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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Dark Alliance Reminds Us We Need a Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Remaster

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The verdict on the recently released Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance is still being decided as fans and critics finally get their hands on the highly-anticipated Action-RPG, but you’re not alone if the mere thought of the game has you dreaming of a Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers remaster.

Released in October 2002 (a couple of months ahead of the film it shares a name with), Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers was a hack and slash action game eventually available for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube as well as Game Boy Advance and even cell phones. The story goes that publisher EA and developer Stormfront Studios were supposed to make a similar game based on Fellowship of the Ring, but in 2001, all parties involved realized that the game wouldn’t be finished in time for the movie’s global release. As such, the work that had gone into that title was carried over to an adaptation of The Two Towers.

We have to stop there for a second. See, it’s pretty hard to separate the Two Towers game from the Lord of the Rings films, and not just for the positive reasons you probably think of when you remember that game. While 2002 wasn’t quite the darkest time for video game adaptations of TV shows and movies, many gamers had been burned by half-hearted adaptations too many times before to be inherently excited about the idea of “living the movie” that we were still being sold on. There were some circles in which the mere mention of a Lord of the Rings game based on the beloved movie drew hesitant sighs and concerned groans.

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However, you also have to understand just how big The Lord of the Rings was at that time. Prior to Fellowship‘s premiere, the odds were good that you either grew up with the books and thought there was no way that the movies could do them justice, or you had never read the books but were feeling cynical about the idea of another franchise blockbuster after The Phantom Menance. In either case, what many of us saw when we first saw Fellowship of the Ring could only be described as magical.

The Two Towers obviously benefited from its association with a property that had ignited the imagination and spirits of film fans across the world, but one of the most fascinating things about the game wasn’t just that it would feature levels, characters, and footage from 2001’s Fellowship of the Ring but 2002’s The Two Towers as well. That meant Two Towers players would actually get to see and play parts of The Two Towers movie two months before it was released in theaters for a global audience.

It was kind of a gimmick, but it was a great one. Much like Enter the Matrix, The Two Towers initially sold itself on the promise of not just letting us dive into a world we loved but actually showing us parts of that world we hadn’t seen before. For a generation in awe that was still processing the grandeur and impact of Fellowship of the Ring, this was more than we could have ever dared ask for. It would have been enough if the games treated the source material with respect (which they did) but to offer us a preview of the movie we stayed up at night thinking of? It was an idea so far beyond what so many of us wanted: an excuse to be in that world for just a little longer and maybe even have our own adventure while we were there.

Yet, when I think back on the Two Towers or hope for a re-release, I rarely dwell on the ways that the game innovated. Honestly, I more often find myself thinking back on the ways that the game was so wonderfully simple and even familiar.

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Honestly, there’s not a lot that separates Two Towers from Double Dragon, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade games, and so many beat ’em ups of the golden era of that genre. In all cases, the premise is rather simple. You walk across linear, but often beautiful, levels and mash a few buttons to wail on the various enemies in your path. You may have to throw in a special attack here and there (and Two Towers utilized a basic character upgrade and experience system for good measure), but the formula is pretty much the same as it ever was.

Compared to something like 2001’s Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, Two Towers was almost comically simple. In fact, I can remember some at the time referring to the game as a watered-down version of those more Diablo-like experiences. Honestly, it wasn’t an entirely unfair criticism if you were determined to stack those games side-by-side based on a few similarities. Games like Dark Alliance offered dozens (or more) hours of rich action-RPG gameplay in lush fantasy settings, and Two Towers could be beaten in a handful of hours with relatively little skill or effort.

Furthermore, it always felt a bit strange to boil The Lord of the Rings down to action sequences. The movies absolutely took the action scenes from the books to a new level, but the games made little to no effort to recreate or expand the more subtle storytelling and character-building elements that really made the books and movies everything they were. Just about any modern critique of The Two Towers game written by someone who has no nostalgia for the game would likely (and perhaps rightfully) focus on the game’s simple combat, abbreviated storytelling, and all-around basic nature.

