Achievment Unlocked: Games are federally recognized as art.

So before you continue on, read this.


Seriously, I know you're still there, take a quick look.
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I'm talking to myself now, aren't I?


Welcome back! So as it seems the NEA can now give grants for video games as public works. I won't go into further detail on the specifics, as you just read them, but this could have some really interesting possibilities.

Games that wouldn't normally be granted a budget, on account of graphic content or niche appeal, now have a chance of being made and distributed publicly.

I would like the greatest public project the world has ever known... H.P. Lovecraft: The Game, you basically play as Lovecraft who has to fight monsters from his own story.

It's a 3rd person actions rpg, and you, as Lovecraft, wield an evolving Victorian Pen-Sword.  Or something like that. It would be very awesome.

Finally!

The endless onslaught of work has been ended.

I can't believe it, it couldn't be happening, pinch me girls, it couldn't be happening...

Oops, too much acting, sometimes I still slip into talking about lines from my recent musical.

Things have been very busy with college acceptance and all, and I hope to post up some more video game/nerd related post within the week as it is now Spring Break, and I should soon have Dragon Age 2.

So I may post stuff about that as I go through.

That reminds me, I made it 3/4'ths of the way through Tales of Vesperia, finally, and am considering whether or not I really want to finish the last bit of it for reasons I will explain in another upcoming post.

So till then...

Also, watch out for bionic squid-men, I was nearly attacked by one on the way home today.

I had to fight it off with a Kukri.

Less is More (Collectibles in Video Games)

So I've been playing a lot of Assassin's Creed 2 recently, I bought it and played it recently (As part of a winter sale at a store), and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the first Assassin's Creed, which I quit half-way through because I was tired of hiding amongst wandering crows of priests and an extremely bland environment. It became very boring, very quickly.

Out of the things Assassin's Creed 2 does a lot better than the first, I think one prominent spot is in it's collectibles.

Now I'm not someone who desires to collect every achievement in every game, as most of the games I've played range from 250-750 in number of points I have collected, so achievements have never really provided me the drive to collect thousands of out of the way items. This is where Assassin's Creed 2 really shines.

The Codex Pages give you health bar upgrades for every 4th page you decode. The Glyphs each have interesting puzzles for you to solve and are located on or near famous landmarks which your quests often take you on or near. Between the two of them, each rewards you with additional story bits, The Glyphs combine to create a hidden scene that has story implications, and the same goes for when all of the codex pages are gathered together to create a secret picture of some sort for more story implications.


I'm a drug fiend big fan of story telling and additional pieces of fiction that fit into the overall story of a game, Mass Effect 2's own Codex Entries are an example, so for me, this seems like a much larger reward than intangible points. As well, between Glyphs and Codex Pages, there aren't too many of either, making it much easier to collect both of them than the typical 100+ collectibles in other games. Now I'm not saying that the system is perfect, There are 100 feathers in the game you can collect, which as far as I know don't provide much of a reward, but the game does a much better job of implementing collectibles than some other games.

So all I'm saying, is it doesn't take many collectibles to make the system good, in fact it doesn't take many, size doesn't matter and bigger isn't necessarily better in this case. A decent sized amount of collectibles for each world/level which are generally easy to find and have some reward beyond just achievement points. now of course this can be changed, say in a game like Fallout or Dragon Age, you could have a smaller amount of harder to find or collect objects which could unlock a power piece of weaponry or armor.

What seems to be the optimal method of collectible items or such in games is that the amount of collectibles is equal to or less than the value of the rewards it provides, as well as being placed in interesting areas that you are likely to visit either on account of the gameplay or the world/level's beauty.