Some Further Thoughts on 'The Consuming Shadow'

So I've been playing some more of 'The Consuming Shadow', Yahtzee's horror roguelike, and I have some more things to add to my previous post. I've now completed the game once, which is to say that I got the 'A' ending with The Scholar, who is the default character of the game. I went to Stonehenge, figured out the god's rune and beat back the Ancient, which is actually very easy. You just whack his tentacles and eyes as they appear and then counter his magic as you would with a Cultist enemy by copying his spells. I was probably lucky, however. I had a good playthrough in which I managed to unlock two new characters. Firstly I unlocked the primarily mêlée character, The Warrior, by completing the lockpick delivery mission and beating the subsequent dungeon. This, nicely enough, gave my Scholar an advanced close combat attack of his own for that playthrough, which seems to have been useful as my pistol-whipping of the Ancient's tendrils was surprisingly effective. As a result of this completion I also unlocked The Ministry Man, who is seemingly one of the "challenge characters" of the game - he only has 24 hours to save the world, rather than 60. I've now had a few goes as them and my thoughts are as follows:

1. Yahtzee probably should have re-written the in-game dialogue for playing as The Warrior. Something one notices when playing a lot of Yahtzee games is his rather verbose style. He's no Hemingway, and his elaborate prose can at times be a little jarring depending on the character in question. I can more or less accept The Ministry Man using the same dialogue as The Scholar, because while The Scholar is an intellectual and might be expected to express himself in such a way, The Ministry Man is heavily implied to be an existing Yahtzee character known for his rather involved note-taking activities. The Warrior, however, is described as "a two-fisted man of action in a world beyond his understanding". All of The Scholar's descriptions and so forth are retained, however, giving this apparent henchman of organised crime a fairly unlikely voice. This is particularly noteworthy because The Warrior does have unique starting lines and various others which establish him as more "plain speaking" and less of a user of complex language compared to The Scholar. I did appreciate the unique text messages the characters receive, however.
   On the other hand, Yahtzee in general uses way too many similes, and (no offence to him) often pointless, trite or ineffectual ones which add nothing to what he is saying. In general, though, he just uses too many similes. There are plenty of other language techniques out there to choose from!
2. I'm still convinced that combat is clunkier than it needs to be. While The Warrior has a dodge move, I feel as if the characters in general could use a duck or crouch manoeuvre. Another thing which surprises me, really, is the lack of stealth elements in the game. I'm surprised that it's not a valid option to hide from enemies, at least as a way of giving combat more variety. It also seems a bit awkward that The Warrior's more powerful mêlée attack is a kick, even though he has a knife in the insanity minigame. He could at least stab up some fools. Often your mid-range, waist-level kick is "hitting" creatures hanging from the ceiling or otherwise out of reach, which only really makes sense with the arcing move of The Scholar's pistol whip, which makes The Warrior's attack look off.
3. It's possibly too easy to get gear. In most "safe" towns you can find a cheap piece of gear immediately, and more are available in dungeons. Something which added to the challenge of a game like FTL, which I've never managed to finish (yes, yes, because I suck at computer games), is how situational the random events could be depending on your ship layout, your crew and a host of other variables. I find that if I'm regularly collecting gear in 'The Consuming Shadow', most random events become a breeze. This is particularly true when one uses the Lucky Charm to harvest gear more quickly.
4. To refer back to my point about atmosphere in the last article, I think some more "English" dungeons could have worked. There could perhaps have been a historical or ruined building layout, especially given that the UK is riddled with mouldering architecture. A nice ruined abbey or some such would fit the bill. The house, office, warehouse, park and brick building environments are maybe a little generic.
5. The game doesn't really tell you this, but it's possible to narrow down information on the rune, colour and aspect of the Ancients by inspecting the markings and bodies in dungeons. This information, however, is not recorded in your notebook, so you have to do it straight away in some fashion.
6. I appreciate the references to Yahtzee's older Chzo Mythos games, particularly the possibility of Chzo as one of the Ancients and the concession in the game of an existing "Tall Man", like the hunter monster in this one. Furthermore, it's nice that The Ministry Man is heavily implied to be Trilby, one of the protagonists of the Chzo Mythos. It's interesting to see that although Yahtzee tends to characterise the Chzo games as a bit pants in hindsight, he still uses Trilby. I also like the use of the Ministry of Occultism, as in those games, and the idea that by 2015 Trilby would have become a high-ranking agent. The use of codenames like T, C and F are good nods to the history of British Intelligence as well. My initial thought, actually, was that C would be Yahtzee's old character (and one of Trilby's supposed colleagues in the Special Talent Project) Chris Quinn, but I don't think that really makes sense.
7. One thing I will say about this, however, is that in the Alpha of the game the Ministry texts were completely anonymous, which gave them a certain unsettling feel when you received the negative ones. Now that they're addressed from "T", this sympathetic character, some old texts like threatening to shoot himself unless you give him good news, contemplating taking his cyanide and having disturbing thoughts about his secretary (the last of which in my opinion was the least necessary) from early Alpha days seem weird and out of character. This is especially true because T's diary entries, which you unlock by playing the game, emphasise his level-headedness and actually describe his conscious difficulty with bringing the apparent apocalypse into meaningful perspective.
   It's worth noting, by the way, that the game's wiki currently describes T as "your handler at the Ministry", but if you read the diaries it's evident that T has possibly never met The Scholar before, and at least has not seen him for a long time. It's also apparent that apart from seemingly being an associate of Keegan, The Scholar is largely unaffiliated with the Ministry, even in an unofficial capacity, and that they've simply "kept an eye" on The Scholar.

