Rock Band 3 isn't a bad game by any standards.
It's just a end of an era of my life I'll probably, regrettably, call one of the best.
For those out of the loop, publisher Activision decreed last May the "indefinite hiatus" of the Guitar Hero franchise. After the disastrous sales of Guitar Hero 5 and Warriors of Rock, both very excellent games in their own right, the writing appeared on the walls.
While Rock Band 3's downloadable songs aren't ending anytime soon, the big game releases likely are. RB developer Harmonix, arguably the saviors of rhythm gaming in America, have said they feel the franchise has reached its inevitable conclusion by teaching you to play guitar.
In short, they're done.
While we couldn't have expected the plastic instrument bubble to last, after all what grown person wants all those toys hanging around the living room, I still quietly weep since this game marks the last, dying gasp of a fad.
Every decision and change made to Rock Band 3 isn't just a misstep, it feels akin to active attempt to sabotage their own creation. I'm reminded of the agitated musician with a one hit wonder: Detesting their creation but savvy enough to recognize their one source of revenue. Alien Ant Farm where art thou?
Let's run down the ways RB3 blew it:
You can't assign characters to a certain instrument
You can't play with 5 players.
You can't play online in any real capacity unless you know at least 60 other people who own the game.
They only created two new venue assets for the entire game. We have played the same backgrounds for over 5 years at this point what was your art team doing?!
Oh wait I know what they did: they created terrible patterns on your note highway to distract you while you have a streak going. They also spent an awful long time finding ways to completely break character animations and remove any sort of personality from your dancing marionettes.
There's no competitive modes at all.
There's no way to filter DLC from core content easily while browsing songs online. Let me tell you how much fun it is to try browsing close to 700 songs with only 10 at a time on the screen. Spolier: it's not.
They added an instrument no one cared for or cares to buy.
The Vocals engine/hit detection system was imported from the Beatles, which wasn't good to begin with. Hope you like humming or singing the complete opposite of the lead signer.
Enough of the shit train through, what are some positives?
The game can boast of a fairly solid setlist with a few heavy hitters such as Space Oddity and 20th Century Boy, but then they completely have to act like Boston hipsters and throw in The Power of Love or Rock Lobster.
You know who likes singing or playing these songs? People who hate themselves.
You can now make fat characters and unlock clothing through a fun series of challenges, an idea they experimented with in Rock Band 2. As with Rock Band 2, however, your fun with these COD-style missions will be short lived as they won't generate any new ones or incorporate any DLC going forward. Once you've bought everything up to Rock Band 3's release, you've unlocked it all.
The Pro Mode drums are a worthwhile addition to actually make drumming semi-realistic and the harmonies do much to expand the Vocals gameplay.
At the end of the day though, Harmonix phoned in the entire experience. I remember listening to a Harmonix podcast wherein a lead designer rambled on about ideas for a 7th star rating, mini-cutscenes and other small touches to the game for a splash of personality.
Shame they cut all of that and we instead got a game akin to Nirvana's self-titled best of album. It open's with a smash then leaves us with half-hearted repeats and the sinking feeling that it's over.
6/28/11
But I just couldn't tell her so
Reading about the controversial board game/museum piece "Train" has reignited a old debate within myself: the narralogical game versus the ludological game.
For those not in the know, Train is a game designed about loading passengers onto trains and making sure they reach their destination. Of course, since it's a board game, most of the pieces are fairly abstracted to yellow pegs and some box cars.
When you play it, you find out their destinations are all concentration camps. Thus, you're left to either win by going through with it or simply rage quitting from the actual, physical, game itself.
Obviously, if it gets a full release it'll be an absolute blast to pull out at a party.
Sarcasm aside, I do applaud a designer for taking authorial control to such an extreme. Hell, you can't even play this game without her present.
To a certain extent, her game is what I had proposed months before with having location based "narrative devices" that allow a group of users to generate a story. While her game has certainly stirred up the "artgames" crowd, as insufferable as they are, most gamers have already been complicit in an experience she has proposed for years.
Take, for instance, every single player game released ever. As much as she'll try and push the heavy-handed idea of her games being true personality tests, all games ultimately require you to sacrifice the control of yourself in order to abide by their rules.
Now if she had made a game with the ability to generate win conditions dynamically via an in game mechanic, I might start listening.
For those not in the know, Train is a game designed about loading passengers onto trains and making sure they reach their destination. Of course, since it's a board game, most of the pieces are fairly abstracted to yellow pegs and some box cars.
When you play it, you find out their destinations are all concentration camps. Thus, you're left to either win by going through with it or simply rage quitting from the actual, physical, game itself.
Obviously, if it gets a full release it'll be an absolute blast to pull out at a party.
Sarcasm aside, I do applaud a designer for taking authorial control to such an extreme. Hell, you can't even play this game without her present.
To a certain extent, her game is what I had proposed months before with having location based "narrative devices" that allow a group of users to generate a story. While her game has certainly stirred up the "artgames" crowd, as insufferable as they are, most gamers have already been complicit in an experience she has proposed for years.
Take, for instance, every single player game released ever. As much as she'll try and push the heavy-handed idea of her games being true personality tests, all games ultimately require you to sacrifice the control of yourself in order to abide by their rules.
Now if she had made a game with the ability to generate win conditions dynamically via an in game mechanic, I might start listening.
3/18/11
I'm going to fade away.
While I did write a "semi-serious" review of Call of Duty: Black Ops a few months back, I think it's important enough to write up a second article on Treyarch anti-military and masculinity-subversing FPS.
After all, they've just pull the greatest stunt in the history of video games. They've shown well over a billion people the fact that all members of the military are actually just scared children looking for an identity of their own. I can't help but love the company for it.
As I write this, Black Ops has currently pulled in more money and sales than any entertainment product ever made. While all sorts of numbers have flown aboout for that that means in terms of profits, the long tail effect of the CoD gameplay formula and brand means we're going to be be playing a whole lot of semi-realistic first person shooters which boil down to overglorified versions of tag that let you pretend to be an "all American hero".
Pushing aside my own cynicism, Treyarch have actually proven themselves the masters of a cynical disposition and created a game that active insults their userbase as much as celebrates it.
To break it down, lets look at the ad campaign and how it ties into both the single and multiplayer modes.
Starting with a rather humorous, if controversial in every single non-white nation, ad featuring z-grade comedians, some basketball players and a bunch of "omg girlzzzz", Activision positioned this hyperviolent shooter as a game for the whole family with their ad department championing the slogan "a solider in all of us" as a shadowed special ops trooper, looking slightly haggard, gazes back at us.
If there's one thing I've learned form reading about video game developers and interacting with them, it's that they do not understand complex narratives or media messages beyond whatever sci-fi or fantasy pulp they read in the supermarket last weekend.
I have no doubt Treyarch themselves signed off on the campaign and simply issued it as a "hell yeah shit blows up lets look manly" kind of advertisement, but I want to assume they actually had a subtle sense of subterfuge at work here.
See, Black Ops single player plot- which I doubt the majority of players ever thought about beyond 5 seconds after the closing credits- involves an American GI becoming a sleeper Russian agent after a brainwashing from an overly macho ex-USSR commander.
It isn't much of a leap to note the "solider inside" of our protagonist is actually a hyperviolent that secondary characters spend much of the game attempting to stop.
Of course, much like the USA's own wartime fantasies, the nuclear holocaust our hero unleashes through his own stupidity and hubris is contained through his grit, pluck and moxie.
A load of horse shit, yes, but a darker plotline than any CoD game has had the gall to toy with before.
In the past, Call of Duty always created storylines with clear good guys and bad guys. Even CoD4 with its celebrated "deep" moment where a US platoon dies in a nuclear blast still made sure to hammer home it wasn't the dumb meatheaded Marines who sealed his fade but a wily Arab complete with dark sunglasses and a golden pistol.
In CoD7, however, our hero brings the worlds problems upon himself rather than the world bringing them to him. A notion that flies in the very face of American preconceptions.
At any rate, how does this connection connection of the ad campaign relate to the "celebrate" multiplayer feature? Through the use of the Rolling Stone's generation ending "Gimmie Shelter" charttopper.
Gimmie Shelter came out in 1969, the year the hippie and peacenik movement breathed its last dying gasps. For five years follow its release, the Vietnam war dragged on with seemingly no end before the Americans cravenly pulled out to almost no fan-fare.
The end of the war, until the sterilization of war narratives reemerged in our nations dark years under Regan, signified the end of the "hero" solider narrative.
Until Regan, our soldiers were viewed in the media and public perception as tragic victims or aggressors. Though the rise of post-modern war narratives, such as "The Things They Carried", would arrive almost a decade later bearing with them a "take no sides" approach to the conflict or its history, the American understanding of its warrior caste crumbled before its very eyes. We did, after all, just send our boys and their schoolyard friends into the killing fields with no real goal or purpose as that "horrible horrible" Europe did almost 50 years prior.
Gimmie Shelter, then, became an anthem for a dying breed of innocence on both sides of the conflict. The hippies rallied around it as their "swan song" while the GIs heard it as a final warning to their previous identities.
CoD7 multiplayer becomes a post-modern narrative akin to "The Things They Carried" through its use anachronistic weapons and factions.
Battles, though some based in vaugely historical contexts, come off as fever dreams you'd expect the drunk fellow at the VFW to tell you after a few whiskeys.
Yes, sarge, I believe that you and private Jimmy rigged up his toy RC car with a bomb to stop those damn Kong. Yes, of course.
With its fictional levels and anachronistic weapons drawn from the entire spectrum of the Cold War, CoD7 is a last testament to the American soldier boy myth we all desperately want to buy into.
The game's advertising and presentation reflect a cold reality for men, where their time as domineering warriors quietly comes to an end while simultaneously embracing the rebirth of the woman as a domineering masculine force.
By placing this gender identity struggle within the context of America's greatest defeats, Treyarch has projected the ultimate escapist fantasy for the US of A. A place where we never really won but never really lost and always, always, knew who we were and what we had to do.
It's just a shame Treyarch, like most devs, are too childlike to realize it.
After all, they've just pull the greatest stunt in the history of video games. They've shown well over a billion people the fact that all members of the military are actually just scared children looking for an identity of their own. I can't help but love the company for it.
As I write this, Black Ops has currently pulled in more money and sales than any entertainment product ever made. While all sorts of numbers have flown aboout for that that means in terms of profits, the long tail effect of the CoD gameplay formula and brand means we're going to be be playing a whole lot of semi-realistic first person shooters which boil down to overglorified versions of tag that let you pretend to be an "all American hero".
Pushing aside my own cynicism, Treyarch have actually proven themselves the masters of a cynical disposition and created a game that active insults their userbase as much as celebrates it.
To break it down, lets look at the ad campaign and how it ties into both the single and multiplayer modes.
Starting with a rather humorous, if controversial in every single non-white nation, ad featuring z-grade comedians, some basketball players and a bunch of "omg girlzzzz", Activision positioned this hyperviolent shooter as a game for the whole family with their ad department championing the slogan "a solider in all of us" as a shadowed special ops trooper, looking slightly haggard, gazes back at us.
