I rarely try out a new AAA game these days, but I felt compelled to try out Sherlock Holmes - The Awakened. And I have rarely been so disappointed. The concept is brilliant: a combination of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, and Doyle’s marvellous detective character. Where did it all go wrong?
In the very beginning, that’s where: there’s a non-skippable prologue.
I sat fuming for the minutes it took the game to finally give me control, and I was not in a pleasant mood by then. Things did not improve after that. Every single dialogue is un-skippable. You have to sit and listen to every single piece of dialogue delivered. I seriously don’t care in the least how important this may be for the story - I want to play fast and get right to the action. (Well, action isn’t the word; you’re mainly running around looking for clues.) If I miss something I can read it later in the journal. You see, there’s a journal in the game where every bit of information is recorded. So WHY THE BLOODY HELL can’t I skip the dialogue - I can read faster than they can speak anyway, so I much prefer to read it in the journal!
The game looks decent enough (and quite pleasant many times); the voice acting is okay; the concept is awesome; the gameplay is interestingly fresh. But I will not accept a game that won’t let me skip cut scenes. All cut scenes. There is not a single case where I accept non-skippable cut scenes or dialogue. Well, to be frank there is one case where it is acceptable: if the game can be run in windowed mode, I can do other things while I listen to the dialogue.
I’ll let you guess twice whether or not The Awakened can be run in windowed mode.
I’m thoroughly disgusted by this lack of attention by the developers; I feel personally insulted that they’ve presented a game I would have loved to play, but made it impossible to endure. One part of me would like to honour their innovativity by playing along - but the biggest part of me wants to chastise their awful design decision. So instead of playing this game I’ll be reading some Neil Gaiman; to be precise I’ll be reading Fragile Things. A short-story collection that - as a coincidence - contains a story named A Study in Emerald that just happens to be an intriguing twist on Sherlock Holmes that includes references to the Cthulhu mythos.
Support Mr. Gaiman today - buy Fragile Things instead of Sherlock Holmes - The Awakened!
If you have an interest in agile development, take a look at this article: Pitching Agile to Senior Management. If you don’t care about agile development, have a look at it anyway - it brings up a few interesting points. To sum things up very briefly, the article goes something along these lines:
- Junior managers and up-and-coming engineers want to try agile development methods to increase productivity.
- However, they don’t understand the criteria upon which upper management decisions are made.
- This article explains that senior managers don’t have the same goals as engineers or juniors, and teaches the latter a few economic buzzwords to throw around.
- The end.
Despite appearances and my cynical summary, this is actually interesting! For example, the second page discusses the difference between introducing technological improvements and introducing economically beneficial improvements; this might be pretty obvious but it never hurts to get a nice summary of the different perspectives. Also, the third page has a very very important tip: you don’t always have to get permissions for everything. I seriously don’t know how I’d get anything done if I didn’t have both the initiative to make my own decisions, and the (grudging) acceptance from managers that it’s okay to do things my way. It’s an old cliche that you can’t get denied permission for something that you don’t ask permission for - but it’s also very true. As long as the results are good, no one will hang you for your slightly questionable methods.
Unless you work in bad companies, of course.
I’m a big fan of Dilbert, but I would never accuse my bosses of being pointy-haired. I often critizise their decisions, but I don’t think that they’re incompetent. Rather, as the article suggests, I think that they’re smart people who are making the best decisions they can based on the information they have…and the goals they want to achieve. Sometimes, when I read horror stories on the ‘net, I get the impression that other people either have completely moronic bosses or a complete lack of understanding for why decisions are made. I try not to be one of the latter people, and I’d never be able to work for the former. I don’t want to end up in…oh, the horror of this flawed and unhumorous pun…bad company.
And speaking of bad companies: time to bring up a bad thing about the article above. Take a look at this quote:
A few months ago I was educating a client about agile development and they told me that they weren’t interested in pair programming because of what they felt to be obvious loss of productivity in having two people do the work of one. I pointed out that with pair programming, when you’re doing it right, both pairs are exhausted after five to six hours.
This seems to be a prime example of bad management.
“Lesse, people who produce get tired. Thus, if a person is very exhausted he must be very productive. Let’s aim for exhausted people!”
Can you spot the errors in that line of thought? At a recent meeting I noted that my company doesn’t use the term productivity. The reason was that many people assumed that increased productivity was the same as more effort, so they exchanged produtivity for a different, more positive, term. At the time I was irritated at this obviously ridiculous attempt at giving productivity a more humane name in order to disguise it…but after reading this article I suspect that there really might have been good cause for it.
Finally, if you’re anything like me you might have wondered what Moore’s technology adaptation chasm that was mentioned on the first page of the article is. Wonder no more: I looked it up for you! To sum things up briefly, Moore divided people into Innovators, Early Adopters, Pragmatists and Traditionalists, and noted that there’s a chasm between Early Adopters and Pragmatists; a new technology must cross this chasm before it can become common practice.
Now, wasn’t that fascinating?
