Bir Gifgafa

Tags

Bir Gifgafa, Command Ops, Divided Ground, left-handed mouse, Steel Panthers, Suez Crisis, The Arab-Israeli Wars, The Star and The Crescent, WinSPMBT

This is a series of posts on the Suez Crisis. See here for the first regular post in the series, here for the previous post, and here to go back to the master index.

In the last post I complained that, although the TOAW scenario gives a good overall picture of the encounters in the 1956 war, it does not convey the “feeling” of this fighting, and which would require gaming at a finer level.

Back near the beginning of this series, I dug out my Arab Israeli Wars (the board game) and set up scenario B-1. Apparently, I’m not alone as there a many games that look at that battle, several of them having been directly inspired by the Avalon Hill scenario. The board game is not designed for solitaire play, and this scenario in particular does not lend itself for playing without an opponent. Nevertheless, when I set it up and fiddled around with it for a little bit, it immediate began to look like an Israeli victory.

Being scenario B-as-in-Basic #1, you would think you’d find it a simple, well balanced scenario suitable for new players learning the game. It does not appear to be this; my impressions of the scenario finds it extremely tilted toward the Israelis. See this thread at Board Game Geek for a bit of discussion on the scenario. I suppose it may have another purpose. A section of the design notes begins with a story of an October, 1973 battle where 5 Israeli tanks are sent to engage 40 Syrian T-55s. After 45 minutes (a typical scenario length in this type of game), half of the Syrian tanks were destroyed and the remaining retreated, without a single Israeli loss. One wonders if part of the purpose of B-1 is simply to demonstrate the massive superiority of Israeli armored doctrine, even when “the numbers” suggest an advantage to the other side.

Divided Attention

The first computer version I played was for Divided Ground. As I mentioned in my previous look at Arab Israeli War scenario conversions, these scenarios contain extensive design notes. In those design notes, the author makes a comment that the purpose of his conversions are to implement the board game scenarios. If a player wants good Divided Ground scenarios, either versus the computer or to compete with an opponent, he says they should look to the scenarios supplied with the game. This conversion may be a good example of what he is talking about.

A turkey shoot. Despite the “light tank” designation, the superior gun (and doctrine) of the AMX-13 makes short work of the Egyptian T-34/85s.

The victory conditions, rewarding destruction of the enemy and the success or failure of traversing the board within the allotted time, are reproduced faithfully. But a problem in this conversion seems to be that the computer opponent doesn’t really understand them.

Assuming that the scenario is, in fact, winnable as the Arabs, the key would be to use terrain to ambush the approaching Israeli’s once they are in range. Using such a strategy the computer version might make it possible for Arab units to remain hidden (via the fog of war feature) until they are close enough to neutralize the range advantage of the Israelis. Instead, the AI Arab player seemed to bunch up his units, leaving them in place to be destroyed at leisure from a distance. Even more glaring, the Arab player dealt with the exit conditions by stacking his units on the exit hexes, making them easy targets once good firing positions were determined.

As Inspired By

Scale Up/Scale Down

Divided Ground

Battlefield size: 8km x 4km
Turn length: 1 hour 30 minutes
Unit: Platoon

Steel Panthers: MBT

Battlefield size: 5km x 2.5 km
Game length: 30-45 minutes
Unit: Single vehicle

The Star and the Crescent

Battlefield size: 28km x 19km
Game length: 2 hours
Unit: Single vehicle

 Command Ops 2

Battlefield size*: 40km x 12km
Game length: ~12 hours
Unit: Platoon

Moving on to the Steel Panthers version, we again encounter a scenario “inspired by” the Avalon Hill scenario, rather than being actually based off of it. The mix of tanks are about right, but there are far fewer (owning to the smaller scale). There terrain doesn’t have the same feel. While the sand and rocky hills are still there, it doesn’t have the “hexside” ridges of the board game.

The inspiration does take one odd form. The map layout is with North to the left and a fairly narrow playing space West-to-East. On the top (that is, West) edge of the map is the Suez Canal, not used in the game. You might recall that the original scenario uses the Suez Canal mapboard to add extra playing space, but the canal features themselves are not playable. The battle took place quite a ways distant from the canal, and it is only in this scenario because the board game must create all of the battles using the same four mapboards.

