Bastion: Initial Thoughts

I'm maybe halfway through Bastion, and so far I'm seeing what everyone loved about the game.

The game is set in a fictional land that has experienced a horrible calamity called...well, The Calamity. I don't know what said calamity is so far, but the game is unfolding at a nice pace and I'm certainly intrigued. The gameplay is mostly beat-em-up with a little bit of RPG and platforming mixed in. The platforming is extremely annoying, as it isn't based on jumping but on trying to stay on these floating platforms. With the angle the camera is at, this gets old fast.

The art style in the game is very intriguing. It's not quite Windwaker-style cell-shading, but it is very cartoony. The characters and environments look like color versions of Alice in Wonderland illustrations, or any old-timey stories I suppose. It's simultaneously fanciful and dangerous; nostalgic and ominous.

The most heavily-lauded and famous part of Bastion has to be the narrator. Everyone was going bonkers over this interactive narrator who comments on everything you do. At first, I really didn't like him. The constant commentary annoyed the hell out of me and I really wished I was just playing a pretty beat-em-up. He's started to grow on me, however. They made him funny and sardonic. He isn't snide exactly, but he does have an edge to his voice that makes it feel like he's told this story a few times and has no patience for shenanigans. I still don't know if his inclusion is as revolutionary as everyone thought, but it is certainly entertaining.

I'll come back with more next week when I have a little more to say. Stay tuned.

Mass Effect 3: Final Thoughts

First, I would like to apologize for not posting last week. School has been hectic this term to say the least, and the maintenance of this is of a slightly lower priority than graduating from college. Again, sorry. I will try to be more diligent.

Second, I would like to know what you all think of this new format. I think it's a little too long-form, but it will work a little differently when I haven't finished a game before I even start thinking about my reviews. Therefore, I will give it another month before I revise the idea, but I would like to hear what you all have to say.

Ok, so final thoughts on Mass Effect 3. I have to say that I stand by my previous assertions. I think that Bioware has created a fantastic series of games because of their focus on engrossing gameplay and a deep, fascinating universe to explore. They create characters that players can relate to, even if they are a bit two-dimensional. As for Mass Effect 3 itself, all of the above is true. However, they wrote a terrible ending for a game. They tried to make it artistic with an open-ending, and failed miserably. It's a weird, aggravating exercise that they may not be able to fix, but that is for critics like me to complain about and not necessarily for Bioware to fix. There were also issues with DLC that are too complex to really get in to here. I will just say that I don't like DLC and I wish it would go away, but they make too much money off of it for that to happen. Besides those two (kind of big) issues, it's another great entry in a great series of games.

One thing that I forgot to talk about in my review of the story of the game was a little boy. While escaping from Earth, Shepard tries to save a little boy who is hiding in an air-vent. No matter what the player chooses, the boy runs away. Later, he blows the hell up in a ship that is fleeing. Throughout the game, there are dream sequences that show the boy running through the woods. The player then controls Shepard as he/she chases the boy through a grey grove filled with Reaper noises and lazers. Bioware was trying to show Shepard's inner turmoil with this ghost-boy, but its really just a transparent ploy to emotionally involve the player that fails miserably for a couple of reasons. For one, you see the boy for about two seconds before he is blown to smithereens. Call me heartless, but I don't care about a character I see for two seconds no matter how old they are. We have no idea who this kid is other than the fact that he's a kid. Another reason is that he's a damn stupid kid. Everyone knows who Commander Shepard is on Earth, and any child with brains should realize that he/she is going to give you the best chance of survival by far. So now we've got a dumb kid we've barely met haunting Shepard's dreams and giving us no emotional response, so Bioware makes it essentially the same dream every time to make it repetitive and boring as well as ineffective. This is a place where the narrative of Bioware as master storytellers kind of falls apart. Of course, all of this is moot if the Indoctrination Theory is true, but at face value the child is pointless.

All right, I'm finally done with Mass Effect 3. Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments. I'm moving on.

Mass Effect 3: The Ending

I was going to write a spoiler-laden article here about the various problems with the ending of Mass Effect 3. It was going to be sprawling and deep and it was going to blow all of your goddamn minds. Then, I did a Google search for 'Mass Effect 3 Endings' and realized that this is already old news. I don't care anymore. There's no right answer in this and we have to live with what Bioware gave us. For the sake of furthering the art of gaming, as I am obviously its vanguard, I will say that the ending is way too confusing. If the Indoctrination Theory is true (viewable here, but beware of spoilers and overproduction,) then Bioware should have made it more explicit and expanded. I like open endings, but only when they are done well and have more than three seconds of footage to hint and what's coming next. 

I'll post links at the bottom so that you guys can read various takes on the ending, but I'm still going to put my two cents in here really fast. Video games are a very new art form with very new rules. Developers feel they own a game because they made it and gamers feel they own a game because of how invested they are in the story; they feel they are in that story. This is even more true in an RPG, and doubly super infinity true when an RPG is as well-crafted and beloved as Mass Effect. I think gamers went too far especially the one who filed a complaint with the FTC, but at the same time Bioware really dropped the ball. Anyway, I'll just give you the links and let you decide for yourself, although I will give commentary with each link.

I agree that your choices do affect the middle of the game, but this guy underestimates the importance of endings

This guy likes 2001 way too much. Video games do not need overwrought and confusing endings to mature. Still makes some good points, though.

This guy gives the best reasons why the ending is atrocious

Just as a recap:

1) The Mass Effect 3 ending is terrible because it makes no sense, ignores most players decisions and is overall confusing, melodramatic, and awful.

2) However, if video games are art, then we must respect the authors and their vision. We can argue and whine about how bad it is, but changing it would arguably destroy it as a work of art. 

3) You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, Bioware. Think next time, and make sure that the new ending you're making works. I'm sick of this and don't really want to talk about it anymore. See you guys next week.

