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Thief 4, Please Steal My Heart Anew

Is Eidos Montreal working on a new Thief game?  Eurogamer put together some clues and came up yesterday with a very definite "perhaps."  I've posted a screen shot from Thief 4 right here.  It's right there, hiding in plain sight.  What, you can't see it?  Ha ha!  I snatch your golden goblet, and I escape into the night!  It's my goblet now.  Goblet keepers.

When I played Thief for the first time, it really got into my head.  When I walked my dog at night, I tried to stay within the shadows.  If I saw people walking through a room it seemed as if they were on "patrol" and I half-consciously memorized their patterns.  I also had some really odd dreams in those days, because in case you didn't know, every Thief game has one very, very frightening level.  Just one.  The other levels are merely suspenseful, although very, very suspenseful.

According to Eurogamer,

Thief is a stealth-action title set in a gritty world that's a cross between the late middle ages and Victorian eras. It sees players creeping around and killing people by using their environment to cloak their approach and dump bodies down sewer hatches.

which is laughably untrue.  The game is not about killing people, it's about sneaking behind them and hiding in shadows when they turn around.  I have no idea where they got the bit about dropping bodies into sewers.  Thief sees players dousing torches to create shadows, walking on carpets to mask their footsteps, causing distractions, and leaning out of hidden alcoves to pick a guard's pocket.  Most of the damn game is just waiting.  The main game mechanic is sitting quietly and attentively.  If today's school kids played Thief, there would be much less ADHD, although admittedly, there would be many more pickpockets.  But damn it, they'd be focused pickpockets.

Technorati Tags: Thief 4, Thief, stealth action, the identity-confused genre

Give One Pause

The latest bit of Dead Space news, which absolutely sounds like a Peter Molyneux style quip randomly tossed off in a ploy for pre-release hype, is that the upcoming survival horror FPS might not have a pause option.  That is, it currently has one, but Electronic Arts said something about removing it.  Ooo!  Scary!  And ultra-realistic, too.  In real life, when I'm walking around a deserted spaceship and something undead jumps out and starts chewing on your leg, I can't just pause, open the inventory, and inject a hypo-med-stimpack to bring your health back to 100.  That's some video game bullshit.  No, in real life, I bring up the real-time holographic display, scroll, scroll, scroll, press A, whoops, selected the wrong thing, now I'm wearing a hoodie and timbs, scroll back, press A, and voilà!  My health instantly shoots up to 17, buying me just enough time to dispatch Lil' Zombie Chewsalot.  Whew!  Now that I have a spare moment, must remember to reload my laser rifle, in case I'm running low on lasers.

The ability to pause during a fight is stupid, but the lack thereof is equally stupid, with an extra layer of inconvenience.  After all, if I wanted to play that way, I could always just refuse to pause.  As a general rule, I'm fine with game designers who try to create a specific experience by limiting my options as a player.  Low health, limited saves, even real-time inventory systems are all legitimate ways to build tension.  However, the game itself better be damn scary as well, because I don't play a game to experience a frightening interface.  The System Shock 2 interface is a giant pain in the ass at points, but it would still be terrifying in God mode.  Resident Evil 4 is the easiest one in the series, and maybe it's not quite as scary, but it's still disturbing, and gosh darn it, people love that game.  They play it over and over.  No one plays the original Resident Evil ten times in a row.  It's not about the difficulty.  It's about the weird funhouse alchemy that turns being frightened into having fun.  Get that right first, Dead Space, then you may touch my pause button.

Technorati Tags: Dead Space, Peter Molyneux, Resident Evil, System Shock, survival horror, my timberlands, let me show you them, Mr. Zombie

More Alpha Prime Out of Context

I beat Alpha Prime.  I wanted to see if it could get any worse.  It sure could!  Around halfway through they begin running out of ways to rip off Half-Life 2 and start biting on Doom 3.  That's around when the "Coral Snake" plot line kicks in.  "Coral Snake" is the code name of someone who might be a double agent, working to foil Arnie, the player character.  Who could Coral Snake be?  Well, there are only three characters besides Arnie, and one of them is overtly evil, so you do the math.  At the end, it turns out that one of the two remaining characters is Coral Snake.  Huge surprise!

The "Glomar's Heart" plot line makes even less sense.  I still don't really understand that one.  Glomar is some kind of magical entity or something (we never see him, and the game assumes we already know about him) and his Heart grants wishes, if you can find it.  Coincidentally, his Heart happens to reside on this crappy mining asteroid, for a little while at least.  At other times, Glomar's Heart flits around the universe granting wishes, I think.  It's confusing.  The finale is a very, very lame boss battle in which you run around pressing buttons  on the walls because none of your weapons will permanently kill this hulking monstrosity.  You're carrying a damn rocket launcher which for all the damage it does, may as well be a strongly worded letter to the editor.  Boss battle, Arnie.  Don't fight back, try the wall buttons!

The final cut scene makes Halo look like brilliant storytelling.  I didn't think I could be more disappointed by this game, but they found a way.  Indescribably bad.  Rather than wrapping up the story in any way, they attempt to set it up for a sequel, which is just so darned optimistic.  Bless their little retarded souls.

Come on in and see the rest of my collection of ridiculous quotes from Alpha Prime.  Every one of these is at least as befuddling as Resident Evil's famous "Master of Unlocking."  The last one, in bold, I've begun saying in casual conversation, and it's done wonders for my social life.  Try it!

"Did they give the marines some kind of better shopping bag or what? . . . That's what you call one hot potato!"

"I had a reality check, baby.  You're in cahoots with them.  Once again I've let you lead me down the garden path even though I know you well."

"We romped around a little on the ship.  I'm not a whore.  I'm being disgustingly frank with you, Arnie."

"You know women ain't shit."