If there's one thing I've learned form reading about video game developers and interacting with them, it's that they do not understand complex narratives or media messages beyond whatever sci-fi or fantasy pulp they read in the supermarket last weekend.
I have no doubt Treyarch themselves signed off on the campaign and simply issued it as a "hell yeah shit blows up lets look manly" kind of advertisement, but I want to assume they actually had a subtle sense of subterfuge at work here.
See, Black Ops single player plot- which I doubt the majority of players ever thought about beyond 5 seconds after the closing credits- involves an American GI becoming a sleeper Russian agent after a brainwashing from an overly macho ex-USSR commander.
It isn't much of a leap to note the "solider inside" of our protagonist is actually a hyperviolent that secondary characters spend much of the game attempting to stop.
Of course, much like the USA's own wartime fantasies, the nuclear holocaust our hero unleashes through his own stupidity and hubris is contained through his grit, pluck and moxie.
A load of horse shit, yes, but a darker plotline than any CoD game has had the gall to toy with before.
In the past, Call of Duty always created storylines with clear good guys and bad guys. Even CoD4 with its celebrated "deep" moment where a US platoon dies in a nuclear blast still made sure to hammer home it wasn't the dumb meatheaded Marines who sealed his fade but a wily Arab complete with dark sunglasses and a golden pistol.
In CoD7, however, our hero brings the worlds problems upon himself rather than the world bringing them to him. A notion that flies in the very face of American preconceptions.
At any rate, how does this connection connection of the ad campaign relate to the "celebrate" multiplayer feature? Through the use of the Rolling Stone's generation ending "Gimmie Shelter" charttopper.
Gimmie Shelter came out in 1969, the year the hippie and peacenik movement breathed its last dying gasps. For five years follow its release, the Vietnam war dragged on with seemingly no end before the Americans cravenly pulled out to almost no fan-fare.
The end of the war, until the sterilization of war narratives reemerged in our nations dark years under Regan, signified the end of the "hero" solider narrative.
Until Regan, our soldiers were viewed in the media and public perception as tragic victims or aggressors. Though the rise of post-modern war narratives, such as "The Things They Carried", would arrive almost a decade later bearing with them a "take no sides" approach to the conflict or its history, the American understanding of its warrior caste crumbled before its very eyes. We did, after all, just send our boys and their schoolyard friends into the killing fields with no real goal or purpose as that "horrible horrible" Europe did almost 50 years prior.
Gimmie Shelter, then, became an anthem for a dying breed of innocence on both sides of the conflict. The hippies rallied around it as their "swan song" while the GIs heard it as a final warning to their previous identities.
CoD7 multiplayer becomes a post-modern narrative akin to "The Things They Carried" through its use anachronistic weapons and factions.
Battles, though some based in vaugely historical contexts, come off as fever dreams you'd expect the drunk fellow at the VFW to tell you after a few whiskeys.
Yes, sarge, I believe that you and private Jimmy rigged up his toy RC car with a bomb to stop those damn Kong. Yes, of course.
With its fictional levels and anachronistic weapons drawn from the entire spectrum of the Cold War, CoD7 is a last testament to the American soldier boy myth we all desperately want to buy into.
The game's advertising and presentation reflect a cold reality for men, where their time as domineering warriors quietly comes to an end while simultaneously embracing the rebirth of the woman as a domineering masculine force.
By placing this gender identity struggle within the context of America's greatest defeats, Treyarch has projected the ultimate escapist fantasy for the US of A. A place where we never really won but never really lost and always, always, knew who we were and what we had to do.
It's just a shame Treyarch, like most devs, are too childlike to realize it.
1/10/11
Gosh how they weigh me down
I'm going to throw a Molotov of an opinion into the internet echo chamber and say what every professional critic would get crucified over.
I think Bioshock 2 is a better experience and game than the original Bioshock was and the forthcoming Bioshock Infinite will be.
There, I threw it out there with more being verbs than necessary.
To support my claims, I must note Bioshock 2 serves as an interesting companion piece for 2009's FEAR 2.
In my FEAR 2 analysis, I noted that entire plot revolved around coping with a teen pregnancy. Now, in Bioshock 2, we find 2k Marin studios exploring the concept of fatherhood through the eyes of my, admittedly still childish, generation and the rapidly aging baby boomer population.
As with all my game examinations, spoilers follow below.
In Bioshock 2, players assume the role of a prototype mechanical monster known as "Subject Delta". As both a knowledge hold over from the previous game, and something newcomers pick up on rather quickly through countless radio transmissions, Delta's one of an underwater metropolis' security forces known as a "Big Daddy".
Bioshock, in a move to complete divorce it from any sort of real world locales, takes place in an city called Rapture somewhere under the sea. Created by an amoral capitalist as a place where the strong survive and the weak would perish, Rapture quickly fell apart during a massive civil war, which players discovered their part of in the previous title, over a new wonder-drug harvested from dead called Adam.
To get more Adam, the brilliant capitalists have created a new child workforce of preteen girls called "Little Sisters". These girls, locked in a constant high by Adam as players discovered by the player, are eventually harvested through their own Adam.
The games, nor the original developers at Irrational Games, never fully explain why they chose little girls exclusively as the plighted group rather than little boys or a mix of the two. Probably because the insinuation of molestation and murder you get while attempting to murder them for Adam would sit well with the ESRB, despite the developers cop-outs with a "red out" screen. So murder of girls is a-ok, just don't touch boys. Thanks for the morality lesson Irrational.
Nevertheless, the duty of the "Big Daddy" system lies in protecting these little girls through a maximum application of lethal force when needed.
You, arising from a decade long coma, find your city in ruins and the girl you swore to protect nowhere to be seen.
Due to the fact you're a horrible abomination of science in the face of God, you ignore the fact that so many years have lapsed a sent of on a quest to find the little girl you once held so dear.
You soon discover that your little girl who you're seeking to reunite with is actually the daughter of a noteworthy capitalist's political enemy, a socialist known as Sophia Lamb.
Mocking your every gun-toting attempt to stop her at first, the messiest metaphorical custody battle north of the Mason-Dixon line, Lamb eventually falls into a complete despair upon discovering that her own teen daughter would prefer to see you succeed. Based upon your interactions with other characters throughout the game, the final moments of your life with your former "Little Sister" determine how she reacts to her birth mother.
The climax of the game, then, isn't so much your escape from the city of Rapture but a final moment of "separation anxiety" between a man and his daughter. She realizes, over the course of your merry misadventure, that the two of you are both sins of science that cannot, and will not, function together in the real world.
Nevertheless, she figures, your spirit- and the last memories off Rapture itself- can live on through her above ground.
Unlike the previous game, which hamfistedly touched upon issues of "free will" through a false sense of player agency, Bioshock 2 asks players to assume a father role under the worst of circumstances.
As a father, you cannot- and must not- break the bonds of love and protection to your children. More importantly, however, you must learn of the final sacrifice in self for the child.
Throughout the game you'll constantly save, or destroy, other lost Little Sisters along the way but must always fight against the mysterious "Big Sisters" hell-bent on stopping you from doing either such thing to the girls.
These creatures, fast, agile and basicly unknowable to the player double as the representation of your daughter's own progression into puberty. As a father, your fights with the big sisters become your own struggles with accepting your fading control upon your daughter and her decisions.
At the end of the story, when you realize that you're actually a reharvested man from the world above, you and your little lost Lamb come to a conclusion that necessitates your demise: Your unholy bond can never exist outside the city that bore it but it's alright.
This effort to cope with yourself as a father when dealing with your child undoubtedly touches upon many of the parental concerns facing my aging generation.
Your children, though influence by you, are ultimately their own persons as well. Thus, no matter how hard you may fight to protect" them against what you see as "evils" in the world, their battles will ultimately fall on their shoulders alone.
So is Bioshock 2 merely the right game in the right time for my life? Probably, but that won't stop me from naming it one of the best games to come out of 2010.
I think Bioshock 2 is a better experience and game than the original Bioshock was and the forthcoming Bioshock Infinite will be.
There, I threw it out there with more being verbs than necessary.
To support my claims, I must note Bioshock 2 serves as an interesting companion piece for 2009's FEAR 2.
In my FEAR 2 analysis, I noted that entire plot revolved around coping with a teen pregnancy. Now, in Bioshock 2, we find 2k Marin studios exploring the concept of fatherhood through the eyes of my, admittedly still childish, generation and the rapidly aging baby boomer population.
As with all my game examinations, spoilers follow below.
In Bioshock 2, players assume the role of a prototype mechanical monster known as "Subject Delta". As both a knowledge hold over from the previous game, and something newcomers pick up on rather quickly through countless radio transmissions, Delta's one of an underwater metropolis' security forces known as a "Big Daddy".
Bioshock, in a move to complete divorce it from any sort of real world locales, takes place in an city called Rapture somewhere under the sea. Created by an amoral capitalist as a place where the strong survive and the weak would perish, Rapture quickly fell apart during a massive civil war, which players discovered their part of in the previous title, over a new wonder-drug harvested from dead called Adam.
To get more Adam, the brilliant capitalists have created a new child workforce of preteen girls called "Little Sisters". These girls, locked in a constant high by Adam as players discovered by the player, are eventually harvested through their own Adam.
The games, nor the original developers at Irrational Games, never fully explain why they chose little girls exclusively as the plighted group rather than little boys or a mix of the two. Probably because the insinuation of molestation and murder you get while attempting to murder them for Adam would sit well with the ESRB, despite the developers cop-outs with a "red out" screen. So murder of girls is a-ok, just don't touch boys. Thanks for the morality lesson Irrational.
Nevertheless, the duty of the "Big Daddy" system lies in protecting these little girls through a maximum application of lethal force when needed.
You, arising from a decade long coma, find your city in ruins and the girl you swore to protect nowhere to be seen.
Due to the fact you're a horrible abomination of science in the face of God, you ignore the fact that so many years have lapsed a sent of on a quest to find the little girl you once held so dear.
You soon discover that your little girl who you're seeking to reunite with is actually the daughter of a noteworthy capitalist's political enemy, a socialist known as Sophia Lamb.
Mocking your every gun-toting attempt to stop her at first, the messiest metaphorical custody battle north of the Mason-Dixon line, Lamb eventually falls into a complete despair upon discovering that her own teen daughter would prefer to see you succeed. Based upon your interactions with other characters throughout the game, the final moments of your life with your former "Little Sister" determine how she reacts to her birth mother.
The climax of the game, then, isn't so much your escape from the city of Rapture but a final moment of "separation anxiety" between a man and his daughter. She realizes, over the course of your merry misadventure, that the two of you are both sins of science that cannot, and will not, function together in the real world.
Nevertheless, she figures, your spirit- and the last memories off Rapture itself- can live on through her above ground.
Unlike the previous game, which hamfistedly touched upon issues of "free will" through a false sense of player agency, Bioshock 2 asks players to assume a father role under the worst of circumstances.
As a father, you cannot- and must not- break the bonds of love and protection to your children. More importantly, however, you must learn of the final sacrifice in self for the child.
