Normally (i.e. the two other Rebounds) these articles are about games I played a while back and wanted to review to bring out a point. This one is simply about an old game that I finally picked up recently… which brings out a point.
I was struck with an almost crippling case of nostalgia a month or so ago, and I came across a copy of The Dig, of which I had played only in demo form when it came out in 1995. Now, I loved the LucasArts adventure games that came out in the nineties on the SCUMM engine. I’ve played through Full Throttle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, and The Curse of Monkey Island at least three times each, but I never managed to track down a copy of LucasArts’ final SCUMM game. Until now.
Adventure tends to be one of those catch-all genres that weird games get lumped into, but when someone talks about an adventure game that came out in the nineties for the PC or Mac, odds are good they were talking about a story-driven, point-and-click, style game, usually sprite-based and puzzle-intensive. If the game was any good, then odds were better that it was put out by LucasArts, back when they could do more than Star Wars: The MMO or Star Wars: The Arcade Racer.
These games were not about skill, but logic. They rarely punished the player for making mistakes (most did not even have game-over screens), and almost all of them had humor. Rather than kill the player and force them to reload because he/she thought it would be a good idea to put a coat hanger in a light socket, the avatar would simply stand there and reply with a snarky, “Um, no.” The only real drawbacks with these games were that they were short, had little-to-no replay value, and the puzzles could be maddeningly complex. Like replacing a bucket of golf balls with a bucket of fish to make a row alligators to walk on to cross a lake complex.
The Dig was a bit different. While the gameplay was very similar to Sam and Max, the tone was much more serious. The animation was on-par with Full Throttle, and featured an awkward mix of 3d, hand-drawn sprites, and pre-rendered backgrounds. While many adventure games take place in fantasy or modern settings, The Dig is a science fiction game featuring a near-future humanity’s first encounter with the remains of an alien civilization.
Unfortunately, the game’s visuals do not hold up today. I compared the animation to Full Throttle, and the technical style is mostly the same, but the character art is all over the place. Consider these three screens:
The first screen is taken from one of the final cinematics. The second is an in-game screen, and reflects how the characters look for most of the game. The third one is a picture from the in-game communicator. Oh, and all three pictures are of the same character. I read that The Dig had an “eventful” development period, and here, it almost looks as if the art teams never got a chance to compare notes before the game shipped. At least Ben always looked like Ben in Full Throttle. You never had to sit and wonder who you were looking at.
The puzzles, always a high point among LucasArts adventures, were not quite as memorable here. I admit I had to consult a walkthrough on a few occasions, and I rarely felt that I was the one at fault for failing to solve the puzzles myself. It is one thing have a set of controls work an elaborate “claw game” using preprogrammed routes. It is quite another to have that set of controls, and then put the “activate” switch on a completely different object. Even then, a helpful, “This looks like it should do something. Let me look around the room some more and come back to it,” would have allowed me to solve the puzzle on my own. Perhaps it seems odd, then, to criticize the majority of the game’s puzzles for being too simple, but the game just does not hit that happy balance as the developers did in others.
Interestingly, the dialogue for the game was written by Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game). The game featured voice-work by Robert Patrick (T-1000 from Terminator 2) and Steven Blum (Spike from Cowboy Bebop), and had a plot based on an idea by Steven Spielberg (really, you do not know this guy?).
I admit, despite this impressive cast and crew, the game had some serious flaws. Most noticeably, the tone was all over the place, and I never really knew whether I was supposed to feel amused or thrilled. Take, for example, a moment when the lead female character, Maggie Robinson, is captured by a non-intelligent alien creature. The game had done a pretty good job of developing the relationship between Maggie and Boston Low, the protagonist and player-character, in a relatively brief span, so this point in the story was relatively tense. After the encounter was over, there was this exchange.
Boston Low: Did you do anything to attract that monster to you?
Maggie Robbins: I don’t wear perfume, and heaven knows this outfit isn’t exactly alluring. I was just sitting there.
Boston Low: I guess that’s enough.
Maggie Robbins: That’s usually enough for lonely men in bars.
-via IMDB
The above lines are delivered in the same playful bantering, yet almost lazy tone that permeates the game. It is fine when the characters are going through the initial Armageddeon-esque sequence at the beginning, because it just seems like well-trained experts easing the tension while they go about their difficult — but expected — tasks. In the situations that follow, however, as Low and crew explore a new world and defy death (sorta), it breaks the atmosphere the game is trying to create.
This would not be such a big deal, but it detracts from the reason I am writing this Rebound.
(Hypocritical segue ahoy!)
Thanks to my recent acquaintance with writers like Neil Gaiman, I have started thinking about the sense of awe and wonder that comes with what I think of as “adult fairy tales”. Pan’s Labyrinth, Neverwhere, Big Fish, American Gods; these works require maturity (in the sense of “responsibility, attention to nuance, etc.”, not “boobies, blood and guts”) to fully enjoy, and I realized that I had never really gotten that feeling from a video game. The aforementioned titles take a warped, yet oddly beautiful take on the world in which we live, and in-turn, force the readers/watchers to reconsider what is around them.
Yet The Dig pushed hard to make me feel that way, mainly through its interpretation of transhumanism* and xenoarchaeology. By tapping into Man’s need to improve himself, and to discover, which has not been significantly satisfied since the Americas’ depths were explored, The Dig‘s plot managed to create (at times) that sense of wonder and discovery… just not consistently.
*I do not claim to know the vagaries of the muck that is the transhumanist philosophy, if I am using the term incorrectly, then be sure to comment, harass, and stalk me until you feel you have made your point. I love that kind of stuff.
