National Videogame Museum - A Virtual Tour

Located in Frisco, Texas - within the facility that houses an art gallery, community theater and science discovery zone - The National Videogame Museum opened this weekend to a massive influx of eager gamers. Children of all ages were in attendance, some waiting as long as two hours to make their way into the museum proper after the doors were opened on Saturday morning. Thankfully, the weather was fair and and local orchestral students were on-hand to play come classical gaming themes to amuse the crowd while they waited. There were also a number of video game cosplayers on-hand.





The museum itself is laid out in an open fashion, with different alcoves displaying the exhibits behind protective glass. The display areas are largely centered around key historical points such as the early days of gaming (complete with a giant Pong game), the development of the home-computer and the North American Gaming Crash of 1983.







One of the better interactive exhibits is the timeline of game consoles one encounters upon entering the museum. A special display, designed like a giant SNES controller, allows patrons to read a brief history of all the consoles on display and many more!




Of course there's more to see than old games and gaming systems. There's also exhibits, like a display showing the differences between how various games - in this case, Q-Bert - appeared on different systems.



Other areas of the museum are devoted towards key innovations, such as the development of portable electronic games and specialized controllers.





There were also areas devoted towards more general concepts, such as computerized music, creative games that allowed the player to build things and on-line gaming.






The museum also features exhibits devoted toward gaming merchandise and promotional materials. This includes statues of Mario and Dracula (a display for one of the Castlevania games) as well as sections devoted toward t-shirts, action-figures and other collectibles. There's even a special section devoted to board games based on video games!






One of the most unusual exhibits is devoted toward examining how home-gaming systems changed the nature of the industry and how the arcades eventually lost out once gaming systems were able to match the computer power of a cabinet-based game. The exhibits are built to resemble a common 1980's living room and a 1980's tween's bedroom.




Local artists were brought in to handle the decoration of the museum. There are a number of stunning murals around the complex, including one of the greatest heroes and villains of the gaming world, overlooking the free-play area, where the classic games of yesteryear can be enjoyed hands-on. After all, it wouldn't be much of a gaming museum if you couldn't play some games, now would it?!





The artists did a great job of seamlessly blending into the architecture. One amusing touch is that the restrooms, which are located in the same corner as a small alcove devoted towards Dragons Lair, manged to mark the doors with Dirk The Daring and Princess Daphne without interrupting the mural.




The exit area of the museum includes a classically-designed arcade area, with working games. Don't worry - the admission price includes some complementary tokens, with extras available for purchase. And the gift shop was designed to resemble a merchant's store from a role-playing game, with several familiar items on the walls and shelves behind the counter.





All in all, it's a fine museum and a fun place to spend some time if you're a gamer.

Fallout 4 - First Impressions

War... War never changes. And neither, ultimately, does the Fallout series.

Okay, there ARE a lot of changes and most of them will please console gamers and shoot-em-up fans and aggravate the role-players and series purists. But underneath the surface, this is still a Fallout game with all that entails. And that means the series purists complaining about how much has been dumbed down in the name of making things easier on the console gamers. It's tradition.

The grand irony of Fallout 4 is how much customization has been added to the game on a cosmetic level while simultaneously stripping down the mechanics. For instance, you've never had more options for customizing your appearance and it's possible to make a character that is morbidly obese for the first time. You also get to customize the appearance of your spouse. Yes, you start the game married and with an infant son and you get to decide how the man/woman of your dreams looks.

Well, unless you want to have a same-sex relationship in which case you're out of luck. Ditto if you'd hoped to give your male protagonist fantastic make-up. Though the unmodded game will apparently let you crossdress if you are so inclined to wander the wasteland in a ballgown and heels.


By contrast, the Skills system has been completely scrapped in favor of a new Perks system that unlocks new talents based on your SPECIAL statistics. (That's Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck, if you didn't know!) This means that everyone working on the Perception Perk chain has to take Pickpocketing at Level 2 to access the higher-level feats... even if you're intent on playing the straight-and-narrow sort of character who would never steal someone's wallet.