One other oddity. The battalion commander has a jeep at his disposal. For some reason, when moved, the jeep makes horse noises. Fortunately for my sanity, the jeep got stuck in the sand within the first few minutes of play.

The scenario said to play from the Egyptian side. Maybe I should have paid attention.

The scenario played out much as the Divided Ground. Kills were made at long range with very little own-losses. In a similar way, the enemy bunched up around a couple of victory locations, where they were subsequently destroyed.

I Want to Love You, But…

The 2005 release from Shrapnel Games, The Star and The Crescent promises to be what we’re all looking for here. While primarily focuses on later wars, it too has a Bir Gifgafa scenario for 1956. Immediately on start, we notice the increased use of realism in this version. Instead of randomly-generated desert or a reproduction of “Board D,” the scenario is played using a Soviet contour map of the battlefield. Unfortunately, it is a 1980s Soviet map of the battlefield so, for example, it has a airfield that didn’t exist in 1956. A hint of things to come.

The Star and the Crescent itself the fifth game released on that engine, which started with BCT: Brigade Combat Team or BCT:Commander (depending on the version) from 1998. While I didn’t collect ’em all, as they say, I do have several versions of this system. This game system is the one that finally drove me over the edge regarding left-handed mouse issues in gaming. Much of the Shrapnel line has long insisted on making the mouse buttons non-configurable. In this series it was particularly galling to me because the interface is so mouse-click intensive.

Amazingly, there is a particular combination of installations and patches that solves the problem. My computer has both The Star and the Crescent and Air Assault Task Force, installed together and both patched up to the latest post-release versions. Running with both, and then launching the TSatC executable (with the current patch) presents a native windows interface. Launching from the AATF executable presents a custom GUI that defiantly eschews integration with Windows. The mouse buttons are locked, as is the screen resolution. Several times in the past I’ve gotten stuck on that interface, unwilling to try to learn the actual game. Fortunately, this time around, I stumbled upon the workaround.

But once the game starts running, we find other problems. It is not a pretty game, by anyone’s definition. But that’s OK. Pretty isn’t necessarily what we’re after. The game was sold as a hard-core sim for hard-core wargamers, so it must be judged as such. The problem is, again, the user interface. At start, all units are halted and without orders. Trying to assign those order tumbles one into a nightmare-like cycle where orders are given, wait, no they weren’t, try again. There, got it. Nope. Try again.

The blue highlighted in green is the lead company of AMX-13s. The black squares to my NW are the enemy that I dispatched, with two lost vehicles (gray squares). The blue squares back up the road to the NE are so far behind because of trouble getting orders. Note the ghost-of-the-future airfield to my South.

Suddenly one vehicle out the unit starts moving… but not the rest. Oops, wrong click try again.

I suppose I should be spending more time with the written manual. But every time I read the manual, the prose regales me with how easy and intuitive the user interface is, not gives me the secret to overcoming its hurdles.

Ultimately, once all the units have the right orders – the desired formation, a path plotted in roughly the right direction, and not halted, subsequent orders become a little easier. It is simpler to modify existing orders than it is to create new ones.

A section from a 1959 US Military map of the Sinai hints at what we are up against. “Very Sharply Undulating” terrain. Another section, closer to the battlefield, describes “Sand Dunes “30 to 45 meters high.”

The simulation certainly does seem to be well done. Modeling look to be at the level of individual shots from individual vehicles. The control, however, can be per vehicle or at the higher-level commands using formations. The friendly UI isn’t at the level where units can take their own initiative, but the game is best played giving orders at the company level and leaving the computer to execute them. The modeling of the map seems to be well done also. The terrain modelling appears to be at a finer detail than most games at this scale, leaving a battlefield peppered with undulations and providing complex fields of fire to navigate.

Pretty much done. The red Xs are killed enemies and the blue Xs are killed friendlies. My units (the blue armor symbol) are headed towards the end of that objective arrow.