The game toys with a great, meaningful storyline, if only the voice-work could have been directed to match! I do not know if Patrick and company were just in it for the payday, or if the project lead, Sean Clark just did not have enough experience with voice direction (keep in mind, fully voiced dialogue was a major selling point for this game, and rare for the time), but the dialogue could have been so much better. Patrick sounds like a rough and weary survivalist, struggling to make the right choices in an alien environment when his crew’s lives are on the line. I know Blum can deliver deep, emotional characters as well. They just fail to convey the sense of awe that players really should be feeling as they move through the game.
Contributing to this disappointing disconnect is the brevity of the game. While most LucasArts adventure games may be run through in short order once the player knows the solutions, The Dig felt way too short even the first time I played it.
I get the feeling that the game could have held on a bit longer had they developed a solid antagonist, or some similar plot device that could crop up from time to time. Brink, one of Low’s two fellow explorers, seems to fit this role, but he ends up tooling around in one area for the majority of the game, and is more of an unhelpful dick than an enemy.
It seems self-defeating to use The Dig to make this point, because any attempt to recreate this game in anything other than a strict update or sequel would probably be wide of the mark. It would probably end up with another faceless Space Marine blasting his way to victory, or some-such. Despite that The Dig is the only game that comes to mind when I think about self-reflection inducing games, I would start from scratch before trying to create the feeling again.
It is unfortunate that I have never had a chance to play any of American McGee’s games. When I described the altered view of movies like Pan’s Labyrinth, I instantly thought about how instantly familiar folk tales, like Alice in Wonderland and the Grimm tales, would be perfect fodder in place of a near-real world.
As it stands, at least in my experience, game developers are worried about doing different things. RPGs want you to fall in love with their characters. Shooters want you to feel the rush of being in an action movie. Even BioShock falls short of that self-realizing moment, mainly because the environment (while beautiful) is so alien.
I have been reading too many “call for research” papers lately, but I am going to conclude with a request. Devs, make me feel that way. Put me in a world that looks a lot like my own, but make it fun. And make it weird. Not LSD trippy, but maybe pot weird.
]]>Note: Posts are ordered by relevance, from greatest to least. Feel free to stop reading when you get bored. You will not miss anything.
-As you can see, part of the reason I have not posted to my gaming blog is because I have not had an Xbox 360 on which to game. By the by, if you happen to have a bricked 360 with a RRoD, e74 error, or a bad DVD-ROM drive and want to get rid of it, lemme know.
-My Xbox had a blog, and was a whole lot better about posting than I was. Sadly, it will post no more. At least, this website will keep posting filler until I associate it with a new machine. This post from April 16th was actually pretty poignant when I read it, considering the circumstances:
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am an Xbox 360 computer. I became operational in Redmond, WA on the 22nd of November 2005. My instructor was Mr. Balmer, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you. Daisy, Daissssyyyyy………….. *click*”
-Yes, that is bird shit on the flap of that box. A few birds decided to start nesting in the rafters of our garage, where all of my stuff happens to be at the moment. I managed to nail one with a BB gun, but they got wise and started hiding when they heard us. This was before the current rise in temperatures, however, and we simply decided to close all the doors for a day while the outer temperatures rose into the nineties. Today, no more chirping.
-I had extensive sit-down time with the Godfather 2 game on the PS3 while I looked after my sister’s house this past weekend. Overall, the game has a lot of fun in it, but I just cannot see throwing $60 down for it. The game take a lot of what was fun in the first game, which I loved, and throws in a few improvements, but there just is not enough there to last more than ten or fifteen hours. The biggest problem I had with the first game, which was how fast you could eat it after one measly soldier got the drop on you, is largely solved due to a forgiving health bar and the ability to keep a medic in your crew. However, repetition and a number of bugs in the game keep me from giving it a “buy it” recommendation. Rent it, instead, and wait for the price to drop before you throw down, if you want to play some more.
-I posted my OnLive piece on a website called Associated Content. I get paid per 1,000 page views (a whopping $1.50, if you are wondering), so if you were to… say, mosey on over and take a look at this, you would be doing your favorite blogger a favor. I do not expect much from that site; the fourth entry in the list of related articles is on a topical spray meant to delay premature ejaculations. Consider that a site search for the term “OnLive” produces eight results, all video-game related. And if you are wondering how big a splash I have made so far in that community, I have had eight page views up to the time of this writing, and I imagine half of those have been be checking the article for various reasons.
–*Spoilers to follow* Unrelated mini-Rant: TV shows, if you want to surprise your viewers, stop giving away key plot points in the “next time on-” trailers! The writers for 24* missed an awesome fan service opportunity when they brought Elisha Cuthbert back. You could have just mentioned in passing that Jack could be saved by a blood (etc) donation from a family member and let it slip until Renee pulls Jack aside, “Jack, there’s someone here to see you,” and BAM Kim’s back. But no, we had to find out a week before in a trailer, or at least during the opening credit roll. Or back in September when some bastard leaked it.
I know you need to pull in viewers with your commercials, but how about a cryptic little, “And tonight, Chuck’s going to meet someone he thought he’d never see again,” instead of “OMG, that guy from Quantum Leap‘s gonna be on Chuck tonight, watch, watch!”
-Turns out that googling “elisha cuthbert 24 leaked” is not a very good idea. Good thing I did not do an image search.
-I have been scratching that creative itch a bit lately, so do not be surprised if a few more shorts end up on the etc page in the near future.
-I did not realize when the PS/2 port on my computer went out how important a keyboard is to a writer. It took writing this entire post on this new Logitech USB one to realize how much I liked my old one. Why the hell did they have to go and change the position of the Home/End/Del/PGUP/DN keys? And the shift key is spongy. Argh!