Mass Effect 3: The Story

This post will almost certainly contain spoilers.

Bioware, above all other game developers, are heralded for their narratives. They have an undeniable knack for telling tales that can capture the imaginations of their fans. Between Knights of the Old Republic, Dragon Age, and the most important series for this week Mass Effect, they've built a reputation as well as become a sort of posterboy for the potential that video games have as vehicles for narratives. Why? What makes them so different from the rest of the competition? Mass Effect 3 is the perfect opportunity to explore what Bioware does well, and what they do poorly in terms of story. It also gives us the chance to ask what it is that makes video games so compelling to the people who play them.

Before I get into the specifics, I suppose I should give a very brief overview of what happens in the game. The Reapers have finally nutted-up and decided to start wiping out organic life in the galaxy. They start with Earth, and Shepard is forced to leave in order to gather an army and defeat the synthetic bastards. That's basically it. You get two new squadmates, although only one is actually a new character. His name is James and he's one of the worst characters I've ever encountered in the Mass Effect universe. He's too cliche and too voiced-by-Freddie-Prince-Jr. for me to like him. Also, I'm pretty sure he takes steroids. It's terrifying. The story is still set up in that fairly open style in which you can play the missions in almost any order that you want, with the exception of one mission that makes it impossible to finish a bunch of others that I didn't know about until I did it and lost about five hours of game time which was just dandy. I spent about forty hours playing it, although I've heard of people somehow putting upwards of ninety hours in. I don't know how that's possible, but there you have it.

The best way to sum up what is great about Bioware's ability to spin a story is an anecdote. I was playing Mass Effect 3 and was very depressed about something big that had just happened (I know that I warned about spoilers, but I just can't say what that thing is.) As the cut-scene played and particles fell from the sky around the characters, the music from the title screen of the first Mass Effect started to play. It's a beautiful score; sort of techno, but the kind of awe-inspiring techno that shares more with the opening harmonics in the "Star Trek" theme song than Deadmau5. As I sat there watching this cut-scene, I started to get a little choked-up. This generally doesn't happen with me in a video game, no matter how good the game. I loved Bioshock, but I didn't feel a lump in the back of my throat during the ending cut-scene. This scene did that. I was amazed and couldn't stop thinking about why I'd had that reaction. I've decided that the reason for this emotional response is Bioware's uncanny ability to make the gamer feel attachment, not only to characters but to entire universes. A few people have joked derisively about the amount of dialogue in Bioware games, but that dialogue forces the gamer to connect to the game in a way that few others do. Even Skyrim, which is one of the conceived games in one of the best conceived universes in gaming history, couldn't come close to the emotional resonance of these games because of the amount of freedom that players have to not chat with NPC's. Everything is too expansive and too spread out to have any kind of emotion at all. I remember beating Skyrim and feeling next to nothing, partially because I still had a bunch more missions and partially because it just kind of happened. Bioware forces to player to talk to the people in their universe, and by way of their dialogue wheel the player is actually talking to those NPC's (albeit through pre-programmed responses.) The NPC's then talk about their views, their lives, and the qualities of their people, expanding the universe and forcing the player to pick a side. That is the strength of Bioware's storytelling; they force you to engage in the conversation and, in the process, find out about this vast universe their engineers have created. It's a mix of interactivity and depth that few have quite gotten right.

I was going to write here about what Bioware does wrong in their storytelling. For instance, their characters can be extremely wooden. The lines they deliver sound unnatural and awkward. Their voice actors aren't always the best and sound like they're reading the ingredients on a cereal box instead of worrying about the end of the universe. This is especially true of the male Shepard, who is excruciatingly hard to listen to sometimes. The structure of their stories is very loose and unconnected sometimes. Then I realized that I really didn't care. I think they need to fix the dialogue and hire better voice actors, sure, but the stories they tell are still intense and interesting. We still connect to these characters even if they are occasionally written with the subtlety of a fat ninja. Again, it has to be that mix of interactivity and deep personal histories that connects us to these characters. Let's look at an example: why do fans love Liara besides her propensity for lesbian sex scenes? Well, of course there is manipulation. Bioware made her smart and adorably awkward like a blue Zoe Deschanel.    

The Same Person

She's essentially the girl-next-door type. However, though she is a good person, she also has a mother who almost helps destroy organic life. She becomes the Shadowbroker as well, which adds some danger and depth to her character. There is also all that you learn about her people, and eventually about her father. She becomes interesting because she doesn't necessarily fit into any traditional archetypes. She's not the whore or the mother, and while she is likable and essentially a good person, she is no madonna. She can be a cold-blooded killer, in fact. She is a really good blend of prototypical and atypical. We need that archetypal foundation of the good, approachable girl so that we can relate to her and become invested in all of the exposition/backstory she will have to deliver, but we also need that edge to keep an interest. In the grand scheme of things, it's actually quite skillfully done. However, again, on a line-by-line basis, the quality of the writing suffers. This leads to something interesting I've noticed about narrative in video games; the detailed skill of the writing doesn't matter.