Results were similar to the other three versions of this battle. The Israeli armor dominated the battlefield, dispatching the enemy with minimal friendly losses. Engagement distances were closer than the previous versions, something I attribute to the finer-grained modelling of the terrain. I do also notice the max-range for all tank guns is set at 1600, shorter than in the other games and closer than some of the kills in Steel Panthers.

In digging through the statistics, I came across another issue I have with the scenario. The scenario puts a 90mm gun on the AMX-13. This is an upgrade that the French were rolling out in the 1950s, but if the Israelis had any at the time of the Suez Conflict, it was only one or two. All the information I’ve seen says the light tanks of the 7th Armor Brigade mounted the 75mm gun, sharing it with the M50 Super Shermans.

But wait, there’s more! Just as I was headed into the endzone, one more company of enemy armor appeared. Shouldn’t be an issue.

One big plus I’ll give this system. Once I killed a couple of the tanks in the above screen shot, the game ended. As the program described, it had now become impossible for the enemy to achieve its objectives. It saves the player from the unpleasantness of having to run out the clock on a scenario he knows is over.

The single 1956 scenario in this package may not represent the gaming system’s best face, so I’ll give The Star and the Crescent/Air Assault Task Force another look in the future.

Roll Your Own

The final look at this battle was created using the editing tools of Command Ops 2 to recreate the situation. For of an engine of its complexity, the scenario tools are surprisingly simple to work with. The game’s creator says his intention was that you could produce an interesting scenario in minutes, allowing you (for example) to imagine what a hypothetical meeting engagement between two arbitrary forces would look like. The details can be increased from there. There is a huge latitude for control of the AI (enemy and friendly) by setting the victory locations, which is vastly simpler than the scripted AI of other products. Under pressure from the users, everything in the engine is editable, allowing us to move from the WWII, Western Front setting to 1956 Egypt.

The most difficult part of the game to create fresh are the maps. Getting them right takes some time and effort. When I first started with some map creation, I was having trouble getting a non-Northern Europe base terrain. I decided to forgo it for this iteration, and used instead a user-created map for the battle of El Guettar.

Adding vehicles for the Arab Israeli War was fairly straightforward.

This was by far and away the best interface experience for playing this battle. I set the unit size for the battle to correspond to the board game/Divided Ground. Commands can be given at any level from that unit on up, including simply commanding the entire force. The typical game length for Command Ops tends to be pretty long. The larger forces and multiple objectives require several distinct planning/execution phases and, at least for me, it takes quite some time to play through. However, a small scenario like this plays out very quickly.

Engaged. Once again, the AI has clumped up their armor, this time at a choke point behind an Tunisian crossing. Judicious use of victory point location placement is what drives the AI in this game.

The battle went mostly as I’d expect. It ended up being a significant loss (although as I was haphazard assigning victory points, calculations of win and loss are probably not meaningful). The kill ratio was somewhat lopsided in favor of the Egyptians, and the Israelis failed to take the bridge. I’m left with a few conclusions about the use of this engine for post-WWII scenarios.

• It is well suited to this time and place. The use of post-WWII equipment was not a stretch for the engine. However, this scenario does show where the limits of this system might be found.

The map seems to be on the larger size for a typical Command Ops battle,  which as I’ve said tend to be multi-day affairs. Granted the map was oversized for this battle, but in the table near the top of this article we can see that this size battlefield is more like the multiple-hour versions of the battle rather than a multiple-days version (which would pretty much cover the whole war). While this might be the size of an area for an extended operation for a airborne assault force, using primarily foot movement, against a fortified defense, things are different when it comes to more modern mobile warfare.

As mobile warfare, including helicopters, continues to advance and modeling improvements in communication and sensors in the 1960s and beyond, I foresee hitting big holes in what Command Ops can portray. And yet, there may continue to be a niche. Cold War era conflicts like the Iran-Iraq War also were also throwbacks to World War II weapons and technologies, so the engine might be a match for some other, later battles.