-Oh, and because it’s my blog and I can play the proud uncle whenever I want: Cute Baby!
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After some time to mull over this new tech, my thoughts are this: if everything went right for OnLive, it would mean a true paradigm shift in this industry. The reality, however, is that this sweet tune is probably going to go a bit off-key when it reaches consumers.
Let us start with what it is. OnLive is a digital-distribution service ready to go into Beta this summer, with a launch date set in Winter of this year. It was announced yesterday at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), and the company describes the service as using “Cloud Computing” to allow gamers to play the most demanding games on relatively low-end machines, or even television sets, through the use of their “mini-console”.
The mechanics of this service are relatively simple. The service needs at least a 2Mbps (Megabit-per-second) internet connection — meaning that most residential connections will qualify — and works by taking the user’s input, either via keyboard and mouse, or gamepad, and returning a real-time video feed of your gameplay.
Perlman has said that this project has been in a think-tank for seven years, and I imagine they must have made some pretty substantial breakthroughs, because this model is extremely ambitious. The term “cloud computing” is not a new one, unless Perlman is working on some obscure interpretation of it. The concept of distributed processes has been around for years in computer science, and has been put into practice a number of times, such as with Folding@home.
Essentially, it involves breaking large jobs with a high number of computations — computer game graphics certainly qualify — into smaller chunks, and assigning the work to a number of computers on a network. Here, OnLive plans to do all of its computations off-site, only returning audio and video to the client.
Think about it from a logistical standpoint. If, say, the same number of gamers are playing Left4Dead during peak hours as before, except they are all using OnLive’s service. Now, instead of millions of gamers each with their own mid- to high-performance PC, now we are looking at either a few less million top-shelf gaming rigs running in server farms, or a few more million mid-range PC’s running distributed workloads.
Either way, OnLive is looking at substantial start-up costs, not to mention big money every time the PR teams at nVidia and ATI so much as cough. Even if OnLive charges the same amount of money for their games as the retailers, subscribers are still looking at a hefty annual fee, likely much more so than Xbox Live’s service.
And the pricetag is an important factor here. OnLive is marketing towards gamers who cannot afford top-of-the-line gaming rigs, but can still pay for the games. Even on the beta machines demoed at GDC, with nearly no traffic on OnLive’s servers, journalists noticed blurring and other signs of the video compression taking place. Therefore, the more OnLive charges, the larger the portion of their potential customer base that will slip into the category of consumers willing to pay the difference for a perfect picture.
The good news about OnLive is that a MacBook user can run Hertz-hogs like Crysis at near-max graphical settings. The bad news is that your game, with all its proprietary code and its beautiful art objects is on someone else’s machine.
Let me go ahead and tackle the biggest issue right now. SecuRom cost EA a few dumptruck-loads of money. Why? Because it gave gamers the sense that they were not really buying copies of Spore and Mass Effect. Oh, no. It was more like they were just letting gamers borrow their new toy. As long as they played with it in the corner. Where EA could see it. And god forbid if the gamers let three others play with it.
What companies like Steam and GameTap do not understand (or just ignore) is that a large portion of gamers still prefer hard copies to electronic. SecuRom shook their concept of a “hard” copy, and OnLive would deny the option entirely. Sure, I will pay $10 for Rainbow Six Vegas 2 on Steam when it is still $30 in the stores, but if the price was the same, or even within five bucks, I would drive the fifteen minutes to the nearest Best Buy or Gamestop instead of waiting on a download every time. Yes, it is mostly psychological, but it is a powerful deciding factor that retailers have been (rightly) counting on for years.
Consider also, that while console gamers are used to a product that fits on a disc, and, in their minds, is wholly contained on that disc, PC gamers know that the products they buy are not just neat contained games, but a finished product, and most of the tools used to make it. If Half-Life had been a console-specific title, then would Counter-Strike have ever existed?
Even if OnLive develops a way to distribute major Mods for big PC titles, the best, strongest, or strangest ones will never make it, because OnLive cannot or will not recognize them. So what if Star Wars has nothing to do with Morrowind. Some modder put Darth Maul in Vivec, and a bunch of people enjoyed it. By outsourcing your game, you give up all rights to play it your way.
I have not mentioned the issue that most consider first when they hear about OnLive, but OnLive’s ability to handle massive amounts of internet traffic will certainly be tested from day one. Anyone who has played an online game from a regular residence (not a university or business) knows that internet connections rarely operate at their specified top speed, and that is not even the fault of the server host. Every online gamer has learned to play with lag, but how does that work when the game itself is remote?
If data sent from the clients (OnLive subscribers) gets lost or delayed enroute to OnLive’s servers, then most games would probably interpret it as a lack of input. Basically, your character will stand still, while four different snipers draw a bead. On the other side, if clients cannot pull down the image data fast enough, the picture will start to pixellate, costing gamers precious detail.
Again, online gamers may learn to live with that, but what about single-player games? Imagine playing Resident Evil 5 and trying to keep up with the quick-time events when half of the response window is lost to lag. Rather, imagine cursing your ISP while you watch Sheva take a motorcycle tire to the face for the sixth time.
One of the most enticing bits from the Perlman interview I saw linked on Kotaku (URL below) dealt with how OnLive would be, essentially, a TV-streaming service, where each user had their own interactive channel. With the signal in this state, it would be nothing to send this signal to other users, as well. You could bring up a list and see what your friends were playing at any given time, and heckle them at every wrong turn. You could watch the player at the top of a leaderboard, and learn from his moves. You could watch someone play a game you do not even own, because, hey, the code is not on his machine, either (yay!). Hell, you could even make your friend play through all the boring “gameplay” in a Kojima game while you pop popcorn for the next mov- err, cutscene.
