Play With My Box

The Strategy is Back

2010-03-06T23:12:00.000-08:00

As it happens I've been watching Inglorious Basterds in 5 to 10 minute spurts. It's not the ideal way to watch a movie but it's working quite well for Basterds in the way it's structured into chapters and capsule scenarios.

I'm also flitting in between two RTSs: the console version of Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath and Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War. I appreciate the advances put into RTS console interface design of the former and I relish the mythos and responsive action of the latter. In between those two games I find myself in the process of downloading League of Legends and trying my hand at this DotA phenomenon. You could say I'm back into strategy in a big way.

My first day of classes at the VFS begins on Monday. I've already scribbled up concepts for two possible video game projects. One of them was actually inspired by my resurgent interest in the strategy genre. I'd call it a streamlined blend of traditional RTS, DotA-style and action-RPG, but I first need to play some League of Legends to truly be familiar with all my possible influences. As the concept stands now, it's pretty ambitious and possibly more than what a handful of students can chew on but at the very least I'm happy about having some grand ideas to kick the year off with.

There's only about 2 minutes to go with the LoL download and I hear Kane's Warth calling out to me. I'll try to slot in some 30 minutes of gaming before lights out.

Distraction on a New Level

2010-02-18T17:06:00.000-08:00

There's a lot going on right now. The things on my plate are many and easily half of those things I can count as distractions.

Well you've probably heard by now that the 2010 Winter Olympics are in full swing. My city of birth and hometown is host to this circus and despite some resistance I've gotten wrapped up in watching sporting events I would never be caught dead watching otherwise. Men's and pairs figure skating has been unusually gripping -- I think all the nasty spills have something to do with my fascination -- and I was ecstatic to see a Canadian skier bring home our first gold at the men's moguls.

And of course, there is the ice hockey. Canada vs. Switzerland is going down as I write this. I've been checking in with the tube and playing some newly-acquired cheap games from Steam (the Shadowgrounds Pack). I've also been keeping myself busy on the Xbox, trudging through my love/hate relationship with Dante's Inferno as well as reacquainting myself with Civilization Revolution.

But what I'm really trying to do is prepare for game design school, or as I like to call it, "pre-studying". Beginning last week I've been diving back into the early pages of Learning ActionScript 3.0 by Rich Shupe and Zevan Rosser. Having not touched Flash in a remotely professional capacity since mid-2005, you could say it's been a very long and drawn out acclimating process. The ironic thing is, I may not even use Flash to build any games during my program. It's going to be a year-long group project and the scope of your student game can be as grand as your time, skill and sanity will tolerate. I hear the Unreal Engine 3 modding tools have been publicly released for a a few months now, so that sounds like a much more appealing option. Then there's the tried-and-tested Source engine and a plethora of other modding tools built around existing retail products that could be utilized. I don't know why but a large part of me does not want to create a "mere Flash game" for my portfolio.

I suppose the fact I am even going back to school is a big change for me. The sequence of events went something like this: I started writing for NextGen Player last February, I then got media passes to cover GDC Canada in April and while visiting the company booths I happened upon the friendly recruiters from the Vancouver Film School. In hindsight I think I was swayed more by the vibe of being around so many game developers than anything the VFS reps could have told me.

I told one of the instructors in attendance flat out that I didn't want my ship to sail. Here I was, 31 years of age with a stuttering career, a love for games and still unmarried. If I was going to dedicate a year back in school for a career that I could see myself finally committing to, the time was now. So you can see the very fabulous job I did of convincing myself to drop the job (okay, so I was eventually laid off anyway) and drop a bundle on tuition for a chance to be behind the curtain of an industry notorious for breakneck change and deadly crunch times.

About a month later, I was accepted into the VFS Game Design program for the March 2010 term. My journey back to being a full-time student begins in about 3 weeks. To prepare... well, I've done very little to prepare so far aside from buying a netbook (who writes notes in a notebook anymore?) and half-heartedly teaching myself the ins and outs of Flash scripting. Oh yes, and I've been playing as many new games as I can stomach before the time to figuratively hit the books arrives.