Throughout the game you'll constantly save, or destroy, other lost Little Sisters along the way but must always fight against the mysterious "Big Sisters" hell-bent on stopping you from doing either such thing to the girls.
These creatures, fast, agile and basicly unknowable to the player double as the representation of your daughter's own progression into puberty. As a father, your fights with the big sisters become your own struggles with accepting your fading control upon your daughter and her decisions.
At the end of the story, when you realize that you're actually a reharvested man from the world above, you and your little lost Lamb come to a conclusion that necessitates your demise: Your unholy bond can never exist outside the city that bore it but it's alright.
This effort to cope with yourself as a father when dealing with your child undoubtedly touches upon many of the parental concerns facing my aging generation.
Your children, though influence by you, are ultimately their own persons as well. Thus, no matter how hard you may fight to protect" them against what you see as "evils" in the world, their battles will ultimately fall on their shoulders alone.
So is Bioshock 2 merely the right game in the right time for my life? Probably, but that won't stop me from naming it one of the best games to come out of 2010.
11/13/10
Here's an attempt at a professional sounding review..
Call of Duty: Black Ops hits every high point, and low point, the franchise has to offer but leaves you feeling like you’ve bought a ticket to a matinee during a Broadway show’s closing week.
In short, every feature you enjoy in our console generation’s FPS game is there from permanent special abilities to an overarching rank up system barring you from game content right out the gate, but every tweak and addition to the formula feels mechanical and route in nature after the title’s four predecessors.
As with World at War and Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops divvies its core gameplay up across three game modes alongside a slew of bizarre, surprisingly well thought out, miscellaneous side-games.
The Campaign, one of these core modes, tosses aside the Infinity War developed fiction and focuses on further expanding the universe established by World at War. Establishing you in the role of Alex Mason, a CIA op currently under interrogation by forces unknown, the story traces your violent, decade long struggle against a trio of Russian rebels up to no good in the shadowy background of major Cold War conflicts.
Unlike Modern Warfare or the prior Call of Duty titles set in World War Two, the Campaign sticks largely to a single plot thread and only acclimates you with new characters on two or three missions. Instead, you’ll follow Mason’s personal odyssey from a failed assassination attempt on Castro to a climatic battle with Russian, British and German forces all gunning for you.
There’s a lot to digest plot wise in the campaign’s six hours, but the steady clip of how the game doles out its numerous revelations and shifting alliances will keep most players engaged until the end.
As with previous titles, you have the option of selecting from a number of difficulties, but ultimately boils down to experiencing a low-impact shooter on easy/normal or gunning for achievements on the unfairly hard “Veteran” difficulty. Most players would honestly serve themselves better by running through the game on the lowest difficulty to absorb most of the plot and memorize enemy encounters before running head long into the brick wall challenges of Veteran. If meaningless game numbers mean absolutely nothing to you, you’ll probably enjoy the game far more than most “hardcore players” will.
During the actual gameplay, you’ll find yourself going through all the motions long considered staples of the series that’ll start to border on cliché now. You’ll fight against overwhelming odds with nary a weapon on you. You’ll stealthily shoot and stab NVA troops. You’ll even fly a helicopter at one point. Yet all of these actual gameplay moments feel secondary to brief glimpses of Mason’s madness that permeate the levels from his obsession with numbers to several brushes with a old friend only he seems to care about.
The occasional plot based level, which typically neatly ties into several great cutscenes and even some live actors, are undoubtedly the highpoints of the campaign’s missions. It’s just a shame there’s little game connected to them, probably a sign that the bombastic “creep ahead while taking out targets which shoot back” FPS style of the series has reached its inevitable evolutionary conclusion.
Upon completing the game, you’ll find there’s a massive amount of Cold War silliness afoot in the game’s hidden collectables, establishing an actual use of the miscellanea you’ve been acquiring since Call of Duty 4. Each yellow tape recorder found throughout the game reveals notes from a redacted file associated to each level. Furthermore, you can discover a secret computer boasting a complete Unix-like file structure that’ll pull back more of the curtains on Manson’s, and even several “faux-real” political figures of the 1960’s.
Doing away with the cooperative campaign of World at War and the one off missions of Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops uses Treyarch’s signature “Zombies” mode as the main cooperative experience. Shipping with only a scant two maps, folks who ordered the $80 and $150 versions of the game will get a code for the four Zombie levels from World at War. While the maps are a nice bonus for the additional cost, they’re ultimately meaningless since fans of the mode have undoubtedly played these games to death already.
The two included maps continue the Zombies style of shooting monsters, buying guns and repairing damaged barricades, but all fall into the trap of becoming route exercises.
The main meat of the game for most players will undoubtedly be the multiplayer mode, which boasts the most comprehensive set of features yet for the franchise.
As millions of fans know by now, you’ll work your way up the ranks via kills and side missions to unlock a number of power ups, weapons and even face paints to deck out virtual, PTSD-free, self as he battles through a number of locations drawn from the Campaign and “artist renditions” of Cold War battlegrounds.
Oddly, due to the limited number of actual historical locations or factions, the game’s multiplayer feels infinitely more “gamey” and less a simulated doomsday conflict. To be certain, past titles in the series have thrown most of their reality out the window by allowing the Taliban to carry experimental US arms or having Brazilian rebels packing weapons which never left the production line, but this game feels devoid of the series eerily plausible encounters with the US and Russia over a downtown apartment complex or Taliban’s attempts to ambush US forces with a nuclear weapon in the middle of NotIraqistan. Furthermore, the loss of the excitable announcers and chatty squad-mates from previous games makes matches sound oddly muted in the face of causality heavy conflict.
These atmospheric changes will mean little for most players compared to the seemingly small yet paradigm-shifting alterations performed to the “Perks” customization which put the franchise on the map.
The numerous alterations to perks falls well outside the scope of the review, but the two most pivotal changes which should be mentioned include the removal of any life or damage boosting perks from the game. Rather than giving players two choices to build their entire character around, or one in the case of Modern Warfare 2, players are far more free to customize their own play style through insidiously well designed new perks.
For instance, the “Scout” perk at first merely lets you hold your breath for extended periods while looking down a sniper scope. While it may appear useless at first brush, its “Pro” variation allows you to instantaneous switch between weapons with a long draw animation. Combined with a fully automatic handgun, snipers will find themselves suddenly deadly at any range.
Killstreaks too have undergone a “less is more” approach to their design. Forgoing the game ending silliness of nukes or spawn locking air support of Modern Warfare 2, you’ll find the return of World at War’s dogs and the delightfully silly, on a far smaller scale, RC Car Bomb. Mordern Warfare 2’s killstreak system rewarded a rapid application rewards and chain combos to keep the kills coming, Black Ops settles for perks that operate far slower and with more of a focus on map domination.
The carpet bombing, a series trademark since Call of Duty 4, now leaves behind a napalm trail in its wake that blocks off a good section of the level for a few moments by horrific fire. For your teammates, it’s an opportunity to steal a few flags while the enemy team crosses their fingers for one of their players to have a class with the Flak Jacket perk.
Levels themselves also continue upon the franchise’s obsession with tight narrow corridors flanked by open, and deadly, expanses. Though a few maps offer a creative spin on a comic book inspired Cold War world, such as the pristine 1950’s “Nuketown”, most fall into the mold of generic factories or snowcapped radar stations.
A number of PC mod inspired game modes called “Wager Matches” have also made their way into the core experience as well. Earning you addition money to buy weapons rather than XP, these matches require you to pony up a small amount of your cash to compete in some wild and wacky situations that’ll have you shifting between weapons at 45 second intervals or fleeing for your life from a gun with only one lethal bullet in the chamber.
If none of these modes tickle your fancy, extensive private match options and a file sharing system allow you to create a spin off of your own design. Unfortunately, compared to the Halo Reach approach of giving you complete control of every game aspect, you’re fairly limited in your options here with options restricted to player health amounts, starting weapons and so forth.
Your countless defeats across the world can even be remembered for years to come thanks to the power of the game’s theater mode, which records your most recent matches and allows countless preteens around the world to upload their sniper rifle kill montage to Youtube with your melon as the centerpiece kill.
For fans who want to enjoy some multiplayer fun without dealing with the internet at large can dabble in some AI-controlled bot matches, limited to only deathmatch or team deathmatch modes and two human players, or play up to four players in split screen fights.
Throwing a bone to local couch fans, everything is unlocked for all players from the start to play with. Unfortunately, this has the added side effect of removing some of the long term fun from local play sessions. Say what you will about the “deep combat experience” that keeps you coming back, one can’t deny most of the series fun dervies from seeing that yellow XP bar fill up.
In another bizarre design choice, local players can’t partake in any of the fun Wager Match modes, record and upload gameplay clips via the Theater mode, or even alter the rules sets of their games. If there was any point in the package which suffered the most, it’s split-screen battles.
Summarily, Black Ops serves as both an excellent third effort with the series for Treyarch and an important franchise branch for Activision. With the loss of the series main developer Infinity Ward, Black Ops has become a defacto turning point in series. Most players could take to Treyarch’s slower paced style of gameplay or many might feel the loss of speed compared to Modern Warfare 2, but many casual fans might just start feeling the fatigue of three years worth of XP grinds before any of the game’s subtle alterations come to light.
Going back to the Broadway example used earlier, Treyarch’s b-list cast put on an a-list performance this year. Sadly, the technical staff is bored with the same motions, the director wants to wrap up the show and start the next as soon as possible and the audience themselves have likely read a summary of the show beforehand, ruining any suprises that might come their way.
It’s a well put together package, but just too much too late.
In short, every feature you enjoy in our console generation’s FPS game is there from permanent special abilities to an overarching rank up system barring you from game content right out the gate, but every tweak and addition to the formula feels mechanical and route in nature after the title’s four predecessors.
As with World at War and Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops divvies its core gameplay up across three game modes alongside a slew of bizarre, surprisingly well thought out, miscellaneous side-games.
The Campaign, one of these core modes, tosses aside the Infinity War developed fiction and focuses on further expanding the universe established by World at War. Establishing you in the role of Alex Mason, a CIA op currently under interrogation by forces unknown, the story traces your violent, decade long struggle against a trio of Russian rebels up to no good in the shadowy background of major Cold War conflicts.
Unlike Modern Warfare or the prior Call of Duty titles set in World War Two, the Campaign sticks largely to a single plot thread and only acclimates you with new characters on two or three missions. Instead, you’ll follow Mason’s personal odyssey from a failed assassination attempt on Castro to a climatic battle with Russian, British and German forces all gunning for you.
There’s a lot to digest plot wise in the campaign’s six hours, but the steady clip of how the game doles out its numerous revelations and shifting alliances will keep most players engaged until the end.
As with previous titles, you have the option of selecting from a number of difficulties, but ultimately boils down to experiencing a low-impact shooter on easy/normal or gunning for achievements on the unfairly hard “Veteran” difficulty. Most players would honestly serve themselves better by running through the game on the lowest difficulty to absorb most of the plot and memorize enemy encounters before running head long into the brick wall challenges of Veteran. If meaningless game numbers mean absolutely nothing to you, you’ll probably enjoy the game far more than most “hardcore players” will.
