconds of fun you have in your game the better to a point looting containers buying and selling equipment distributing xp into your skills and so on but with the ios games in question if you ve played through their core loop once you ve played the entire game period there are no unique new mechanics introduced no clever new puzzles no story or characters to discover or unique environments to explore just the same thing over and over with the numbers going up and the visuals changing slightly the longer you play so why play past the first 30 seconds and why pay any money so that you don t have to play that same 30 seconds over and over as many times before you can see those numbers go up and those visuals change you can earn gold to get better equipment in infinity blade by grinding through repetitive encounters or you can pay real money for gold and just buy that better equipment outright same with paying real money for towerbux in tiny tower or coins in jetpack joyride grind through the tedium of this repetitive experience for hours or just give us your money right now it s an exploitative practice and a self incriminating one at that what you re paying money for is the ability to play less of the actual game so you can more quickly get further in the game you re willing to pay real actual money to play less of it s an admittance of the game s own hollowness so if you re willing to pay money to play less of this game why play it at all why not shake yourself out of the haze of compulsion delete the game off your device and pretend it never happened that s what i did anyway and i ll admit i am susceptible to the draw see above regarding my apb reloaded story the draw of the end result the extrinsic reward of that perfectly customized character i wanted to see onscreen was so strong that i was willing to play hours and hours of repetitive missions through hair pulling technical problems to get at it achieving the golden jetpack or the 100 floor tower or the ultimate sword in these ios games is no different and i really do feel it s harmful manipulative and frankly unconscionable why were all those costume bits and tattoo designs in apb only unlockable after i d played through a certain number of missions read certain number of hours to force you to keep playing and keep coming back to get what you want the cool accessory the awesome rims for your car these are just cosmetic items they have no impact on balance they re not part of the game ramp having 100 tattoos in the first hour wouldn t make me overpowered in pvp there s no functional reason to gate them but they re not available up front because because then you might just play once for a few hours make the character you want spend no money and never play again and then where would all that microtransaction money come from no different in these ios games why does it take exponentially more realtime hours to build the 20th floor of your tiny tower than the second there s no intrinsic gameplay balance or experiential reason it s purely to increase the tedium of the experience over time encouraging you through boredom to pay up your real cash to skip the wait and when a game starts messing with me like that trying to manipulate and exploit me i get offended offended that the game would think so little of me as an individual i disengage uninstall done but i realize i m lucky susceptibility to compulsive behavior is a function of the individual s brain chemistry if taking a certain parkinson s drug can cause gambling addiction then certainly your unique brain chemistry may make you less able to put down a compulsion fueling game than i am and intentionally nakedly exploiting the brain chemistry of your players to extract money from them it s not so far down the spectrum from offering a kid a free hit hoping that they ll get hooked and become a regular customer you know like a drug dealer in an afterschool special or in real life so when jon blow or adam saltsman talks about this stuff being inherently bad i see exactly where they re coming from these practices tangibly hurt people in one of the few ways that a video game can by psychologically manipulating them to hand over their time attention and money for something with no intrinsic value if you aren t making a game experience that is itself something that people will pay to have if you need to withhold meaningless rewards from them until they submit you aren t making a game i don t know exactly what you re making and frankly i m not sure you do either but i know what i want to make and it s not that bastion disclaimer i m friends with greg kasavin the writer and creative lead of bastion we worked at 2k at the same time and i ve known him since my zine days so there s that but no matter bastion is a great great game period here s where most chatter about bastion starts the voice there is something about the human voice as a buoying element in games i think people just like hearing someone talk while they play yeah tons of games are nearly or completely wordless and the more powerful for it ico limbo classic metroid games prior to the current generation but there s a whole other class of games on the opposite end of the scale where someone s talking to you almost constantly while you play the talk radio stations in gta the audio diaries and public announcements in bioshock glados it s all about being in game parallel to the player s own actions when dialogue in a cutscene starts nine times out of ten i reach for my phone and check twitter but when your party members are chattering while you walk around the gameworld in a bioware rpg or when price i think is talking you through all ghilied up in cod4 or when you re driving around in deadly premonition and york is talking to himself about back to the future that stuff s great it has a pull it s a unique sensation i think that s why people latched onto the narration in bastion so strongly it s not just someone talking while you play but someone talking about what you re doing when you do it it s a great flourish and i did like it but it s unfortunate that it overshadows what i think is actually strongest about the game which is its incredibly clever and well considered suite of systems surrounding the core gameplay and story bastion is a game about building your character and rebuilding the gameworld as you go these work together rebuild part of the bastion get access to a new system that supports building your character and what systems they are weapon upgrades a perfectly balanced set of binary choices leading either to a highly specialized or broadly useful weapon the tonic system an array of wonderfully differentiated and carefully staged passive abilities resulting in just the type of character you want to play and the shrine system deserves special mention a completely opt in series of game difficulty modifiers that each make the experience more challenging in diabolical ways while offering commensurate xp gain each system is highly modular and no decision is permanent encouraging ongoing experimentation and as much or as little investment in each as you want so the narration and story stuff is great and the final story choice you make is really thought provoking but none of this would matter if these narrative elements weren t supporting a game whose systems were firing on all cylinders bastion has both going for it it s the full package dark souls as a video game player it s nice to be reminded every once in a while that you re not an idiot which isn t to say that there aren t plenty of games that expect you to think like an adult human with a brain some came out this year even such as spacechem and atom zombie smasher and english country tune but as a player of more mainstream fare where you control a dude and kill tons of enemies with your weapons and abilities it s not hard to get the feeling that video game designers think that maybe you re a little developmentally disabled or have had some head trauma or maybe you re texting or watching a youtube while you play because they sure aren t expecting you to be using 100 of a capable adult s mental capacity to progress through what they ve designed it quickly starts feeling very deterministic press the thumbstick in the direction of the goal arrow press the button to jump over the gap jam on the button to complete the quicktime event and win the ...