In any event, 'The Consuming Shadow' is still fun. I've been watching Yahtzee's 'Ego Reviews' on Youtube and he mentions in the one for 'Trilby: The Art of Theft' (another favourite of mine) the possibility of additional content for 'The Consuming Shadow' at some point, perhaps in time for the Steam release. Hopefully that's also provided to everyone who purchased the game through other means. At this stage I'd argue that the aspects which would liven things up in further content would be another dungeon environment or two (perhaps with some more background assets), some event artwork, possibly another playable character (although I realise I haven't unlocked The Wizard yet) and maybe some kind of custom mode. I imagine alterations to the game's combat and so on would be too big a task. In any event, this is one I'll be attempting to keep multiple blinking-from-the-darkness abominable eyes on.

SPOILERS! Ending A screen below!

"I just wanted to go into Stonehenge!"

Some Initial Thoughts on 'The Consuming Shadow'

As I once stated in my article 'On Zero Punctuation', I quite like the works of Yahtzee. I'm not a complete Yahtzee fanboy, mind you. I certainly think he buys in a bit too much to this whole "Oh no there are evil forces of political correctness who want to lock us up for making crass jokes" paranoia which seems to exist on the internet, but I think for a mostly one-man team he's made some pretty fun games in his time, games which have given me just us much entertainment as many notionally "professionally" made games and a good deal more entertainment than even more such titles. With 'The Consuming Shadow', however, he seems to have progressed properly into "profesh" territory himself, as this is not a free title but one you must purchase for the sum of ten American-style dollars.

I'd been keeping my eye on the game for a while, but lost track when it actually game out, so I've only just grabbed it as of a few days ago (as of writing). I'd played a bit of the alpha, but not too much, and I was looking forward to the improvements made in the full version. In case you're unaware, the game is a procedurally-generated "roguelike", which is to say that every play-through is randomly generated but at the end of each playthrough (regardless of how it ends) you get experience points and thus levels which contribute towards your next playthrough. The game's in two dimensions with a fairly simple interface and a silhouette art style, which leaves a lot to your imagination.

August 16th, 2015. Made the mistake of looking at the 'Latest Threads' on The Escapist forums...

Here are my thoughts so far:

1. The game is fun. It's not overly complicated, it's quick to play, and the procedurally-generated nature of the content gives it a feeling of longevity, in my view at least.
2. The dungeons feel a bit limited. Dungeons are a single storey of a randomised assortment of screen-sized rooms, regardless of whether you're in a fancy home, a warehouse, an office building, a park, etc. Thus the dungeons themselves can be a bit monotonous at times. There's also not a great deal of background material in most of them.
3. The controls are also a bit limited. You can walk forward, run forward, turn, shoot, make a short ranged close combat attack and cast spells. Apart from one unlockable character with a dodge there's little variety of movement, like ducking, jumping or what have you, which can make gameplay feel a bit stiff and unrealistic.
4. The art style works. I don't think Yahtzee always gives himself enough credit for his artwork, and claims that the silhouette style in this primarily compensates for his limited skills, but leaving the enemies up to your imagination gives the game an unsettling feeling. There's a decent variety of enemies as well. The music and sound effects are quite good.
5. The game has a nice deduction game appended to the main dungeon gameplay in which you have to gather clues to figure out which ancient being you're meant to be banishing from the universe and which exact magical incantation you'll need to do so.
6. It's possibly not as atmospheric as it could be. It certainly is atmospheric in the sense that it gives a nice uneasy feeling of Britain falling under a mysterious darkness that no one really wants to acknowledge, but I feel like it's not as quintessentially "English" as it could be. Admittedly, you can also travel to towns in Wales. I feel like one thing which could benefit the game would be some unique artwork for the random encounters and a little more artwork for the town screens, a bit like the visuals that come up each time you reach a new city in Organ Trail. I need to put a bit more thought into this, and obviously Yahtzee wanted to limit his artwork, but I still feel like this could have helped.