During the actual gameplay, you’ll find yourself going through all the motions long considered staples of the series that’ll start to border on cliché now. You’ll fight against overwhelming odds with nary a weapon on you. You’ll stealthily shoot and stab NVA troops. You’ll even fly a helicopter at one point. Yet all of these actual gameplay moments feel secondary to brief glimpses of Mason’s madness that permeate the levels from his obsession with numbers to several brushes with a old friend only he seems to care about.
The occasional plot based level, which typically neatly ties into several great cutscenes and even some live actors, are undoubtedly the highpoints of the campaign’s missions. It’s just a shame there’s little game connected to them, probably a sign that the bombastic “creep ahead while taking out targets which shoot back” FPS style of the series has reached its inevitable evolutionary conclusion.
Upon completing the game, you’ll find there’s a massive amount of Cold War silliness afoot in the game’s hidden collectables, establishing an actual use of the miscellanea you’ve been acquiring since Call of Duty 4. Each yellow tape recorder found throughout the game reveals notes from a redacted file associated to each level. Furthermore, you can discover a secret computer boasting a complete Unix-like file structure that’ll pull back more of the curtains on Manson’s, and even several “faux-real” political figures of the 1960’s.
Doing away with the cooperative campaign of World at War and the one off missions of Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops uses Treyarch’s signature “Zombies” mode as the main cooperative experience. Shipping with only a scant two maps, folks who ordered the $80 and $150 versions of the game will get a code for the four Zombie levels from World at War. While the maps are a nice bonus for the additional cost, they’re ultimately meaningless since fans of the mode have undoubtedly played these games to death already.
The two included maps continue the Zombies style of shooting monsters, buying guns and repairing damaged barricades, but all fall into the trap of becoming route exercises.
The main meat of the game for most players will undoubtedly be the multiplayer mode, which boasts the most comprehensive set of features yet for the franchise.
As millions of fans know by now, you’ll work your way up the ranks via kills and side missions to unlock a number of power ups, weapons and even face paints to deck out virtual, PTSD-free, self as he battles through a number of locations drawn from the Campaign and “artist renditions” of Cold War battlegrounds.
Oddly, due to the limited number of actual historical locations or factions, the game’s multiplayer feels infinitely more “gamey” and less a simulated doomsday conflict. To be certain, past titles in the series have thrown most of their reality out the window by allowing the Taliban to carry experimental US arms or having Brazilian rebels packing weapons which never left the production line, but this game feels devoid of the series eerily plausible encounters with the US and Russia over a downtown apartment complex or Taliban’s attempts to ambush US forces with a nuclear weapon in the middle of NotIraqistan. Furthermore, the loss of the excitable announcers and chatty squad-mates from previous games makes matches sound oddly muted in the face of causality heavy conflict.
These atmospheric changes will mean little for most players compared to the seemingly small yet paradigm-shifting alterations performed to the “Perks” customization which put the franchise on the map.
The numerous alterations to perks falls well outside the scope of the review, but the two most pivotal changes which should be mentioned include the removal of any life or damage boosting perks from the game. Rather than giving players two choices to build their entire character around, or one in the case of Modern Warfare 2, players are far more free to customize their own play style through insidiously well designed new perks.
For instance, the “Scout” perk at first merely lets you hold your breath for extended periods while looking down a sniper scope. While it may appear useless at first brush, its “Pro” variation allows you to instantaneous switch between weapons with a long draw animation. Combined with a fully automatic handgun, snipers will find themselves suddenly deadly at any range.
Killstreaks too have undergone a “less is more” approach to their design. Forgoing the game ending silliness of nukes or spawn locking air support of Modern Warfare 2, you’ll find the return of World at War’s dogs and the delightfully silly, on a far smaller scale, RC Car Bomb. Mordern Warfare 2’s killstreak system rewarded a rapid application rewards and chain combos to keep the kills coming, Black Ops settles for perks that operate far slower and with more of a focus on map domination.
The carpet bombing, a series trademark since Call of Duty 4, now leaves behind a napalm trail in its wake that blocks off a good section of the level for a few moments by horrific fire. For your teammates, it’s an opportunity to steal a few flags while the enemy team crosses their fingers for one of their players to have a class with the Flak Jacket perk.
Levels themselves also continue upon the franchise’s obsession with tight narrow corridors flanked by open, and deadly, expanses. Though a few maps offer a creative spin on a comic book inspired Cold War world, such as the pristine 1950’s “Nuketown”, most fall into the mold of generic factories or snowcapped radar stations.
A number of PC mod inspired game modes called “Wager Matches” have also made their way into the core experience as well. Earning you addition money to buy weapons rather than XP, these matches require you to pony up a small amount of your cash to compete in some wild and wacky situations that’ll have you shifting between weapons at 45 second intervals or fleeing for your life from a gun with only one lethal bullet in the chamber.
If none of these modes tickle your fancy, extensive private match options and a file sharing system allow you to create a spin off of your own design. Unfortunately, compared to the Halo Reach approach of giving you complete control of every game aspect, you’re fairly limited in your options here with options restricted to player health amounts, starting weapons and so forth.
Your countless defeats across the world can even be remembered for years to come thanks to the power of the game’s theater mode, which records your most recent matches and allows countless preteens around the world to upload their sniper rifle kill montage to Youtube with your melon as the centerpiece kill.
For fans who want to enjoy some multiplayer fun without dealing with the internet at large can dabble in some AI-controlled bot matches, limited to only deathmatch or team deathmatch modes and two human players, or play up to four players in split screen fights.
Throwing a bone to local couch fans, everything is unlocked for all players from the start to play with. Unfortunately, this has the added side effect of removing some of the long term fun from local play sessions. Say what you will about the “deep combat experience” that keeps you coming back, one can’t deny most of the series fun dervies from seeing that yellow XP bar fill up.
In another bizarre design choice, local players can’t partake in any of the fun Wager Match modes, record and upload gameplay clips via the Theater mode, or even alter the rules sets of their games. If there was any point in the package which suffered the most, it’s split-screen battles.
Summarily, Black Ops serves as both an excellent third effort with the series for Treyarch and an important franchise branch for Activision. With the loss of the series main developer Infinity Ward, Black Ops has become a defacto turning point in series. Most players could take to Treyarch’s slower paced style of gameplay or many might feel the loss of speed compared to Modern Warfare 2, but many casual fans might just start feeling the fatigue of three years worth of XP grinds before any of the game’s subtle alterations come to light.
Going back to the Broadway example used earlier, Treyarch’s b-list cast put on an a-list performance this year. Sadly, the technical staff is bored with the same motions, the director wants to wrap up the show and start the next as soon as possible and the audience themselves have likely read a summary of the show beforehand, ruining any suprises that might come their way.
It’s a well put together package, but just too much too late.
6/29/10
Keep Your 'letric Eye on Me Babe
Yo, so I'm two years late to the party but I beat Metal Gear Solid 4.
Well, alright, beat is a bit of a misnomer. A more apt description would be "watch it fizzle out slowly."
Despite the opening two chapters of the game featuring some of the best stealth gameplay in the genre, the three following chapters reduce the game to a series of quick time events.
I can't fault Kojima for them, as spending any more time on actual gameplay and not wrapping up inane story threads from the bloated second and third entries in the series would force him to "revisit" the series again. Apparently this is a horrible torture.
To be blunt, I'm a fair weather fan of the series in the purest sense of the word. I was a huge fan and supporter of the first title on the PSX over ten years ago, I played through the second one but recall nothing beyond disappointment and didn't even bother with the third.
From what I gather, the third was the best in the series because it shed (har har) the whole Snake angle from most of the game.
To me, this seems like a cop out for both the players and Kojima.
As a fair weather fan, my love of the series begins and ends with Solid Snake. By playing 1,2 and 4 I got Snake's narrative arc and I would be content with there never being another Metal Gear title for as long as I live.
This isn't to say I wouldn't want the stealth mechanics of the game to come back in some form, far from it. The fact I can cloak myself as a Persian rug screams out for this game's mechanics to be in a more deserving title.
No. Instead, I have finally outgrown Solid Snake and the series no longer needs me.
I can recall seeing my first trailer for Metal Gear Solid on a Playstation demo disk back in 1998. Around then, some promotional trailer truck was going around pimping Playstation games. Were we to look back on them now, I'd probably see a truck full of games that would give me a headache but at that point it time they were the coolest goddamn things around.
The demo CD a trinket they gave out to everyone, so when I got home I poped it in to play some TOTALLY SWEET Crash Bandicoot. However, the video demonstration on the disk was for a game entitled Metal Gear I had never heard of.
It wasn't until I had exhaused everything else I could do on that CD that I clicked the play video button.
With it's engrishy cries of "THIS FALL: LET'S GET SOLID!", the theme music that's since become one of the series few consistent traits kicked in and never let me little eyes go until I'd watched the video at least four more times.
It seemed unreal then. Here was a game that was telling me not to kill everything I on the screen. Furthermore, its sci-fi/military angle seemed startlingly mature and realistic when I'd just finished playing games like Jumping Flash and Crash Bandicoot.
When the game came out later that November, it more than lived up to the hype. The game trapped you in a base against overwhelming odds with one clear instruction "sneak or die".
Though time has passed to reveal the game is an overwritten Japanese cartoon as imagined by the Rainbow Six art team, it was a game that served its purpose at the time.
Metal Gear Solid 2 then, represented another passage of time. While I wasn't much older than 11 when I played through Metal Gear, I was probably 15 by the time I was able to play Solid 2.
With its boring characters, bizarre Japanese quirks and lead character I had never even heard of, I silently wrote off the series to myself.
It was the same case with 4 in all honesty. Despite owning a Playstation 3 I still consider it an overpriced "brown HD graphics" generator that lacks substantial exclusive games. MGS4, then, was more or less the ramblings of an insane Japanese man to me.
After playing through it, I still consider my initial assessment correct.
MGS4 should have been the final, gorgeous, eulogy to the series but instead felt like a constipated trip to the can. Sure, you feel pumped sitting down to get the poisons out of your system, but nothing ever comes.
At any rate, Solid Snake and his chum Ocelot are astoundingly emotive characters here that run the gamut from being genuinely funny to tragic figures we end up rooting for.
Snake's final tribulations, throughout most of the proceedings, trap him in a world where he realizes his end is ever more nigh and that it'd best for him to simply fade away. He quickly realizes that, despite what the back of the case may say, in his final hour cannot stand alone. Instead, his journey can only be taken through the suffering of others.
Kojima seems to have taken to heart the classical lesson of "at the end of a comedy there is a wedding and at the end of a tragedy there is a death" yet failed to learn the trick of artistic restraint in applying those ideas.
Characters we once loved change both for the better and the worse all while Snake continues his slow march towards the graveyard, both literally and metaphorically.
Were the game to have ended at the climatic moment Snake pulls the trigger on the pistol in his mouth, I would have said that the entire game and series had been vindicated as story about one old dog who just couldn't learn a new trick.
Apparently, I was told that the internet is run by evil computers and that I can come back from the dead with just a collection of cells. Whatever.
Well, alright, beat is a bit of a misnomer. A more apt description would be "watch it fizzle out slowly."