In terms of narrative, video games share just as much with books as they do with film. Yes, they are visually oriented, but they are also long-form and take anywhere from six hours to infinity to finish. Therefore, I would like to do something a little odd and compare Mass Effect 3 to the Harry Potter series. How closely have you read those books? If you've taken any time to actually read them, it becomes apparent that they aren't particularly well-written. JK Rowling's dialogue is often very unwieldy, the structures of the stories can be nearly non-existent and calling some of the characters flat is an understatement. However, they are some of the best-selling and most-beloved books of all-time. I love them. The reasons for this is the same reason that Bioware and other game developers can succeed in telling a great story without necessarily having the best writing. The number one most important thing is building a universe that the characters inhabit. The world Harry and his friends live in is, for lack of a better term, magical. There's fantastic creatures, imaginative inventions, and whimsical/nightmareish adventure around every corner. It's a fully realized realm that people would love to explore. The same is true of Mass Effect, Dragon Age or The Elder Scrolls if we're going to leave Bioware canon. Hell, Star Wars and "Star Trek" could be included in here as well as a bevy of other sci-fi and fantasy titles. Beyond a world, they also have characters that are enjoyable, if not always deep. Who doesn't love Aberforth, even if he probably had sex with a goat? The gruffer, disillusioned Dumbledore is interesting not because he's such an interesting character, but because of how he fits into the mythos and how differently he acts from Albus Dumbledore, the beloved and complex character we miss throughout the seventh book. A good equivalent to Aberforth in Mass Effect 3 would be the Asari barmaid in the Presidium Commons. Asari are wise and generally aloof, but this lady is gruff and harshly-spoken. Again, this is using the player's knowledge of this universe they set up to make characters engaging and entertaining. Then, of course, there's the length. Both Mass Effect and any Harry Potter book are too long to remember the specifics of each conversation. If you say that Ron said something, I can assume it was probably something incredibly stupid and possibly funny. If you say Garrus said something, I can assume it was badass. I couldn't tell you what either of them actually said, though, which allows the player to fill in the blanks themselves. I choose to believe these characters were well-written because I liked them and can't remember specific reasons to believe anything else. 

So what am I trying to say in this vast, tangled weave of text? The writers at Bioware aren't William Shakespeare. They aren't even Christopher Nolan. They use a lot of cliches and manipulation, their dialogue is awkward, and a lot of stuff feels disconnected or doesn't really make sense. However, they are pioneers. They are attempting to write deep storylines and build interesting characters in a medium that doesn't always pride itself on its storytelling abilities. Writing in video games is a deep, unmapped lake in the middle of nowhere and Bioware is just dipping a toe. They are laying groundwork for what will eventually be a medium that could rival all others before it in terms of emotional power and narrative complexity. You have to applaud them for that. 

Mass Effect 3: General Feelings

Well, after a very long break I am back. I know you've all missed me terribly, as I am one of the few shining lights in your life. You don't have to say it, I just know. To my Russian readers, dosvedanya or something. I'm sorry, I don't speak your language. Anyway, I've decided to break up my reviews into four week parts so that  I can put more thought into them and maybe actually finish games before I review them, just like a big boy. Generally the first week will be first impressions, the second and third will be something interesting I've noticed about the game, and the fourth week will either be a reworking of my original impressions based on the ending or something else I thought was interesting if my first impressions were totally right. If there are five Sundays in a month, then I just get an extra week to play the new game. I think this will allow for a little more analysis and depth. Also, again, the finishing the game thing. That's been bugging me since I started writing this blog. This month will be a little different, however, as I have already finished the game. I was sick almost all of Spring Break so I had nothing better to do. Therefore, I have all of my impressions of the game and will have to be crafty with the rest of my articles. Also, I'm now posting this on a Monday so I've already screwed up the format. Anyway, I hope this works better than that hellish weekly format.

Now that old business is closed, we shall move on to new business: Mass Effect 3. As all of you know, I am a huge fan of the Mass Effect series. Bioware has done a fantastic job of building a deep universe, a compelling story, and a rabid fan-base. Because of the quality of the previous games in the series, hype for Mass Effect 3 has been fevered. Ads were ubiquitous on TV and the Internet in the months leading up to its release. Xbox Live even had a countdown on the dashboard. However, the game has also been mired in controversies surrounding its ending and DLC. I'll talk about the endings and controversy in different, spoiler-laden part of the review. Right now, I want to talk about the more general gameplay aspects of Mass Effect 3. Does the game work as a game?

In terms of actual game-play, everything is very much like Mass Effect 2. The style is more action-RPG than the first one, with fast-paced, roll-and-shoot game play not totally unlike Gears of War. The characters still have powers to upgrade, though now there is a branching tree-esque system in place where the gamer picks between two different modifications to their skills once they upgrade it past level three. There are all kinds of cool weapons that are actually impressively distinct in terms of how they fire and how much damage they can do. The vehicle sections are still gone, the elevators load quickly, and they've added decapitation effects when you shoot enemies in the head. In terms of bare-bones gameplay, nothing has changed. The dialogue is also handled similarly using Bioware's patent-pending talk-o-gram dialogue wheel. The paragon/renegade quick-time actions are also still in place, though now they can have actual influence on the game. Really, what you can take from the game play is that Shepard is still a badass space warrior who will stop at nothing to see an end to the Reapers.

There are two gameplay concepts introduced into Mass Effect 3 that are different and really modify the game feels; the war assets and the multiplayer. War assets are a concept that isn't completely alien to the Mass Effect franchise. The essentially act like the upgrades to the ship from Mass Effect 2 in that you need to take part in missions in order to acquire resources to get the best ending possible for your playthrough. It's a fairly simple concept, but one that is even more effective in this game. Collecting war assets feels so much grander and more important than modifying an engine. It's easier to imagine amassing hordes of Elcor to help in your war effort than imaging the difference between Thanix cannons and whatever second-rate crap Cerberus installed on your ship in the first place. It's epic, for lack of a better word, and makes you want to gather every race in the galaxy to help save Earth. The multiplayer is much less successful. If you don't already know, the multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 is tied to the single-player via a galaxy readiness system. Galactic readiness is a handicap on your war assets that cuts off half of the effective strength of those armies from the beginning. For instance, if your war assets total at five thousand and your galactic readiness is at 50%, then your effective strength is only around two-thousand five-hundred, which will probably give you an ending that results in everyone dying and show naked pictures of old Marlon Brando. In order to raise your galactic readiness, you either need to play the multiplayer or apps you can get on your phone or Ipad. Its extremely annoying, especially since the free app is really only useful as a way to boost your galactic readiness in multiplayer. The multiplayer itself is essentially horde mode, where you kill wave after wave of increasingly difficult enemies. You can unlock different classes, races, and other schwag as you gain levels. There seems to be one map for every system in the game's universe, so that's about six maps. Its not awful, its just really boring and made to feel like a chore you have to complete to complete your single-player campaign. It's horribly unnecessary.