Overall I think 'The Consuming Shadow' is a pretty decent game to play if you've got the inclination. It's spooky and sombre with a definite sense of progression. For a mostly one-man job I think it's very admirable indeed. At the same time, I feel like if someone was to take inspiration from this game for a project of their own, there are a few ideas which could be expanded to really capitalise upon the potential of a concept like this.

On Zero Punctuation

I met Yahtzee once, at a convention. I live in the same country as him, so it's not too surprising. It was back when he and his much less funny friends were trying to start their own TV show. I was dressed as Ganondorf at the time (and in green makeup) and I've occasionally been worried that I was one of people Yahtzee had in mind when he used to make occasional digs about bothersome costumers. Well, I don't really do the whole convention or costume thing much anymore, but I still follow the works of Yahtzee. My review of his first novel, Mogworld, can be found here. I also have a lot of fondness for his Chzo Mythos adventures games, imperfect as their creator might consider them to be with hindsight, and some of his other old adventure games, like Odysseus Kent and Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment are good for a laugh too, the latter also being a fun hybrid of various game genres. I still have a screenshot of when I got the perfect score in Trilby: The Art of Theft. I didn't really get into Poacher but I have enjoyed his more recent gaming foray, The Consuming Shadow. My point is, I would consider myself a reasonably well-versed enthusiast of Yahtzee's work.

But the thing he's best known for these days is his web review series on The Escapist, Zero Punctuation. I watch new episodes when they come out fairly regularly, and every so often when I'm doing something else I'll put old episodes on in the background just for a laugh. I like the background sight gags and the running visual jokes particularly, as well as some of the more elaborate descriptions. I think Zero Punctuation has had its ups and downs, reviews that were better or funnier than others and periods of time over which it seemed like perhaps Yahtzee was too busy or too bored to put as much effort in as he might at other times. That's purely an assertion, however. My point is that as a general rule I like Zero Punctuation.

Now Yahtzee's a big boy and he definitely doesn't need an internet nobody like me to defend him, although someone on Twitter did once ask of this blog "Is this the text version of Zero Punctuation?" which rather tickled my fancy, to be compared to one of the heavy hitters of cussing out the generic, overrated crap churned out by ruthlessly exploitative entertainment corporations and gobbled up by the undiscerning. I just wanted to give my opinion of Yahtzee's review show, because I do see criticism of it from time to time. That's fine, of course. Criticism of anything is good, and as someone who produces freeware Yahtzee has no incentive to not take criticism of any form, which I think is why he's so harsh on his own work from years gone by.

Among a lot of pretty negative reviews of Zero Punctuation on tvtropes.org, these remarks from a more positive review stood out to me:

"Yahtzee does not try to be a conventional reviewer. He talks about games in the same way your mate probably would; in the vaguest possible terms, emphasising the elements that stood out, bitching/praising odd details, and going off on wild tangents. Friends do not regard stuff like a professional critic, but the thing is that when people are buying games, their choices tend to be more influenced by their mate's advice as opposed to the critic's. A lot of it is down to the fact that you know your friends. You know their tastes and prejudices, and that helps a lot when forming a decision. I think Yahtzee does us a favour by being so transparent about his prejudices and preferences. Like my mates, I am able to contrast my own preferences with his refreshingly pithy and informal comments. I often find that more useful then (sic) the words of some faceless IGN reviewer." (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/review_comments.php?id=1053)

This is not unlike how I see it. The complaints I tend to see about Zero Punctuation are that the reviews are unsystematic and unstructured, that they gloss over details and make mistakes when Yahtzee seemingly couldn't be bothered to try. Putting aside the question of the balance of analysis and humour in the videos, the thing I find the most useful about Yahtzee's reviews are that they voice immediate, practical frustrations and issues, be it with the controls, storyline or what have you. These days for whatever reason I simply don't have the patience for a lot of video games, so I actually find this kind of thing relevant. Similarly, if Yahtzee plays up something for the sake of humour, or makes a mistake or glosses over an area, I don't really care because I feel after watching many episodes that that's the kind of person he is. It really is like asking the opinion of someone you know. They'll give you their impressions, potentially in a humorous way, without necessarily weighing the pros and cons. There are plenty of reviews out there that are super structured and detailed, so what does it matter if these ones have different priorities? I think Zero Punctuation generally succeeds at what it's trying to achieve.