Despite the opening two chapters of the game featuring some of the best stealth gameplay in the genre, the three following chapters reduce the game to a series of quick time events.
I can't fault Kojima for them, as spending any more time on actual gameplay and not wrapping up inane story threads from the bloated second and third entries in the series would force him to "revisit" the series again. Apparently this is a horrible torture.
To be blunt, I'm a fair weather fan of the series in the purest sense of the word. I was a huge fan and supporter of the first title on the PSX over ten years ago, I played through the second one but recall nothing beyond disappointment and didn't even bother with the third.
From what I gather, the third was the best in the series because it shed (har har) the whole Snake angle from most of the game.
To me, this seems like a cop out for both the players and Kojima.
As a fair weather fan, my love of the series begins and ends with Solid Snake. By playing 1,2 and 4 I got Snake's narrative arc and I would be content with there never being another Metal Gear title for as long as I live.
This isn't to say I wouldn't want the stealth mechanics of the game to come back in some form, far from it. The fact I can cloak myself as a Persian rug screams out for this game's mechanics to be in a more deserving title.
No. Instead, I have finally outgrown Solid Snake and the series no longer needs me.
I can recall seeing my first trailer for Metal Gear Solid on a Playstation demo disk back in 1998. Around then, some promotional trailer truck was going around pimping Playstation games. Were we to look back on them now, I'd probably see a truck full of games that would give me a headache but at that point it time they were the coolest goddamn things around.
The demo CD a trinket they gave out to everyone, so when I got home I poped it in to play some TOTALLY SWEET Crash Bandicoot. However, the video demonstration on the disk was for a game entitled Metal Gear I had never heard of.
It wasn't until I had exhaused everything else I could do on that CD that I clicked the play video button.
With it's engrishy cries of "THIS FALL: LET'S GET SOLID!", the theme music that's since become one of the series few consistent traits kicked in and never let me little eyes go until I'd watched the video at least four more times.
It seemed unreal then. Here was a game that was telling me not to kill everything I on the screen. Furthermore, its sci-fi/military angle seemed startlingly mature and realistic when I'd just finished playing games like Jumping Flash and Crash Bandicoot.
When the game came out later that November, it more than lived up to the hype. The game trapped you in a base against overwhelming odds with one clear instruction "sneak or die".
Though time has passed to reveal the game is an overwritten Japanese cartoon as imagined by the Rainbow Six art team, it was a game that served its purpose at the time.
Metal Gear Solid 2 then, represented another passage of time. While I wasn't much older than 11 when I played through Metal Gear, I was probably 15 by the time I was able to play Solid 2.
With its boring characters, bizarre Japanese quirks and lead character I had never even heard of, I silently wrote off the series to myself.
It was the same case with 4 in all honesty. Despite owning a Playstation 3 I still consider it an overpriced "brown HD graphics" generator that lacks substantial exclusive games. MGS4, then, was more or less the ramblings of an insane Japanese man to me.
After playing through it, I still consider my initial assessment correct.
MGS4 should have been the final, gorgeous, eulogy to the series but instead felt like a constipated trip to the can. Sure, you feel pumped sitting down to get the poisons out of your system, but nothing ever comes.
At any rate, Solid Snake and his chum Ocelot are astoundingly emotive characters here that run the gamut from being genuinely funny to tragic figures we end up rooting for.
Snake's final tribulations, throughout most of the proceedings, trap him in a world where he realizes his end is ever more nigh and that it'd best for him to simply fade away. He quickly realizes that, despite what the back of the case may say, in his final hour cannot stand alone. Instead, his journey can only be taken through the suffering of others.
Kojima seems to have taken to heart the classical lesson of "at the end of a comedy there is a wedding and at the end of a tragedy there is a death" yet failed to learn the trick of artistic restraint in applying those ideas.
Characters we once loved change both for the better and the worse all while Snake continues his slow march towards the graveyard, both literally and metaphorically.
Were the game to have ended at the climatic moment Snake pulls the trigger on the pistol in his mouth, I would have said that the entire game and series had been vindicated as story about one old dog who just couldn't learn a new trick.
Apparently, I was told that the internet is run by evil computers and that I can come back from the dead with just a collection of cells. Whatever.
4/6/10
She's So Heavy
Heavy Rain is a bad narrative, a bad game, and a bad influence on game designers and players. It's also one of the more significant games that's I've been delighted to play this year. It's fairly common on this space of mine to say that all modern game design ideas are bad and to chide those who enable them, but I've got no reservations in giving Heavy Rain my notable "Mr. McCarthy's urban underachievers award" with a beaming smile a parent might reserve for their handicapped child after they burn down the kitchen on the pretenses of "cooking like daddy".
Let's break it down.
Playing Heavy Rain taught me that David Cage is apparently both suffering from ADD and slightly autistic at the same time. In a bizzare twist, however, I don't mean these terms as a complete insult, but rather as legitimate descriptors of his so called "writing".
Every scene and decision you make in Heavy Rain unfolds in the same tripartite format every time of: looking/reacting/combating. Those who contest this forms a beautiful narrative when repeated some forty odd times are, with the full weight of an insult, morons.
Heavy Rain's story has no sense of pacing in any fashion beyond the immediate shock value. While critics may argue that the game advances "interactive fiction" or whatever superlative they may be thinking of in describing what is the adventure game yang to Myst.
Case in point is with the female character Madison.
She's a character I felt bad for only because she's stuck in a world written by men with little exposure to how actual women operate. Her characteristics beyond "journalist that is never once seen doing journalist things" is simply "she has tits and an ass". Every scene in which you control her attacks her sexuality and female qualities in some capacity, leading you to remain "uncomfortable" in any scene she takes a part in. You'll be raped with a drill, forced to strip, and even take part in completely unnecessary fucking for the sake of there being fucking.
In short, she's a tool to the detriment of the other characters both male and female. Never once did any of her plot threads lead to any serious conclusions nor did she ever do anything to make herself a particularly interesting character I wanted to see survive beyond a simple "boy I sure don't want a drill stuck in my vag either".
She the figurehead of the aformentioned greater narrative problem as a whole outlined above. Each scene will have you milling about until you obey the adventure game logic to proceed to the next section. Know that the crying baby could probably make use of the bottle lying conspicuously on the table? Well too bad, you can't touch it until the French developers say so.
In the end, the game ultimately boils down to you have not made too many missed button presses and having found around 15 red/blue pages to advance to the "good" ending.
Yeah, that's a second call back to Myst in one post. Want to fight about it?
All this contributes to is a hopeless feeling of noticing the puppet strings hanging all around you. While excellent movies/novels/goddamned real literature may frustrate you with character revelations and decisions, you're supposed to eventually understand these motives and place them within the overarching narrative, thus increasing your respect and enjoyment of the work.
When you're controlling a character who runs against all the logical motives you've been inputting for him, you merely scratch your head and roll your eyes.
As you undergo each progressively "difficult" scene- of which only two actually made me think through the consequences of my actions- you come to realize that David Cage wrote himself into a corner. With nowhere left to go, you're forced to endure scenes of melodrama and pointless theatrics that would have made the writers of Halo blush.
Of course, the melodrama may just be due to the fact David Cage can't write or keep a consistent universe. The game abounds with cultural anachronisms and clashes. We see French style toilets, cars, appliances, and electrical outlets in a city that's supposed to be a cross between Philly and Boston.
Characters murder other people, both innocent and not, in cold blood with absolutely no repercussions to speak of!
Again, let's go back to the journalist.
She's attacked by a crazy doc who wants to stick a drill in her vagina after he's convinced she's a fed. Should you pass the Simon-Says action sequence, she kills him with his own drill. After almost being brutally slaughtered in the most inhumane way possible she merely walks it off and proceeds to the next sequence where she strips for a mob boss.
What?! How?! Why?! More importantly why wouldn't the goddamned police start coming after her! Sure you could argue that nobody would miss a crazy old man.
Except this man is a drug dealer and has local connections and owned property. Madison also touched a dozen odd objects in the building. This is a game where the police have advanced computer glasses that can see through goddamned time and apparently murders just happen everyday? Good lord, did anyone even look at a second draft of this and ask "But what about?".
This is coming from a character who only hours before had been worried about being raped in her sleep and here she goes attempting to stick up a mobster. This is completely inconsistent in her character actions, which nobody bothers to give any motivation to other than she wants to write articles for some weekly shitrag.
Unless she was an embedded reporter in Iraq, her whole character makes no sense at all. This isn't creating a "mysterious femme fatale", this is making a stupid one dimensional cut out.
Then again I should expect much from a game where I survive a bomb blast by hiding in a fridge.
Narrative could be forgive if it was a good game, but it's not. There is no game to speak of. Since the murder is the same berk every time you play, there is no reason to ever return to the game. With absolutely no element of "play" at work beyond binary distinctions that boil down to you not turning the page fast enough, there's nothing one can call a game at work in the systems here.
I guess it's a game in the same way I held my finger on the pages where I had to make a decision in "choose your own adventure" novels. I did that there because I thought I was being so damn clever. Here you can sub that phrase with "hitting the power button on the console".
More damning, perhaps, is that in it's attempts to be a movie there's no distinction for when one should be "active" on the controller or when one is being timed. I guess this is to give the illusion of decisions and consequences being weighed on the fly.
Too bad there's a pause button I can use at any time to game their system. Sorry David, you failed at making suspense.
It doesn't even need to be mentioned that the voice acting and graphics are mediocre at best and downright awful at worst.
So why do I still consider this an excellent title everyone should check out at least once? It's the sign of something much better.
Where Mr Cage failed in his attempts to rip off movies by mashing Saw and Mystic River together, a good writer could step in to deliver bite sized narrative content that delivers an experience one can't get without the "interactive" nature of games.
I'd like to envision a future where titles such as this would come on a blu-ray, dvd, or- God Lord willing- streamed directly through your cable as part of primetime programming. While Heavy Rain shot itself in the foot by arbitrary tying itself to the PS3 console, I could imagine a company such as Pixar taking the interactive features of blu-ray players to deliver experiences that are shaped by you as a viewer.
While this isn't to say I want the death of passive reader narrative in any capacity- I'd probably be annoyed as hell if I had to make a decision every time Peter Griffin made a flashback or Dilbert had to choose which wacky workplace pun to use- I do see this as a viable new medium. I imagine something akin to The Incredibles or Up where decisions don't ever lead to the arbitrary "death" of a character as video games are destined to be constricted by. Instead, I see viewers being able to choose their own narrative arc and path through the story at key points which the writers have dictated as possible branches.
Since players/viewers can and will always choose the jerk option in any game they play, this format would allow writers to keep their artistic control while allowing significant choice by the end consumer. In the end, we'd create a true mutually generated narrative.
It also wouldn't hurt if these pieces were kept short so as to allow unlimited potential in visuals to not be trapped by Heavy Rain's constant texture repeats and rigid animations.
I really enjoyed my time with Heavy Rain. I just hope next time they'll at least throw a curtain up to cover the strings pulling me about.
Let's break it down.