Years later, though, that’s actually the aspect of the game that I feel has aged best throughout the years. I could rant about how Two Towers‘ short, sweet, and complete design is a breath of fresh air compared to the onslaught of open-world games that seem to secretly want to be live service titles, but the beauty of The Two Towers isn’t the idea it’s somehow this bastion of noble game design. It’s more about how it so perfectly represents the idea that a good beat ’em up never really grows old. From the original genre innovators to modern throwbacks and even those titles that tried to do a bit more with the genre (such as Rockstar’s brilliant The Warriors), these games offer a kind of simple pleasure that sadly seems to be harder to justify at a time of escalation in game production.

Mostly, though, fond memories of The Two Towers are rightfully often rooted in the thrill of experiencing a loving tribute to the early Lord of the Rings movies with friends. It’s been said that it’s easier to make a game where the joy of playing with others allows you to overlook game design elements that would otherwise bug you, and maybe there’s some truth to that. Even negative reviews of Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance published so far tend to mention that the game can still be a good time when played with others. It’s just more fun to play with friends, and you could certainly argue that there have been game developers who rely on that quality to sell games that would otherwise be unappealing.

The thing that’s easy to love about Two Towers is how openly it embraces that philosophy. The game isn’t trying to be much more than it is by forcing in systems and mechanics that ultimately bloat what the game actually does so well. Just about any gamer of any skill level with a friend by their side, an extra controller, and a love for The Lord of the Rings movies can hop into Two Towers and experience exactly what that game was meant to provide: a simply fun time designed to make you celebrate this thing you love and not feel exploited.

That’s what makes the fact that we’ll probably never get a remaster or remake of the Two Towers (or its exceptional follow-up, Return of the King) due to the complicated nature of the licenses involved so upsetting. WB mostly controls the rights to Lord of the Rings games now, and even if they were willing to allow EA to remaster or remake these games, it’s not entirely clear how that process would work or how much of the original games’ film footage and “DVD” extras could be retained. It’s always tragic when licensing gets in the way of our ability to enjoy a gaming experience, and it’s especially sad when licensing impacts our ability to enjoy a game that not only celebrated its license but gave many of us reason to believe in licensed games again.

Yet, I refuse to give up hope. As we near the 20th anniversary of Fellowship of the Ring later this year and the 20th anniversary of The Two Towers‘ game next year, now feels like the perfect time to revive these classic hacks and slash beat ’em ups. Without them, a new generation of Lord of the Rings fans must rely on dwindling backward compatibility support and emulations just so the idea of a simply enjoyable Lord of the Rings game easily shared with friends doesn’t go from history to legend and legend to myth as much that once was in gaming becomes lost.

The post Dark Alliance Reminds Us We Need a Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Remaster appeared first on Den of Geek.

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sagevalleymusings · 4 years

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Internet Addiction is Real (even when you use it to write about internet addiction)

In October 2015 I started a video game ban that lasted six weeks, and ended around this time that year actually. I didn’t post my reflections about it then, partly because it felt self-aggrandizing and partly because people were kind of shitty when I announced my video game ban, saying things like that they found the internet an important way of connecting with people and that they were going to spam me with videos of puppies now. And yes, it was kind of shitty to say these things to me because their forthrightness that they didn’t have a problem with social media or the internet didn’t change the fact that I do. It’s at minimum rude that not one but three of my friends thought the appropriate response to my struggle was not only to tell me that I didn’t have a legitimate struggle but to say that they were going to undermine my efforts to better myself.

And it did feel like I’d bettered myself. In 2015, in six weeks, I had:

Completed two books, and started two others.

Made my bed every single day

Started exercising intermittently

Learned how to cook two completely new dishes to great success

Been more productive at work

Finished unpacking my bedroom from moving in four months ago

Wrote a published piece on Patheos

Painted my nails twice (something I used to enjoy a lot)

It was actually surprisingly difficult, especially at first. I was spinning my wheels trying to do something that wasn’t video games, and coming up surprisingly short frequently. I tried getting back into whittling, which there was simply not conducive space for; I tried writing daily, which was exhausting and had many of the same pitfalls, as it was still extended periods of time in front of a monitor. But six weeks later, I felt lighter, more productive, and more present. Ultimately, I think this was an important exercise. A reminder that when a want becomes a need, it ceases to serve you.

But now I find myself falling into the same patterns that I’d gotten into in 2015. I spend almost all of my time in front of a computer screen. I work at a computer with unfettered access to the internet and very little structured work, get home, and hop on the computer. I alternatively work and play on the computer from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. I am in front of a monitor of some kind, for nearly 14 hours every single day.