"Well I'll bear that in mind, Mr. Eavesdropper Extraordinaire!"

"I need to throw some rotten tomatos on the stage."

"Probably someone from that shower of bastards."

"I didn't know that the troops had licked him into shape!"

"Ass is needlessly vulgar.  I personally am betting on the duodendum and pancreas."

"If you touch that Heart, Glomar will enslave you.  You'll be a rookie taking on an old warhorse.  Glomar will fuck you over."

And he will.  Oh, he truly will.

Technorati Tags: Alpha Prime, Resident Evil, Glomar, forget about Social Security, Glomar's Heart is the third rail of American politics

Alpha Prime - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Czech Republic

If you like games, or conceivably, if you hate games and want them all to suck, you may want to read the new Alpha Prime review up at Gamers With Jobs.  Oh, what a shoddy piece of work.  The game, not the review.  Alpha Prime is another one of those Eastern European imports that have been making it into North America lately.  S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is the only example of a good one that comes to mind.  All the rest have been junk.  I'd like to check out the Night Watch game someday, if only because Night Watch is such a fun movie.  Sometimes the movie's luster can carry me through the rough spots in a game.  Hell, I'd play an adventure game based on Russian Ark if they made one.  It'd make a good roguelike.  The movie is one long take, so the game only allows you one life.  Hardcore.  Like me.  I am hardcore, too.

Anyway, the most outstanding bits of awfulness in Alpha Prime are the cutscenes, which aren't fully translated from Czech.  One of the characters is a cowardly Italian stereotype, and he speaks in half Italian, half badly translated English, and it's clear the voice actor is in way over his head.  They're all bad, though.  I put a couple of examples of awkward dialogue in the review, but here are a few I had left over.  Imagine all of these being read in an overly dramatic space soldier voice:

"They'll surely prize us out of this ship like an oyster from its shell.  And eat us with some lemon!"

"How could they hire such a worthless sack for a prospector?"

"By pressing (Default T) you turn on flashlight to help you in the dark corners."

When you walk over some bullets or health, the text on the screen says, "You Picked Pistol," or "You Picked Medikit."

"I'll get you Glomar . . . I'll pull you out of the fucking wall."

(That's another thing, pointless swearing.  I left all those quotes out of the review because someone might be reading it from work.  Also, I wanted to get away with using "dick" somewhere else.)

"Don't be such an asshole!  Do you think I've just been sitting on my ass here?"

Sometimes I'd sit around in a firefight and let everyone shoot at each other a while.  This is an actual transcript of the taunts and exclamations these soldiers tossed around while I waited for them to die:

"Fuck!"  "Shit!"  "Fuck!"  "Shit!"  "Take him out!"  "Shit - fuck!"  "Jesus!"  "Somebody take him out!"

Admittedly, it's fun to think of the voice actors having to record a hundred versions of "Oh shit!"  That's an apt way to describe Alpha Prime, too.  A hundred shits in a firefight.  Ew.

[I'd like to create a little archive of my GWJ contributions, so here's a link to my FreeRice writeup and also the 2007 Gaming Reference Guide to which I added a few mini-reviews.  After the winter break I'll make a little sidebar list for these links and start turning this joint into a proper website.  For now, think of it as low-fi DIY rustic charm.  Think of it that way.]

Technorati Tags: Alpha Prime, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ

Phoenix, We Have A Problem

New article up at Gamers With Jobs about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations.  Read it here.  It'll take less time to read than it took me to type out that long ass title.  It's the conclusion to the Phoenix Wright trilogy, but there's a new Ace Attorney game coming out with a new protagonist, Apollo Justice.  Apollo has an uphill battle because he'll never be my beloved Phoenix Wright, with his retinue of wonderful characters like Maya, Mia, Pearls, Gumshoe, and of course Edgeworth.  (I also enjoy Godot's antics, and Franciska has a certain crazy appeal.)  This last game is bittersweet because the better the story gets, the more I'm reminded that this is the end.  Well, that's how stories work, and Phoenix Wright is very much a story-based game.  Most games nowadays don't tell a story very well at all, and I'm still surprised when I find one that has a coherent narrative structure, with character arcs, heightened stakes, imaginative details, etc.  Usually I ignore a game's clumsy attempts at storytelling unless it really interferes with my playing.  I've played many games which would have been more fun if they'd just dropped the plot altogether.

Phoenix Wright, however, lives and dies on its characters and plot, although once in a while it throws in a clever puzzle to solve.  As such, it's a tough game to review because I can't just tick off the little boxes (graphics, controls, multiplayer, length, replayability) and tally up its score.   One funny thing about games is that because they cost so much, we keep looking for ways to quantify the experience.  I never see book reviews that say it's a great story, but not worth the cost of the book, and you wouldn't want to re-read it.  Gamers With Jobs is pretty damn obsessed with scores, or with not having them, so I actively avoid trying to tick the boxes in my articles.  Unfortunately, it's a deeply ingrained part of every gamer's mind.  (Adult gamers, anyway.  Kids who don't pay for their own games have different priorities.  They'll play anything, which is kind of sweet, isn't it?) 

The problem is, even though you can't really quantify a story, we try to do it anyway.  This twist was good, this character is bad, they left this thread hanging.  I don't have a solution for this mind set.  I think time tends to smooth the rough edges of a game and after a few years I look back on it with pure nostalgia.  I've even gotten to the point where I can be playing a great game and feel a kind of pre-nostalgia: "I'm definitely going to remember that moment."  Later, I find myself listing the reasons why that moment works so well, and it kills the magic a little, like explaining a joke.  Well, there are worse problems to have.  Enjoy a game, analyze it later, and come back much later to enjoy it again.  I've gotten more than my share of enjoyment from the Phoenix Wright series, and even if Phoenix isn't in it, I'm doggedly optimistic about the new story on its way.

