Obviously the simplicity has benefits as well as negative points: it’s simpler to use, so therefore more of the community can try their hand at map-making for an extremely popular title.  This is demonstrated by the fact that since the Puzzle Maker has been available, the number of Steam Workshop files for Portal 2 has shot up to nearly 100,000 (by comparison, Team Fortress 2 has close to 5k and Skyrim just over 7k)¹ despite being the newest edition to the Workshop repertoire.

My first test chamber for Portal 2

The negatives, I feel, come with the restrictions you face with what is available to you in the Puzzle Maker: e.g. you can’t add extra doors for staged testing.  Plus, try as I might to create things exactly as I imagine them in my head, it never seems to be quite right as not all the tools are available to you.  The solution here would be to learn how to use Hammer properly… but for a lot of fans that’s a bit too confusing to contemplate.

So, you may be wondering why my production of test chamber blueprints stopped mind-May… the answer is Diablo 3.  This hit internationally on May 15th and domestically (in the UK) May 18th.  After some very irritating cock-ups from various pre-order suppliers, I eventually got my hands on it for the UK release date.

I must say I’m sort of glad I didn’t get a copy until May 18th as Blizzard had some serious issues on the international release. Let me explore these. D3 is both single and multiplayer but you have to be online all the time, on Battle.net’s servers even to play on your own.  No, it doesn’t make sense to me either.  Couple that with the fact that their servers clearly weren’t ready – nor capable – of handling the volume of people trying to connect.  Again, just to play single player.

Error 37 screengrabs were plastered all over the internet as eager fans were raging at Blizzard.  That’s not to say I didn’t escape: I’ve had three instances since I got the game where I’ve been unable to play because the damned servers were having a tea break (or eating themselves, I dunno) with Error 35 taking out the game on May 20th for over 9 hours and Error 37 rearing its ugly head again nearer the end of the month (Error 35 = servers down for maintenance; Error 37 = servers are busy).

That’s the one major drawback of the game.  The interwebs have been awash with rumours of an “offline mode”, but whether Blizz decide to actually do it or not only time will tell.

Enough of that.  The game itself is great fun with brilliantly detailed graphics and fun attacks for all classes.  This is the first RPG of this type (the hack’n’slash) that I’ve actually finished – albeit only on normal difficulty – and am now going through it again to try and find better loot (so far unsuccessfully).  The fact that I haven’t got bored yet is praise in itself as I do have a tendency to just wander off despite all my intentions to play through as every class and on every difficulty.  Again, time will tell if I do end up admitting defeat.

Blizz have done OK with the female characters; yes, they start off fairly under-dressed but so do the male counterparts.  My one criticism is the fem-Demon Hunter’s boots… why would you wear heels (at all!) to fight the prime evil?  Seriously.  Oh, and the occasional armour vs. cleavage fail is a given.

In between my battling of evil I made a brief foray into the world of the mod.  The mod in question is Centralia: Part 1, which is the opening sequence of a game developed as a mod for Half Life 2: Episode 2.  I’ve written a more general review over here but I felt it worth a mention as a) it doesn’t involve shooting guns or killing things and b) yeah, OK, my brother is one of the devs.

The idea behind it is (I paraphrase) “to make creepy places fun”, so they’ve taken an extraordinary story from real life (Centralia, PA) and added some more spooky to the mix.  Even though it’s pretty short for now, it still managed to make me jump a couple of times.

A still from the beginning of Centralia

It is a genuinely interesting concept for a game and I’d quite like to see where it goes, but to do that I first have to persuade my bro to set up a KickStarter fund, then he has to get funded through it.  Blah, blah austerity etc.

Tropes Vs Women in Games: a cool thing for you to throw money at

As I’ve mentioned KickStarter, we here at BR had this drawn to our attention.  Tropes vs. Women in Video Games is the brainchild of Anita of Feminist Frequency who is hoping to make a series of films based on, well, tropes of women in video games.

“The series will highlight the larger reoccurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders.”

This looks promising, and who here wouldn’t want to get paid to play games and make films about it?  Exactly.