Is this a bad thing? I don’t live near most of my friends anymore, but they’re on Facebook. I don’t have a TV but I can get news and entertainment from the internet. I am not the kind of person to bash new technology for the sake of its strangeness. But here’s the thing: the biggest detriment for me from this kind of access to the internet, to social media, to the entire compendium of human knowledge and endless possibility, is that it prevents me from completing.

Being able to change tasks to literally anything means that I do change tasks to literally anything. If I don’t want to do the laundry, I can just pick up Flight Rising. If I don’t want to do the dishes, I can snag Monster Super League. If I don’t want to finish my art project, there’s always Pokemon Go. If I don’t want to work on the budget spreadsheet, I can take Office Specialist training. If I don’t want to schedule meetings, I can look up the menu on this restaurant to make sure the receipt is within regulation. If I don’t want to write, I can practice Spanish on Duolingo.

Even when the thing I’m doing is still work, the issue isn’t that I’m not doing work, but that I’ll get five feet from the finish line and change tasks every time. It’s that my brain has somehow decided that being rewarded for starting something new is more important than finishing something old, because that’s how the internet works, so that’s how the world works.

Modern internet culture has no end. There is no finale. Movies that do well get unplanned sequels. Shows that were supposed to end in Season Five get extended to Season Thirteen and die a slow death after everyone has gotten way too sick of it to care. Facebook will literally scroll forever, as will Twitter, Tumblr, Netflix, and Youtube. Games have switched from stories to live services - experiences that are only loosely connected to the vaguest semblance of a plot, and gameplay that you can interact with daily for literally the rest of your life (or until the server goes down).

And so, like layers, my modern interactions with the internet just built on top of one another. Unlike when I could play Legend of Zelda and then Super Mario 64 and then Prince of Persia consecutively, I would start Pokemon Go, continue doing that, pull up Monster Super League, continue doing that, pull up Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, The New York Times, Flight Rising, YouTube, ad nauseum until checking every “daily” that I had to do went from taking one hour to taking six, or eight, or ten. I feel like I’m constantly trying to “catch up” in order to complete whatever facet of the internet I’d started, while not realizing that they update faster than I could possibly catch up. It’s a common joke in people my age that we’re in a perpetual cycle of promising to catch up with friends. But with the way Facebook rewards shallow, brief, constant interaction, is it really that this is a product of my age, or is it a product of my time? Fifty years ago, did you say the same thing, or did you just write a letter?

Hell, even texting as the alternative to phone calls is just surface-level constant interaction. And yet a text “conversation” takes about five times longer than a phone call, but we justify it because it “doesn’t get in the way” so we’re all doing three things at once, all of the time, because we don’t have time for any of them. I can justify my 14 hours of screen time because I’m gaming, writing, and socializing, while there’s a load of laundry in the wash, and dishes drying in the rack. And that argument makes so much sense until the tasks I’m juggling become less and less significant and more a waste of time. Facebook is genuinely a waste of time if I’m scrolling past 50 different memes that 19 of my friends have shared when the point was supposed to be the people that shared them. It took me I think two weeks to notice that a friend of mine was having a serious emotional issue because I couldn’t hear it through all the social media trash that builds up like oceanic microplastic that you can’t even see but still swallow anyway.

So what do you do? Stop playing games I enjoy and have made friendships from? Cut out social media in my life and consequently stop talking to important friends? Block time wasters on my work computer even though the issue isn’t any one time waster but the way it re-wires my brain to start new tasks in the middle of old ones?

I don’t know what the solution is ultimately. But really all I’m doing is wasting time. I’m writing this at work. I know I’ll have neither the “time” nor the motivation to write this at home. And I’m only writing this instead of doing something more toxic and less valuable because my boss caught me on Facebook today.

So when I say I have a problem relationship with the internet, if your response is to become defensive about that, maybe ask yourself if that defensiveness means that you, too, are only one more clickbait article away from being the kind of person who has to change their Facebook password to a random key mash just to stop themselves from checking it on the clock, and yet can’t motivate themselves to do work instead.

#addiction #internet addiction #armchair philosophy #i'm literally procrastinating right now

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distortedaura-blog · 7 years

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Indie... What's that?