Technorati Tags: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, Trials and Tribulations, Apollo Justice, Gamers With Jobs, over-analyzing analysis itself

Assassin's Chat

I think the various controversies surrounding Assassin's Creed have died down now.  Everyone was yelling about whether it was over-hyped, whether reviewers unfairly knocked it without really playing it, and some childish idiocy about the game's producer.  I'm not even touching that one.  It's funny that a game in which you traipse around the Holy Land during the Third Crusade sticking shivs in every Christian, Muslim and Jew ended up as an Internet shout-fest about whether or not the gameplay is repetitive.  Religious watchdog groups don't bother with video games.  You could make a game about leading a group of starving kids during the Children's Crusade and the only controversy would be whether your squad mates have decent AI.  Actually, that game sounds like fun, but now I've over-hyped it.

I played Assassin's Creed for an entire week of multiplayer fun, and it never got boring.  The game doesn't really have modern multiplayer.  Rather, it features the underrated pleasure of watching someone else play.  It doesn't work for every game, but the cities of Assassin's Creed are glitteringly beautiful and the control scheme makes it easy for even a novice to pull off cool acrobatic feats.  You climb to the top of very tall buildings, see a breathtaking panorama of labyrinthine streets and sun-baked domes, then dive off a ledge into a cart of hay and pop out unscathed.  Let's just ignore the question of how a small pile of hay prevents injury and why passersby don't flip out when you jump out of it.  I'm a little ashamed that every time I did that, I'd quip, "Hay there.  I gotta bale."

That one sequence of events just never gets old, whether doing or watching it.  That's not to mention all the shanking, sneaking, swordfighting, and rooftop chases that make up the actual game.  Maybe they're right, it is a bit repetitive, but finding things that give me pleasure and then repeating them over and over, well, that's the general idea of my life.  My only real criticism is when the game insisted on showing off its idiotic story.  I don't care about the complex and intriguing story behind Assassin's Creed.  I also don't know anything about it, because every time someone started talking we went off to get more drinks, and they were still talking by the time we got back.  The speeches were always negative, too.  From what I could tell, every character who talks to your guy, Altair, calls him a dupe or a coward.  Why does everyone think it's a good idea to endlessly berate a guy who carries throwing knives?  Each conversation seems to run for at least five minutes.  Four minutes of that should just be Mr. Rudy Insult's gurgled apology.

The assassination targets even chat with you after the hit.  As they're dying, you get one of these scenes:

"So it is you, Altair.  You have come to kill me."

"I did kill you.  Stop breathing."

"Don't you want to know the big secret behind my entire operation?"

"Not really.  Can we get out of this magical slow-time whispered confession?  You're not the only guy I'd like to kill today."

"It isn't what you think.  You're a pawn in a deep game.  Forces beyond your control are pulling the strings."

"The strings on the pawn?  What?"

"I was once like you . . ."

"Come on, just die a little more.  Please?"

"Altair, come closer . . ."

"No."

"I am your . . ."

"Shut up!"

"The password is . . ."

"Die already!  I killed you!"

"Believe me, I am still alive . . ."

"No!"

"Still alive . . ."

"Boo!"

". . . still alive."

Technorati Tags: Assassin's Creed

Safe, Effective, Downloadable Psychonauts

You can now directly download Psychonauts on XBox Live.  It's a wonderful experience, one of the most imaginative, genuinely funny, lovingly crafted games I've seen since they all went 3D.  I don't know if you'd call it an adventure game, really, but it gave me that magical LucasArts/Sierra feeling.  I couldn't wait to see more, but I also wanted to savor every last moment.  Like it was the only game I owned.

Here are a couple of cutscenes from the brilliant Lungfishopolis level.  Spoilers, obviously.

Technorati Tags: Psychonauts, Tim Shafer, adventure games

Extracurricular Activities

For today's video game post, click over to my new article at Gamers With Jobs.  It's an excellent site for folks who play games but don't go all crazy about it.  Well, sometimes they go crazy, but not the way twelve year olds do.  For example, they do "perspectives" rather than "reviews," which means they don't just slap an arbitrary score on a game and then kill time for two pages.  Scores sell games, but for reviewers they're a way to hide behind a number and feign objectivity.  Painkiller: Overdose, the game I'm discussing, is horrendously bad, even worse than you would expect from the title, but the lowest score it would ever get on any review-based site would be maybe 5 out of 10, and that's if the disc didn't fit in the drive properly.  Reviewers tend to default to "it's good for what it is" when a game lacks ambition.  Maybe there should be a scoring system that starts at zero and has no upper bound.  Does that make any sense?  Read the article instead -- I may have used up my coherence for the day.

Technorati Tags: Painkiller, Overdose, Gamers With Jobs, GWJ

Run and/or Gun

Thanks, Crystal Dynamics!  The new Wii version of Tomb Raider Anniversary will let Lara Croft run while shooting.  This article says it's a first for the series, and as far as I know, that's true.  I got out of the series early before it soured, about halfway through the second game.  Sure, the graphics improved, but I always liked the very first Lara, the one made of maybe twelve polygons.  You kids today don't realize lady archaeologists are sexier when you have to use your imagination a little.  You want her upper body to be one big shapely but immobile Lego, like she's wearing a sports bra made of cement.  Aww yeah, I'd dust that off with a tiny brush.

And now she can shoot while she jumps around.  It's funny how I expect that from every game now, except for Resident Evil, of course.  Video games have done nothing but impair my ability to kill anything in real life.  If you gave me a real gun the first thing I'd do would be to jump sideways while firing.  If you gave me another gun I'd try to fire them simultaneously in different directions.  On some deep level I'm convinced that in a desperate shootout, I could do a slow motion backflip without any loss of accuracy.  While all you people are slowly training your sights and checking your backdrops and whatever, I'll be out there mixing it up.  Sure, I'll miss you by a mile, but you'll admire my enthusiasm and spirit.  I'm like a gun toting Kerri Strug.

