The internets would certainly be a darker place without John of Armor Games. Or it would for me, at least. Still, I?m wagering more than a few of you guys have seen the obscenely happy-go-lucky colorful spike-fetishizing meta-celebrating blue-elephant playgrounds that are This Is The Only Level and Achievement Unlocked, among others. Whenever I see the jmtb02 logo, I know I?m in for a great time.
HOWEVER?
While I?m incredibly fond of the elephant games, I have a bit of a gripe with his other games cache, the one involving the fast-moving double-jumping sawblade- laser-dodging stick dudes. Specifically, I?m looking at Exit Path 2 and Give Up.
Now, don?t get me wrong, these are both great games. They have interesting ideas and they?re both really hard and involve a lot of dyingwhile still being focused on fast-paced runny-jumpy fun. But their problem is that they decided that they could pull up their shorts, put their caps on backwards and be big-boy STORY GAMES. And when they got the big boy?s table, their new attitude gets pretty much ignored. For all their flashy clothes and cool ?tudes, the reason they get loved is because of the cute little kids they still are at the core. I?m imagining they?re under the impression that everyone loves their cool new clothes when really everyone just looks past that. I guess in this analogy I?m the pesky little kid at the playground shouting insults at their clothes before running away and hiding under a rock, but whatever, someone needs to tells them that their jacket doesn?t match their shoes.
Dropping the dumb analogy, the problem these games have is that their stories are mostly told through text in an environment where reading is heavily discouraged and nearly impossible. Exit Path 2 tries to tell a story about a dystopian government who oppresses its citizens and you escaped the city in the first game and blah blah blah and now you have to go back to raid the city for supplies like a mouse darting into a kitchen to steal cheese. However, you will only know this if you read the signs in the background. There are two main problems with this. The first is that, like in many poorly-written stories about La Résistance, you never actually see ANY OPPRESSION. You?re just a dude running through a city that has an unusual amount of sawblades in it. Two, you have to STOP to read any of the signs. Sounds simple enough, but this is a game about running as fast as possible through sawblades and lasers and over pits. Everything about the game is about moving forward, and there?s even a timer to hammer the point home. Stopping is antithetical to the game?s very theme. This might be one of the reasons that even when I did stop to read the story, it made no sense. Why am I shutting off power to the entire city? How exactly will that solve anything? Why am I never being chased even though they can?t possibly have missed seeing me escape? Whatever, the game ends with something exploding, that?s as good punctuation as any
Give Up is more interesting. It takes cues from other media that have resounded well with its target audience, and by that I mean it?s another ripoff of Portal. You run through what is probably a lab of some sort but functions more like an obstacle course with an increasingly large number of ways to die while a big camera watches you and what is probably a robot makes snarky remarks over the intercom. Its one main gimmick is a big blue button on the bottom of the screen labeled with the words GIVE UP, and Mr. Robot Dude is constantly pestering you to push it. And you know what? I actually find that interesting, in a story sense. Of course, if you?re like me, you?ll probably press the damn button on level one and then come back around to play the game through. The only real reason to press the button is curiosity, or perhaps sheer boredom if you?re sick of dying for the five hundredth time this level. However, it does get interesting to listen to the robot try harder and more desperately to make you press it. Oh wait, did I say ?Listen?? I meant, ?Read? because this game does not have voice acting.
Which isn?t an inherently bad thing. I always watch movies with subtitles anyway, and I?d kill any Nintendo developer who?d dare put coherent voices into my precious Legend of Zelda. But there?s a time and a place, people. And when you?re running through a maze of bullets, falling platforms, lazers, and spikes, then you will not be inclined to move your eyes away from the chaos to read something, not even a single sentence. I get so confused as to how the developers want me to feel about our robot buddy when I catch a single line of interesting dialogue but realize I?ve missed half the conversation, and then I throw the entire thought process into a bin so I can focus on ending the repetitive process of painting the background with my organs.
These aren?t bad games. Heck, even though I got pissed off at Exit Path for the million times I died at the spinning axe section and the fact that it sometimes breaks its own legs and slows to a crawl, I still felt a sense of joy at finishing it. But they need something more if they?re going to try and touch me emotionally. ?So, how would I fix these games?? I ask myself, under the delusion that someone on the internet will care. Well, I reply, Give Up probably could have been fixed up with just a touch of voice acting for the robot, so we could listen to the dialogue while our eyes focus on not dying. However, Exit Path is a different story. It would need some way to clean up those damn loading breaks between screens, for one. But you know, I think it would have benefitted greatly from rest areas. You know, not just checkpoints, but flat glowing areas with no danger, where a person could read as much of the signs as they wanted to at their leisure. Oh, and the game would need to make clear that the stopwatch paused at that point. That way, it wouldn?t break up the flow so much, like that courtroom scene did. Really, game, if you?re going to force us to look at one of the signs you wrote, you could at least be descent enough to stop the timer YOU put us on. Oh, and by the way, absolutely NO ONE is going to appreciate it if a teleporter sends him to a point he couldn?t see going in AND where he must suddenly run left when the rest of the game has him run right. Thanks.
