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Sep 27th, 2017 at 17:33:55 - Oxenfree (XBONE) |
As I continued playing Oxenfree for a little over an hour yesterday, I seem to be further ostracizing myself (as Alex) from my friends on the island. This game really likes to play with your emotions. The main character Alex struggles to cope with her brother’s death, and it comes up in conversation often, especially with Jonas, her new stepbrother. After yesterday’s gaming session, I didn’t know if Clarissa was dead or not. She’s apparently not, rather she’s been taken into an alternate dimension. In some sort of dream state, hallucination, temporal vortex thing, Clarissa blames Alex for Michael’s death, saying that if she hadn’t urged him to stick around he would have left town and he would have been safe. Naturally Alex gets defensive, and seems to feel a certain level of guilt. Every conversation I have continues to guide the story. At first I thought these decisions were going to result in minor changes to the storyline, but they all seem to be leading up to something much larger.
As I said before, the game toys with your emotions quite a bit. On more than one occasion, a friend has either died or been sucked off into some alternate dimension. This has happened with Clarissa, Jonas and Ren. I assume it will happen to Nona at some point as well. I’m not sure if this is just how the game plays out normally, or if this is a result of a decision that I made during dialogue. The dialogue choice is usually an empathetic response of some sort, a malevolent response or an indifferent one. I’ve tried to err on the side of good for the duration of the game, but honestly that might not be a good thing. Some of these decisions might seem like the right thing for one character, but might end up hurting someone else. We’ll see how it finishes, I feel like things are leading up to something big. I feel like each decision I make is becoming more and more important.
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Sep 26th, 2017 at 14:56:50 - Oxenfree (XBONE) |
I have played Oxenfree on Xbox One for a little over 2 hours now. So far, I can say that I am impressed. Within the first few minutes you see your first decision. Playing as the main character Alex, you are given the option to choose sides between your new stepbrother Jonas and your childhood friend Ren. The game does a great job with the dialogue. By creating this walk and talk approach, the developer Night School Studio has created a very organic approach to conversation. Every dialog box gives the player a decision, a side to choose. Each of these decisions guides how the game plays out and how, as Alex, your relationship with your friends develops. In one instance, you are given a choice to explore a cave or stay on the beach. Though I am not sure what the result would have been had I not gone into the cave, going into the cave was basically what started the actual story of the game by unleashing some sort of paranormal entity on the island. As I followed the story further, my dialogue decisions resulted in another acquaintance, Clarissa, jumping from a window to her death (we think). Alex, and in turn I, feel guilty when this happens. The dialog boxes are assigned to the X, Y and B buttons on the Xbox controller, as conversation happens in the game, you are given just seconds to respond, or else the game forces you into a dialogue decision. I am sort of on the fence about this so far. On one hand, the conversations flow much more naturally. On the other hand, if for some reason you miss a prompt, you could potentially change the outcome of the game, which seems like a harsh consequence. We will see how things play out going forward.
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Aug 30th, 2017 at 18:43:24 - Prison Architect (PC) |
I played another 2 hours of Prison Architect today. I realized after my last 2 attempts in the sort of sandbox mode that I had a ton of the campaign that I still needed to finish. The campaign is more of a drawn-out tutorial, but it forces you to make some decisions and witness some pretty brutal stuff. At first, I thought that it was kind of nice playing at a slower pace after my last couple of failed attempts in the sandbox mode. It was at least slower at first.
Immediately after the first part of the campaign, where I had to execute the prisoner convicted of a double murder, the game threw me into a scenario where I had to put out a fire in the canteen/kitchen and then rebuild again before meal time. I find out before too long that the fire was set in an attempt to kill the son of a mob boss. The Palermo crime family controls the drug trade within my prison, and to help stem the drug problem, I do a shakedown of the entire prison. I find a ton of contraband in the process of searching the prisoners. From a morale perspective, the prisoners for the most part weren’t very happy with me during and immediately after the shakedown.
Interestingly enough, just like in sandbox mode, I have to keep the prisoners needs in check while managing the ever-growing prison population. Things can get out of control so quickly. As part of the story, the prisoners riot and several staff members, including the warden are taken hostage. The sheer size of my prison population doesn’t help the situation at all. Luckily from my failed game in my last playthrough, I learned what to do in the case of the riot (the game gave me instruction as well). I have to deploy riot police quickly enough while dealing with the hostage crisis at the same time. The hostage crisis sort of plays itself out as interludes during the riot.
One thing I’ve learned more than anything in this game, and something that seems to be an ongoing theme from an ethics perspective is that even though I am in charge of a for-profit prison, treating my prisoners right is paramount to my success. The cost gets pretty high when riots occur. Prisoners and staff members are killed, walls are knocked down, I deploy riot police. It’s just better in the long run, if I want my game to last for any length of time, to treat the prisoners with dignity and give them creature comforts. Basically, a little humanity goes a long way.
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Aug 29th, 2017 at 11:54:53 - Prison Architect (PC) |
Yesterday I played another 3 hours of Prison Architect. At this point I had finally made it through the initial tutorial which gave me the basic framework of the game. As you start the actual game, they basically give you a huge open field and tell you to build a prison. This seemed like a daunting task at first but you are given a finite sum of money to start with and some pretty basic tasks. I began to build.
Everything seemed to be going well at first, I built a canteen (cafeteria) and a kitchen, and built a basic holding cell to hold my prisoners, one that didn’t cost too much money. I was ready for my first prisoner intake, or at least I thought I was. It wasn’t long before things started to spiral out of control. The in-game days go by rather quickly, and with each passing day comes more prisoners. Some prisoners are paroled, so there is a bit of ebb and flow, but there are quite few more prisoners coming in than there are prisoners going out. The holding cell I built was becoming overcrowded and in my haste to build it I had included a fundamental flaw, a door to the outside. It wasn’t very long before the prisoners found a way to exploit it and make a break for freedom. In the ensuing minutes, I lost about 80% of my prisoner population, either to death or to escape. The CEO of the prison system called not long after, my contract was revoked. Game failed. Restart.
To my disappointment, I was forced to start everything over. I got past my initial frustration and decided that this time I would do things right, and I would do it as fast as I possibly could to keep up with the population of the prison. I was wrong, again. While I could build the holding cell larger, and even had the funds to build a cell block, I forgot one critical thing. Food. I started with plenty of food, but just as in my previous playthrough, I didn’t consider a quickly growing prisoner population. Before long, my prisoner population was large, as was their demand for food. My supply of food, along with my short-staffed kitchen couldn’t keep up with the demand. The result? Extremely hangry (hungry + angry) prisoners. They rioted, killing each other and virtually my entire staff, all the way down to the janitors. I tried to deploy riot police but it went so fast, everyone was dead before they had a chance to make a difference. Again, game failed. Another restart.
In my time playing today, I had to restart the game twice. While this was incredibly frustrating, it also taught me a pretty good lesson in ethics. Even though it might be my job in this game to create a prison that makes money, I also learned that I must find a balance. I’d imagine it’s the same in the real world of for-profit prisons. If you decide to cram prisoners into tight spaces, or if you don’t provide enough food, the prisoners riot or find a way to escape. Basically, treat people with respect and dignity and there is a significantly higher chance that you’ll get treated in kind. I will see if I can’t do that in my next attempt at building this prison.
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KingBadfish has been with GameLog for 6 years, 8 months, and 3 days |
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