 

Technorati Tags: Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Raider, Lara Croft, Kerri Strug, firearm safety, Archaeology 101

W Double I

I got a Wii.  I'm now a Wii owner, and can now write about all things Wii with confidence and hands-on experience.  If I'm writing about the PS3, rest assured I just looked it up on Wikipedia.  Of course, all the new Wii owners wrote about it last year, so once again I'm behind the times.  I've been standing in line since December 2006.  Turns out it was the wrong line.  And get this, the second line I got in was also not the Wii line.  But third's a charm, and now I own a Wii, and I got to feed a baby goat, and Randy Jackson informed me that he, personally, was not feeling me.

What new casseroles can I bring to the table of Wii commentary?  First of all, I promise I'll never make a Wii pun.  I've done it a couple times before, with my friends, but that wasn't in print, and those were different times.  It's played out.  And I won't insipidly double the letter i or substitute "Wii" for all hard e sounds.  Check it out: implicitly, invidiously, interstitially.  If you've read other Wii articles, you know what a mangled nightmare the word "interstitially" becomes.  It makes Lex the Bookworm hide and cry.

Another refreshingly unusual (or boringly typical?  read on!) angle for my Wii story is that I'm bad at it.  Or at least, I need to unlearn all the years of experience with other consoles.  As kids, we would all jerk the controller while playing.  You press A to make Mario jump, but your hands also jump upward, as if that gave him more oomph.  As controllers got more complicated, we stopped doing that, because you couldn't mess with analog sticks, triggers, and buttons while waggling around like a bee with news.  But the Wii controller requires motion, and what's worse, sometimes there's no corresponding button to press.  In Mario Party, you wave the remote to make him jump up and hit a block.  I spent a full minute frantically mashing A and wondering why he wouldn't jump, even though there was a prompt right there on the screen.  And in Trauma Center, you apply the shock paddles by holding the remote and nunchuk towards the screen.  Somehow I could not believe that the game would register that action.  It seems crazy that the game can tell where I am in the room.  I feel like my privacy has been violated.  Does the game know what I'm wearing?  Is the next Everybody Votes going to be whether I should put on some pants?

So far, the Wii feels less like a game system and more like a weird appliance designed to produce and distribute Nintendo vibes around the room.  At its best, it turns people into little kids, and rewards them for acting silly.  At its worst . . . well, Nintendo vibes have been shown to cause obsession, bleary eyes, and corrupted spelling.  I'll try to remain objectiive.

Technorati Tags: Wii, Nintendo Wii, hypocrisy

I'm a Healer: Beginner's Tips for Team Fortress 2 Medics

Twice now I've dreamt about Team Fortress 2, and I haven't even played it that much.  It just gets in your head.  It's a bottomless toy chest of colorful visuals and exciting moments.  All the classes are fun, but I always return to the Medic, because he suits my play style.  I'm an accurate but slow shot, and I prefer to be in the middle ranks, neither on the vanguard nor defending the base.  And I like healing other people.  I know what it's like to be low on health.  It feels bad.  Even if you come across a health pack, it might not bring you up to 100%, and it's kind of impersonal.  And it's been on the ground.

Here are a few tips I've picked up along the way:

• The Medic uses a proton pack-looking device to shoot a stream of healing plasma or something into the other players on his team.  It looks, um, a little intimate?  You should probably aim above the belt.  And although you have to stick close to your target, always stay behind them!  Don't block their view.  You can't defend yourself while healing, so let them do the shooting.  However, if someone throws grenades or shoots rockets at you, jump away or you're dead.
• Your teammates will call out when they're wounded, and if you see them nearby, run out to help them.  If they're too far away, though, they're going to die anyway.  I know how that sounds.  But you're not a miracle worker, damn it.  And they respawn.  They'll forgive you.  I make tough calls like that every day in Team Fortress 2.
• Scouts are too fast to keep up with and if they need healing, they come to you.  Engineers and Snipers stay in one place, so once they're healed, move on.  Spies are pretending to be on the other team -- shh!  The Soldier, Demo Man, and to some extent the Pyro need attention.  They get hit all the time.  And every single Heavy Weapons Guy wants a Medic behind him constantly, because he's so damn slow, but a good Heavy Weapons Guy can push through the one choke point where both sides have reached a stalemate.  So keep him alive through that push.
• And of course, the best way to do that is to use your Über Heal!  After you've healed enough damage, activating Über Heal gives you and your target ten seconds of invulnerability.  That's enough time for the H.W. Guy to take out a ton of enemies and turrets.  It's the most exciting ten seconds in a Medic's life.  Some Medics say it's not as fulfilling as the ten seconds of getting married, or the ten seconds during which their children were born.  They're lying.
• Everyone on the other team wants to kill you.  Snipers will take you out first, and Spies will backstab you.  Scouts are usually busy with something else, but they'll take a few shots on the way.  You're armed with a gun that fires syringes and a bone saw.  For real.  It's hard to kill anyone with them, but it can be done, and it's brilliant.  I once hacked up another Medic with the saw.  "Aaagh!" he cried out.  "What happened to Do no harm?"  "Sorry, doc," I replied.  "I was late for class that day."
• Finally, watch out for spies.  It's a special achievement for a spy to get an opposing team's Medic to heal them.  Keep in mind your teammates' names, although the Spy can also imitate them.  It's annoying, but your safest bet is to shoot everyone first, because it makes Spies drop their disguise.  Friendly fire doesn't damage your allies.  It's almost a sign of respect.  But don't get paranoid.  If every Medic starts mistrusting their friends, then the Spies win.