Besides the very existence of multiplayer, the only other problem with the game-play is that the controls can be a bit awkward on occasion, especially while using cover. Shepard has a tendency to roll when he/she should really duck or randomly stand up completely out of cover for no discernible reason. It seems like a little thing, but it can get you killed pretty easily. Other than that, all I can say is that its Mass Effect. They want you to feel powerful without being a god like just about every other game out there, and they execute very well. The gun play is tight, the dialogue system is still the best around, and the quick-time events are actually enjoyable which is the exception when it comes to quick-time events.

Next week, I'll talk narrative in this game and the rest of the Mass Effect series. I don't know if I'll talk about endings yet. I might make an article that's all about controversies. We'll see.

SORRY

I realize it's been a very long time since I've posted anything on this blog. This likely disturbed my readers immensely, possibly leading to alcoholism or insanity. For that, I apologize. The reason for my absence, besides factors like living my life, is that I've been rethinking the format of this blog. A week is not enough time. As you may have noticed, I rarely finish the games I review. This gives me a good idea of how a game is, but isn't really fair or as thorough as I would like. I also feel I'm rushing like mad the entire time. So I'm debating changing it to a review a month, or possibly writing and article a week, but only on one game a month. I'm doing some soul searching is what I'm saying. So I'm sorry I haven't said anything before this, but I think I'll probably start posting again in April. It's starting to get sunny outside so we'll see how that goes, but I think I should be able to do that.

Ta ta,
Drew

Rock Band 3 and Rhythm Games

Music and rhythm games have been around for a long time. Dance Dance Revolution, Rez, Space Channel 5, and even the mini-game in Ocarina of Time are all prime examples. However, for a very long time they were a niche genre. Unless they were part of a larger game, music games didn't sell particularly well and most didn't consider them to be a part of the enormous pantheon of classic games. Then there was Harmonix.

Harmonix is a developer that deals almost exclusively in music and rhythm games. In the early 2000's, they released Frequency and Amplitude. In the game, the player took control of a weird, futuristic DJ. Using a track-and-button system not unlike their later Guitar Hero and Rockband games, the player would pound out notes using a regular controller rather than an instrument peripheral. The player also controlled every track of the song, rather than one instrument. The games garnered plenty of critical respect and a loyal cult following. A few years later, in 2005, they released the first Guitar Hero game through Activision for the Playstation 2. Obviously, this game came with the guitar peripheral developed by Red Octane. It was, again, a big success critically, but not hugely popular with gamers at first. However, it started to gain traction and by the time Guitar Hero 2 was released the following year, it was huge. Harmonix then decided that they wanted to expand the instrumentation to drums and vocals, as well as the guitars already in place. Activision laughed in their faces, so they left to make the Rockband series.

For a while, in the late 2000's, the Rockband and Guitar Hero series were the best selling games on the market, though they were popular for slightly different reasons. Guitar Hero was slightly more competitive with it's face-off mode pitting two guitarists against one another, while Rockband was symbiotic with everyone coming together to finish a song as a band. Their business models were very different, with Guitar Hero pumping out full-blown and full-priced games multiple times a year and Rockband focusing on downloadable content. After a few years, the market became saturated to the point that no one could figure out any reason to buy a new game. With a full band of plastic instruments cluttering their apartments, people had had enough. It was in this market with this mindset that Harmonix released Rockband 3. 


Rockband 3, to its credit, tried to revolutionize the genre. Rather than release a $60 game that could have been sold as DLC and made much more money, Harmonix decided that they were going to actually teach players to play the instruments they'd been pretending to play for the past few years. Pro mode was going to be their crowning achievement and the the ending to an inevitable progression. And there was no way in hell it was going to work.

The drums made sense. They'd released cymbal expansions a few years ago that a person could put on their kit for little more than aesthetic value, so with a quick update, the player could play the drums when the game said drums and cymbals when a new round symbol came flying down the track. The keyboard (a new peripheral) was also fairly easy since the piece of equipment was new and was cheap enough to include in a bundle with the game without being totally inconceivable to buy. Nothing was needed to make the vocals pro, though they did throw in three-part harmonies that no one ever used. The only thing left was the guitar. There were two guitars; a plastic one and a real one. No one wanted the plastic one, because it was stupid. It was a replica of a Fender Mustang that had a button where each fret should have been. It also had less fret than a guitar, so the whole goal of teaching the gamer how to play the guitar was lost. the only option was the real Squire that Fender had made specially for the game. It was cool, though it was over $300 before you bought the adapter necessary to interface with the game. No one was willing to buy a substandard guitar that they could use to play a video game and the whole experiment flopped.

Nowadays, Rockband still quietly sells tons of DLC to people who still enjoy banging away on those plastic instruments (myself included.) The Guitar Hero franchise, which was taken over by Tony Hawk developers Neversoft for some reason, is apparently dead. There are many reasons for this, most notably over-saturation (There were twelve different games released in five years, not counting mobile and portable games,) and a weird decision to add vague story lines and gimmicks to the games. While rhythm games focused on dancing are still seemingly popular (including Harmonix's Dance Central series,) the heyday of plastic instruments seems to be over. The Rockband developers have wisely moved to building their music library and releasing the tracks through digital distribution rather than releasing new games every few weeks.

