|
Do not try this at home
By Ahchay
What is it that makes a great videogame?
You don’t have to answer that question. However, would you believe me if I was to say that one of the best videogaming experiences I’ve had in the last year was HTML browser based, with rudimentary (at best) graphics, no sound that I’ve noticed and, arguably, little-to-no actual gameplay elements at all?
I’m talking about Edge of Chaos, a real-time turn-based (don’t worry, it’ll make sense eventually) game based on hoary old PC space shooter I-War and quite obviously based on those old Star Trek games that your granddad played in the sixties, only without the subtle nuances that made those games worth playing.
Here’s what you do.
You have five moves every three hours, with which you can shoot something, repair something, indulge in a little light salvage work or, if none of these options are available to you, you can move to another sector where, in three hours time, you might be able to fire, generally pretty ineffectually, at another ship.
And that’s pretty much all there is to it. Just you and a hundred other people wandering around virtually thumping each other. Sounds boring doesn’t it?
But the genius of the game lies in that boredom. You have time to plan your strategy, to talk to the other players on your team and, through little more than what amounts to an occasional email, you actually start to role-play. Not in an ‘I am a mighty elven warrior’ kind of way that we might traditionally associate with those words, but in the sense that you properly start to feel as though you are piloting a lone ship across the void. Part of you really is floating in vacuum a million miles from anywhere, lost and alone. You care when one of your compatriots gets shot out of the sky, you start to form groups and alliances with and grudges against the other players and when another faction attacks and destroys your homeworld... Well, that hurts. Somehow, this manages to feel more real than all of World of Warcraft’s graphical splendour can manage.
Most of us don’t really know how, for example, a seven foot tall purple elf feels, but we do know what it feels like to be alone. We know what it feels like to have to rely on email, or text messages, to stay in contact with the ones we love. We have, all of us, felt like this at one point in our lives. And it is this feeling of loneliness, of isolation that this game - perhaps inadvertently - capitalises on.
About as exciting as it gets..
And, for the two or three weeks that an average game will last, it will consume every waking hour. You will adjust your sleep patterns to hit those all important end/beginning of turn times. You will rearrange business meetings and you will piss off your entire family. At first, those five moves seem to be an almost trivial investment of time - three minutes four or five times a day? No problem. But soon you're checking fight logs, sending back sit-reps to your CO, checking your email every five minutes... Well, you get the picture.
You (or, more accurately, those around you) may only have the patience for one or two games of this, but you owe it to yourself to experience this at least once. You may never be able to look the more traditional RPG's in the eye again.
May 2006
|