It's not the most glamorous profession, but a good Medic can really make a difference out there in the crazy, competitive world of Team Fortress 2.  Once the beta is over and everyone's playing it (assuming they're not playing Halo 3, of course), you'll see a lot of Spies, Snipers, and Scouts, but as long as there's one Heavy Weapons Guy out there, he deserves a Medic of his very own.  Let the healing begin.

Technorati Tags: Team Fortress 2, Medics, Über Heal, "over heal"

Have You Heard of This Halo 3 Game?

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Internet) just sent me an email asking when I was going to get around to the mandatory Halo 3 post.  All Internet typists need to put up a Halo 3 post by the end of the week or face a hefty fine and possible senatorial teabagging.  Sorry, y'all.  I'm still getting caught up on my BioShock posts.  I think I need to write eight of those before I can even pretend to be a "games journalist," also known as a "playa writa."  Technically, I was out of the country when BioShock dropped, so I get an extension, but Halo 3 is too mainstream to be ignored.  I like to keep my finger on society's pulse for so long that it gets uncomfortable and society starts wondering, "Is this guy even a doctor?  Most doctors don't move their lips when they count."

This Halo 3 thing is tricky because I don't have the game and I won't until it comes out on PC at least a year from now.  Also, I don't like Halo.  I don't hate it, either -- I just don't think it has that something extra that makes a great game.  It's a lot of fun playing multiplayer matches with friends, but almost everything is fun with three or more.  Chess can be fun, but have you ever tried to play while a third person picks up all the pieces and moves them around randomly?  Instant excitement.  And Halo matches, fun as they are, tend to reward the same limited skill set, as opposed to, say, Team Fortress 2, with nine genuinely different ways to play, and a chance to switch each time you die.  In Halo, the most important choice is whether you're going to use the pistol, and in Halo 2, it's whether or not you should pick up an energy sword.  The answers are, respectively, yes, and yes, you cheap bastard.  Have fun stabbing people with a giant Quake 2 logo.

As for the single player campaign, well, everyone knows that's not the main draw.  Personally, the Halo universe doesn't do it for me.  It's futuristic, frantic, and colorful, but also annoyingly familiar.  I blame Master Chief, the protagonist.  I don't like him, and I hate his friends.  He's just a soldier, or super-soldier, which is even dumber.  He just follows orders, shooting up each level, and moving on to the next one.  His sidekicks have no personality beyond the sort of hoo-rah team antics that you see in any war movie, as perfectly satirized in Starship Troopers.  (I don't care for Cortana any more than for Denise Richards in that movie.)  In any FPS, the game forces you to complete somewhat arbitrary objectives, but the Half-Life series, BioShock, and to some extent Far Cry disguised the linear narrative by putting you in the bodies of self-motivated characters who were really just fighting for their lives.  Master Chief is fighting to save Earth.  Screw Earth.  It's a pretend future Earth.  Almost none of my friends live in pretend future Earth, and I bet I could convince them to move before shit went down.  I would offer them, uh, credits and homemade cyber-pie.

Three questions for writers, even writers of video games:  In your story, is an entire race, planet or universe in danger?  Is your story set in the future or another alternate world?  Finally, is your hero very very special -- superhero, super-soldier, or Chosen One special?  If the answer is yes to all three, start over.  Two out of three is acceptable, but still requires a lot of work to keep the cheese level manageable.  You'll need to be extra clever, extra funny, or extra nude.  The Halo series has a cool way with names (a robot named 343 Guilty Spark, a ship named In Amber Clad) but never follows through on the allusions.  Thanks to a ten million dollar marketing campaign, Halo 3 gets plenty of attention from the non-gaming press, but they may be wondering if this game is worth the hype.  Probably not, because no game could live up to that buildup.  If you want to enjoy Halo 3, I'd suggest not reading another word about it.  I'm not even going to write another word

Technorati Tags: Halo 3, Master Chief, Starship Troopers, Team Fortress 2

BioShock Demo for the Xbox Peoples

 

I don't have the Xbox, live or dead, but if you have Xbox Live, the demo of BioShock is now ready for download.  There's no PC demo, so I can stay pure and free of spoilers until the full game drops on August 21.  I'm getting the collector's edition with a little figurine, soundtrack CD, and art booklet.  I haven't menti0ned it much but I'm as excited as a bee in bee town about this game.  If, somehow, you haven't heard of it and would still care, it's a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, a terrifying Art Deco parody of Ayn Rand's Objectivist ideas set in a collapsing underwater dystopia.  In fact, although I won't be in the country when it arrives, I'll take a moment that day to think about how cool it must be for everyone just starting to play.  Maybe I'll ridicule Ayn Rand in my own little way by opening an atlas and shrugging or finding a fountain and sticking my head in it.  Or, I guess I could pursue my own self-interest and happiness that day, but I was gonna do that anyway.  I know!  I'll pursue my own self-interest Objectivist style and act like it's some kind of goddamn virtue.  Join me, won't you?  August 21st, a day to be insufferable.

Technorati Tags: BioShock, Xbox, Ayn Rand, Objectivism

Numbing Repetition vs. Nummy Repetition

Every game has some amount of repeated action, and every game player has some internal clock ticking down towards boredom.  For me, that point feels like I've stopped playing the game and started practicing it.  Although I want to do well at a game, I don't feel like spending hours developing any skills that will only help me in one game.  Improvement in any FPS, rhythm game, adventure game, or strategy game can transfer to other games of that genre, but learning the abstruse rules of a particularly complex fighter or RPG feels pointless unless I get a steady feed of small victories.  Otherwise, there's no guarantee you'll ever master that one game.  You may suddenly discover your personal glass ceiling, only this ceiling has spikes and slowly lowers itself towards you and also the ground is covered in lava.  Not to mention the employee sex discrimination in the video game world.  I say, if women want to work in Bowser's castle, they have every right to go all the way to the top and someday kidnap and threaten princesses for full pay.  But ask yourselves, though, am I part of the problem?