• While creating the map may be the hardest part of the process, it may also be the most important when in comes to immersion and the fun factor. In this version of the scenario, failure to take the crossing seems almost meaningless. In the real battle, there was no bridge and there was no river. The opportunity for the player to connect with the historical circumstance is difficult unless the battlefield itself is actually recreated.
• Clearly the advantage is Israeli gunnery and tactics is not property modeled. I used data for the German 75mm tank projectile, which does slightly outperform the Soviet guns. But clearly it wasn’t enough. A good bit of tweaking is almost certainly in order here.

Hopefully I’ll find the wherewithal to work some more with this concept before I’m done. With a little bit of work, I think I could see much better results. Furthermore, the 1956 Arab-Israeli War in general is even more suited to Command Ops than this particular scenario. The use of paradrops to seize objectives, which then are rescued by mechanized forces, is very much the scenario this series was originally designed to play.

Return to the master post or go on to the next article.

*Regarding Battlefield Size and Duration. Since I set this up myself, it isn’t really representative. The map I used is much bigger that shown, but the roughly 40km x 12km rectangle is where all of the fighting will take place. Likewise the battle would never last for 12 hours of fighting. But I needed to set start and end times, so I just gave it most of the day.

Take the Cannoli

Tags

action/adventure, console port, Grand Theft Auto, GTA, Hot Springs, Korean War, L.A. Noire, left-handed mouse, Logitech Wingman, mafia, Mafia II, roaming, The Godfather, Vice City, World War II

The Godfather is one of the greatest movies ever made.

From the story, to the casting, to the technical details, it manages to get nearly everything right. But it is more than that. Far from being a great telling of a story on film, it uses the medium to perfection. The piece is neatly framed between the two religious celebrations; the wedding and the christening.

It is also a practically unparalleled cultural phenomenon. It redefined the “gangster” cinema genre. No longer do we expect the exaggerated, one-dimensional villains played a la James Cagney. Instead, our mobsters are the deep, complex characters that, yes, they are criminals but they are also the heroes and protagonists of our stories.

Since then, any Mafia-related movie takes place in the shadow of Coppola’s work. We “know” how the mobsters of the 40s and 50s behave, because we’ve seen the film (and its sequels). It provides an implicit backstory to any new characters that are created.

Mafia II (Spoilers included, no extra charge)

The game Mafia II starts using some similar hooks, but is clearly not going to be a simple retelling. The main character (your character) is caught in the course of a minor robbery. Rather than serve jail time, he agrees to go into the Army to fight the fascists in Europe.

Similarities to the back story in my earlier article are present, perhaps because of the automatic game-goodness that comes with including some World War II combat in a game. Unlike L.A. Noire (and Hot Springs, for that matter), our character is not a hero (flawed or otherwise) returning victorious in the war against Japan, but a flawed-or-otherwise-hero* dodging future service in Europe. The war service seems to serve main three functions. First, it allows the introduction of the game world to the main character because, well, we’ve been away at war and missed out what’s been happening. Second, a gratuitous MG 42 level, a la Medal of Honor, can be included. Third, and rather weakly, our character is saved from certain death in Sicily at the hands of Mussolini’s soldiers by the local mafia Don, who convinces the Italians to surrender. Thus, we come to understand the power of La Cosa Nostra.

Returning from the war, the game begins a sequence taking place in the fictional city of Empire Bay (very similar to New York) in the final months of the second world war. The Mafia II begins taking place a few years before L.A. Noire. However, the majority of the story actually occurs in 1951 during the Korean War (which takes place via radio news reports within the game).

L.A. Noire and Mafia II were released within a month of each other. They are also broadly classified within the same action/adventure genre, in the style of Grand Theft Auto and its sequels. However, whereas L.A. Noire (as I discuss in my article) actually draws heavily from the puzzle/adventure style of games, Mafia II is a more straight up drive/fight/shoot game. Given the similarities, some compare and contrast is surely in order.

In terms of resource use, Mafia II seems to make better designed in terms of system resources. The facial expression modelling aside, Mafia II is probably the more visually impressive game, but runs with less apparent stress on the system. The games are similar. Fairly realistic, 3D characters in a fully-explorable city – what is sometimes referred to as the “roaming” genre. The fairly realistic Los Angeles/Hollywood of L.A. Noire is considerably bigger than the faux-New York of Mafia II. Whether this is an advantage is limited by the difference in game-play. In Mafia II, one could spend significant time earning money/cars, etc. throughout the city. In L.A. Noire, there doesn’t seem to be much point (a few minigames aside) from deviating too far from the script. In fact, the long driving distances sometimes got a little tedious, factoring in the sometimes-long waits a stoplights. (I did say fairly-realistic version of Los Angeles!)