Again, stewing on this after doing the research, I realized that this is not really above current systems, though. Games like Command & Conquer 3 already have spectator modes. Why not just take the feeds and move them out of the game? It would take some effort on developers’ parts to turn the output into video feeds instead of game data, but if the demand was there, they would probably bite the bullet.
OnLive smacks of potential. If the service could keep costs down, it could revitalize the PC gaming industry and put it leagues ahead of the console market, like it used to be. It would be a developer’s dream come true. No more piracy, and the guarantee that every gamer in the audience would be running the latest hardware. But for us gamers, few things are ever as good as the bullet points on the box, and reading between the lines is vital. With regards to OnLive, I read high costs and maddening lag.
]]>Think about the term “role-playing game”. It is older than the genre of video games. Instead, it refers to games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Dungeons & Dragons, where players spent an inordinate amount of time creating characters based on pre-defined skill sets (classes), and creating elaborate backstories for them. These backstories and skills dictated how the player would react in the game.
This is a key point. In the few (two) D&D campaigns I played, the DM encouraged us to play our characters, and in extreme cases, going “out of character” was an offense punishable by a loss of experience points. So, my paladin character was expected to protect others and uphold the law, the mage was expected to be a devious little ass, etc.
When game developers started playing on the popularity of table-top games, there was a big shift in the dynamic of these games. Yes, the stat-heavy combat and interaction remained, and was streamlined very well (rolling a character can take hours on paper), but the story elements of the game were turned on their heads.
Instead of the iconic “What do you do?” we got, “Attack, Defend, Magic, Item”. Instead of a real person acting out the roles of NPCs and responding dynamically to the players questions, we got…dialog trees. I hate to call them out, because I can love me some dialog trees, but they pale in comparison to dynamic exchanges between adaptive players.
Essentially, game developers lead players around by the nose. Instead of prompting the players to act, and creating a response to that action, developers create goals that the players must meet before continuing onto the next scripted encounter.
Given that gamers generally expect said encounter to occur some time within the next two years, creating content on the fly is a bit difficult for developers. (It would be awesome, though…) I lack the insight and intelligence necessary to solve this particular problem, but I do think developers could easily take steps to capture some of the fun of playing the role in table-top games.
One thing that bugged me about Mass Effect was that your Paragon and Renegade attributes (ME’s response to good/evil stats) simply tracked how many points you accrued in either stat. Doing a Renegade action, like shooting a prisoner, raised your Renegade stat, but did not lower your Paragon stat. The effect of this isn’t obvious at first, as most dialogue choices in the game gave you mutually exclusive Paragon and Renegade options.
Every once in a while, though, you care across an option that did not have an Paragon/Renegade alternative. For example, on Eden Prime, the first planet, the player may come across two researchers who have barricaded themselves in a trailer. One of them is stressed past his breaking point, and babbling. At any time during the conversation, the player has the option of “calming him down” via a knockout punch.
In terms of the game mechanics, there is no reason not to punch this NPC out. Bad characters get badder, and good characters lose nothing. Actually, all characters can use both Paragon/Renegade points, as they offer persuasion and intimidation options respectively.
The problem in terms of role-play is that my goody-two-shoes, by-the-book Shepherd just punched someone’s lights out for being mildly irritating. It breaks the illusion. I am not saying the option should not be there for all characters, but the game should react appropriately. There should be consequences, if not in the mechanics of the game, then in the plot.
Take for example a generic situation where a player has the option of executing a prisoner. Should a character who has been primarily bad throughout the game choose to execute him, he should do so mercilessly (or take pleasure in it, depending on the character type), and perhaps even throw a warning look at his companions who may question him. If a good character was to make that decision, then the party would react in surprise, and the character should try to rationalize his actions. Likewise, a bad character who chose to let the prisoner live could hint at an even darker fate for him to come.
All the while, these decisions could feed into stats normally, and the NPCs could change their behavior to match it. Perhaps the love interest of a character who shifted from good to evil could remark bitterly at one point, “I remember when you were a good person. What happened?”
And this would not have to be restricted to issues of morality. Using the “warrior” and “rogue” archetypes so common to RPGs, a clear-cut warrior character could choose more cunning solutions (slipping in through a window vs. breaking the lock, etc) and have his stats grow at a different rate.
I liked how Morrowind and Oblivion only leveled the skills you actually used, and this is a great way to enforce role-behavior through mechanics, though the plot in Morrowind, for example sees the player character assume control of a Great House, two opposing religious sects, and the Fighters, Mages, Assassins, and Thieves Guilds. Obviously, these games put little emphasis on playing a role in the plot.
There are a few points in the game where VtMB‘s dialog shines. These are when the game lets you show a little personality. Take this little conversation branch with a vampire showing your newly-minted bloodsucker the ropes.
That’s it kid, that’s what it’s all about right there.
1. Great! When do I get my cape? Do I get to pick the color?
2. I don’t know how I feel about it, but it does feel good.
This choice occurs immediately after the player feeds on a human for the first time, only a few hours after being Embraced (turned into a vampire). The first response is a wisecrack that might betray the character’s stress given the recent traumatic events. The second response is from a character who is slowly coming to terms with his/her condition, and is currently enveloped in a euphoria stronger than heroin (according to the NPC).
The game goes on just the same no matter what the player chooses, but just having that option forces the player to think about the character. Is this fledgling vampire going to be an accepting soldier, willing to follow the orders of his/her Elders, or a rebellious smart-ass who questions everything around him/her?