My god... what am I even good at? The program is supposed to give you a broad base of skills for approaching the games industry from a design perspective; wannabe programmers are highly recommended to get a real Comp Sci degree. I've dabbled in graphic and audio design as an ex-web monkey and bedroom DJ. I love to write as shown in my hobbyist writings for NextGen Player... but I guess the worry that keeps persisting is where I will fit in within the realities of the game development world? Will I excel at level design? Maybe I'll enjoy and become good at programming or modelling. Then there's the job of a producer, which is a sort of catch-all role that describes anyone who makes games without actually having hard skills in anything... except perhaps Microsoft Excel use and leadership. There's this huge unknown out there as the school term approaches that is both exciting and scary.

Entering VFS as a more mature student, I like to think that I will be a kind of "elder statesman" among the throngs of eager high school grads and twenty-somethings. Aside from work ethic and a realistic approach to things, I doubt my experience will play a huge factor. I just want to make games and I hope this passion will help me get everything I can from this program.

Sold on the Demo

2009-03-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy one. The Xbox Live Marketplace has been awash in some great demos in recent weeks. I've had a crack at most of them and have discovered a surprising phenomenon this time around: the inability of a demo to sell me on the final retail product.

I count Resident Evil 5, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, and Wanted: Weapons of Fate among some of my most anticipated titles this spring. The demos for all three games failed to ignite my interest, dispelling months of positive hype, preview videos and screenshots in a matter of minutes.

Demos are still one of the best ways for gamers to test drive a product before making a buying decision. So what does it say about a demo when it almost works against the game itself, revealing the game's shortcomings for what they are and possibly even focusing undue attention to flaws that might not pose such a large factor in the full retail release?

There's also a misconceptin among the gaming community on what the purpose of a demo really is, even going as far as to confuse the goals of a demo to that of an open beta release. In the case of Resident Evil 5, the quality of the demo made me doubt whether I was actually playing test code or an actual slice of a the the actual game. A myriad of problems made me dislike this demo, not the least of which was the cumbersome control scheme. This sentiment was shared by gamers at large and the mass reactions prompted a response from Capcom
brass and the game producer. The complaints were heard loud and clear, but fears were not allayed. It was only a matter of getting used to the controls, we were told: Once we played the actual game, it would all make sense.

But of course it would. I won't get into Capcom's response to fan reaction to the demo, as stubborn and arrogant as it was. The statements were telling, however, and stood as a stark reminder to us all that demos have always been mainly tools of marketing, and not an avenue for iterative design. As much as I wanted Capcom to roll back their survival horror opus and change fundamental design mechanics in order to make a better game, this was not going to happen. By the time a demo launches, almost everything about a game's development is locked in and near to completion.

So it can be disheartening for developers to see some negativity result from gamers getting a sample of their pet project and realizing that they won't be able to change anything once the actual game is released into the wild. I can almost begin to see why some game demos never see the light of day, or show up months after a game's release. I used to find late demos inexcusable. It flies in the face of marketing logic, or so I had mistakenly assumed. If the recent batch of demos are any indication, maybe publishers and developers ought to put more care into their demo code and put more thought into what segments of a game are to be shown. Should a custom level be built, a patchwork of different areas of the game or simply the first 30 minutes of the retail code be used for expediency's sake?

For game companies, putting out a demo is still giving gamers what they want. It's just not the win-win it used to be. In all likelihood, they have been waiting with bated breath for it, eager to get a taste. That first impression, however, can be a killer. Without the benefit of having the full power of the game behind you, impressions are left to hang only on a fraction of the full meal, the little you've decided to offer them as a sample. If the demo is good, then the experience will be extrapolated into a favourable impression of the full game to come.

And a lousy demo? Well, I've learned to never underestimate good marketing, word of mouth and the power of Metacritic.

The Impression Game: FEAR 2 demo

2009-01-24T11:21:00.000-08:00

The ad campaigns for FEAR 2: Project Origin tell you to fear Alma again. Playing the advance demo the other night on my Xbox, I wondered if it was more fitting to fear pre-Half Life 2 shooter design.