It had been a long time since I'd played Rockband when I picked it up this week and, to my surprise, it's still really fun. My fingers don't remember the brightly-colored frets of my old, white Explorer controller as well as I'd hoped, but I fudged my way through my Jimi Hendrix DLC and old enemies like "Green Grass and High Tides." There's nothing really to say about Rockband other than it's a great game to play drunk and rowdy with a group of dorky friends. I once saw a man get through "Almost Easy" while he was on acid and I had to wonder if he was the reincarnation of John Bonham. You don't get that same experience out of Halo or sports games. This is less of a review and more of a message that you should try these games again. You may have forgotten how much fun they can be.

Half Life 2

Recently there was a push by people on Steam, developer Valve's digital distribution service, to force Gabe Newell and the other folks at Valve to say literally anything about their most anticipated game; Half Life 3. Since releasing the Orange Box set in 2007, no one has said anything about a Half Life: Episode 3 or the more likely, full-length follow-up to the genre-defining series. In an attempt to persuade Valve, some Steam users played Half Life 2 in an attempt to rocket the game up the play-charts and send a message that Gordon Freeman had not been forgotten. The game only got to number eleven on the chart over the weekend and Valve has kept mum on the subject of a sequel. This got me thinking about the game again, however. Half Life 2 was my first favorite game, and it is an extremely important one to many people. The entire series has shown that first-person shooters, a genre notorious for attracting meat heads of the highest caliber, can be art. Just thinking about it makes me feel fuzzy inside.

It's impossible to talk about the merits of Half Life 2 without first discussing the merits of its predecessor, Half Life. Half Life was released in 1998, spewed from the churning cauldron that was the modding community. It was built with a heavily modded version of the Quake engine. The game is notable for many reasons, including AI that was extremely advanced for the time and its position at a weird crossroads between shooter and platformer. However, most would say that its most important contribution to the world of video games was its narrative. The story itself wasn't deep, although a quick Wikipedia search will reveal a deep world outside of the game-space. The player character was a theoretical physicist by the name of Gordon Freeman. He looked a little like Ed Norton with a goatee, glasses and a super advanced Hazard suit that worked as a suit of armor that shielded him from environmental hazards as well as attacks. In the beginning of  the game, an experiment Gordon is involved in results in a catastrophic event known as a resonance cascade. The resonance cascade rips open a hole in space-time and sends forth a variety of monsters from another dimension known as Xen. The rest of the game is simply Gordon trying to escape. Much happens, of course, but that is the basic structure.

The dreaded zombie from Half Life 

What was remarkable about the game was the lack of cutting. There were no cut-scenes or cinematics in the game. The only reason that the player knew what Gordon Freeman looked like was from the art on the box. This continuous game play was a huge step forward. It made the player feel closer to Gordon. Freeman never speaks throughout the game, either, allowing the player to project their own thoughts onto him. One of the most riveting scenes in the game is one which normally would have been glossed over in cut-scene. In the introduction scene of the game, the player stands in a high-tech tram. This tram lowers into the Black Mesa Research Facility at the start and takes the player on a tour. there are giant machines and bubbling vats of neon-green ooze. There are giant metal blast doors that take a few seconds to open, building the tension and player's curiosity. At one point you see a man in a business suit; the great enigma of the series, the G-Man. Eventually, the player arrives at their destination, and the game begins. That scene illustrates perfectly the pacing and narrative control that Valve used in this game. The concept is very simple (aliens come from another dimension and you have to escape,) but with the build in tension and the multitude of problems Gordon must overcome, the game starts to feel epic and because of the lack of cut-scenes the player is always a part of the action.

After Half Life, fans were rabid for a sequel. While Gearbox developed some competent expansion packs, everyone wanted Gordon back. It didn't happen until 2004 for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, the development of the Steam distribution service, development of the Source engine, and a German hacker stealing their source code. When the game was finally released in 2004, it was a revelation. 

Welcome to City 17

The game looked beautiful, and I think it still does. Gordon finds himself in City 17 after something that happened at the end of the first Half Life that I don't want to ruin for anyone who hasn't played it. City 17 is one of many urban centers controlled by the Combine, an alien race that has enslaved the human race. As with the first game, there is an introductory scene in which there is no real action where the world is revealed to the player. Everything is very 1984, with the smiling face of this universe's big Brother, Dr. Breen, slathering propaganda onto the newly arrived visitors. There are hints of atrocities and oppression all around. Nothing is over-the-top and very little is actually said. It's very obvious through little actions and snippets of dialogue that everything is very wrong. From there, the action picks up considerably, with portals and teleportation, vehicle sequences and intense gun-fighting. The story is even more engrossing than its predecessor, with characters who are actually likable (something that doesn't happen often in video games.) The world feels more realized than in the first game and everything shines. 

My favorite part of the game is later on, when you find a car. As you're driving along a coastal road, you are constantly attacked by Combine forces. Sometimes this means you have to stop and snipe them with a crossbow, sometimes it means surviving an assault that feels eerily lifelike. If you aren't paying attention, they can sneak up on you and get you with that shotgun. All the while, the most beautiful scenery every put into a game is on display. It feels like the Pacific Northwest, actually. I felt like the bridge could have been found in Astoria. Large pine trees are everywhere and you can feel the mist on your neck. It's a glorious sequence. There is also the famous Ravenholm sequence featured in the demo of the game. It's essentially Valve's take on a zombie film (at least before Left 4 Dead) and it needs to be seen by everyone.

The physics, appropriately considering Gordon's profession, were also a major step forward. For one of the first, if not the first, time in gaming history, there were actually puzzles based around the physics of the game. I remember the first time I figured out that putting bricks onto one side of fulcrum weighed the contraption down enough that I could run up the side like a ramp and jump onto a ledge. It was exhilarating.   Then there was, of course, the Gravity Gun. I like to call it the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator, but that might be because I'm a giant dork. The idea of a device that can pull or push random objects in game space was genius. It was a revolutionary idea that is still being ripped off today. There is little more terrifying in the world of games than hearing the pitiful moans of a zombie, and little more satisfying than launching a saw blade at the abomination and slicing it at the midsection. 