Playing Heavy Rain taught me that David Cage is apparently both suffering from ADD and slightly autistic at the same time. In a bizzare twist, however, I don't mean these terms as a complete insult, but rather as legitimate descriptors of his so called "writing".
Every scene and decision you make in Heavy Rain unfolds in the same tripartite format every time of: looking/reacting/combating. Those who contest this forms a beautiful narrative when repeated some forty odd times are, with the full weight of an insult, morons.
Heavy Rain's story has no sense of pacing in any fashion beyond the immediate shock value. While critics may argue that the game advances "interactive fiction" or whatever superlative they may be thinking of in describing what is the adventure game yang to Myst.
Case in point is with the female character Madison.
She's a character I felt bad for only because she's stuck in a world written by men with little exposure to how actual women operate. Her characteristics beyond "journalist that is never once seen doing journalist things" is simply "she has tits and an ass". Every scene in which you control her attacks her sexuality and female qualities in some capacity, leading you to remain "uncomfortable" in any scene she takes a part in. You'll be raped with a drill, forced to strip, and even take part in completely unnecessary fucking for the sake of there being fucking.
In short, she's a tool to the detriment of the other characters both male and female. Never once did any of her plot threads lead to any serious conclusions nor did she ever do anything to make herself a particularly interesting character I wanted to see survive beyond a simple "boy I sure don't want a drill stuck in my vag either".
She the figurehead of the aformentioned greater narrative problem as a whole outlined above. Each scene will have you milling about until you obey the adventure game logic to proceed to the next section. Know that the crying baby could probably make use of the bottle lying conspicuously on the table? Well too bad, you can't touch it until the French developers say so.
In the end, the game ultimately boils down to you have not made too many missed button presses and having found around 15 red/blue pages to advance to the "good" ending.
Yeah, that's a second call back to Myst in one post. Want to fight about it?
All this contributes to is a hopeless feeling of noticing the puppet strings hanging all around you. While excellent movies/novels/goddamned real literature may frustrate you with character revelations and decisions, you're supposed to eventually understand these motives and place them within the overarching narrative, thus increasing your respect and enjoyment of the work.
When you're controlling a character who runs against all the logical motives you've been inputting for him, you merely scratch your head and roll your eyes.
As you undergo each progressively "difficult" scene- of which only two actually made me think through the consequences of my actions- you come to realize that David Cage wrote himself into a corner. With nowhere left to go, you're forced to endure scenes of melodrama and pointless theatrics that would have made the writers of Halo blush.
Of course, the melodrama may just be due to the fact David Cage can't write or keep a consistent universe. The game abounds with cultural anachronisms and clashes. We see French style toilets, cars, appliances, and electrical outlets in a city that's supposed to be a cross between Philly and Boston.
Characters murder other people, both innocent and not, in cold blood with absolutely no repercussions to speak of!
Again, let's go back to the journalist.
She's attacked by a crazy doc who wants to stick a drill in her vagina after he's convinced she's a fed. Should you pass the Simon-Says action sequence, she kills him with his own drill. After almost being brutally slaughtered in the most inhumane way possible she merely walks it off and proceeds to the next sequence where she strips for a mob boss.
What?! How?! Why?! More importantly why wouldn't the goddamned police start coming after her! Sure you could argue that nobody would miss a crazy old man.
Except this man is a drug dealer and has local connections and owned property. Madison also touched a dozen odd objects in the building. This is a game where the police have advanced computer glasses that can see through goddamned time and apparently murders just happen everyday? Good lord, did anyone even look at a second draft of this and ask "But what about?".
This is coming from a character who only hours before had been worried about being raped in her sleep and here she goes attempting to stick up a mobster. This is completely inconsistent in her character actions, which nobody bothers to give any motivation to other than she wants to write articles for some weekly shitrag.
Unless she was an embedded reporter in Iraq, her whole character makes no sense at all. This isn't creating a "mysterious femme fatale", this is making a stupid one dimensional cut out.
Then again I should expect much from a game where I survive a bomb blast by hiding in a fridge.
Narrative could be forgive if it was a good game, but it's not. There is no game to speak of. Since the murder is the same berk every time you play, there is no reason to ever return to the game. With absolutely no element of "play" at work beyond binary distinctions that boil down to you not turning the page fast enough, there's nothing one can call a game at work in the systems here.
I guess it's a game in the same way I held my finger on the pages where I had to make a decision in "choose your own adventure" novels. I did that there because I thought I was being so damn clever. Here you can sub that phrase with "hitting the power button on the console".
More damning, perhaps, is that in it's attempts to be a movie there's no distinction for when one should be "active" on the controller or when one is being timed. I guess this is to give the illusion of decisions and consequences being weighed on the fly.
Too bad there's a pause button I can use at any time to game their system. Sorry David, you failed at making suspense.
It doesn't even need to be mentioned that the voice acting and graphics are mediocre at best and downright awful at worst.
So why do I still consider this an excellent title everyone should check out at least once? It's the sign of something much better.
Where Mr Cage failed in his attempts to rip off movies by mashing Saw and Mystic River together, a good writer could step in to deliver bite sized narrative content that delivers an experience one can't get without the "interactive" nature of games.
I'd like to envision a future where titles such as this would come on a blu-ray, dvd, or- God Lord willing- streamed directly through your cable as part of primetime programming. While Heavy Rain shot itself in the foot by arbitrary tying itself to the PS3 console, I could imagine a company such as Pixar taking the interactive features of blu-ray players to deliver experiences that are shaped by you as a viewer.
While this isn't to say I want the death of passive reader narrative in any capacity- I'd probably be annoyed as hell if I had to make a decision every time Peter Griffin made a flashback or Dilbert had to choose which wacky workplace pun to use- I do see this as a viable new medium. I imagine something akin to The Incredibles or Up where decisions don't ever lead to the arbitrary "death" of a character as video games are destined to be constricted by. Instead, I see viewers being able to choose their own narrative arc and path through the story at key points which the writers have dictated as possible branches.
Since players/viewers can and will always choose the jerk option in any game they play, this format would allow writers to keep their artistic control while allowing significant choice by the end consumer. In the end, we'd create a true mutually generated narrative.
It also wouldn't hurt if these pieces were kept short so as to allow unlimited potential in visuals to not be trapped by Heavy Rain's constant texture repeats and rigid animations.
I really enjoyed my time with Heavy Rain. I just hope next time they'll at least throw a curtain up to cover the strings pulling me about.
3/28/10
Part 3
It's the best question you can ask anyone really.
Why? Why is this? Why should I? Why should we?
Everyone, anywhere, all the time, should ask themselves this question after each statement someone makes.
You are beautiful.
Why?
This is tasty.
Why?
Etc etc so on and so forth ad nauseum.
So how does this blog post relate to video games? Simple. Ask yourself why every moment you're playing every game.
You must stop the invaders.
Why?
Today, most game designers are stunted and failed screenplay writers who would say- based upon their Star Wars and comic book addled haze of a childhood- a number of non-concerning reasons.
Because the fate of the world hangs in the balance!
Why?
One of the greatest games of all time, Doom, has a constant response to every why.
You must kill the monsters!
Why?
Because they are from Hell. And hell's pretty bad.
Why?
Because they've murdered all your comrades, your friends, your family, and you are trapped alone on mars. Everyone you once knew and loved is strung from the trees and walls, desperately taking in their final gasps of life in a haze of pain. You are trapped in a world where flesh and bone compose the walls, floors, ceilings. All the while creatures are looming around every corner to eviscerate you and claim the only remaining human soul that anyone knows of. For this, you are the last candle light of humanity before the unstoppable wind of evil snuffs out the once burning beacon of human existence in this solar system.
oh.
You really can't form a more complete narrative than that. Of course, the whys' will continue as the game progresses.
Why are their chainsaws and medical supplies in hell?
Why are the same groups of monsters constantly coming after me?
Why are these space bases laid out in a maze like fashion with no practical purpose?
Simple response: "Hell's a pretty fucked up place dude. You ever been there to say what it's like?"
I'm tempted to bring a recent modern game I've played, Uncharted 2, which was recently lumped with more praise that I'd ever care to make a case against. Unlike Doom's constant "why" response, Uncharted 2 leaves you with no responses.
Nathan Drake must claim the lost treasure of some place!
Why?
Cause he wants it.
Why?
Cause he is a treasure hunter.
Why?
Fuck you play our terribly acted game.
No.
As you begin to ask more questions, you're left with even worse responses.
Help Nathan Drake steal these maps!
Why?
Cause he wants them.
Why?
Cause.
That's it, that's the entire motivation for the game. Naughty Dog assumes you give a shit about helping a mass murder earn his riches.
It's pretty depressing that the general population is apparently eating up this pap. Each level introduces mechanics you will use only once in a blue moon all while attempting to make a loveable and human character out of a man who steals from museums because it benefits him.
In Grand Theft Auto 4 we played Niko Belic, a man who wasn't afraid to kill but realized the inhumanity of himself while taking part. The open sandbox parts didn't punish you engaging in ultra violence and the game always ignored your agency as a player in between missions.
This is a good thing. I know I occasionally want to fuck around with a game, so why should it have any bearing on the overarching story? It's akin to watching your favorite scenes off a DVD. The actors have no idea if you're either laughing at it or whacking off to it. It honestly makes no difference to them, they'll keep playing their part in the drama. You, on the other hand, are free to enjoy both the moment to moment excitement and the overarching irony taking place around them.
Uncharted 2, on the other hand, assumes you give a flying fuck about obeying it's amoral and unlikeable character's moral code.
Break into the museum and steal artifacts, but make sure to not kill any guards!
Why?
Because they are innocent.
Why?
Because fuck you, play our prescripted scenario.
Of course, in the following level you're apparently free to kill off similarly armed mercenaries as you please.
At no point in this game have I been told why I, as a player, should care. At least GTA4 you've got the promise of more free areas to explore and destroy as you please.
Which brings us all back to Doom. You care because you don't want to die. If you want to die then there's really no point for you to boot up this game now is there.
Unlike modern "masterpieces" such as Uncharted 2, your motivations outside of this overaching question of why are both self imposed and rewarded for exploring them.
Why do I want to find these secret areas in Doom?
Because you'll get access to better guns and items sooner, especially if you've croaked before in this level.
I cannot stress enough that Doom attains that intangible since of "place" and "weight" that so many other shooters have been attempting for years to capture. As you're zipping through the levels, each more convoluted than the last, you feel this unexplainable since of belonging.
The textures with all their bright 256 VGA colors feel real. Enemies made from photos of clay models and pixel art feel strangely menacing. More importantly, perhaps, all of these visuals allow you to develop iconic imagery with each level that allows you to navigate with purpose.
The next time you play a given level, you'll remember the basics of where items and keycards are and will then be tempted to explore the out limits of the map.
What if you attempt that jump?
What if you press against that wall which seems slightly out of place?
99% of the time, you'll be rewarded with a new secret area or simply a different way you might be able to approach a situation.
This point of "going back" to levels is another important facet of what makes Doom one of the greatest games of all time and continues to respond to "why": It's a game that grows with you.
You'll want to go back and replay this level on a harder difficulty.
Why?
Because you'll find new weapons, more enemies, and new challenges due to your changing physical attributes.