Next Month:

There will be Max Payne 3 – as the PC edition got delayed so it didn’t have to do battle with Diablo 3 – and probably (finally) some AC: Revelations as I now have a copy waiting for me.  I suspect there will be more but I haven’t thought that far ahead yet!

But! Before I go, an Assassin’s Creed note…

Just quickly, this has just popped up on the internet: promise of a female protagonist in an Assassin’s Creed title!  It will be a “companion game” to AC3, subtitled Liberation, but will only be on the PS Vita.  Borderhouse (follow the link) say:

What’s interesting and exciting is that the protagonist of the game will be a woman of color named Aveline.

Admittedly, yes, that is pretty interesting – and awesome – but being me I have to push the cynic buttons and raise two points. First, we’ve talked about this before, and I will keep banging on about it until it surfaces for definite: is this the “her” Juno mentioned at the end of Brotherhood?  This mysterious lady-assassin that Desmond has to find before he can defeat the Templars?  My guess is: no.  If it’s running concurrent to AC3 he can’t have found her yet as, surely, her story comes after his ends (after another three games).

Secondly, PS Vita?  Really?  An over-expensive handheld with few titles and not nearly as many users as Xbox 360/Ps3/PC?  That’s where you decide to premiere your first femprotag of the franchise?  You don’t think that’s a little bit sidelining?  I suspect the peeps over at Ubisoft are expecting only the die hards to buy it, which means they aren’t too bothered about offering up a viable femprotag for the mainstream just yet.

Or, maybe they’re testing the waters for the Elusive Female Assassin that will save the world.  Or, maybe Aveline is “her”. Prove me wrong, Ubisoft, please!

1. as of 9am, 31.05.12

First off: go check out the trailer if you haven’t seen it already.

Stephen B: Well, I’m a Brit, and that probably colours my reaction to the setting. I’m just not invested in how glorious the War of Independence was, and killing the dastardly English isn’t really as exciting to me as Assassins vs. Templars.

My first reaction was concern for the fighting: is going up against guns with a small hand-axe really going to work?  The moves lacked the skill and finesse of previous styles, although they’re better on a repeat viewing.  Plus, I am a bit disappointed that no-one else is following Mass Effect 3‘s lead and doing female version trailers. Or… having even one female in the whole trailer.

All this grand posturing is about English vs. American white guys only and the protagonist is of Native American descent, so while you’re blowing all those trumpets you’re ignoring the incredible ongoing & future genocide. The game might highlight how his people are treated as part of the story, but that’s not clear from the trailer.

Miranda: Would it be possible to have a leading lady in this franchise? I’d love that – I like the Orlando-esque idea of the protagonist being different genders through time – but isn’t Desmond always the person, er, “wearing” the history? So I imagine we’d have to lose him as well; they’d have to create a female equivalent? Even without that leap, I’m personally hoping there are less Sex Assassin type ladies this time around, and more, y’know, female characters.

Readers might remember the last time we covered Assassin’s Creed on here and talked about the Sex Assassin NPC thing – Ubisoft Workshop staff actually read the post, which featured Markgraf’s own designs for female assassins, and gave it a friendly shoutout, which was nice to see (sadly, when I try to find the shoutout, it’s been archived and doesn’t seem to have the hyperlinks anymore. Shame, that – we were originally hyperlinked from “we thought this would quell some people’s fears on where we stand on important subjects”). We then had a bit of feedback from people who pointed out that there are female assassins in ACII you can deploy places, so then we made another post to address that a bit, because the point is, we’re aware of that, but it’s not like there isn’t room for a good deal of progress.

Rai: I too am concerned about how they’ll fit this protagonist into the grand scheme of things: after all historically it’s one set of oppressive zealots complaining about being oppressed (by the English) without a shadow of irony as they murder and destroy the indigenous population.  Given the protagonist’s ethnicity, one has to wonder how he’s on either side of this war, given the racist sentiments aimed at Native Americans (in that era and beyond).

On the anti-Brit theme, I have my doubts that it’ll be handled appropriately or even accurately – there are tendencies when anything American is involved for Brits to be portrayed as some sort of devil spawn (which is getting pretty dull).