But that's not to greatly disparage the solid game on display here. All the familiar trappings of the FEAR were present, along with the beats you've come to expect from a tightly scripted corridor first-person shooter. Your character, a different FEAR operative than the original's protagonist, is dogged by Alma during impromptu hallucination sequences. Meanwhile phantoms haunt your steps and homogeneous hordes of replicant soldiers impede your progress through a story that seems as nebulous as ever.

Typical of a shooter, things like "meet us at the rendezvous point", "find the exit" seem to provide all the narrative force required to string you through some beautifully devastated environments. Monolith has taken FEAR to the beauty salon by applying a fresh coat of foundation and layering on all the blush and highlighting you could ask for. The texture detail in the sequel is several magnitudes more intricate than it was in FEAR. The light has also seen a tremendous overhaul. Gone are the jagged, janky shadows, replaced now with bevy of lighting tricks that take the games atmosphere from being merely believable to utterly gripping. It shares more than a few stylistic hallmarks with last year's Condemned: Bloodshot. Thankfully, where that game revelled in up-close melee while offering a smattering of gun play, FEAR 2 amps up the gun porn but throws in the same amusing butts and scissor kicks from the original FEAR.

The play mechanic are competently realized. The game nails that all-important feel of holding and firing powerful weapons. Where FEAR offered a largely cosmetic option to aim down your weapon's barrel (which in practice looked more like you were lifting the gun from waist to chest height), FEAR 2 goes full out with a iron sights mode that perfectly mimics that found in the Call of Duty series. The standard arsenal of boomshots, rifles and subs all look appropriately sexy but they suffer with their muted reports. Really, a shotgun should not sound like a pop gun.

Yet if there's a problem with FEAR 2, it's surely not for its lack of intensity or good intentions. With it's thin story and pretensions of Hollywood horror scares, the developers are still not sure what they want you to think after the last bullet has been fired and the final replicant dispatched. Despite the cheap scares brought on the occasional blurry visions, you're essentially a one-man wrecking crew: incredibly well-armed and endowed with superhuman reflexes (yes, the slow motion makes a return), so the threats never feel elevated to any point beyond the purely concrete. As in the first game, the core game play is actually quite divorced from the core of the story. A survival horror game like Dead Space links these pieces together by actually making the scares and threats one and the same. Here you see visions of ghosts but blast armies of obstacle-hurdling relicants in the face mask. Ther'es not much horror there, but it's still a damn fine guilty pleasure.

So while the demo for FEAR 2 still makes a solid case for retail purchase, it doesn't quell any suspicions I have about stepping into the shoes of yet another super soldier on a particularly bad acid trip. Perhaps the multiplayer modes will include one for a communal freak out session, no weapons required.

(Note: To be fair, the various preview videos of the final game do show some variety in the enemies beyond soldiers and mechs. We can expect a showing from the deformed freakazoid contigent and even the demo included a posse of angry poltergeist monsters. I'll admit that it can be fun to hate on Alma, even if it will probably be a lot more fun to play the damn game once it comes out on February 10th, 2009.)

Are Consoles Finally Ready for Real-Time? (Part 1)

2009-01-21T17:57:00.000-08:00

Real-time strategy games, as a genre, have not been very kind to me these last several years. The last RTS I ever dug into with any aplomb was Blizzard's Warcraft III. It was then, as I dutifully built my bases, harvested wood and cranked out countless units all armed with special abilities, that I really began questioning my actual liking for the genre. More recently on the console side of things, I've always felt compelled to play more RTS games on the Xbox 360, more as a way of balancing my gaming diet over actually having an affinity for this style of game. Consequently, my experience with RTS titles on the 360 often begin and end with a game's demo.

Given my spotty history with RTSs, it's been a surprise to catch myself feeling much more optimistic about the genre. But what is it about this genre that has me being pulled in one moment and pushed away the next? Why now, of all times, am I suddenly feeling bullish about real-time strategy, especially on the consoles?