Another major selling point of Fallout 4 is the revised crafting system. Not only can you modify and construct new weapons based on what you can scavenge (the system will seem familiar to anyone who played Skyrim), you can even modify buildings and construct your own wasteland bunker. No doubt these options will please some gamers but if I wanted to build a house, I'd have bought The Sims.


Me? I play Fallout games for the story. And Fallout 4 has what is easily the strongest opening of any game in the series. At the very least, it is the most cinematic opening yet.

The story is that you are a Veteran retired to civilian life. Your service has bought your family a ticket into Vault 111 - an underground environment meant to keep select members of humanity safe in the event of nuclear war. You confirm your appointment just in time for the mushroom cloud to rise over the horizon as you hurriedly sprint through your peaceful town toward The Vault.

This ends with you being cryogenically frozen, awakening just long enough to see your child taken by sinister figures and your spouse seemingly killed. From there, you have to fight you way through the wreckage of the Vault, discovering in the process that it's over 200 years in the future. Also, that giant roaches suck to fight bare-handed.


It's fortunate that the game's opening is so engaging because you'll feel like you're on the plot railroad almost immediately. Admittedly, I didn't try to go off the reservation beyond accidentally running down the wrong road before entering the vault and getting nuked for my trouble but it's clear Bethesda has listened to complaints about the world being too open-ended and about how hard it was to find companions. You can't help but find a trusty dog to help you in your travels shortly after leaving The Vault, after your robot butler points the way for you to go.

As to be expected, there's a lot of bugs in this initial release. I myself have fallen prey to a fairly common one for PC gamers that renders it impossible to resize the screen past a window half the size of my screen or play in full-screen mode. On the bright side, this does enable me to keep an eye on my chat windows in Facebook while continuing to explore the ruins of Concorde, but it would be nice to use my whole screen for the fire-fights.

Bottom Line: It's different and it's buggy... but it's still engaging when it works and it's still Fallout.

Second Thoughts On Thief

Early on in Thief, a mission requires you to break into a brothel in order to steal a book.  The brothel is hidden away in the sewers and an entrance to a subterranean library is hidden away in the brothel.  Fans of the original Thief games (Dark Project, Metal Age and Deadly Shadows) will immediately recognize this library as a Keeper stronghold.  And that is the Thief reboot in a nutshell - an occasional glimpse of the greatness of yesterday hidden behind the empty promises of whores in a filthy, depressing sewer.

Despite that, I did enjoy playing most of the Thief reboot.  The problem is it isn't a very good Thief game.  It's an interesting variation on the Batman: Arkham games.  And it wouldn't be a bad Assassin's Creed game or a Deus Ex prequel.  But it lacks the spirit of the original Thief games.  There are references to the original series everywhere but there's no heart under the finery.

Don't believe me?  Here's perhaps the greatest sign that Eidos Montreal had little interest in staying true to the stealth-based heart of the series.


A mission goal for Combat Takedowns.

Combat Takedowns.  In a series built around the idea of avoiding combat at all costs.

That says it all, doesn't it?  Not only does the game allow you to just slaughter your way through every challenge, in some levels it encourages it!  And there's no reward for taking the slow and stealthy path, save for an Achievement for taking more than 15 hours to beat the story mode of the game.

Sure, you could look around for a grate that lets you crawl into the City Watch station and sneak into the prison unseen.  But why bother when you can just kill the guards with explosive arrows?
That's another sore point - the story mode is nowhere near as interesting as the thrill you get from the side missions.  Maybe I've been spoiled by sandbox games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls but the most enjoyable parts of Thief were the hours I spent house-breaking and running missions for my fences.  That's rather a big problem when the story of the game is a distraction from the most enjoyable part of the game-play.

What's really vexing is the game itself doesn't seem to take its plot seriously.  The urgency of the original series' plots is completely absent.  Without giving too much away, you find out after the first chapter that you disappeared for the better part of a year and nobody knows where you've been.  This concern is immediately put on hold so you can steal a ring for your contact.