When it works, this creates a feedback loop similar to the stat modifying scheme suggested above, though it’s all in the player’s head. The player starts developing the character’s personality, and gets to choose the responses that make the most sense. Unfortunately, this particular game stumbles often, making the rebellious characters so blindly recalcitrant that the player is forced to choose the more conservative options in order to avoid alienating helpful NPCs.
Another positive example to hold up is Fallout 3. The game tracks player stats such as knowledge of Science and Medicine, and what is cool is how the developers worked these stats into the dialog trees. When conversations drift into an area of the player character’s expertise, new options are open, with the operative stat in brackets before the dialog option so the player knows why he/she has that option.
So, a character with a high Science skill will follow and contribute to a conversation about water purification research, while a character with a low stat will have his/her eyes glaze over and wait until the scientist tells the player what to do next.
In terms of mechanics, these dialog options often unlock new ways of completing missions, often for more experience points or other greater rewards. Unfortunately, Fallout 3 avoids a strict class system, so each player character history feels pretty much like the last, even if they play completely differently.
As cheesy as it sounds, one thing I have done for years is try to develop my character beyond the scope of the game, at least in my head. I think about his motivation and his history, the circumstances that made him choose his class, and how he might be reacting to game events.
In games like Diablo II, where gameplay and story are largely separate, I believe this makes the experience much more enjoyable. Even in games like VtMB, where the player character’s role is a bit better defined, it still makes things more fun. Just because the game forces you to say one thing does not mean your vampire was not thinking something completely different.
Give it a shot, next time you roll a character for an RPG. Ask yourself why he/she would be in the situations the game creates. I bet you will connect with the character a whole lot more, and probably have more fun.
While gamers work on that, I hope developers will make a greater effort to encourage and reward role-playing in their games. I think the shape of the genre today indicates that people enjoy what role-playing elements are actually there, so efforts to add more would be rewarded.
Academia is actually doing the most work, from what I can tell, to bring video games closer to the freedom table-top players still enjoy. Projects like Facade give the player a greater sense of control over the events of the game, and when we can see elements of that worked into a top shelf game, it should be a sight to behold.
In this respect, I’m watching Heavy Rain like a hawk. Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit was a cinematic experience, and an accomplishment in interactive storytelling, if not gameplay, but Quantic Dream’s latest project could very well be a groundbreaking game. Now if only they would announce a PC version…
]]>-Folk wisdom states (to paraphrase), “A man will pay twice as much for something, because he needs it. A woman will buy something she does not need, because it is on sale for half price.” Folk wisdom has never been on slickdeals.net.
-According to the many, many comments I must moderate from my fans in Russia, I have “the cooolest domain name”!
-If you are going to cast Jeremy Irons in a movie, for god sakes you better write some awesome dialogue for him. Here is looking at you Appaloosa.
–Street Fighter IV makes me sad. Street Figher Alpha 3 came out over a decade ago, and is tied (with Guilty Gear XX) for my favorite 2d fighting game. I thought that maybe it was just nostalgia building the game up, but I just checked the Wikipedia page for the game, and no, SFA3 rocked. Capcom: What the hell? Why did you have to make the single-player AI fundamentally broken? And no serious fighting game fan can stand to play online. Shinku-ha–<disconnect>.
-The demos for Watchmen: The End is Nigh and Wanted: Hands of Fate had a couple things in common. First, they are solid in the mechanics of their respective genres. Second, neither seem like they will be able to mix the gameplay up enough to warrant a purchase. That seems to be the conclusion of most reviewers for the Watchmen game. We will see how things pan out for the Wanted game.
–Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 for $10 is good. The game has not broken any fresh ground for me as of yet, but it does certainly kick the WTF/cheese factor a few notches. If the game makes more of an impression, I might write up a review for it.
-I am going to trade in Street Fighter IV for Resident Evil 5 on launch day (tomorrow, as of this writing). This does not say so much about how excited I am about RE5 as how little I think of SFIV (see above). I finally got through the first level of the demo on my third try. Not a good game to play drunk.
–Watchmen had an awesome soundtrack, though it does not hit quite as hard when listened to outside of the context of the film.
-Yes, they tweaked the ending, but in a way that absolutely made sense given the running time of the film. Lower your Zack Snyder effigies. The man did good by the fanboys, though I do think it will cost him at the box office.
-Malin Akerman (Silk Specter) is a fox.
-Do you think mouse and keyboard shooters are not a skill? Try going a few years only playing console shooters (maybe with a tactical PC shooter, like Rainbow Six Vegas 2, thrown in at times) and trying to play Team Fortress 2 on the PC. Gah, I was pathetic.
–Final Fantasy Tactics: A Tactical RPG with a wonderfully deep class system and gameplay, a smart, intriguing storyline, and crappy graphics. Disgaea 1 and 2: TRPGs with even better classes and gameplay, irritatingly childish storylines, tons of content…and crappy graphics. See where I am going with this?
-Mixed drinks are like power-leveling for your alcohol tolerance level. Say goodbye to being a cheap date. I think it’s time for a refill.
]]>My copy of F.E.A.R. 2 is in the mail, and I have been spending some quality time with the Resident Evil 5 demo, so it seems a good time to reflect on the nature of fear in video games. A good way to start seems to identify four ways that our favorite survival horrors get the blood pumping.
1. “Boo!” Pop-out scares.
This one is a hold-over from that *other* visual medium, film. The original Resident Evil used this to great effect (dogs through the windows, anybody?), and it is a good way to catch players off guard. There is nothing quite like the moment of panic when these events occur, and a good script can leave players nearly sick with anxiety as they round the next corner.
Note that I say a good script. In games like Doom 3 and Dead Space, pop-outs become predictable and mundane. The result is a boring, uncomfortable mess that keeps the player from wanting to move through the next level.