On a Swedish IT news site there are a few interesting headlines; one of which is that Sweden is “best” in Europe at using the Internet. (Link; beware - it’s in Swedish.) First of all, let me object to the word best. Let’s see. What constructive criticism could I conjure against that use…? Maybe…the fact that it’s complete and utter bollocks! Best is a marvellous word for quantifiable comparisons within a clearly measurable area, but in what way is Internet use a measurable area? And what exactly would “best” imply? That we’re best in Europe at finding warez? That we waste time on the Internet instead of working? That we know how to write good Google keywords? The phrase is completely ridiculous and says nothing at all.
And on the note of Google, there is another headline at the same site: Why Google is Making Us Dumber. Basically, that article insists that Googling stuff makes us dumber; for instance we no longer do conversion arithmetic by hand (or by head, rather) - instead we use Google features for those kinds of things. Well, let’s see if I remember my logic classes; I’ll try to make a modus ponens situation out of this. But I’ll leave out the predicate logic.
If P then Q, where P = “increased Google use” and Q = “getting dumber.” And I’ll introduce R = “increased Internet use” as well, and state the intuitive hypothesis that if R then P. Then we have the following:
(R -> P) AND R
-> P
(P -> Q) AND P
-> Q
Thus, Swedes are getting dumber. If you trust strange logic and strange articles you read on the ‘net, that is.
I won’t really waste any time on disputing the “Google makes you stupid” claim - it’s clearly ridiculous and a prime example of backward-thinking. The same was said when calculators were invented. “Oh no, the kids won’t learn how to do simple arithmetic anymore now that they have a machine for it.” Granted, I expect that kids today can’t do simple arithmetic, so I guess this example sucks. Still, I’m convinced that the productivity gains from automating simple tasks vastly oughtweighs the small setbacks in basic knowledge.
But wait, there’s more! I have yet another point to this little blog post. Some people might have read my little rant about coffee, in which I claimed that coffee was the cause of major wars. I received some interesting (IRL) feedback to that; most who commented on the post were confused and didn’t really see the point of it. That’s okay, ’cause I was planning on bringing up the point later - like now. In the coffee post I claimed, for example, that coffee was the cause of the War of the Golden Stool. That was complete and utter rubbish. Just as all the other coffee-related anecdotes in the post. Have you guessed the common thread through this blog entry by now? No? Okay, I’ll continue.
The post sounded confident and it was backed by enough facts to make it believable; no one really cared to question my claims since the topic was dull, but I have seen many search entries for the War of the Golden Stool that led to my site. I keep imagining that some kids have used my lies as interesting anecdotes in their schoolwork, and that a few teachers are scratching their heads in confusion right now. I hope that both those teachers and those kids have learned a valuable lesson about using things on the Internet as resources for their essays. There’s basically no guarantee that anything you read on the net is true, regardless of the imagined authenticity.
This goes for the article about Google making people dumber as well: it’s a personal opinion backed by no facts. It doesn’t matter that a major Swedish IT news portal picked it up - it’s just as much rubbish regardless of who thinks that it might be valid.
There, I’ve done it. The sheep’s out of the bag: a Sheeplings press release has been sent out. Click here to see it in all its glory, or go to Sheeplings.com to read more about the game!
And for the ones who won’t click the link above I might as well post the release here as well:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Are You Ready for the Fluffiest Game Ever?
KarjaSoft releases Sheeplings, a thrilling mix of puzzle solving and sheepherding action.
Sweden — May 2, 2007 — KarjaSoft releases Sheeplings, a thrilling mix of puzzle solving and sheepherding action. As Windsor the sheepdog you must protect and guide your flock toward the final goal: the sheep-jumping competition in Woolyville. Armed with only your bark you will face ravenous wolves and eagles, sheep-napping bandits, logic puzzles, stubborn sheep, hidden powerups and much more.
Sheeplings is designed to provide fun for the whole family. The casual and non-violent gameplay is suitable for kids, but adults will also find themselves challenged by more than 80 wool-raising levels divided into three quests. Sheeplings also features an innovative unlocking scheme that lets you tackle the levels in any order you want.
Sheeplings is priced very sheeply at $19.99 and is available for Windows 2000 or higher, and Intel Mac OS X 10.4.4 or higher.
Read more about Sheeplings at
http://www.sheeplings.com
Download a Windows trial version from
http://www.sheeplings.com/files/SheeplingsDemoInstall.exe
Mac trial version is available at
http://www.sheeplings.com/files/SheeplingsDemo.dmg
About KarjaSoft
KarjaSoft was founded in 2003 but changed focus in 2006 from small applications to family-friendly games with innovative gameplay. Current plans include world-wide market domination in fluffy sheepherding games by 2008. For more information, visit http://www.karjasoft.com
Contact:
Miro Karjalainen
KarjaSoft
infokarjasoft.com
http://www.karjasoft.com
As you might have noticed I included a link to my KarjaSoft page as well; this meant that I had to do some serious restructuring before sending out the press release. First and foremost I switched web hosts from Cirtexhosting to Lunarpages in a vain attempt at receiving more stable hosting. Secondly, the old site design was…practical. And not particularly appealing. The new one isn’t exactly the Mona Lisa either, but I think that I won’t scare away people from the moment they enter my page at least. I hope.
Incidentally, on the topic of switching web hosts, here’s a tip: don’t forget to set up your e-mail accounts on the new host. It becomes rather embarrassing when everything starts to bounce all of the sudden, and you have no idea why.
Do like the ram tells you or he’ll nibble your legs off!