Some viewers (and I apologise for the weasel words but I couldn't be bothered getting any more links for you) tend to object to his mistakes, which is reasonable enough, I suppose, but I figure that if he isn't enjoying a game there's probably more to it than whatever he overlooked or misunderstood. I also don't think his criticisms are driving sales away from games. I would imagine that the big gaming sites that give out numerical scores have a good deal more influence than one person's humorous videos. It'd be like blaming me if New Who got cancelled. Additionally, what does it matter? Do you want the game you like to sell well so that the developer will make more games you like? How do you know you're going to enjoy those hypothetical future games too? Alternatively, do you just want more people to buy it so that more people agree with you on the internet? Of course there's also the notion that certain heavily-marketed, glossy and subsequently popular games are, subconsciously, regarded as objectively good in the community and that disagreement with that is a form of heresy, although I think as a general rule it's a minority that suffer from that delusion. One of the clichés is that Yahtzee bashes Nintendo a lot, but despite accusing them of being uncreative and repetitious he often seems to find things to like about certain Mario and Zelda games, so that's hardly a fact.

Let me put it this way. Imagine there was some game I really liked that Yahtzee gave a really negative review to. Let's use The Last of Us as an example, although saying I "really liked" The Last of Us might be pushing it a bit. I liked it, but might not go so far as to say that I really liked it. It hardly changed my world. Anyway, Yahtzee gave that a pretty negative review, and I think that for whatever reason some of the game's more overt themes just didn't engage him. But you know what? I couldn't give a shit. Back when Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out I really liked it. Yahtzee's review of that was pretty negative too, but I didn't remotely care. Why would I? It's a video game. Similarly, I quite like RTS games. He doesn't, and often pokes fun at RTS gamers as either being amoral bastards who like to send innocent soldiers to their deaths or as boring accountant types. You know, there's work to be done in the RTS world: a game where you're made somehow to feel guilty about the deaths for which you're responsible like a real general. Anyway, I don't care that he dislikes RTS even though I do like them. What does it matter? Maybe I'm thick-skinned from finding myself liking so many unpopular and unfashionable things, and disliking the reverse, but I don't see why it matters. It really comes down to insecurity, and the mind-numbing kind of insecurity to which modern Western society has given rise, where people's interests and hobbies, which is to say the products on which they spend their money, start to infiltrate their personality and sense of self. It's one of the more insidious downsides to a capitalist economy. As a result, people identify too closely with their interests and take it personally when products they like are criticised. It's irrational. You won't die if someone dislikes something you like, you know. Reality doesn't work that way. Introspect and try to perceive subconscious reactions.

This can basically outline the schematic of how I find my experience of Zero Punctuation:

Negative Review

1. A game I wasn't interested in: "It's funny to see him ripping into this game I either didn't even know about or had no intention of playing. Even though this is his job, I kind of feel sorry for him having to deal with this dross."
2. A game I was interested in: "Maybe I'll look a bit further into this game and see if I really want it."
3. A game I already own and didn't like: "It's nice to know other people have had a similar experience."
4. A game I already own and do like: "Well, that's his opinion, and his criticisms help me evaluate my own thoughts."

Positive Review

1. A game I wasn't interested in: "Yahtzee actually enjoyed this? Maybe I'll check it out."
2. A game I was interested in: "Now I feel more justified in my desire to get this game."
3. A game I already own and didn't like: "That's surprising, but fair enough. Maybe I ought to approach this game again, if I could be bothered."
4. A game I already own and do like: "That's cool."

So really, what am I losing in this situation? It's due to Zero Punctuation that I've played a number of games I probably wouldn't have bothered with otherwise: Just Cause 2, Saints Row 2, X-Com: Enemy Unknown and Spec Ops: The Line are all examples of these, although I have to admit that I've never finished any of them. As I say, I don't have nearly as much patience for video games as Yahtzee does. Probably the one example of a game I bought due to Yahtzee's recommendation and still didn't enjoy is Bastion, but that's just how it goes, and to be fair that was on an old computer with an overheating problem where it was impossible to be patient with a game because you could only play it for a few minutes before the computer had to have a little rest.

Personally I think Zero Punctuation has its place. It's somewhere that heavily marketed triple-A titles can be lambasted in antithesis to the paid-up '7 out of 10 is bad' state of the mainstream video game journalism industry, it's reasonably funny and it can be revelatory of potentially worthwhile games that might otherwise have been lost behind the big marketers. Having a diversity of opinion is always a good thing when it comes to reviewing products, and personally I think Zero Punctuation helps to balance things out a bit in a culture of hysteria and bandwagons. Basically, reviews are meant to be aids and not instructions. If you're undecided about something, seek a variety of opinions on it. If you want something regardless, it shouldn't matter what other people think. Most importantly, if someone dislikes something you like, or the other way around, don't take it personally. That's life.