Speaking of sound, there has never been better than the sound in Half Life 2. There is a crispness to it like it was recorded in an autumn morning. Everything is so clear and concise; the crack of the crowbar, the snap of the pistol, the boom of the shotgun. That piercing screech and hoot of the fast zombies would make Bruce Lee soil himself while the headcrabs had an almost adorable chirp until they latched onto your face. The aural qualities of the game were immediate and sharp, only adding to the immediacy and the beauty of the game. 

The game deals with issues that all good games deal with; namely, control. Control is an inherently big issue in the world of games because control is the very foundation of games. Without control, without gameplay, a game is just a very awkward animated film. Control is everything. In Half Life 2, you have the G-Man silently observing you, and you get the feeling that he is somehow responsible for all of this. There are the Vortagaunts, aliens who were former slaves with no free will. In the previous game, you were forced to kill in the first game because of their bondage to a massive alien by the name of Nihalenth. Now, they help you and worship you for freeing them from their shackles. They sometimes speak of seeing a million eyes through Gordon's, a possible allusion to the players of the game. Breen is controlled by the Combine, but the Combine appears to be controlled by some unseen force, as Gordon is. Everything that happens comes back to one decision made at the end of the last game, and who controls whom. 

I cannot speak highly enough of this game. It is damn near perfect with beautiful visuals, incredible sound design, fun game play and the most enthralling storyline of any game I've ever played. Most great games have some of these qualities. I don't know if I've played another game that has all of them (maybe Portal, but it's still Valve and they're in the same universe so doesn't matter.) If you haven't played these games, play them.

And I would do horrible sex acts to Gabe Newell if he'd release Half Life 3.

NCAA Football 12

Dear five or so readers,

I was going to write a long piece about genre and how video games are simultaneously three things: games, narratives and simulations. It was interesting, but ultimately had nothing to do with this game. Let's face it, it's a game about playing football. You get a lot of options in terms of player stats, conference realignment and plays. If you like college football, you'll like this game. If you don't care, you will care even less about this. It's fun, but ultimately extremely stupid. Not even my uncanny ability to bullshit could connect this game to anything deeper. I've got some homework to do, and then I'll see about writing something a little deeper in a few days. 

                                                                                                                          Love,

                                                                                                                          Drew Norton

                                                                                                                          Writer/World-Class Assassin

Costume Quest

Just out of curiosity, how many of you know who Tim Schaffer is? If you don't, just know that I don't hate you, but I am terribly disappointed in you. Tim Schaffer is the fantastic creative designer and head of Double Fine Studios. He started at Lucas Arts before founding Double Fine in 2000 and has helped developed some of the best, or at least best written, games in history including The Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, and the flawed but enjoyable Brutal Legend. Recently, Double Fine has begun to create smaller games for release through digital distribution services such as Xbox Live and Steam. The first of these games is Costume Quest, and I could not be happier with the results.

Costume Quest is a simple game, but it is executed so perfectly. In terms of game mechanics, it's a fairly standard turn-based RPG. You choose the attacks you wish your character to perform and then they perform them. The game requires the player to press certain buttons during the attack at certain times or hammer on a button to power up the attack and keep the battles a little more dynamic. This is also required when the enemies attack to minimize the damage taken. I suppose they're technically quick-time events, but they don't result in instant death and are relatively easy so they actually worked well. When not in battle, the player wanders around in three different environments in search of new costumes which somehow change the characters into magical beings, candy which is used as currency, and quests, which are usually of the 'fetch' variety. There are a few mini-games and collectables, too, but overall there is little to the game in terms of actual playing. You look around, you trick-or-treat a little bit and then you fight some monsters. There is a little variety that kept things fresh, but there is little more to the game than that.

So why do I like this game so much? Well, it all comes down to the narrative. Don't get me wrong, this is extremely simple, too. You are either a boy or a girl whose sister or brother is abducted by monsters because they think he/she is candy. The rest of the game is a quest to get them back. That's really it. However, the writing and the environments are so charming that it is impossible to dislike the game. Every line of dialogue in the game is fantastic. I bought the game, in fact, because of a screen shot I saw of a boy in a banana suit making an Arrested Development reference that I won't spoil here. Video game writing doesn't get better than this. It's a little annoying that there's no voice acting, but I don't mind reading every once in a while. Then there's the environments, or really the overall tone of the game which the environments evoked so perfectly. This game brings back the memories of childhood and bygone Halloweens so perfectly that I thought I would asphyxiate on the nostalgia. All of the kids running around, the constant pursuit of candy, and the sheer adventure of being a child is all so beautifully rendered. The three main environments are a suburban neighborhood, a gigantic mall and a little town that looks like it is somewhere in Connecticut or one of those other Northeastern states that are so beautifully and disgustingly quaint. I love it so much.

This is a short review, I know, but it is also a short game. It took me just about seven hours to beat with minimal effort. Be that as it may, I urge you to buy this game. Tim Schaffer is the closest thing to an auteur that video games have right now and he should be supported. At the same time, this is a fantastic game about the joys of being young. The imagination, the writing and the sheer love that went into this game makes it irresistible. I feel that this game is a modern Norman Rockwell painting. It embodies everything we hold dear, including meta humor, pop culture references, fantastic imagination and a deep undercurrent of, for lack of a better term, goodness. I'd say love, but I'm not a hippie. It's one of the few games I've ever seen that has children killing monsters for candy that I think is totally wholesome.