As you keep pushing yourself through the harder challenges, you'll find that tangible sense of place become more real on each playthrough. You'll learn to recognize and respond to every single monster. You'll learn the dirty little tricks of movement you didn't think were possible. You'll discover the funny little ticks and side benefits each powerup offers. You'll also find yourself pushing for faster and faster clear times.
In the end, you'll find that your greatest challenge lies in fighting with the geometry of the level itself and how it controls your assaults on the enemy.
That choice of the word assault, by the way, isn't merely a synonym for "fights". It means just that, assualt. You are faster, better armed, and smarter than any enemy in Doom. Assuming you know each monster and their capabilities, the only thing that could possibly kill you is any surprise attack the level itself could create.
More entertaining, however, is the fact their strength lies in numbers. Glorious glorious numbers.
A small fight will have at least 2 dozen monsters attempting to ambush you. A larger fight will be pushing the 50 mark. The best fights, however, will throw well over a hundred foes at you.
You will not stop shooting and you will not stop for a rest with pathetic concepts like "regenerating health" or "limited ammo". Instead, you're going to fight!
You'll ask once more, why should I fight so many goons?
Because it's a perfectly designed game.
Why? Why is this? Why should I? Why should we?
Everyone, anywhere, all the time, should ask themselves this question after each statement someone makes.
You are beautiful.
Why?
This is tasty.
Why?
Etc etc so on and so forth ad nauseum.
So how does this blog post relate to video games? Simple. Ask yourself why every moment you're playing every game.
You must stop the invaders.
Why?
Today, most game designers are stunted and failed screenplay writers who would say- based upon their Star Wars and comic book addled haze of a childhood- a number of non-concerning reasons.
Because the fate of the world hangs in the balance!
Why?
One of the greatest games of all time, Doom, has a constant response to every why.
You must kill the monsters!
Why?
Because they are from Hell. And hell's pretty bad.
Why?
Because they've murdered all your comrades, your friends, your family, and you are trapped alone on mars. Everyone you once knew and loved is strung from the trees and walls, desperately taking in their final gasps of life in a haze of pain. You are trapped in a world where flesh and bone compose the walls, floors, ceilings. All the while creatures are looming around every corner to eviscerate you and claim the only remaining human soul that anyone knows of. For this, you are the last candle light of humanity before the unstoppable wind of evil snuffs out the once burning beacon of human existence in this solar system.
oh.
You really can't form a more complete narrative than that. Of course, the whys' will continue as the game progresses.
Why are their chainsaws and medical supplies in hell?
Why are the same groups of monsters constantly coming after me?
Why are these space bases laid out in a maze like fashion with no practical purpose?
Simple response: "Hell's a pretty fucked up place dude. You ever been there to say what it's like?"
I'm tempted to bring a recent modern game I've played, Uncharted 2, which was recently lumped with more praise that I'd ever care to make a case against. Unlike Doom's constant "why" response, Uncharted 2 leaves you with no responses.
Nathan Drake must claim the lost treasure of some place!
Why?
Cause he wants it.
Why?
Cause he is a treasure hunter.
Why?
Fuck you play our terribly acted game.
No.
As you begin to ask more questions, you're left with even worse responses.
Help Nathan Drake steal these maps!
Why?
Cause he wants them.
Why?
Cause.
That's it, that's the entire motivation for the game. Naughty Dog assumes you give a shit about helping a mass murder earn his riches.
It's pretty depressing that the general population is apparently eating up this pap. Each level introduces mechanics you will use only once in a blue moon all while attempting to make a loveable and human character out of a man who steals from museums because it benefits him.
In Grand Theft Auto 4 we played Niko Belic, a man who wasn't afraid to kill but realized the inhumanity of himself while taking part. The open sandbox parts didn't punish you engaging in ultra violence and the game always ignored your agency as a player in between missions.
This is a good thing. I know I occasionally want to fuck around with a game, so why should it have any bearing on the overarching story? It's akin to watching your favorite scenes off a DVD. The actors have no idea if you're either laughing at it or whacking off to it. It honestly makes no difference to them, they'll keep playing their part in the drama. You, on the other hand, are free to enjoy both the moment to moment excitement and the overarching irony taking place around them.
Uncharted 2, on the other hand, assumes you give a flying fuck about obeying it's amoral and unlikeable character's moral code.
Break into the museum and steal artifacts, but make sure to not kill any guards!
Why?
Because they are innocent.
Why?
Because fuck you, play our prescripted scenario.
Of course, in the following level you're apparently free to kill off similarly armed mercenaries as you please.
At no point in this game have I been told why I, as a player, should care. At least GTA4 you've got the promise of more free areas to explore and destroy as you please.
Which brings us all back to Doom. You care because you don't want to die. If you want to die then there's really no point for you to boot up this game now is there.
Unlike modern "masterpieces" such as Uncharted 2, your motivations outside of this overaching question of why are both self imposed and rewarded for exploring them.
Why do I want to find these secret areas in Doom?
Because you'll get access to better guns and items sooner, especially if you've croaked before in this level.
I cannot stress enough that Doom attains that intangible since of "place" and "weight" that so many other shooters have been attempting for years to capture. As you're zipping through the levels, each more convoluted than the last, you feel this unexplainable since of belonging.
The textures with all their bright 256 VGA colors feel real. Enemies made from photos of clay models and pixel art feel strangely menacing. More importantly, perhaps, all of these visuals allow you to develop iconic imagery with each level that allows you to navigate with purpose.
The next time you play a given level, you'll remember the basics of where items and keycards are and will then be tempted to explore the out limits of the map.
What if you attempt that jump?
What if you press against that wall which seems slightly out of place?
99% of the time, you'll be rewarded with a new secret area or simply a different way you might be able to approach a situation.
This point of "going back" to levels is another important facet of what makes Doom one of the greatest games of all time and continues to respond to "why": It's a game that grows with you.
You'll want to go back and replay this level on a harder difficulty.
Why?
Because you'll find new weapons, more enemies, and new challenges due to your changing physical attributes.
As you keep pushing yourself through the harder challenges, you'll find that tangible sense of place become more real on each playthrough. You'll learn to recognize and respond to every single monster. You'll learn the dirty little tricks of movement you didn't think were possible. You'll discover the funny little ticks and side benefits each powerup offers. You'll also find yourself pushing for faster and faster clear times.
In the end, you'll find that your greatest challenge lies in fighting with the geometry of the level itself and how it controls your assaults on the enemy.
That choice of the word assault, by the way, isn't merely a synonym for "fights". It means just that, assualt. You are faster, better armed, and smarter than any enemy in Doom. Assuming you know each monster and their capabilities, the only thing that could possibly kill you is any surprise attack the level itself could create.
More entertaining, however, is the fact their strength lies in numbers. Glorious glorious numbers.
A small fight will have at least 2 dozen monsters attempting to ambush you. A larger fight will be pushing the 50 mark. The best fights, however, will throw well over a hundred foes at you.
You will not stop shooting and you will not stop for a rest with pathetic concepts like "regenerating health" or "limited ammo". Instead, you're going to fight!
You'll ask once more, why should I fight so many goons?
Because it's a perfectly designed game.
2/28/10
Part 2
4: Half-Life
It's an unsurprising choice most folks make when noting their "top games" lists. It's an anachronistic choice when made today though. For our supposedly refined taste in games now, many of the elements in Half-Life are just plain silly either in or out of context. Chief among these being crates filled with ammo.
Today, when we play our epic cinematic masterpieces ammo is typically found in the most obvious places, off the bodies of the fallen. Some games take this process of ammo collection and make it an mini game in and of itself, such as recent PC gaming darling Crysis. There, a dedicated press of the action key is required before you can even pick up the ammo. In games such as Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2- The Fall of Troy, the acquiring of ammo is so automatic that not even a sound effect chimes in to mark your pickups.
Meanwhile, in Half-Life, you smash an man sized crate with a crowbar to find exactly one rocket inside. This crate, logically enough, being located within an office complex.
As a staff member of an office complex I can say with great certainty, though not complete, that I have never once seen a missile fall out of a crate.
The beauty of the "smash the crate" action was, however, that it gussied up a the age old tradition of opening the treasure chest with something that felt very real and tactile.
I could list the other achievements of Half-Life- its two dozen different weapons, its unshifting perspective, its realistic level design, its lengthy playtime, its excellent multiplayer, and its fantastic expansion packs- but they all pale to the fact that Half-Life was the first polished shooter.
Compared to the other games I'll be running down on this countdown list, Half-Life was the only title that was feature complete right out of the box. There are no showstopping bugs, there is no need to wait for user content or patches to fix the game, and- most importantly- none of its mechanics are half baked.
Here's an example:
The Health/Armor Stations.
Bungie's Marathon games, forever landlocked on Mac platforms, were the first noteworthy titles to make use of wall mounted Medkits, despite the actual forefather of the concept being a rightfully forgotten title called Corridor 7. Marathon let the player recharge their energy at these vending machines at will.
What Bungie forgot, however, was providing the player with any other means of regenerating life. It became easy to trap yourself in a nigh unwinnable situation because you entered a level with barely any life and no Med station in sight for a good half hour or so. Furthermore, there was absolutely no risk involved in any Marathon map once these stations were discovered. Players could simply take a few hits from a fight, run back to the health teat, then recklessly charge back into the fray with nary a consequence.
Foreshadowing of modern FPS health systems I suppose.
Half-Life, though, offered players the sanctuary of the teat fairly frequently but with a finite number of health points each could bestow. Rather than seeing each health unit as something to suckle on through the entire mission, each had to be used sparingly get the most out of them. A succinct example of Valves "refine not innovate" philosophy.
Although I've claimed much ado about how much was included within the game itself, I can't deny its modding scene saved that game from being just another notch on the bedpost of PC gaming's "unappreciated gems".
Half-Life did give us Counter Strike after all. It also begot: Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat, Vampire Slayer, Action Half-Life, The Opera, They Hunger, Deathmatch Classic, and at least 30 different single player games I can barely remember playing.
In short, that single game could provide someone with enough content to last them at least a decade of games.
It offered me far more, it introduced me to a friend.
Half-Life cannot be undersold in its importance of shaping games we play now.
Go to www.steampowered.com and pick it up for ten bucks. It's the best money you'll have ever spent on a game.
It's an unsurprising choice most folks make when noting their "top games" lists. It's an anachronistic choice when made today though. For our supposedly refined taste in games now, many of the elements in Half-Life are just plain silly either in or out of context. Chief among these being crates filled with ammo.
Today, when we play our epic cinematic masterpieces ammo is typically found in the most obvious places, off the bodies of the fallen. Some games take this process of ammo collection and make it an mini game in and of itself, such as recent PC gaming darling Crysis. There, a dedicated press of the action key is required before you can even pick up the ammo. In games such as Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2- The Fall of Troy, the acquiring of ammo is so automatic that not even a sound effect chimes in to mark your pickups.
Meanwhile, in Half-Life, you smash an man sized crate with a crowbar to find exactly one rocket inside. This crate, logically enough, being located within an office complex.
As a staff member of an office complex I can say with great certainty, though not complete, that I have never once seen a missile fall out of a crate.
