One of the benefits of Steam is the stack of indie games they make available. I’ve been slow to look into such things, but this week have been enjoying some Nightsky.

It’s a puzzle-platformer – popular format amongst indies, I hear? The idea is you have to navigate a sphere across the screen whilst obeying realistic laws of physics. There’s no “jump” button, your basic controls are just roll left or right, so to accomplish that you need to take a run-up (rollup?). If you can’t do that, probably have to go another way something else.

It’s not just about jumping gaps – you get subtleties like the ball rolling onto a car (transferring momentum). Or having enough momentum to follow a wall and roll along an ceiling briefly. Or releasing other movable items to clear a path. The game likes to show off its physics especially when you get a feature like two platforms hanging from one chain strung across the sceren. Which you might have to navigate carefully or you’ll just go tumbling off.

There are no bad guys, the only way to “die” is to fall off the bottom of the screen. But then you just start again from the start of that little section. That leads to a fairly relaxed pace. There are some fiddly\twitchy bits but they tend to come in short bursts, and you can usually sit still a moment to figure out what to do next.

On those ground we’d have a fun little distraction, but Nightsky also has a really distinctive design style. It’s all in monochrome, with a backdrop of sunset hues. The soundtrack is ambient and moody. So it becomes a quiet, introspective experience. Even if it’s just a game about, er, a big marble, you feel like he’s diligently rolling his way home across a world that’s forgotten and empty. Now there’s just owls and the occasional creaking leftover piece of machinery.

So it’s a very “evening” game, and has helped me relax anyway after a shitty week. £6 on steam, if you fancy a look.

Good evening.

Double update tonight.

First, Stoo takes a look at 90s console RPG Shining Force – which recently arrived on PC via Steam. [Archive note: this later moved to JGR]

Our second review is of something a bit more recent – the TV tie-in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Dark Motives.

Hope you enjoy them. We’re coming up on a milestone soon. So we might have something special to celebrate. Or it might the be usual rubbish; we haven’t decided.

Some screenshots for Skyrim at Rock Paper Shotgun.

From what I’ve heard so far, it’s like Oblivion with upgraded graphics and more advanced combat physics. Rest assured I’ll be getting a copy; I missed the early installments of Elder Scrolls but have been a huge fan since Morrowind. My current thought tho is how they’re going to move on from Oblivion’s wonky balance system.

See, in that one the level of enemies is always matched to your own. This means weird situations like winning the Imperial Gladiatorial Arena at a lowly level 2. Or conversely at high level, common bandits running around with rare, exotic weapons and armour. A dungeon that was for a lvl2 hero populated by wimpy skeletons with rusty swords at one point, is at lv25 now full of spell-flinging liches. It sort of takes away from your sense of progressing as a hero if, whatever you do, you don’t feel a clear change in your power relative to the world around you.

I can see how Bethesda arrived at such a situation. In many RPGs your progress around the game’s world is restricted by level. You start off in the relatively friendly GreenShire Forest, if you try going into Murky Swamp or Orcish Caverns you get your ass handed to you, until you’ve killed a load of rats and goblins, bought some better armour and levelled up. A core tenet of Elder Scrolls games however is an open world where you can start exploring wherever you want from level one. So how do you stop low level guys from getting arbitrarily splatted yet keep it challenging for high-level mighty champions?

In other words, free roaming is difficult to fit with traditional RPG dynamics. Oblivion, as mentioned, had the surrounding situation alter itself to your level, sometimes to silly extents. Morrowind sort of tried that but in a half-hearted manner. So on the one hand no ludicrously over-geared bandits, but on the other you were utterly unstoppable by level 25. I’ll be interested to see how Bethesda tackle it this time.

Hi there!

We have one new review for you tonight. Our friend and sometime contributor Jo (of blog fame) has written a review of Bullfrog’s strategy caper Theme Hospital.

Thanks Jo! Now all we need is for the other FFG staff to get off their asses and produce some content.

Which we, er, will do very shortly. We’re just, er, doing something else at the moment. But we’ll get right on it.

Surely that involves blocking off the entrances and starving the monsters within into surrender over the course of several months. Which, er, doesn’t describe the nature of today’s game at all. But anyway here’s Dungeon Siege.

It’s a crucial question for an RPG: what type of character are you going to be? Although the choice in Alpha Protocol may be a little narrower than in your more traditional beardy-type affair – you have to be a spy of some sort – there’s still the usual dilemma about where to spend your hard earned action points.

Essentially it all boils down to deciding whether you’re going to be a sneaky, stealthy, softly-does-it-minimise-casualties kind of guy, or a one-man killing machine who thinks nothing of leaving a pile of bodies in his wake. After being afflicted by my usual lack of decisiveness in this regard (can’t we be good at everything, like Jason Bourne? I’d happily have undergone some traumatic psychological-realignment mini-game to earn sufficient points) I eventually decided to go for being good with guns, owing to my past record of hopelessness when it comes to sneaking around in games rather than any ideological bias towards shooting first and asking questions later.