I'm on about repetition because I played a bit of the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars beta this weekend.  I doubt all 25,000 keys are gone yet, so go install it now and play for several hours, so you can understand the next two paragraphs.  Oh look, you're back.  As you can see, Quake Wars is a multiplayer FPS, meaning you and a bunch of guys run around fighting off the other guys until time runs out.  You run out there, kill some guys, get killed, respawn, and run out again.  If you're lucky, there's some strategy and team comradery, but you don't actually know these people, and there's no time to chat.  Although it's mindless and impersonal, you also have to stay constantly alert and predict your enemies' actions.  But you never really win.  Anybody you kill just comes back a few minutes later and you have to kill them all over again.  I want the satisfaction of permanently killing someone, in a video game, I mean.  Even America's Army, the FPS developed by the Army (a free download, and rated T, for Teen!  "Enlist" today!) brings everyone back to life in the next round.  In real life, this only works when the Army invades someplace like India, where they have reincarnation.

Some folks already like Quake Wars ("roXorz" level satisfaction) and will probably love it once it's finished.  I've enjoyed Counter-Strike and some other multi FPS's, so maybe I'll like the finished product, too.  But I felt too much like an unpaid tester to really get into this beta.  I was there to fight the same battle, over and over, to help the developers work out bugs.  With time, I would have improved, the way everyone improves, by "learning the map."  By memorizing the map.  Go for the sniper rifle, it's over there.  If they show up over there, come at them from this direction.  I'd be all over that map like Carmen Sandiego.  But when do you get to kick back and enjoy the map?  I want to blow up a bunch of nondescript soldiers, but then I want to have a leisurely stroll along the battlements with a cooling drink and some cucumber sandwiches.  I want the crusts cut off my sandwiches, too, and I don't want them to respawn.  So what if the game is called Enemy Territory?  Once you kill all the enemies, then it's just territory.  My territory.  And I'm building an aboveground pool.

Technorati Tags: games, FPS, Enemy Territory, Quake Wars, America's Army, Carmen Sandiego, cucumber sandwiches, relaXors

Beowulf: The Game

That's Beowulf: The Game.  Don't get confused and walk out of Gamestop with Beowulf: The 1000 Year Old Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem, because I guarantee your PS3 can't read that shit.  So now you can dismember monsters and their moms in your very own home!  Hopefully you can play as Beowulf, not some new character inserted into the story named Rickywulf.  I also hope that was just some generic monster in the trailer and not Grendel or Grendel's mom, because it's not nearly tough enough.  It looks like a Weeble with claws.  It may as well be a tubercular tadpole feebly slapping Beowulf's toe with his tiny, moist fist.

I used to listen to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf while driving at night.  It's great stuff.  Seamus Heaney's poems often have several really thick, meaty words balanced with a few bright, gleaming ones to create a certain kind of earthly music.  Beowulf was already a pretty juicy story, but Heaney makes it so chewy and clangy your jaw hurts and you might get metal poisoning.  Sometimes I would slow down in the fast lane so I could devote my full attention to his voice.  I liked to think that if I got in a wreck and had my arm lopped off it made more sense to do it to Beowulf than, say, Chumbawamba.  Because, odds are, I won't get up again.

You can see why Beowulf fits the gaming trends of today.  It's mythical and violent, like God of War, and I bet it appeals to the Ren Faire crowd as well.  However, the original story only has three actual fights, and the third one doesn't go so well.  Anything else you throw in there is filler.  And I can't imagine how they would deal with my favorite part of the text, the weird bits of advice on honor and manners.  "Always reward someone who does you a favor, and double rewards if they die."  "If someone kills a family member, hunt down their whole family and kill them, unless they pay you a lot of money."  They cleverly weave the advice into the tale via that old child-rearing trick: "Hrothgar always eats his vegetables, so you should too."  Stop comparing me to Hrothgar!  I'm not Hrothgar, all right?  And I never will be!  (Runs to room, sobbing, and slams the door)

Technorati Tags: Beowulf, Grendel, Seamus Heaney, God of War, games, tubercular tadpoles

True Tales of Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s

It dropped on Tuesday, with Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword, and I hit the store bright and early to purchase the hell out of them.  Target was out, but Gamestop had plenty.  They actually gave me a box from the pile of reserved games.  Made me feel special.  I had a bit of a row with the clerk over Guitar Hero 80s, which proceeded thusly:

(Oh, and I call myself "Tristram" in this dialogue, because that's how I remember it.  Subjectivity, you know.)

TRISTRAM:  Hullo!  I'd like to purchase this game.

CLERK:  OK, but you do know this game features rocking out, right?  It's only for rockers.

TRISTRAM:  Of course.  I know how to rock.

CLERK:  Yeah, we just have to ask that.  Sometimes kids get a hold of it and their parents come in later because their faces melted off from a blistering guitar solo and we have to buy them off with gift cards and gauze.

TRISTRAM:  Oh, I don't mind proving my skills.  Toss me that guitar.

CLERK:  Rock on!  [tosses me a guitar]

TRISTRAM:  No, not a real guitar.  What the hell are these wiry things on the neck?  Give me a HERO guitar.

CLERK:  Sorry, I didn't know you were up to that level.  [tosses me a plastic guitar, with fret buttons, like Hendrix used]

TRISTRAM:  Wheedly-do, deedly-yo, tweedilly tweedilly tweedilly reeeeeeowwww . . .  EEEOOOW.

CLERK:  Oh God!  That's insane!  I couldn't be rocked any harder by a nanny on steroids!  You've got hotter licks than an aardvark on fire!  My ears just came!