I often make the comparison with Grand Theft Auto, although my own experience with that series is limited. Years ago, I had a copy of “Vice City” (faux-Miami) which I played for a while. In that game, I was far more interested in simply driving around, stealing cars and interacting free-form with the game rather than following the scripted missions (which were often leaned too much toward the puzzle). Mafia II seems to be designed for that kind of gameplay (includes mods that enhance the experience), but in this case I find myself playing strictly by the scripted story. In fact, it is even sometimes surprising when some of the GTA-style mechanics (changing clothes stops police pursuit) pop-up in the middle of an immersive story.

Suprisingly, the story itself seems more engaging in Mafia II. I would have expected that L.A. Noire, being more story dependent, would have won this contest. But its the Mafia II story that draw me in better. Also, unexpectedly, the Mafia II story seems to be more linear. It is also more dependent on the in-between-action-sequence cut scenes. By contrast, the “dialog tree” feature in L. A. Noire allowed the story to advance with more direct player interaction.

Can it get more real than scrubbing urinals? You can’t complete the level until these babies are clean.

Driving, again, is a major feature of Mafia II. Again I am using the steering wheel. In this case, the wheel is not supported out of the box. Instead, I found some XBox emulator software that interfaces a variety of controllers for a broad array of games. This solution works great, and almost “out of the box.” After installation, I had to do a little fiddling to get the pedals mapped, rather than the hand-held controller buttons.

That done, the driving experience is easily better in Mafia II relative to L.A. Noire. Overall, the wheel and pedals feel far more natural. In addition, different effects are added to the driving experience. Initially, the driving takes place in the winter on ice and snow. Sliding and spinning are included, of course, but so is the rotation effect that happens when you gun an rear-wheel drive vehicle on an icy road.

Other details are modeled. There is a noticeable difference when driving on cobblestone versus pavement, for example. In the more powerful 50s cars, the effects of a manual shift are built into the “feel” of the driving, even though you are not required to actually shift yourself. One example – when starting off going uphill, you initially slide back a little bit before the clutch engages. I wonder how many younger drivers, never having actually driven a manual, wouldn’t understand why this is happening? The different makes of car are noticeably different in their models. Better cars aren’t just faster and more controllable – they actually feel different. A truck has to be driven quite differently from a sedan which is different from a sports car.

A new standard for realism in driving simulation: pulling over to let your drunk passenger throw up in the street.

Another area where Mafia II outshines L.A. Noire is in the combat part of the action. First of all both shooting and punching is a little less wonky. In L.A. Noire, I frequently found myself unable to do what I wanted when hand-to-hand fighting, and having a terrible time aiming with the gun. Mafia II responds much more naturally. Further more, the degree of the modelling is much more in line with what is expected from big-budget action games. Punching combos are included, to add some “strategy” to the fistfights. Shooting includes a modeling of the inaccuracy of follow-up shots and the total inaccuracy of automatic fire after the first round. Clearly Mafia II emphasized the action end of things, where L.A. Noire was pushing the puzzle end.

Unfortunately for L.A. Noire’s scorecard, even in the depiction of the characters and social environment, Mafia II has the edge in a number of areas. I’ll admit that in some cases that facial expression modeling in L.A. Noire seems a lot more realistic. But for the most part, modeling of the “ambient” environment is probably a little more believable in Mafia II. One example that struck me was while I was driving down the street in a snowstorm, and passed someone shoveling snow onto the street. It just seemed like such a natural detail to include.

Consolation

It is also worth mentioning, although I won’t dwell on it here, that as another console port, it also has the same issues (and same mitigations) relative to the mouse. The game does not use the system mouse configuration, which is a pain. It does allow reconfiguration of all of the “buttons,” which include the fighting functions programed into the mouse buttons.