More Thoughts on Dead Island

The more I play this game, the more I hate it. I've been playing co-op with my girlfriend recently because there's nothing better to do, and I have to say that this is one of the most frustrating, broken experiences I've ever had. The Thugs (AKA really big zombies) are annoying in that they can basically look at you and send you flying around a room like a bouncy ball. However, this annoyance is relatively contained in the beginning of the game because there's rarely more than one Thug in an area. However, once you get into the city level, everything can knock you over in one hit! Isn't that wonderful? I thought at first that this was because of the zombie leveling system, which scales somewhat with the player's level. However, I was continually knocked off of my feet by zombies several levels below me, zombies which just randomly decided to spawn behind me when I was fighting one of the annoying mini-boss super zombie things that they stole from Left 4 Dead. How can you play a game that has enemies that are illogically much stronger than you spawning out of nowhere for ever and ever and ever? There is no end to them. This may have been a premeditated idea for the game as zombies tend to swarm (they're social creatures, of course.) If that's the case, however, then make the combat fun or consistent or even usable for Christ's sake. In the beginning of the game, you can just kick a zombie and it basically explodes in a cloud of dust. Later on, however, you can kick them a million times and they just keep swinging at you while a million other zombies randomly spawn. Then of course there's the stamina meter that forces you to choose your shots or, you know, stop swinging altogether and die a horrible death. Also, your weapons break so that might happen. They pile all of this unnecessary crap onto their game to make it difficult, but its just annoying. In fact, even with all of this extraneous bullshit, the game would be easy if it wasn't so glitchy. I've swung at a zombie that was right in front of me and missed before. That isn't a testament to how bad of a gamer I am, but to how I swung through the zombie like it was a ghost. Maybe that's a power that zombies get when they reach level 20 or something.

Speaking of which, why do the zombies have levels? That is the stupidest concept I've eve heard. What do zombies gain out of levels? How do they gain them in the first place? What experiences are they gaining? Humans gaining levels makes sense because they're learning how to do different things, how to handle different situations and handle their weapons properly. Zombies can't do this because they're fucking zombies. Zombies don't learn from their mistakes. That's stupid. Zombies don't get stronger and grow. They're dead. Next they'll have zombie families and go to their zombie job where they hope to get a promotion to director of brain sales or something. Zombies are brainless and primal creatures that act on instinct. Thecided to completely ruin the intrinsic nature of the zombie to keep with the aesthetics of the RPG.

Finally, and most possibly nit-picky, is the whole central premise of the game. Not the tired survival aspect of the zombie experience, though that is annoying. No, the fact that your character can't be infected. It makes sense, of course. If you could be infected, then you would die very easily. It would be an even more annoying game than it already is. However, the thing that is scary or unnerving or even compelling about zombies is that they can infect you. Zombies can turn you into a monster with simply a bite or  transfer of fluids. That's scary. However, what are zombies without their infectious nature? They're dead people that can walk. Creepy, yes, but what the hell is a walking corpse going to do to you? Half of the zombies in this game don't even have weapons, so they are just scratching at this character that is cutting them up with a machete or bashing them in the head with a baseball bat and, at least starting in the city section, they start to become very deadly. That is ridiculous. I know there's really no way around it, because instant infection would make the game unplayable. However while being scratched a lot hurts, it hardly seems deadly, no mater what level the zombie is at THIS IS STUPID!

There were a number of things this game could have used (polish, a writer, ect.) and a lot of things it could have done without (zombie levels, glitches, ect.) As it stands, we have a mediocre zombie game that couldn't possibly have lived up to its expectations and instead delivers an infuriating mix of glitches and poor gameplay. Sorry about this rant. I was playing this game this morning and I just couldn't take leaving these things unsaid. It fails on a narrative level, a gameplay level and just a general fun level.

Dead Island

Dead Island is a poster boy for a giant problem in the world of video games: pre-rendered trailers. Pre-rendered trailers, or previews for video games that only show cinematics and not actual gameplay footage, tell the consumer absolutely nothing about what a game actually is while still making the game look fantastic. Dead Island's trailer was magnificent and set the Internet buzzing like a bee hive. All that this trailer tells you about the actual game is that there are zombies in it. If you watched that trailer, could you tell me that this game is a survival horror/RPG game in which you play one of four characters immune to a zombie virus? No, you could tell me that its cool how it was all in reverse and such. That's it. This isn't an isolated incident. Could you tell me that Alice: Madness Returns is a platformer from this trailer? Or how about how the battle system works in this one for Final Fantasy XIII-2. Yes, it will probably involve chocobos and moogles at some point, but beyond that it's a mystery. If you see a really great pre-rendered trailer for a game and feel a sudden itching in your pocket, you either have a strange STD or you should wait to see a gameplay trailer before you buy that game...or both I suppose.


Now, beyond this trailer business, Dead Island is a remarkably unremarkable game. It's not terrible, it's just repetitive and boring. As I said before, the game is about whichever character the player chooses doing zombie survival-themed fetch-quests. I chose the black guy because, as I've stated many times, video games don't know how to handle minorities and the subtleties of character yet. I derive endless pleasure from hearing a man say, "Copacetic," when they are handed a mission, especially when the man in question has a voice that sounds like it was picked out of a stereotype line-up. Other than the fact that he is black and some back-story my character read to me during the selection process like it was an interview, I know nothing about my character and learn even less. In fact, I've forgotten everything that was read to me except that he was from New Orleans (also, he conspicuously loses his Nawlens accent the second he stops telling me his life story at the beginning, so that apparently didn't matter anyway.) There is no characterization beyond what weapon each character specializes in. If you're hoping that the lack of characterization in the player character is made up for in an ensemble of kooky NPC's, you're sorely mistaken. I don't remember any of the characters except for Sinamoi, and that's only because I was trying to figure out where the hell that name came from the whole time I played it. I have to assume it's some kind of islander name, but I'm out of luck so far.