TRISTRAM:  I CAN'T STOP GET OUT OF HERE NOW

[Later, among the ambulances, fire trucks, and animal control vehicles, the CLERK recounts his terrifying experience.]

CLERK:  And I ran.  I ran so far awa-hu-yay.  I just ran.  I ran all night and day! . . . I couldn't get away.

REPORTER:  But what happened to Tristram?

CLERK:  He didn't make it.  No one can stare into the eye of awesome for that long without going mad himself.  Or at least getting carpal tunnel syndrome.  No, he's in Heaven right now, shredding with the angels, or in Hell, hitting the Devil's whammy bar.

REPORTER:  Or he could be in Purgatory.

CLERK:  Don't you see?  We're the ones in Purgatory, because try as we might, we'll never rock as hard as him.

Technorati Tags: Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero Encore, Rocks the 80s, slight exaggerations

Titan Quest, or You'll Pay For That!

Titan Quest isn't the most original game in the world.  It's a Diablo clone released long after the end of the Diablo clone war.  That was after the Myst clone war but before the GTA clone war, and by now I'm not even sure what war we're fighting now.  Brain Age?  Katamari?  All those innocent games, copied before their time.  Senseless.  At least with Titan Quest, developer Iron Lore waited to cash in on the craze, and ended up with a highly polished, streamlined take on the "click on monsters until they die" genre.  And did Blizzard really invent that genre after all?  Diablo had kind of a generic medieval setting, while Titan Quest takes place in Greek mythology, which actually predates medieval times.  I smell a lawsuit! 

(Figuratively.  If anyone out there is tragically afflicted with the ability to physically smell lawsuits, I'm not mocking you and I apologize for being so litigious in the past.  It's just that I thought Ronald McDonald was spitting in my food.  I later discovered that everyone else's burgers taste like that, too.)

In college, everyone I knew played Diablo.  On average, that is -- I knew plenty of people who didn't, but the ones who did played it so much that they wrecked the curve.  If you're easily addicted to things, or -- and this is an important distinction -- you just like doing things over and over without being able to stop, Diablo was a great warm up for Blizzard's later project, World of Warcraft.  I've never played it but I hear it's maybe a little addictive.  Of course, with any game there's a fine line between "addictive" and simply "extra fun."  All good games entertain or satisfy in some way, and some aim for many hours of good, decent fun rather than a few hours of unforgettable joy.  My problem with World of Warcraft, and all MMOs, is the monthly fee.  I want to pay for something and be done with it.  I like buying games, not paying for services.  One of these things is not like the others: water, gas, electricity, Internet, whomping on orcs with your magical sword.  Yes, I consider Internet access a basic necessity, and no, you may not try to make a case for your magical sword.  Also, I do not want to see your magical sword, and no, I am not just jealous.

I pulled Titan Quest down to my box using Steam, a digital distribution platform without monthly fees, which makes all the difference.  Free online game services are Full of Terrific Wonderment, a phrase you sometimes see on forums as the acronym FTW.  It's on sale until tomorrow for $18, and with high speed it's an easy download.  Steam started out horribly buggy, but now it's the best service out there, closely followed by GameTap, which has kind of a screwy business model but a slew of wonderful old and new adventure games.  That's the future should look: on-demand downloads, wireless access everywhere, and nobody charging little fees on top of it.  It's been established many times that gamers will put up with little fees, or as they call them, "microtransactions," but that doesn't mean it's right.  Gamers also put up with Sonic the Hedgehog for years as he got slower and dumber, when they should have slapped that spiky blue betrayer so hard that rings fly out of his ass.

I'm fine with the Wii approach, which focuses on games as a physical action in the real world.  But as a work of fiction, most of a game takes place in your head.  It doesn't really exist.  So they shouldn't be tied to one disc, one console, one gas and time wasting trip to the store, where you end up punching some twelve year old until they drop the one available copy.  And you shouldn't be charged again for the time you spend playing.  It's silly and a little rude to monetize fiction to that extent.  It's like making people pay for the morning dew, or a gentle breeze, or the innocent laughter of a child.  Or all three for one low rate.  Holy shit, I just came up with a brilliant idea.

Technorati Tags: Titan Quest, Diablo, Steam, GameTap, monthly fees

Girls, Violent Games, and Feminism

The F-Word blog (safe for work, and if your work filter blocks it, I'm sorry to say that your work filter is kind of dumb) posted yesterday about a study showing that teenage girls play violent video games, such as Grand Theft Auto.  Well, of course they do.  No one who actually plays games thinks that the female hand is only capable of moving a mouse or controller when it's connected to the Sims or, say, Barbie's Demure Adventures starring Princess Kitchen Pony.  I expect, however, that if this gets picked up as a news item it will be yet another terrifying look at our out-of-control kids.  Hooray for equality: boys and girls are all ticking time bombs.  The only non-dangerous family member left is Grandpa, because he and the rest of the Greatest Generation already got their kill on and now they just want a nap and free samples at the Costco.

The F-Word's generally fair analysis of the story gets a bit muddled in this last paragraph:

I’m not a believer in the idea that playing a violent video game makes people want to go out and commit violent acts: but I do think it’s problematic that one of the most popular games played by both girls and boys involves the male protagonist using, beating, pimping and killing prostitutes.