Can we get back to Korea?

Lastly, much like L.A. Noire before it, I put this game into my rotation at this place because it does take place (at least about 2/3rd to 3/4s of it) during the Korean War. In another neat little feature that stands out, the radio news has time-period appropriate news items on it, mixed in with local news perhaps related to your own play. In 1945, this includes news of the end of the Second World War in both Europe and Japan. In 1951, this includes reports of the fighting in Korea.

It’s a neat touch that nicely puts me in the mood to cycle back to Korea War gaming in one of my next posts.

*At some point in the story, the hero mentions that he earned a Purple Heart (obviously, he is back in the States due to a war wound) and a Distinguished Service Cross. Strangely, the backstory for what might have earned him such a significant award is not included, nor evident from the gameplay that is included. The character is cast much more as a reluctant conscript rather than a hero.

Between the Wars

Tags

action/adventure, console port, Earl Swagger, film noir, game design, gun porn, Hot Springs, L.A. Noire, left-handed mouse, Logitech Wingman, murder, night vision, Stephen Hunter, World War II

My History of Games series is intended to be an exploration of wargaming. Here I take a little diversion into some different genres.

L.A. Noire was billed as a major innovation in gaming at the time it was released. It had been developed using live actors and proprietary motion capture technology to use not only realistic looking 3D graphics, but to use the lifelike qualities of those graphics in-game. The player interacts with characters and can, indeed must, interpret their tone, body language and facial expressions to read between the lines of what is being said. A critical gameplay element is to observe suspects body language during interrogations in order to determine whether or not they are lying, and it is the motion capture that makes that body language realistic enough to read.

But in many other respects, L.A. Noire has the classic game elements that have been around for generations of PC games. Inside the overall L.A. Noire narrative, there’s the driving game, the the chase and shoot game, the button-mashing fisticuffs, and the pixel hunt. Even the “interview” innovation is probably very similar to many previous efforts – at its core, you are given a statement that you have to choose whether it true, false, or something in between.

So how do does one talk about this game? Is the focus on the facial reading? Is it on the “classic game?” Is it meant to be a “Grand Theft Auto” goes to Hollywood in the 40s?

Say Goodbye to Hollywoodland

One of my first reactions after starting up the game was wondering how much was made up. After all, they had replaced the iconic Hollywood sign with Hollywoodland! What I didn’t know then, but I know now, was realistic. Indeed the reproduction of Los Angeles paid meticulous attention to detail. The original sign was put up to advertise a new housing development called “Hollywoodland” and it did in fact still read that way in 1947, when this game is set. It wasn’t until 1949 when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce assumed responsibility for maintenance of the sign and, as part of that effort, removed the “LAND.”

The things you learn.

L.A. Noire has a minigame that involves spotting various landmarks in Los Angeles. When driving by a landmark for the first time, a key or button is pressed to glance at it, after which you receive some sort of bonus points for having found it. The rest of Los Angeles is also very detailed and varied, and the experience of driving from crime scene, to bar, to apartment, and then back to the police station does give the impression of being there. I don’t look for, and haven’t noticed, the repetitive scenery which often fills out games. It is obvious how much work has gone into the details. It does make me wonder about its accuracy. How close is this to a Google Earth from 1947?

Beyond the scenery, the style of the game is a mix between ripped-from-the-40s-headlines and the film noir of the period. Probably more the latter than the former. Any semblance of historical immersion, though, is pretty much limited to the visuals. Driving, shooting, as well as any other activities are meant to be gamey, not realistic. Dialog is meant to mimic movies, and modern ones at that. The story arcs are an exaggerated form of what we know to expect from this type of thing.

The Uncanny San Fernando Valley

So how about those graphics?

The game was some $50 million dollars and 7 years in the making. The concept of using live actors to provide realistic body-language in-game was heavily marketed in the development phase and meant to be a big new thing in the world of gaming. I don’t know much about video game marketing, and what constitutes a commercial success, but I’ve read it sold some 5 million copies. It sounds like it did OK.