However, what the game lacks in story and characters, it also lacks in gameplay. This is an action/RPG, and in that spirit every character has some specializations into which the player can dump the skill points they accrue through a leveling system. I know this idea is Earth-shattering, but please try not to soil yourselves. My character, who's name is Sam B. I just remembered, specializes in blunt weapons and heals over time. Huzzah! To move up the skill tiers, the character must fully invest in at least one of the skills in the tier below it (below it in terms of power at least, as it is technically above the next tier in the menu.) It's all really simple stuff. The combat is just about as simple, with most characters swinging and stabbing their way through hordes of enemies. The enemies level with the players, but I never really had any trouble with them. There are special zombies, such as the infinitely annoying thugs which can knock the player down with a single hit. The player can also throw items at the zombies, use environmental weapons such as propane tanks and upgrade their weapons with a somewhat fun mod system. However, the weapons degrade and must be repaired which, along with charging weapons, is one of my least favorite game mechanics in the video game industry. I know weapons break in real life and its a good way to stop the players from becoming the 
Übermensch, but I want to feel powerful when I'm using a flaming baseball bat. Call me crazy, but it's just a dream of mine.

One thing I will give the game is its weird little details. For instance, when you look downwards in the game, you can actually see your character's legs. That's rare, indeed. Also, when starting a car, the character actually turns the key and puts the car into gear. The legs are just a nice aesthetic choice but the car starting, whether or not there is really danger, adds a taste of panic to a moment that would be completely over-looked in any other game. I've never had a zombie break into a car and kill me in that game, but every time I was running away from them towards a vehicle, it was on my mind. However, this glimmer of interest is squashed by other attempts at realism, like a stamina bar that forces the player to stop attacking if it goes down to zero. In fact, there were a few times I was swinging a crow bar Gordan Freeman-style and my famous rapper character decided to just quit swinging. My stamina was fine, but he decided that the zombie might just let him go if he stopped swinging. I don't know if it was a glitch or if this was supposed to simulate a zombie blocking somehow, but it was extremely annoying.

When it comes down to it, this game is nothing more than a great trailer. Playing co-op with a friend or loved one makes the game much more fun (though the lack of polish is even more noticeable), but as a single-player experience it's lacking. The concept of zombies, at least in the classic Romero style, have been looked at from ever angle. There is nothing more to say about them. Furthermore, the gameplay doesn't seem to go beyond simply trying to make the game realistic, as if that would add enough tension to completely ignore story, characters or meaning of any kind. I am very aware that this game takes part on a rich party island and that it is most likely a commentary on the super rich and capitalism in general. Fantastic. I always love to hear about how capitalism is evil from people who sell their product on false advertising.

Saints Row: The Third

It's hard to really decide how I feel about Saints' Row: The Third. It raises a lot of conflicting emotions. On one hand, it's fun. All of the Saints' Row games are great open-world games because they haven't forgotten that you can do anything you want in them. On the other hand, it's really stupid. It hovers right around Soul Plane on the Drew Norton Scale of Stupidity that I just made up and refuse to calibrate. There's a thin line between fun and stupidity in the world of video games, and Saints' Row: The Third poops all over that line. I think that's why I enjoyed it so much.

The story is non-existent. Everything that happens is just a setup for a raid on a sex dungeon or an excuse to blow a skyscraper sky-high. For the purposes of this review though, I can tell you that the boss of the 3rd Street Saints (a gang from the imaginary town of Stillwater) gets screwed over again and ends up in a new town called Steelport. Underneath all of the baseball bat-sized dildos, this is just a revenge tale. Of course, it's really hard to look underneath dildos of that magnitude. 

This game was sold on its zaniness. It seems unlikely that anyone has failed to see one of the commercials for this game parodying Japanese game shows. Yes, there are killer game shows, multiple missions involving free-falling out of airplanes and a street gang that has become a commercial force to be reckoned with. Everything glows in the city of Steelport, from casino fronts to the lighting underneath a custom sports car.There are references to everything from old-school gaming to old-school film actors with fantastic mustaches. It seems like the developers cranked everything to eleven for this game, which I have to give them credit for. This does lead to situations that may turn-off people not entrenched in the culture of gaming. People who have played these types of games for years, blowing up a town full of people with an RPG is par for the course (though this game goes much, much farther than that.) However, I can see how other people might be turned-off by this excessive violence, sex, drugs and sheer volume. Those people also don't know what fun is, but I digress.

An argument could easily be made that this game lacks any kind of narrative depth. In fact, I doubt there would be any argument. There's little to no character development, there really isn't a plot so much as a general theme of destroying gang leaders and anyone with even the slightest tendency to deviate from the path of the main story-line could easily lose the thread altogether in a mash-up of side quests and mini-games. Even when there is something resembling a story, all of the dialogue is silly. Don't get me wrong it can also be awesome, but in more of an Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando way than in a way that connects you to the characters. Really, it's just poorly written. It is.

However, while everything in the story is silly (and that's being kind), two things about this game are done better than almost any game I've played; the customization and the developers' imagination. Volition made an amazing world in Steelport. All of the neighborhoods are fantastically realized with a ton of flair. The gangs are amazingly cool, with a group of luchadores, some Tron junkies and a group of Matrix-esque badasses ruling the various islands. The situations in the game, while sometimes cheesy or forced, are almost always entertaining. 

That's what this game is; entertaining. I can see how people could feel disconnected by the sheer stupidity of the game, and I can't disagree with them or say that I don't wish this game was better written. However, I had so much fun shooting tanks, flying high-tech fighter jets and killing hookers with giant rubber penises that I could look past the sub-sophomoric humor and god-awful writing. It's a romp, best played drunk with friends. At least it was more fun than Battlefield 3.


Edit: I realized that I completely forgot to talk about the second thing I thought was amazing; the customization. It was nagging at me all day, so I've finally gotten to it. The character creator in this game is phenomenal, allowing you to tweak your character's features to the smallest degree. The only thing I wanted that wasn't there was a great bushy beard, but alas we can't have everything in life. Instead, I made mine look almost exactly like Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead so I was happy. It's also possible to customize your vehicles to the tiniest detail as well as make somewhat minor changes to your wardrobe. It's a lot of fun to play around with.