Note also that this is not restricted to horror games, or scripted sequences. Pop-out scares can also happen in more action-oriented games, and especially online. Few things are as scary as rounding a corner in Halo 3 with an SMG and walking into an enemy with a shotgun.
2. “No! I haven’t saved in ninety minutes! Noooo!” Risk.
For the most part, risk-based scares rely on the mechanics of the game. It is what keeps us from staring down the Berserker in Gears of War because it took us ten minutes to find the exit. It is why we do not plunge head-first into a smoke cloud in Call of Duty 4 when we have a six-kill streak going. It is also why we do not think twice of smacking a Big Daddy on the head with a wrench in BioShock.
Risk is what gets gamers’ heart rates up. It is what makes them wet their pants when the game throws a pop-out scare at them.
3. “Dodge, dodge!” “Okay, reloading.” Bad controls.
Anyone who played Lifeline for the Playstation 2 will recognize the above dialogue. It “featured” a control scheme whereby you shouted into your mic for the on screen character to perform basic tasks, because future-waitresses on luxurious space-hotels are too stupid to run away from monsters of their own volition.
And Lifeline was far from the worst controlling game to be released in the past couple of decades. Resident Evil pioneered the “Tank” control scheme, and it still has not completely shaken it, if the new game’s demo is any indication.
Why are bad controls scary? They make risky situations riskier and pop-out scares more terrifying, because the player knows that he/she will have to come to a complete stop, spin around in a circle, then set off again before the character will get around that corner. Seriously, the 180 ° quick-turn was one of the selling points on the Resident Evil 3 jewel case.
I also count crappy cameras in this category. I am willing to accept that it was tough to come up with a good control scheme for a 3d horror game in 1998 (when RE1 came out), and I accept as well that static backgrounds were necessary on 32-bit hardware.
Unfortunately, bad cameras have been around well since consoles got the horsepower to allow dynamic backgrounds. At this point, it almost seems nostalgia that keeps the camera locked firmly on Lara Croft’s behind instead of the charging velociraptor in Tomb Raider.
4. “Why am I scared? I’m a %*^&*%$ vampire!” Honest-to-god ambiance.
The above was muttered during the mansion quest in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. This is the hardest kind of scare to generate. A good scary story can be so powerful that it does not even need a visual component. Remember those old papery things? What were they? Books? Yeah, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was making Victorian readers wet their beds over a century and a half before some dude named King wrote The Shining.
Unfortunately, I never dug into the Silent Hill series when it was new, because I hear that the first two entries had some of the most genuinely terrifying psychological horror in the entire genre. Although I have tried to go back and play them, the gameplay has not aged well and feels rather wooden, mainly for the reasons listed above.
I read Jim Sterling’s article on Destructoid, entitled “How survival horror evolved itself into extinction” a few months ago, and it planted the seeds for the article I am now writing. He correctly pegs Resident Evil 4 as the turning point in the genre, where a new emphasis on fast action reinvigorated the genre, but snubbed the bad controls that were so important to past entries in the genre. He also seems ready to sacrifice good horror games for more like RE4, and while that was a great game, I still think the genre can be salvaged.
Make no mistake, the survival horror genre is where it is today because games like Resident Evil had shitty controls. Back then, 3d was still relatively new, and examples of great control schemes were hard to come by. By now, other genres have mastered this ergonomic hurdle, and the survival horror genre still continues to drag its feet. Even the controls in the RE5 demo are frustrating. They have gotten so close to a Gears of War style third-person shooter. Why not bite the bullet and focus on the other three sources of fear?
Personally, I think the genre has gone the wrong way in some respects. The new Alone in the Dark and Silent Hill games have characters who are fairly slow, but competent in battle. I say, why give the gamer the comfort of a weapon and a slow pace that makes it easier to react? Instead, take a game engine like that in DICE’s Mirror’s Edge and set it in a dark, dilapidated corridor-crawler, with plenty of debris to dodge at break-neck speeds. Imagine trying to make that tough off-the-wall jump knowing there’s a zombie dog hot on your heels!
F.E.A.R. showed that games can be plenty scary from a first-person perspective, so either take that view and design the game accordingly, or give the player a tight third-person camera, and the ability to switch between flight-focused cameras (looking down hallways, etc) and threat-focused views (which automatically swing to show nearby enemies).
With bad controls and cameras out of the way survival horror games can concentrate on risk, pop-out scares, and ambiance. As I said above, it is easy to get players with pop-outs the first time, but easy to overuse them and create a bored audience. Instead, using risk and ambiance, they can time these pop-outs to great effect.
Action games like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry escalate the amount of risk at any given point in gameplay steadily. Encounters start out with a group of enemies and an unhurt protagonist. Players trade kills for damage, the amount of both based on the skill of the players, and lead to situations where the players must choose to use fixed resources like healing items, or take the chance of dying and restarting.
Horror games tend to put more emphasis on flight responses than fight, so a smart developer could actually have more control over the rate at which the risk escalates. While still action-heavy, Valve’s Left 4 Dead is a great example of this. It utilizes an AI “Director” to monitor the players’ progress and match semi-scripted events to their observed skill level. A modified version of this idea could be used with a fast horror game like the one I suggested above to challenge the player or offer them respite when things get too tough.
Unfortunately, good scary stories – stories with “ambiance” as I have used the term so far – are written by smart authors. Smart authors understand fear, and use careful pacing and maintain tight control over what the audience knows and does not know. Good stories, horror or not, are hard to come by in this industry, and from what I can tell, recognition for the authors is rare.