On the other hand, I’ve yet to see any further use of this technology in any other games. There was initially some talk of a sequel, which I think people assumed meant more L.A. detective stories. Later, the developer announced a game taking place in China in 1936. That project was eventually shut down before release. One assumes that, whatever success of the original game, the costs of this style of graphical interface exceeded its value.

Back to the Basics

Putting all the rest of it aside, it isn’t a bad gaming experience, although for me not in that “best game ever” category by any means.

My impressions are marred by a few problems, mostly part and parcel of porting a console game to the PC.

One is the save and load system, necessary for console games but out-of-line with most made-for-PC games. Besides hardware and software limits on consoles, fixed save points can be used to up the challenge of a game – you can’t save right before a difficult task and then replay it until you get it right. Of course, it is frustrating have to go through a cut scene and some action to get back to the point that you actually want to play, because you couldn’t save where you wanted. It is also annoying to want to stop playing for the night, only to have to wait until the game decides it is time to save.

Another point of irritation is the lack of support for left handed mice. This game is hardly the worst offender, because some of the clicks can be remapped. But it forces me to think backwards with other menus. I plan to call out other culprits in future articles.

Speaking of key remapping, I’ve never been able to drive properly with WASD keys. I don’t have a console controller, so I dug out my wife’s old steering wheel. Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work either. Besides the fact that I keep reaching for a non-existent turn signal, the steering is designed around a controller, and doesn’t respond to the wheel in a natural way. I frequently find myself swerving down Ventura, as I try to get my steering back under control.

Then, to add insult to injury, with the steering wheel mapped in, some of the other controls don’t work as configured. In order to interrogate a suspect, I need to use one of the buttons on the steering wheel to interact with my notebook. I don’t know if it is a buggy port or just an unexpected controller fighting with other inputs.

Some of my issues with the game are not related to UI, but are baked into the design. As I said, despite all the 3D, the interrogation game comes down to a dialog tree with three choices. You can believe, disbelieve, or accuse them of lying (given proof found elsewhere). Choosing launches you into a further dialog. If you guessed right, you get additional choices or information. If wrong, the characters (you and the suspect) generally get mad at each other. The problem is, the apparent intricacies of the story don’t always fit this simple model.

I’ll give an example, hopefully without spoiling the plot. I am at the home of the husband of the victim, where I find a clue that would seem to indicate he had bad intentions toward his wife. However, other clues point towards someone else, yet to be discovered. In the dialog tree, I accuse the husband of killing his wife, which he vehemently denies. I believe him, but I do want to ask him about the clue. The problem is, the only way to bring up the clue is to accuse him of lying, bring up the clue, and then allow him to explain that it isn’t what it looks like, and he wasn’t lying after all. Not at all intuitive.

However, having learned my lesson, I’m faced with another suspect later in the game. Again, I’m pretty sure he’s innocent, but when I ask about his contact with the victim, he seems to be hiding information. So, this time, I accuse him of lying, referencing witness accounts of him being seen with the victim to back the accusation up. Turns out this isn’t the answer the game is looking for and the suspect gets all sullen and refuses to give information. Never did quite figure that one out. This guy, like a number of characters, seem to lie to the police for no reason whatsoever. I know they’re lying, but also know they have no involvement in the crime.

One part of the frustration is, unlike the traditional puzzle game conversation tree where you can generally get through all the branches eventually, in this game it is very easy to shut yourself off from the solution by picking the wrong choice. And when that choice starts to feel like a random stab at one out of three options, well, I don’t like those odds.

Overall, though, I can’t complain about the game. While it didn’t appear good enough to make it as a high-end development, top-tier game, as a bargain bin puzzle/action game with some very cool technology – it was worth what I paid for it.

Another Story about Night Vision

As it happened, the next book on my to-read shelf happened to be based in this same period. Once again, a fictional story based on real events.

Hot Springs by Stephen Hunter is a novel expanding out the story of his protagonist Earl Swagger. Much like L.A Noire, it starts with Earl’s return from the Pacific War, release from the (in this case) Marines, and beginnings as a officer of the law.

Rather than risk a review that might give away too much of the plot, I’ll offer a few impressions. However, if you want to know nothing from the book, skip ahead to the next section.