That's technically correct (the best kind of correct!) but a little misleading.  As a Grand Theft Auto player, this is one of my pet peeves.  Every "violent games" GTA story always mentions killing a prostitute, which is possible in the game but not particularly encouraged.  The only thing you get from killing a prostitute is a worthless amount of cash, the same amount you can get from any random pedestrian.  "Using" them is a transaction of a few dollars for a small health boost.  Beating them offers no reward, and like all violent acts, if a cop sees you do it, they pursue you and try to throw you in jail, which is a very significant deterrent.  You will get some minor funds from being a pimp, which involves driving prostitutes around and killing guys who threaten them.  However, in terms of gameplay it's no different from being a taxi driver, ambulance driver, "freelance police officer," or fireman, all of which are equally encouraged, which is to say that you can do it, but rather than saying the game involves driving an ambulance and saving lives, I would say it includes that feature.  GTA definitely involves carjacking -- anyone who says you don't have to jack cars is correct but being cute with logic.  But every single news outlet appears to have a pronunciation guide which proscribes using "Grand Theft AW-to . . . prostitute killing sex money death murder hooker game."  (To anyone who got to this paragraph via Google -- boring, huh?  The real hardcore stuff is here.)

I'm too mature, intelligent, and good looking to enjoy every single aspect of GTA.  I don't kill prostitutes, and I only pick them up if I need the health boost.  Some of the humor is hilariously clever, but some of it makes me cringe with its self-conscious edginess that only titillates teenage boys anymore (and girls, apparently.)  My favorite activity is driving the taxi and listening to the radio while being chased by the cops.  I love that fares will still get in your cab and even tip generously as police helicopters shout and shoot at you.  Combine that with a sunny Miami-like 1980s cityscape, Wang Chung's "Dance Hall Days," and, um, maybe some tequila, and you've got a recipe for awesome.  Sometimes the game influences me to be awesome in real life, but as an adult I can resist that urge.

Recently, while playing GTA: Vice City Stories, I ended up on a mission to protect some prostitutes who were being targeted by a rival gang.  I had to grab a car and quickly pick them up around town, while the gang cars tried to run me down.  When I saved the first prostitute, just in time, she thanked me, then leaned out the window and started firing a powerful semiautomatic at our pursuers.  "Well honey," she said, "you didn't think the only protection we have is rubbers, did you?"  Those damn gang cars were really killing me but once I had three prostitutes in the car firing back at them it became a glorious, chaotic high speed chase, with enemy cars exploding into flames and flying through the air -- the best moment in the game so far.  And I couldn't have done it without prostitutes.  Bless their hearts of gold and diamond trigger fingers.

Technorati Tags: The F Word, feminism, GTA, Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, prostitutes, Wang Chung, being awesome

Soul Caribou 3

Soul Calibur 4 is coming, and as preparation, I started playing Soul Calibur 3.  Sure, I suck at Soul Calibur 2, but there are some subtle changes that I need to understand if I'm really going to suck at Soul Calibur 3.  And when the new one comes out, I'm not even going to use a controller.  I'll just slap at the screen making hooting noises.

I started playing with Tira, because she's new and fast.  No defense to speak of, but I never actually guard against attacks.  I just attack over and over and if I get hit, I try to recover or accuse the other player of cheap moves.  Tira wields some crazy metal hula hoop that's sharp on both sides, and it's the coolest thing when I manage to get a hit in with it.  I love the hula hoop!  Swords bore me.  I want to go back to a simpler time of sock hops and decapitations.

My training regimen:  I play Tira for several rounds in a duel to the death with Ivy.  (That's Ivy on the right.)  Then I play Ivy against Tira, so I can get inside Ivy's head, figure out what makes her tick.  Then I change them into different outfits, in case it matters, and back to playing Tira.  Sometimes I wish they could hash out their differences once and for all, though.  If I were there, I could defeat them in battle but then propose some kind of truce in which we all work together towards a common goal.  I have some other ideas about that.

Brainstorming about such scenarios improves your visualization abilities, which helps you think up new combo attacks and be a better Soul Calibur player.  You can't do it with every fighting game, though.  If you find yourself doing it in Super Smash Bros. Melee, well, I'm not saying it's wrong, but I don't want to play with you or hear one word about Link-Bowser action.  Also, it's wrong.  Ew.

 

Technorati Tags: Soul Calibur, Tira, Ivy, Super Smash Bros, visualization, subtlety

Save the Trauma for Yo Mauma

Atlus just announced Trauma Center: New Blood for the Wii.  (From Famitsu, which I can't read, and Joystiq, which I can barely decipher amidst the ads and forum junk.)  I played the DS Trauma Center and a little bit of Second Opinion on the Wii, and it turns out I'm the kind of surgeon who would have to say, "We did all we could," a whole lot.  Or maybe I would walk out there with a kidney in one hand and some intestines in the other and shrug.

But Trauma Center: New Blood will have co-operative multiplayer.  That means I can limp through the operation by relying on someone else's superior abilities!  Co-op multi seems to be coming back into fashion.  Guitar Hero has it, a lot of Live Arcade games have it, and the new crop of Half-Life mods has some gems like Left 4 Dead, where you and a couple friends try to survive an onslaught of zombies.  I think it comes out this summer.  It's supposed to be brutally difficult but if you all work together a couple of you might make it out alive.  If you screw up in Guitar Hero your friends are not eaten by zombies but maybe in the '80s version their hair catches on fire.

In the best co-op games, you're forced to rely upon your partners, which works for a while until one of you does something stupid.  And that's when you learn the truth about your friendship.  I like it when you and your friends are up against the game, rather than another team of human players.  That just feels like the least athletic sport in the world.  I don't want to be stitching up a wound while some competitive asshole chants, "Choke!  Choke!"  I am a healer.  I took an oath to fix busted-up bones and stuff, and I will not be distracted by the likes of you.  If you persist in these juvenile antics, I shall have no choice but to -- great.  I lost another one.  I hope you're happy.  Very unprofessional of you, RabidIceWeasel420.

Technorati Tags: Trauma Center, Trauma Center: New Blood, co-op, multiplayer, Guitar Hero, Left 4 Dead, surgery trash talk