I’m pretty peeved it is still a dude.  What happened to all the stuff at the end of Brotherhood when Minerva was telling Desmond to go and find this ‘other assassin’ he’d need to beat the Templars?  Minerva was using female pronouns to talk about this other assassin – so, where is she?

Changing tack slightly: the trees(!) – in the trailer we see the guy free-running among the branches. This could be an interesting switch from the buildings we’re used to thus far.

Also did anyone else hear the theory that AC3 would be set in the Far East?  If so… would Far East have been a better setting than 1777 America?  I think so, but then America is of very little interest to me as it all feels quite egomaniacal: could the setting of AC3 be a ploy to get more US fans?  Or to bring the centre of attention back on to the USA, as is the tendency of so many games?

Stephen B: Well, I suppose the previous games were quite brave in that the first one had you playing a medieval Arab, and the second went to Italy with no mention of the US. So it could be okay that they do one in the USA… but the Far East would have been a lot more exciting for me.

Markgraf: As per Rai’s reaction, I’m baffled as to why our hero isn’t a woman, still – I mean, come on, it’s 2012, surely we know that women exist by now and that it’s fine to have them as protagonists?

But my angle is this one: I’m keen to see people of colour represented as actual hero-y heroes in games, because it’s damn rare, it’s still damn rare, and that’s frankly an embarrassment to civilisation as a whole.  So I’m delighted, actually, to see that Ratohnhaké:ton is mixed race and doing his bit for First Nations people in games.

The Assassin’s Creed franchise is doing itself quite proud of multiculturalism in games: it started the series with you playing Altaiir ibn La-Ahad, who is a Syrian Arab, born and raised, which is literally one of the only examples I can think of where the playable protagonist is Arab.  But you’ll all remember that Altaiir had an American voice, and if you peered under his hood, it was Desmond doing an Altaiir cosplay.  So, you had a character with the right sort of name for the place he was in, but without the right sort of voice, and not really the right sort of face, either, which was pretty much ethnicity-trimming, if you ask me.

No-one can possibly have any problems with the representation of First Nations people – they’re under-represented and it’s uncontroversial to represent them as heroes – and that’s great, but I do feel bad for Altaiir, the Arab hero that never really was.

I’m not that thrilled by the setting, either, to be honest.  For all the reasons we’ve mentioned (yet another America-centric game) but also because… I just want to see a more diverse range of ethnic backgrounds to playable characters, really.  So couldn’t we have wandered further afield than America for the third?

(And raise your hand if you’re bored of having The English!!! as villains in things…)

Oh, and I’m also excited that YOU CAN CLIMB TREES!!!!, yes.

Rai: I too am more than pleased that the AC franchise has done good things for protagonists of diverse ethnicity and to have another character in that trend is good; even better if he is actually his own self and not just Desmond-in-a-hood!  Their failings with portraying Altaiir appropriately will always stick in my mind though.

It is a shame it’s not a woman though, and it is a shame it’s in America – if previous form is anything to go by, we may end up with a trilogy of games in that period, and I suspect they’ve brought it home to America so they can more easily blend into Desmond fighting Templars himself in the present/future.  So I have no idea where on earth this ‘she’ assassin Minerva was banging on about is going to come from.  I truly hope they don’t just let Desmond find her and then she’s an unplayable sidekick character.

Conclusions:

Miranda: “Hurrah for more beautiful vertigo-inducing rendering, but let’s hope there are some women NPCs at least in this that are written as characters, not damsels and sex machines!”

Stephen B: “Potential racial sensitivity GOOD, provided they stick to it. Setting’s a bit blah; hoping the general ‘Assassins vs Templars’ struggle is enough of a hook to keep me interested.”

Markgraf: “I BET THE FANDOM ARE MORE HAPPY TO ACCURATELY REPRESENT THIS GUY’S ETHNICITY THAN ALTAIIR’S BECAUSE HE WON’T BE ALL WHITEWASHED IN-GAME LOL”

Rai: “Where is my she-assassin?!  Good to see an appropriately portrayed non-white protagonist, but the American setting feels like a bit of a disappointment, and definitely poked my inner cynic with a very pointy stick.”