In the end, it was a choice that served me well, because for the most part, it seems, you need to be quite good with guns in Alpha Protocol, particularly towards the end where…well, I won’t spoil it for you, but needless to say, you don’t tippy-toe into your enemy’s backyard and resolve your differences with a full and frank discussion. Still, there were obviously times throughout where being good at other stuff would have come in handy. During missions where casualties were particularly frowned upon (ie they were civilians or – gasp – fellow Americans) my lack of stealth points and noisy armour created unwanted attention, for example, or when the situation called for some hand-to-hand combat, I was hopeless in a fistfight, flailing away aimlessly with powder-puff punches that rarely connected.

Without having a great knowledge of the genre, it seems that a combat specialism is usually a fairly safe choice – by which I mean that you’re not likely to get halfway through the game and then find you’re in a really difficult position because of it. I don’t know if Alpha Protocol would be significantly harder if I’d taken a more stealthy approach, but it seems to me that some of the boss fights, in particular, would be pretty tricky without some decent firepower. Perhaps that suits a player looking for more of a challenge (or indeed one of a different type) but there’s a part of me that thinks a game shouldn’t let you spend a lot of time just digging a hole for yourself to fall into and never get out.

Anyway, having successfully played the game to completion, it has to be said that I didn’t have half as much trouble with the general RPG-ness of Alpha Protocol as I thought I would. I think I was most grateful for the fact that, although there are choices galore throughout, extending even to the order in which you do the missions, at no stage do you find yourself in the middle of a vast open world wondering what to do next. And there’s no grinding through battles with random enemies just so you’re in a position to actually complete the next bit of the story, either.

Still, without being under any illusions about going back to Fallout or getting stuck into Baldur’s Gate or Oblivion, I reckon I’m ready for another action RPG. Knights of the Old Republic, perhaps? Or Mass Effect? Next time, though, I don’t think I’ll write about it. Because this whole feature hasn’t really worked, has it? [No – a reader]

The game, by the way, is flawed but worth a play. Yes, it’s buggy and there are bits that don’t work quite as well as they should and it’s all rather rough around the edges, but you do seem to have some genuine control over how the story progresses, and not just in an obvious ‘be good/be bad’ kind of way. As the end credits rolled, playing a news report summarising how the game world, and the various characters and factions within it had ended up as a result of my actions during the game, I started to contemplate what I might do differently were I to play it again.

I’d say more but the internet’s full of reviews written by professionals who are paid to tell you about modern games like this, so you can go and look at those if you want. Although I’d point you in the direction of Zero Punctuation for the most pithy and entertaining summary.

Next on FFG: a genuine review of an old-(ish) game, perhaps?

Hello there.

Finally, we have our first content of 2011. I’ll bet you were on the edge of your seat.

Well, fret no more, we have a new review! And, in honour of the England cricket team finally managing to win in Australia and bring home the Ashes, we have another cricket game for you. No, stop…where are you going?

Look, I promise this’ll be the last one in a while, okay? More non-cricket stuff coming soon. But for now, here’s a review of Brian Lara International Cricket 2005.

Well, that’s another year (almost) done and dusted. For once I’m not frantically trying to get one last review in before we get into January, so the very least I could do is staple together some half-hearted reminiscences from the previous twelve months, for anyone that might be interested. Don’t worry – they’re FFG-specific, rather than just general thoughts – I won’t be telling you what I think of Glee or anything like that.

Rewind 12 months and though my attempts to finish a review of Mystery of the Druids before the end of 2009 were in vain, it did mean we had a review ready to kick off the new year. The game wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be, but I did enjoy the unintentionally hilarious dialogue. Other adventures we covered this year included a couple of more modern efforts – the clunky and dated CSI game, and the more glossy and impressive third instalment of the Broken Sword series.

The Sports and Racing sections received a boost, even if it was largely a case of wading through ageing dross (Lotus: The Ultimate Challenge and FIFA Soccer Manager, for example). On a more positive note, I rediscovered the considerable charms of Formula 1 ’97 and got the chance to include one of my all-time favourite games – Pro Evolution Soccer 4. A nice treat for my 100th review – let’s just not talk about number 99.

Meanwhile, my esteemed colleague was busying himself with a mixture of genuine oldies (such as console favourite Golden Axe and Apogee platformer Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure) and more modern fare like Far Cry. Shooters were most definitely on the menu in 2010, and positive reviews of Blood, Deus Ex: Invisible War and Doom 3, among others, appeared this year.

Finally, with esteemed colleagues at Just Games Retro calling it a day and moving on to other projects, the JMan very kindly donated a review of Star Trek: Captain’s Chair to us. A brief moment of respectful silence for JGR – you will be missed.

So, what will 2011 bring? I imagine it will be a mix of the usual stuff, although there are some reviews I’ve had in mind for a while which I’ve been putting off for too long, so it might be best if I commit to at least one of them in writing. So: Gabriel Knight – this is the year.