The beauty of the "smash the crate" action was, however, that it gussied up a the age old tradition of opening the treasure chest with something that felt very real and tactile.
I could list the other achievements of Half-Life- its two dozen different weapons, its unshifting perspective, its realistic level design, its lengthy playtime, its excellent multiplayer, and its fantastic expansion packs- but they all pale to the fact that Half-Life was the first polished shooter.
Compared to the other games I'll be running down on this countdown list, Half-Life was the only title that was feature complete right out of the box. There are no showstopping bugs, there is no need to wait for user content or patches to fix the game, and- most importantly- none of its mechanics are half baked.
Here's an example:
The Health/Armor Stations.
Bungie's Marathon games, forever landlocked on Mac platforms, were the first noteworthy titles to make use of wall mounted Medkits, despite the actual forefather of the concept being a rightfully forgotten title called Corridor 7. Marathon let the player recharge their energy at these vending machines at will.
What Bungie forgot, however, was providing the player with any other means of regenerating life. It became easy to trap yourself in a nigh unwinnable situation because you entered a level with barely any life and no Med station in sight for a good half hour or so. Furthermore, there was absolutely no risk involved in any Marathon map once these stations were discovered. Players could simply take a few hits from a fight, run back to the health teat, then recklessly charge back into the fray with nary a consequence.
Foreshadowing of modern FPS health systems I suppose.
Half-Life, though, offered players the sanctuary of the teat fairly frequently but with a finite number of health points each could bestow. Rather than seeing each health unit as something to suckle on through the entire mission, each had to be used sparingly get the most out of them. A succinct example of Valves "refine not innovate" philosophy.
Although I've claimed much ado about how much was included within the game itself, I can't deny its modding scene saved that game from being just another notch on the bedpost of PC gaming's "unappreciated gems".
Half-Life did give us Counter Strike after all. It also begot: Team Fortress Classic, Day of Defeat, Vampire Slayer, Action Half-Life, The Opera, They Hunger, Deathmatch Classic, and at least 30 different single player games I can barely remember playing.
In short, that single game could provide someone with enough content to last them at least a decade of games.
It offered me far more, it introduced me to a friend.
Half-Life cannot be undersold in its importance of shaping games we play now.
Go to www.steampowered.com and pick it up for ten bucks. It's the best money you'll have ever spent on a game.
2/25/10
A List PART 1
So recently I've been getting asked by friends (they are not imaginary I swear) what I consider my tops five games to be.
It's a simple question really, as everyone is capable of rattling off a list of favorites at will. But then I got to thinking how could I objectively examine each game I've played based upon my own criteria of what is a "good game". This then creates the matter of complete subjectivity again and thus creates a temporal paradox but whatever.
Thus here were my three criteria when composing this list:
Design Quality: Is the control sound? Are the game rules in place logical and fun to follow? Is there a consistency throughout the ruleset?
Personal Significance: Is this game "important" to me? How have other games impacted my ideas on games by the contents of this title?
Longevity: Am I still playing this game now? Will I still be playing and talking about this game in the future? What impacts will this game have on future titles and even my life?
I can't deny this entire deal is as pompous and masturbatory as possible.
Without further adieu, onto the list.
5: Rock Band (Franchise)
Rock Band is a direct insult to both video games and music. At it's core, the game is a simple recreation of Simon where, at a perfect level of play, your only real decision making comes through where to double your points for a short time. Thus, it spits directly in the face of the entire design philosophy of player "agency" which countless games have been striving for over the past two decades.
For real musicians, the game has become a defacto signifier of "selling out". There is absolutely no real musical benefit for becoming "good" at the game, nor does it even come close to simulating the countless agonizing hours I have no doubt many musicians undergo when learning those opening notes of "Stairway to Heaven".
Despite all of this, it is a game I've clocked- were you to average it out over time- at least an hour a day for over two years. In terms of being a "most played game", Rock Band is- undoubtedly- it.
Games are, of course, about escapist fantasy. Could anybody deny the power of the "rockstar" fantasy? Rock Band, ultimately a futile exercise in chasing after a higher score, is second life in a box.
Let's go into a little backstory everyone loved so dearly with my FEAR 2 review.
It was January 2006 and I had just returned from winter break back to Fitchburg State. Once again, I was coming back from the mall with the now defunct Circuit City with a new game in tow. This game, know as "Guitar Hero", was a monstrosity few had ever seen before. It wasn't simply a "game" you bought for ninety bucks. No, this was a whole new beast.
It's oversized crate contained a guitar which, as related to me by one of my floormates in the front seat, looked "Like something meant for preschoolers". He wasn't incorrect, of course, but I believe his perspective might have been a touch jaded. He was, after all, an actual guitarist.
The ride to the mall Gamestop is a rather surreal experience in retrospect, feeling as if it took place almost a lifetime ago. Buying the game was essentially a fluke in and of itself. Being a fan of any title with a big controller attached to it, a quick glance over an online review was enough to convince me to check it out.
That evening, as the wails of a poorly covered Boston song echoed the halls, I had found a new addiction.
Guitar Hero 1 was a very flawed game technically, resulting in an absolutely skewered difficulty curve when it came to jumping between skill levels. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 so at the time it was borderline nirvana.
Everyone on the floor had a different song they enjoyed hearing and playing. Roommate one, Matt, always enjoyed clicking along with Ziggy Stardust while roommate two, Dan, would end up singing along to Stellar unconsciously.
It created a sort of "meta" game for us. Me and Matt would trade scores back and forth on Ziggy while Dan would occasionally play along on his acoustic. At the same time, it was just so restrictive. "Man," Matt would typically quip, "they really need some drums in this." I, meanwhile, would wonder why I couldn't play the bass.
Guitar Hero 2 entered the scene with less fanfare than the first. I believed I'd gotten my fill of the first game and the tracklist of the second was average at best, but the addition of a second player made the experience far more interesting if only to have different tracks to play with.
When Rock Band was released in November of 2007, I remember driving through almost blizzard like conditions to get the boxed instrument set. While the GH series hinted at a sort of "meta" experience, Rock Band was a new world.
I found, connected and fell out with an entire group of friends due to the game. Even typing that sentence now creates a rather nostalgic headrush. Booting up the game for the first time and hitting the opening lick of "Mississippi Queen", complete with the clack of the drumsticks and the off-tempo singing of a lost friend, still resonates with me.
I can even remember the song I was singing the night shit really hit the fan: "Pretend We're Dead". A fitting anthem.
Even now, that group long since gone, I still chip away with my plastic guitar. Last summer I journeyed into Boston with some old high school friends to play the game with some of the developers and other fans at the Hancock Theater. As we played Foreplay/Longtime with the audience clapping and booing in time, the dissipation between the reality and fantasy was complete. It's more than a game and it's far more than a feeling I guess.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART
It's a simple question really, as everyone is capable of rattling off a list of favorites at will. But then I got to thinking how could I objectively examine each game I've played based upon my own criteria of what is a "good game". This then creates the matter of complete subjectivity again and thus creates a temporal paradox but whatever.
Thus here were my three criteria when composing this list:
Design Quality: Is the control sound? Are the game rules in place logical and fun to follow? Is there a consistency throughout the ruleset?
Personal Significance: Is this game "important" to me? How have other games impacted my ideas on games by the contents of this title?
Longevity: Am I still playing this game now? Will I still be playing and talking about this game in the future? What impacts will this game have on future titles and even my life?
I can't deny this entire deal is as pompous and masturbatory as possible.
Without further adieu, onto the list.
5: Rock Band (Franchise)
Rock Band is a direct insult to both video games and music. At it's core, the game is a simple recreation of Simon where, at a perfect level of play, your only real decision making comes through where to double your points for a short time. Thus, it spits directly in the face of the entire design philosophy of player "agency" which countless games have been striving for over the past two decades.
For real musicians, the game has become a defacto signifier of "selling out". There is absolutely no real musical benefit for becoming "good" at the game, nor does it even come close to simulating the countless agonizing hours I have no doubt many musicians undergo when learning those opening notes of "Stairway to Heaven".
Despite all of this, it is a game I've clocked- were you to average it out over time- at least an hour a day for over two years. In terms of being a "most played game", Rock Band is- undoubtedly- it.
Games are, of course, about escapist fantasy. Could anybody deny the power of the "rockstar" fantasy? Rock Band, ultimately a futile exercise in chasing after a higher score, is second life in a box.
Let's go into a little backstory everyone loved so dearly with my FEAR 2 review.
It was January 2006 and I had just returned from winter break back to Fitchburg State. Once again, I was coming back from the mall with the now defunct Circuit City with a new game in tow. This game, know as "Guitar Hero", was a monstrosity few had ever seen before. It wasn't simply a "game" you bought for ninety bucks. No, this was a whole new beast.
It's oversized crate contained a guitar which, as related to me by one of my floormates in the front seat, looked "Like something meant for preschoolers". He wasn't incorrect, of course, but I believe his perspective might have been a touch jaded. He was, after all, an actual guitarist.
The ride to the mall Gamestop is a rather surreal experience in retrospect, feeling as if it took place almost a lifetime ago. Buying the game was essentially a fluke in and of itself. Being a fan of any title with a big controller attached to it, a quick glance over an online review was enough to convince me to check it out.
That evening, as the wails of a poorly covered Boston song echoed the halls, I had found a new addiction.
Guitar Hero 1 was a very flawed game technically, resulting in an absolutely skewered difficulty curve when it came to jumping between skill levels. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20 so at the time it was borderline nirvana.
Everyone on the floor had a different song they enjoyed hearing and playing. Roommate one, Matt, always enjoyed clicking along with Ziggy Stardust while roommate two, Dan, would end up singing along to Stellar unconsciously.
It created a sort of "meta" game for us. Me and Matt would trade scores back and forth on Ziggy while Dan would occasionally play along on his acoustic. At the same time, it was just so restrictive. "Man," Matt would typically quip, "they really need some drums in this." I, meanwhile, would wonder why I couldn't play the bass.
Guitar Hero 2 entered the scene with less fanfare than the first. I believed I'd gotten my fill of the first game and the tracklist of the second was average at best, but the addition of a second player made the experience far more interesting if only to have different tracks to play with.
When Rock Band was released in November of 2007, I remember driving through almost blizzard like conditions to get the boxed instrument set. While the GH series hinted at a sort of "meta" experience, Rock Band was a new world.
I found, connected and fell out with an entire group of friends due to the game. Even typing that sentence now creates a rather nostalgic headrush. Booting up the game for the first time and hitting the opening lick of "Mississippi Queen", complete with the clack of the drumsticks and the off-tempo singing of a lost friend, still resonates with me.
I can even remember the song I was singing the night shit really hit the fan: "Pretend We're Dead". A fitting anthem.
Even now, that group long since gone, I still chip away with my plastic guitar. Last summer I journeyed into Boston with some old high school friends to play the game with some of the developers and other fans at the Hancock Theater. As we played Foreplay/Longtime with the audience clapping and booing in time, the dissipation between the reality and fantasy was complete. It's more than a game and it's far more than a feeling I guess.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)