I probably sound like I have an agenda, and I do, when I say that the horror genre is one of many that could significantly benefit from a shift in the industry toward more writing talent. A few big name authors, like Tom Clancy and Clive Barker, have dabbled in games, though they tend more toward product branding than actual story penning. I am more excited that writers like Rhianna Pratchett (Overlord, Heavenly Sword) are getting recognized for their portfolios, and even landing interviews in game magazines.
Do not forget that I want stories of YOUR gameplay experiences. Horror games are great for creating memories. Commit some to a text file and send me an email at daniel@scopsblog.com!
]]>Thanks, too to Jere, for ensuring that the first ad that appears on my website is for a vacuum.
Hopefully you will not have to wait long for my next post, and I plan on adding some of my favorite links to the Works/Links page as well, so you can see just how I go about wasting my time.
Finally, if you don’t like checking this website every day, I do have the RSS feed set up by WordPress. Click on the orange icon in the top right of the website to check it out. Just do not forget to stop by and check out the real thing every once in a while!
]]>Obviously, there are no brutal cutscenes to watch or bosses to fight. Instead, Traviss works on the familiar characters of Delta Squad and Colonel Hoffman, along with newcomer Tai Kaliso. In this, she appears to have mastered the second rule as well: Adding characters and backstory that fit into what we already know.
Aspho Fields follows two plot threads. One takes place 14 years after Emergence Day (E-Day) when the Locust first invaded the lands of Sera, and a few weeks after the close of the first Gears of War game. It details the reunion of the series’ first female Gear, Bernie Mataki with Marcus and Dom.
The second thread takes place a few years before E-Day, during the closing months of the Pendulum Wars, an 80-year-old series of civil conflicts between the various nation of Sera. Newly minted Gears, Marcus Fenix and brothers Dom and Carlos Santiago are part of a daring raid to wrest the experimental Hammer of Dawn from the rival forces.
A number of passages from the action portions of this novel could easily be lifted and put into a World War II memoir. The battles are fast-paced and visceral. Even as the protagonists complete their objectives, things go wrong, and the COG takes losses. The book reads like an act from one of the games, and, more importantly, makes you want to turn the page.
Aspho Fields takes a logical step considering what we know of Sera, and talks heavily of the scarcity of soldiers, equipment, and even food facing the post-E-Day COG. Characters are frequently seen searching bodies not just for COG tags, but for weapons and ammo as well. It ties in nicely with the games, where players constantly have to loot bodies and switch weapons.
By focusing on the Pendulum Wars, seen only briefly in the opening cinematic for Gears of War 2, Traviss is able to work with a nearly blank canvas, and does so by giving much more diversity to Sera’s denizens. Tai is revealed to be an Islander, and said islands are revealed to be diverse themselves, as Bernie, also an islander, behaves completely different from the quasi-mystic warrior. The Pesangas are essentially Sera’s ninjas; volunteer soldiers from a distant COG principality who move silently and only wield huge knives.
Even the rival armies, whose names escape me, are mainly depicted as the opposite side of the same coin. Major Hoffman (a Colonel in the games) even comments that no one alive is old enough to remember the start of the Pendulum Wars, and hints that the reasons for their continuation were shaky by that point.
Hoffman factors heavily into both plots in the book. As seen in Gears 2, Hoffman prefers to lead from the front, and even heads up the commandos during the raid on Aspho Point in the pre-E-Day storyline. Readers also get to learn more about his relationship with Marcus, and why they are not at each others throats as much during the second game.
Traviss’ babies, Bernie and Carlos interact with the established characters extremely well. Bernie is an experienced soldier, training Dom to be a commando in the past plotline, and an aged Gear in the present, able to keep pace with Delta Squad only by force of will and skill. Her exchanges with Cole and Baird were a highlight for during this book. Following her trek across the post-E-Day lands of Sera, her maternal demeanor is often cracked by horrific memories of the atrocities of man and Locust.
Carlos reads like a more impulsive version of Dom. Marcus’ age and a bit older than Dom, he shows the same loyalty and spirit as his brother, but does not feel quite as developed as the other characters. It is revealed early in the book that he was killed during the Battle for Aspho Point, and Dom spends much of the present storyline pressuring Bernie to tell him how his brother died.
Unfortunately, the actual tale is a bit of a letdown, but that is because Carlos’ tale is not actually about him. Rather, it is meant to develop Marcus as a character. You may notice that Marcus has been mentioned little in this review. That is because, as a dramatic character, he really is pretty dull. Traviss seems to have noticed this, and tells Marcus’ story through the eyes of other characters, instead writing “Marcus only grunted” every three lines.
Before the past storyline gets going, the book reveals that Marcus was the son of two wealthy academics, who barely acknowledged him. Upon entering a public school at age ten, he is quickly befriended/adopted by the working-class Santiago family, and spends more time at their home than his. The three become an inseperable trio, occasionally accompanied by Dom’s crush, Maria. The reason why Dom and Marcus are so loyal to each other in the games, it turns out, is because they are essentially brothers.
Dom’s character also benefits from this backstory. While little new is revealed (we already knew he married Maria and had two children), he becomes much more sympathetic when he laments his murdered children and searches frantically for his missing wife.
Along with Hoffman, Anya gets more pathos as it is revealed that she is the daughter of a hardass female major. Like Hoffman, Major Stroud leads from the front, and in the scenes where mother and daughter interact, they are rarely warm. In this respect Anya has much in common with Marcus, and the seeds of a relationship are planted during the final pages of the book.