Aside from that, well, unless the pace of our content slows dramatically, I imagine we’ll get our 200th review up at some stage in 2011, perhaps around the same time as our 10-year anniversary. We’ve got a few special things in mind to mark these events, but any ideas, suggestions and offers to write glowing tributes would of course be most welcome (I won’t hold my breath though).

Even if you’re attempting to explain your shortcomings as a gamer in a (ha-ha) humorous, self-deprecating manner, it pays not to over-do it, lest someone mistake you for a genuine idiot. So let me make the following point: I do understand what ‘RPG’ stands for, and that role-playing, by its very nature, involves making detailed choices about everything, in order to define your character. It’s not like I’m saying, ”Why are there so many choices in RPGs?” – because that would be stupid, obviously.

Anyway, to Alpha Protocol, and its many conversation trees. Throughout the game, you’re going to have to make a number of choices which genuinely affect your relationships with other characters and what happens during the rest of the game. In other words, they matter.

What is it about RPGs and important choices? It’s something that I’ve never been able to deal with [Jeez, we all saw that coming a mile off – a reader]. But deal with it I must, for in Alpha Protocol, the talkie bits come thick and fast, every so often pausing for, oh, roughly three seconds or so to prompt you to select one of a handful of potentially very significant dialogue options.

Although I don’t particularly like it at the time, the extremely short amount of time you’re given is actually a blessing in disguise, otherwise I’d probably still be there in the middle of the first conversation, umming and ahhing about what to say. Not that you actually get to decide what you say, mind you – instead, you select from a variety of loosely-defined stances, which your character, Michael ‘Mike’ Thorton, then translates into cheesy dialogue on your behalf.

Whatever option you choose, Thorton will make you sound like a dick. Because, frankly, the character is a bit of a dick, his script consisting entirely of the kind of macho bullshit that middle-aged developers think their core audience of 14-year old boys want to hear. All that aside, though, I really have a hard time committing to something so vague. Why can’t you just see what your character is going to say before you allow him to say it? Even if none of the options appeal, at least you can try and pick the least cringe-inducing one. But no, it’s all ‘Aggressive’, ‘Suave’, or ‘Professional’. What the hell does any of that mean?

Admittedly, sometimes you are given options that are pretty straightforward. Defeat a boss character, for example, and you can choose to talk some more or select the ‘Execute’ option to shoot him/her in the face. Or if, in the middle of a bullshit-laden conversation with a slimy NPC, you suspect he or she be stringing you along, there is occasionally an option marked ‘Fuck Off’, which must surely do what it says on the tin.

If it sounds like I’m guessing there, it’s because I am. I’d never choose the ‘fuck off’ option, even if my character had been stripped naked, tied to a bed and the preceding question had been accompanied by the sound of the game’s antagonist unzipping his flies.

You see, when it comes to being rude in games, I just can’t do it. During the video cut-scenes in Wing Commander 3, for example, you were occasionally presented with a choice to make Marky-Mark Hamill either say something nice or something horrible. First up, you step into a lift with the crazy comms guy who rants and raves about something or other for a while until you think ‘This guy’s a loon…’

And, sure enough, when you’re given the option to respond, that’s exactly what one of the choices is. But could I bring myself to be rude to this man, even though neither he nor I, nor the situation itself, was real? No – I smiled politely and humoured him instead.

As the game develops, Hamill starts to attract the attentions of a couple of female crew members. Naturally enough, every time either one of them talked to me, I was nice to them – it seemed only polite, after all. Then, suddenly, you’re in the bar with them both, forced to lay your romantic cards on the table. I had no idea I was leading anyone on! Obviously, then, you have to be a massive bastard in giving one of them the brush-off, a situation which could have been avoided if you’d given clearer signals earlier on. But I couldn’t be anything but super-nice to another character until the game forced me to do otherwise.

This is even more ridiculous in Alpha Protocol, a game in which I found myself face to face with someone I’d been shooting at for the best part of 15 minutes, only to be nothing but polite to him once he was writhing on the ground begging for mercy. There must be a word for someone who has no problem with shooting hundreds of people dead only to be stopped in his tracks once one of them attempts to engage him in conversation – I’m not sure what it is though.

At this stage in the game, I’m worried that my ‘be nice to everyone’ schtick is eventually going to have unfortunate consequences. So far, I’ve tried to be reasonable and broker a deal with every shady character I’ve come across – but pretty soon, there’s bound to be a conflict of interest.

Frankly, I can’t stand a repeat of the turmoil caused by telling Ginger Lynn-Allen I wasn’t interested (yes, I chose the other one), so rather than cosying up to the next gangland kingpin I come across, I’m telling him to fuck off. Yeah!

Hello everyone. We have a review! Here’s Doom 3. Yes 3. Not 1 or 2.

We’re hoping to have a few more items before Christmas. So as to help me spend time with the oldies, I’ve made an act of supreme sacrifice and dedication, and held off from buying the new warcraft expansion.