I could just go outside.

Let’s talk about bad games for a moment.

As I’ve jokingly said in the past on this blog, PC gaming died somewhere around 2003-2004. I guess somewhere around the point Half-Life 2 was released. After the subliminal PC experience that was Half-Life, Valve realized that lighting had genuinely struck and that the odds were forever stacked against them. After all, it’s impossible for anyone to follow up the best single and multiplayer action games (for novelty’s sake we’re going to consider Counter-Strike part of Half-Life because it is) with another smash mega hit. So for six years Valve toiled and toiled to make the most polished game out on the market. No chaff was kept for their little darling as every individual piece was honed and crafted into a refined diamond that nobody could say with a straight face was “bad” in the traditional sense.

But that’s what Half-Life 2 is: a bad game.

It’s not the only game guilty of this sin, as we’re going to find out we can blame Halo and the rise of the modern gaming console as one of the many sinners that led us to this place, but it’s one of the three games I wanted to focus on talking about what the current standards of refinement and mass production have wrought in the gaming industry.

Compared to Half-Life, HL2 is a treat for the eyes, a fantastic soundscape, and a wonderful experience. None of these factors really matter though as story is ultimately irrelevant for a game. At this point, we come to a critical juncture in our industry where game is either about the gameplay or its story. Tragically, these separate pieces seem to have been impossible to recreate since Deus Ex in 2000.

For all the smoke and mirrors of a living world, HL2 ultimately made you into a mobile camera that relied on the stale gimmicks of boxy room after boxy room setpiece wherein a different gimmick separating you from the next door.

I can’t fully blame Valve though. Halo’s release in 2001 marked a permanent shift in the design of action games. Bungie stated themselves that goal of Halo was to make you enjoy “those first 30 seconds” of gameplay over and over again in every segment of combat. A noble goal considering those precious moment to moment experiences are what make up good games. Unfortunately, developers were too blindsided by the fact Bungie actually made an FPS work on the terribly controlling consoles that they completely missed the higher goals of the game design.

Instead of games with satisfying core mechanics built around a series of varying challenges to those mechanics, we instead game poorly scripted and paced movies with a series of base vaudeville vignettes of gameplay.

It shouldn’t be unsurprising, after all, considering the rise of console gaming within the sixth generation of systems. These are machines designed for quick and expendable single player games, as one must always be motivated to buy new carts to keep playing, and party oriented multiplayer games, as nobody wants to legitimately lose- heaven forbid.

Let’s look at a single player example- Bioshock.

Bioshock follows the Halo school of design to a T wherein the player will continue
to experience the first 30 seconds of gameplay every moment their in the game- because what they see in those first 30 seconds is the entire game.

Several of the more prominent members of the BS team were responsible for the absolutely stellar System Shock series and the granddaddy of all modern games Deus Ex. With such a pedigree behind them, the fact it’s a horrible game should come as a surprise.

What marks Bioshock as a critical failure- beyond its heavy handed story that rehashes System Shock 2 completely- is that it’s a no risk game.
If you die at any point your life will be completely regenerated. It’s not like such a regeneration should ever be necessary however, as you eventually become a jack of all trades in all weapons capable of regenerating your life constantly. Even then, all your weapons you acquire except for the wrench are rendered useless.

More damningly, I believe, is the revelation that your single free option in the game- to kill or not kill the kids- is essentially a wizard of oz style façade. You must always save the girls because that will net you the best tangible benefits. This is not an actual choice in essence, it is a linear target range with poor bump mapping and under rendered hallways powered by the Unreal Engine.

Remember, you certainly can limit yourself from all of this meta-knowledge to get into some bullshit thing like “the flavor of the game” but that’s a completely dismissable response. You are playing a game wherein the goal is to win. If that is the most effective path to victory, you will take it every time because it simply works.

System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, however, encourage a similar style of min/maxing that actually offers many different choices and actual consequences to your actions. Taking that new high powered rifle? You’ll need to make sure you’re actually trained in that skill. Take a new magic power but don’t like it any more? Too bad, so sad, it’s forever bound to your body and you’ve wasted a slot. In short, every decision you make has weight and the potential to forever screw up or benefit your experience.

On the multiplayer forefront, we have a game such as Call of Duty 6. Some will call it Modern Warfare 2 but they are liars, it is Call of Duty 6.

Here we have a shooter that takes its cues from Smash Brothers and Marvel Vs Capcom 2 wherein the guiding design principal is “throw enough crap in there and the game will automatically sort itself out”. Of course, I’m being unfair to MvC2 here, which is actually a very good game with an incredible level of potential skill on display. The SSB comparison is far more apt.

While Call of Duty 4 was actually incredibly well balanced across all platforms, which each system having its own different “power weapons” and such, CoD 6 is a game that discourages skillful playing. Rather than having players learn map routes and other tactics that have been standard fare since Counter-Strike was still relevant, CoD 6 believes you should remain seated at all times. Want to see folks coming? Attach a radar to your gun. Killed enough folks? Congratulations, you can automatically end the game.

For a pickup and play game, it’s fine for what it is. If anything the developers should be congratulated for making a game where anyone can win and where there is absolutely no viable cover other than the map boundaries.

However, such features do not make for a game of skill.

Unlike Quake 3, wherein a good player can survive indefinitely based on their skills alone, a good player in CoD 6 will eventually just be overrun or run out of ammo. With death more or less an “inevitability”, what’s the point? Why not just take your chances on a slot machine? It’d produce similar results in determining how often you won or lost.

On the opposite end of this multiplayer development spectrum is Quake 3, a game with incredibility limited options that produces a limitless skill cap. Any defeat you suffer in Quake is through your own horrible playing and not some sky god becoming bored with you. A shut out of 50-0 isn’t unheard of in Quake a good players will continue to dominate the playing field through a variety of skills most “semi-realistic” sorely lack (thus resulting in a whole generation of really subpar players but I digress).

This trend of bad games isn’t just limited to action games mind you, look at any RPG out on the market now. Compared to the glory days of rouge and nethack, games such as Mass Effect and Fallout 3 change your diaper for you as you play.

A game like nethack will take years for the average player to complete. Furthermore, every defeat they suffer will force them to replay the entire game over again. Unlike snoozes such as the Fable series, Oblivion, or any of the Zelda games from Ocaraina onwards, nethack can not and will not be completed by brute force attempts.

Sure with the typical Zelda you can just hold B and eventually Gannon will defeat himself, but attempting to fight flat footed in a typical hack session will result in you cleaning your entrails off someone else’s blade. That is assuming you don’t drink the “wrong” potion and accidentally kill yourself before the first enemy.

In short kids, games really are getting worse today in many ways. There are still diamonds in the rough, of course, but their numbers are dwindling. The defense of “it’s just fun” isn’t a good enough reason anymore. Sure, I can read a Harlequin romance or watch any one of the “Scary/Disaster/X” movies and said I “enjoyed them for what they were”, but those are all infantile justifications of either bad taste or guilty pleasures. If you want a more productive use of your gaming time, look for some classics and give yourself a real challenge.

Here, I’m such a nice guy I’m even offering links to two good games that will never age:

http://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/info/shareware.php

http://www.nethack.org/