Exit Path, Give Up, This Is The Only Level, and Achievement Unlocked can be found here: http://armorgames.com/
HOWEVER?
While I?m incredibly fond of the elephant games, I have a bit of a gripe with his other games cache, the one involving the fast-moving double-jumping sawblade- laser-dodging stick dudes. Specifically, I?m looking at Exit Path 2 and Give Up.
Now, don?t get me wrong, these are both great games. They have interesting ideas and they?re both really hard and involve a lot of dyingwhile still being focused on fast-paced runny-jumpy fun. But their problem is that they decided that they could pull up their shorts, put their caps on backwards and be big-boy STORY GAMES. And when they got the big boy?s table, their new attitude gets pretty much ignored. For all their flashy clothes and cool ?tudes, the reason they get loved is because of the cute little kids they still are at the core. I?m imagining they?re under the impression that everyone loves their cool new clothes when really everyone just looks past that. I guess in this analogy I?m the pesky little kid at the playground shouting insults at their clothes before running away and hiding under a rock, but whatever, someone needs to tells them that their jacket doesn?t match their shoes.
Dropping the dumb analogy, the problem these games have is that their stories are mostly told through text in an environment where reading is heavily discouraged and nearly impossible. Exit Path 2 tries to tell a story about a dystopian government who oppresses its citizens and you escaped the city in the first game and blah blah blah and now you have to go back to raid the city for supplies like a mouse darting into a kitchen to steal cheese. However, you will only know this if you read the signs in the background. There are two main problems with this. The first is that, like in many poorly-written stories about La Résistance, you never actually see ANY OPPRESSION. You?re just a dude running through a city that has an unusual amount of sawblades in it. Two, you have to STOP to read any of the signs. Sounds simple enough, but this is a game about running as fast as possible through sawblades and lasers and over pits. Everything about the game is about moving forward, and there?s even a timer to hammer the point home. Stopping is antithetical to the game?s very theme. This might be one of the reasons that even when I did stop to read the story, it made no sense. Why am I shutting off power to the entire city? How exactly will that solve anything? Why am I never being chased even though they can?t possibly have missed seeing me escape? Whatever, the game ends with something exploding, that?s as good punctuation as any
Give Up is more interesting. It takes cues from other media that have resounded well with its target audience, and by that I mean it?s another ripoff of Portal. You run through what is probably a lab of some sort but functions more like an obstacle course with an increasingly large number of ways to die while a big camera watches you and what is probably a robot makes snarky remarks over the intercom. Its one main gimmick is a big blue button on the bottom of the screen labeled with the words GIVE UP, and Mr. Robot Dude is constantly pestering you to push it. And you know what? I actually find that interesting, in a story sense. Of course, if you?re like me, you?ll probably press the damn button on level one and then come back around to play the game through. The only real reason to press the button is curiosity, or perhaps sheer boredom if you?re sick of dying for the five hundredth time this level. However, it does get interesting to listen to the robot try harder and more desperately to make you press it. Oh wait, did I say ?Listen?? I meant, ?Read? because this game does not have voice acting.
Which isn?t an inherently bad thing. I always watch movies with subtitles anyway, and I?d kill any Nintendo developer who?d dare put coherent voices into my precious Legend of Zelda. But there?s a time and a place, people. And when you?re running through a maze of bullets, falling platforms, lazers, and spikes, then you will not be inclined to move your eyes away from the chaos to read something, not even a single sentence. I get so confused as to how the developers want me to feel about our robot buddy when I catch a single line of interesting dialogue but realize I?ve missed half the conversation, and then I throw the entire thought process into a bin so I can focus on ending the repetitive process of painting the background with my organs.
These aren?t bad games. Heck, even though I got pissed off at Exit Path for the million times I died at the spinning axe section and the fact that it sometimes breaks its own legs and slows to a crawl, I still felt a sense of joy at finishing it. But they need something more if they?re going to try and touch me emotionally. ?So, how would I fix these games?? I ask myself, under the delusion that someone on the internet will care. Well, I reply, Give Up probably could have been fixed up with just a touch of voice acting for the robot, so we could listen to the dialogue while our eyes focus on not dying. However, Exit Path is a different story. It would need some way to clean up those damn loading breaks between screens, for one. But you know, I think it would have benefitted greatly from rest areas. You know, not just checkpoints, but flat glowing areas with no danger, where a person could read as much of the signs as they wanted to at their leisure. Oh, and the game would need to make clear that the stopwatch paused at that point. That way, it wouldn?t break up the flow so much, like that courtroom scene did. Really, game, if you?re going to force us to look at one of the signs you wrote, you could at least be descent enough to stop the timer YOU put us on. Oh, and by the way, absolutely NO ONE is going to appreciate it if a teleporter sends him to a point he couldn?t see going in AND where he must suddenly run left when the rest of the game has him run right. Thanks.
Exit Path, Give Up, This Is The Only Level, and Achievement Unlocked can be found here: http://armorgames.com/