This book is what I would call a literary version of gun porn. Gun erotica, perhaps (although I’d advise against googling that)? The story describes firearms and their functionality in detail, including thorough and accurate descriptions of training and firefights. I suspect firearm aficionados love this stuff, and others probably don’t so much.

I was a little taken aback when I hit a point in the novel where an early version of night vision technology once again took on a major role in the plot development, as it did in several earlier novels by the same author. It became just one plot point of many that was built upon technical details of historic firearms models and tactics. And as I said above, this is good.

I do wonder how well the story holds on its own, without the “gun erotica.” I’m not sure it does, but I’m also not sure it matters. When we pick up an “Earl Swagger” novel, we expect a well told narrative peppered with guns, fights, and gun fights. It did strike me that this story would translate well to the big screen, and that may even be by design. If I were in the movie biz, I think I would enjoy paring this book down into a screenplay. It seems like it would fit just about right into a feature length film.

Día de Muertos

To wrap up this post, I give you Grim Fandango: Remastered.

Why? Why? Why? you may ask.

I started playing this at the same time I started L.A. Noire, in part to amuse my children around Halloween. And amused they are – they regularly ask to continue with the game. I also had never finished the game when I bought it in the CD jewel case, probably a year or so after it came out.

No, it’s not a wargame. It’s not even historical. It isn’t even an attempt to create a self-consistent reality. However, if I had to date it, I could see putting it sometime in the late 40s. The scenes back in the land of the living have a 40s look and feel, and the cars look shortly post war. Plus, the vibe of the game is, like L.A. Noire, that same film noir style.

At the time it came out, it was touted as one of the best of its genre – the puzzle game. The genre is one that I’ve generally avoided, although I have played enough to form the opinion that I don’t like it. At their worst, puzzle games involve hunting through the graphics for hidden hot spots, and then using the found items in non-intuitive combinations to “solve” the particular puzzle. I find it extremely frustrating. I suppose it would be one thing if the puzzles were truly brain teasers that could be worked out with some effort and knowledge. Too often, it seems to me, the only useful knowledge is a background in puzzle games, thus knowing what tricks tend to be thrown at you.

Grim Fandango was an improvement. It had a better story, better dialog and genuine humor. The puzzles themselves were supposed to be a bit easier than the norm for games at the time. At the peak of the puzzle games’ popularity, it was a game targeted a bit more towards the mass audience.

Back then, I was working on it at the same time as my wife. We would both try to do the same “level” at the same time, and help each other out if one of us figured it out first. Problem was, I’m not sure we very often figured it out. Eventually, she would crack and look up the solution on some cheat site. We only got so far. I decided that I was going to figure out the thing for myself, and I guess she lost interest to the point where she wasn’t looking up the answer. So we stopped.

At this point, I’m not yet back to where I’d left of before. Somewhere in Year 2, if you know the game.

It is worth making a gameplay comparison to L.A. Noire. The main difference between the two is that some of the L.A. Noire puzzle involve physical reactions – the driving, fighting, or shooting pieces. In Grim Fandango, all interaction (at least as far as I have seen) is simple moving and clicking. Unlike Grim Fandango, L.A. Noire has the ability to “fail.” However, if you fail on an action sequence or die in a gunfight, you’re simple given the opportunity to try it over. If you “fail” in an interrogation, you’re given a poor rating on the case, but you move on to the next case anyway. Effectively, not that much different than the keep-at-it-until-you-get-it mode of a Grim Fandango.

So in many ways Grim Fandango is an easier, “lighter” version of L.A. Noire. One drawback of Grim Fandango is that it can’t entirely get away from the puzzle game solution that is built of seemingly unrelated stuff you’ve found. L.A. Noire at least has you matching the clues in an intelligent way to the facts of the crime you are trying to solve.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the “Remastered” part of this game. It really does look and play great, post-facelift. In fact, a few UI anachronisms aside, I’d say the game could easily hold its own as a current title. Maybe not the A-list title that it was in its day, but its likely worth its full asking price of around $15 and definitely worth picking up on sale (as I did.)

And as I said, (quite unlike L.A. Noire), Grim Fandango is something that can be played with the kids.