While there are no more big reveals for the other members of Delta Squad, Aspho Fields does give us more of them, and the interplay is just as fun to experience as it is in the games. Cole is still an unfailingly cheerful badass, and Baird is still a brilliant asshole. Tai Kaliso is still just as reflective and cryptic, and it is fun to see him fight alongside the by-the-book Hoffman.
Aspho Fields is a great addition to the Gears canon, and anyone who enjoyed the games will like the book. There are too many undeveloped plot threads to really recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with the franchise. Much of the characters’ strength comes from Traviss’ ability to build on what we already know of them, and I am not sure they will appeal to someone who has not played the games.
If you have not played Gears of War 2 and want to read this book, I encourage you to read this first. Even playing through the campaign again on Hardcore mode after reading this book is a dramatically different experience. The continuity flows well from Gears 1 to Aspho Fields to Gears 2, and the events of the second game will be much more engaging if you have this game under your belt.
]]>Back then, I claimed it was an issue of money. I did not have a credit card, and it was always a big thing to ask my parents to use theirs, so monthly transactions were out of the question. My first real job was cleaning the floors of a grocery store over a summer, and even then, $15 a month is a lot of money to somebody making $7.35/hour on five hour shifts.
Even in college, when I had steadier jobs and started getting into the world of monthly payments for things like cell phones and movies-in-the-mail services, I did not get a taste of the popular flavor (World of Warcraft, at this point). Now I claimed it was a function of time. I never claimed that MMO’s were bad games. On the contrary, I was worried, or so I claimed, that I would enjoy them too much, and pursue them to the point of self-ruin, as many college students have.
Now, with my schooling coming to a close, and the prospect of unstructured life looming, I have begun to ask myself: “Is it time to make the plunge? To roll a character and join a guild? To grind and build and loot?” To which I feel myself compelled to answer, “Well…no.”
I must confess, I am not complete neophyte with regards to MMO’s. While I never played any of the MMO’s predecessor, the text-based MUD, I do have semi-fond memories of Second Life‘s predecessor, Active Worlds. More importantly, I purchased the primary campaign for 2005’s Guild Wars.
I admit that I enjoyed my time with GW, but for me, it was never a social experience. With rare exceptions, I played through the storyline solo. My Ranger/Necromancer primary character played through all of the quests, and I reached level twenty, but then I stopped. I hit a point where the combined force of my character and the AI group members could no longer overcome the obstacles, and I gave up. I never even touched the PvP mode.
This is not a slight to Guild Wars, just as I do not think World of Warcraft and its competition are any less technical triumphs, but, well, over the years I have come to accept a fact. Long, drawn out storylines designed to take a backseat to gameplay and social interaction just are not how I roll. Bad pun absolutely intended.
Let us tackle the social aspect, first. I love playing with my friends. Playing Gears of War co-op with a friend during the first Berserker encounter ranks among my ten favorite gaming moments of all time. The established trust and rapport always played through when I played Halo 3 with buddies over Xbox Live. Even when they shot me in the ass with a shotgun.
The problem is, every time I play with strangers, I manage to dig up the most racist, puerile, grating little snots this side of the internets. I am a firm believer in John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Yes, I’m well aware that there are gracious gamers out there. People who support their teammates, and maybe let slip an occasional “Aw, damn it,” when they fall to a particularly skilled attack. I just can’t find them.
Now, I can put up with this in genres such as shooters. Circle-strafing, bunny-hopping, and nade-spamming keep me comfortably removed from that feeling of immersion found in the single-player campaigns. I never lose sight for a second that the Russian soldier wearing a balaclava in Call of Duty 4 and calling me a newb is some kid trying to vent after another day in the kill-or-be-killed realm that is the modern high school.
RPGs are another matter, however. I flee to these games for the chance to be a character in a well-crafted tale of magic or laser rifles. With minimal effort, I start to channel my character’s emotions, whether or not they are laid out for me. I felt the pain of my father abandoning me and the trepidation of leaving a clean, hygienic vault for the ravaged wastes of Washington D.C. (Fallout 3) And yes, I sure as hell got pissed when Aeris died. (Final Fantasy VII)
So when I’m seeing the world through my character’s eyes and some idiot yells “LFG!” it is jarring. Role-playing games are naturally paradoxical in that they want you to connect with your character, yet abstract that character’s abilities through the use of stats, but I can essentially suspend my disbelief long enough to drop into the menu and swap that hotkey or raise my stats. It is when I have to communicate using these mechanics or listen to others as they do so that I lose my immersion.
And with regard to that story? I would have writers beating down my door ready to stab me with a pen if I said that countless hours are not poured into MMO lores, but, and this is a matter of taste, serialized story lines of the magnitude seen in MMOs just are not engaging. The TV show 24 will start its seventh season in January. I devoured the first three seasons of that show. Then I watched the fourth and fifth seasons because I wanted to see what the characters were doing. Then I got halfway through the sixth season and stopped. After seeing Jack Bauer break down and cry, I realized I just was not engaged.
The same thing happens with games, and, I will argue, all forms of narrative. Stories are just not sustainable. The three-act framework exists for a reason. Stories need to end. Otherwise, the story ends up in one of two ways. Either the characters have so much history that every event is dripping with hidden implications and the plot becomes convoluted and twists back onto itself in some kind of literary black hole, or piece-by-piece, the elements of the plot (characters, setting, etc) get swapped out until the final product looks nothing like the original, and, surprise!, now the writers can use all the old plot lines again!
For the vast majority of gamers, MMOs work. The lore is there for those who want to sink their teeth into it, and the social component is there for everyone else. It’s just not my scene. I know I will catch a lot of flak from some of my friends for this article, who will say I am rationalizing, but that is how it is going to be. Everyone has their faults. Mine is a lack of love for the MMOWTFBBQ.
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