You get more hints that something weird happened over the next few missions but the game is halfway over before Garrett feels compelled to start figuring out what happened to him during the missing year.  By that point, your main fence and the closest thing you have to a friend has been arrested and you have to go rescue him as part of the story quests.  But first, you can do the DLC mission where you rob the city bank, whose starting point is right by the starting point to go save your fence.

Another problem is that the missions are all short.  Really short.  Shorter than Deadly Shadows short.  And while the world of the Thief reboot may have literally been built on the bones of the old world, the missions of this game are built on their spiritual bones.  They try to invoke the feeling of the old games by ripping off the greatest moments of the old games.  The minute Garrett announces that he has to break into an asylum, old-school Thief fans know what to expect and any sense of suspense is ruined as we go on a side-quest to Silent Hill.


And then they pad it out with everyone's least favorite thing - sliding puzzles!

I should note that there is one thing the Thief reboot did bring over from the original games, though.  Buggy AI.

I will get you! Even though you're standing in the light just around the corner from me!
The AI is limited in their paths and frequently get stuck on corners.  And thanks to lazy level design, there are many points where the hostiles have no way of getting to you, so long as you duck in the right places or climb up on the right object.

If I could just kneel down or walk past that corner, I would get you!

All in all, Thief may be worth giving a try in a few months when the price drops.  Just don't expect to go home again if you're a fan of the original series.

First Thoughts on Thief

The original Thief Trilogy (The Dark Project, The Metal Age and Deadly Shadows) is one of my favorite gaming franchises of all time.  It's also one of the most influential franchises of all time, with The Dark Project having pioneered the first-person stealth game and Deadly Shadows possessing one (if not THE greatest) horror levels of all time - The Cradle.

When I heard that Eidos and Square Enix were partnering to revive the franchise, I was excited but wary.  The first two games were designed for the PC.  The final one was marred, somewhat, by having to be designed with console gamers in mind.  I feared that something similar might happen with this new Thief game, which was designed for the PS3, PS4, XBox 360 and XBox One.

It did.  But it's not quite so bad as I thought it would be.


The interface and controls are much like the original Thief games, but with some additions taken from other, more recent Eidos games.  Chief among these is the ability to edge around corners, that every stealth game has had since Batman: Arkham Asylum and Deus Ex: Invisible War.


Another new feature, at least once you start the first mission, is the Focus ability.  With the tap of the F key, you can highlight all the objects you can interact with, be they loot you can grab, enemies to avoid, objects to open in search of loot or items you can climb or use your grappling claw on.  There's also a new Swoop ability that allows you to dash quickly between one patch of shadows to the next without having to switch between creep and spring modes.  You can also move up behind a person and disable them with the Q-key for a Quick Takedown, rather than pulling out your blackjack.  


Thankfully, these new tools are optional - so far- and old-school Thief fans who want a classic experience can turn off options like loot glinting in the dark to increase the difficulty.  This is in addition the three difficulty modes, which raise or lower the enemy AI as well as your ability to stay unnoticed in the shadows.  


One problem with the PC version of Thief is long load times.  This is a cross we have to bear with games that were designed for consoles and then ported to the PC.  Many was the time I thought the game had frozen up only to suddenly spring into life.  Amazingly, the game never crashed, though it did take me the better part of an hour and a half to complete the game's prologue with only one "death" in that time.  Thankfully, the game looks gorgeous, even on an older system like mine and there's no difference in quality between the game-play and the cut-scenes. 



The plot so far is reminiscent of the original games while still being its own beast.  The prologue sees Garrett (the titular thief) paired with another thief named Erin to steal a supposedly magical artifact from some nobleman's house.  Hijinks ensue and the first chapter opens with Garrett trapped in a locked-down marketplace with the guards closing in and his escape options limited. 

So far, I'm not disappointed in Thief.  It's not as groundbreaking as Skyrim but I don't think it's meant to be.  For those who stalked the streets of the city with Garrett 15 years ago, this game will be a welcome bit of nostalgia.  Fans of  more recent stealth games will also find a lot they'll enjoy.