Just for the record, I’m not a 90s kid.

Heck, I was just born a couple of years before the 90s went poof into the thin air. So much so that I could neither enjoy the old-house charm of 90s nor earned the distinction of being the new millennium baby..

The 90s went, but its trace still lingered, in the 8-bit super Mario games, in the Pokemon saga that still came on the original Cartoon Network (long before the disgusting Oggy took over), and of course, in the people for whom making a straight line was far more important on Tetris than on paper.

My first gaming rig was an 8-bit TV console that came with two extremely cute white controllers and an infrared blaster to play Duck Hunt. I was four, and fortunately or unfortunately, it became pretty clear that the only game in which I was any good at was, well – Duck Hunt.

And so, the boring vacation mornings became an embodiment of utter bliss. Gaming marathons, followed by a power cut- all progress lost- power comes back- same levels all over again.

In fact, I’ve played the first four levels of Mario so many times that I can literally play them blindfolded now.

Just kidding. A friend of mine bet me once, and I lost.

Enough about the old school. When computers started becoming a rage, I would go to my friends’ places or cyber cafes to try my hand at the original Call of Duty or as was the rage the : Project IGI. Though it hasn’t been refreshed as often, to this day I maintain that IGI is one of the best computer games ever made, as it almost had a cult following at its peak. Kids like me would also recognize one other game that simply blew everyone away – Roadrash. Nothing could match the thrill and adrenaline rush while speeding through the busy streets of one of the best illegal street racing games ever made. Think of it, those games were not from acclaimed publishers like Ubisoft or EA, but certain indie studios sprang up to give the gaming generation its daily dose of addiction. The advanced titles with jaw-dropping graphics and goose bump-inducing soundtracks still hit the top charts regularly, but even today, there’s nothing to match the utter simplicity of Indie Titles like FEZ or Super Meat Boy. Let’s face it, I suck at big games that involve a lot of running, ducking and shooting baddies up, and the simplistic, minimal graphics, simple gameplay mechanics and the puzzles that are liberally peppered throughout these indie titles does interest me more than the big bang shoot ‘em ups. However it’s not that I do not enjoy the occasional game of Halo once in a while, but the rest of my gaming time, you’ll find me grinding away to earn the perfect 3-Star in Angry Birds.

These indie games kind of like ignite the days of jumping away with an 8-bit Mario, or shooting with unlimited ammo (without a cheat code) in Contra. Also, the slightly weird backstories do incite interest. Take Braid, for example. One of the most popular features of Prince of Persia : Sands of Time was the time reversal mechanic. Braid took the primitive play style of a 2D-platformer, married it with a compelling story and an always on time reversal power, and boom! You had one of the most popular labels of the last decade in your hands.

Super Meat Boy is the story of a boy with no skin (just a lump of meat) and his quest to reunite with his girlfriend bandage girl and save her from the evil scientist Dr. Fetus. The game is characterized by its fine control and split-second timing as the player jumps through 300 hazardous levels. The game is all about the story and the vulnerability of meat boy, who is, to put it mildly, totally adorable.

Now the one thing I really like about indie games is that they are pretty straightforward and implement revolutionary concepts with a simple gameplay mechanic. Look at FEZ. A 2D boy in a 2D world gets the power to see the world in 3D, and then he has to solve 3D puzzles from a 2D point of view in order to save the universe. I mean c’mon, how cool is that!!!

Everyone might not like puzzles, because yes, most puzzles can be solved by a technique known as brute-forcing. A bunch of players try out hundreds of brute force combinations to solve a puzzle, often bypassing its logic. But what’s the fun in that? Solving a puzzle by its proper logic gives you an inexplicable happiness, the kind of feeling that comes from solving a sum you’ve been stuck on for days, that comes from yelling – “I’m on top of the world…” in the middle of a busy street. Okay, maybe not the last part. So for all the gamers and non-gamers out there, here’s an indie fan’s request :

“Get away from the mainstream games for a couple of days. Discard your Crysis, CoD, CoC or Subway Surfers for at least two days and try out the games that actually test your brain. Because you can always come back and crush all the covenants in Halo, or get that perfect score in Candy Crush Level- 29. But not every day can you help a 2D guy see the world in 3D.” Till next time, keep rolling, keep rocking, and keep having fun.

Peace.

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