To understand my optimism, we need to take a quick jaunt in our time machine. Real-time strategy is a genre that began in 1992 with the seminal Dune 2 and has, shockingly, changed very little in the last 17 years. Seventeen years. That period of time in the games industry is equivalent to the birth and passing of a star (as an aside, I've been rewatching bits of Danny Boyle's Sunshine and I do relish my space ship disaster movies!). It's amazing to consider just how very little has changed in seventeen long years within a genre that would seem so rife with possibilities. When it debuted, Dune 2 established a new way to play strategy games by combining the combat-driven goals of traditional hex-based war games with the empire-building and "play god" qualities of games like Populous and SimCity. While there were already games on the market that held similar ambitions, none of them had Dune II's sense of immediacy of allowing you to control your armies in real time. Leisurely turns played against the AI or against human opponents over play-by-mail systems were a thing of the past. Strategy was now a real time affair and the gaming public (including yours truly) ate it up.

Dune II's basic formula of harvesting resources, building a base and amassing a massive army to destroy the enemy's base was perfected in the years to come. Westwood Studios, the studio responsible for creating the RTS template, followed up Dune II with Command and Conquer, while PC games upstart Blizzard entered the market with their wildly successful Warcraft games. By the time we approached the late 1990s, the PC games market was literally overflowing in RTS titles. The Westwood and Blizzard franchises quickly became the gold standard against which all other pretenders to the throne were compared against. Unfortunately for us, there were far too many pretenders and consumers were soon awash in mediocore "me-too" experiences.

I want to skip ahead several years to the present day in order to show just how little has changed with RTS games since the '90s. The genre really has evolved into a very niche genre, not unlike the fighting games that seem to be going through a renaissance right now. RTS adhere to a very particular set of rules and conventions and demand a relatively high level of performance from its players. To the average player, your typical RTS presents a rather daunting task. Even with the luxury of a keyboard and mouse, most RTSs play out like a multi-tasker's wet dream. There are tech dreams to memorize, workers and harvesters to manage, not to mention a war that needs to be waged, sometimes on multiple fronts. What results can be described as a glorious marriage of fast reflexes, even faster tactics and true panic-induced strategic thinking. On a less favourable day, your typical RTS can devolve into a mind-numbing arms race, as each player blunders through their production tree so as to build up the largest army of the strongest (or cheapest) units and send the entire mob en mass to the enemy's front gates. All of this unfolds admist a cacophonous flurry of hotkey strokes and mouse clicks.

As if it comes as any surprise, this style of of game play and interface design has transitioned rather horribly to the home console. Thumb sticks are no substitute for even the worst mouse. We've also pretty much reached the conceivable limit of buttons we can comfortably fit onto a game pad. While recent advancements have streamlined common tasks like unit selection, preparing build queues and creating hotkeys, playing console RTSs remains a cumbersome, labour-intensive venture. (In light of this grim fact, I'd like to give out big props to the developers of Command & Conquer for their hard-headed insistence on fighting this uphill battle)

Oh, but times, they are a'changin'. I've recently been sucker punched by Ubisoft Shanghai's EndWar, a Tom Clancy property that puts the player squarely back into the army commander's boots: an army commander, I might add, who has also bee relieved of his middle management and junior accounting duties. This game, despite it's rough edges, has impressed me to no end. Also on the horizon, I am looking forward to the ever mysterious Halo Wars. Both EndWar and Halo Wars point the way towards a very bright future for strategy games on the console and I'll be going more in-depth in my next post about how they have the potential to change our opinions about RTSs forever.

The Play With My Box Dubious Distinction Awards 2008

2009-01-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

Best Candidate for PR Muzzling
Denis Dyak (Silicon Knights)
Peter Molyneaux (Lionhead Studios)
Bobby Kotick (Activision)

Failed Shot at Tony Hawk-style Video Game Stardom
Shaun White

Triumph of Innovation Over Good Design
Mirror's Edge

Triumph of Innovation Paired with Good Design But Low Content
Left 4 Dead

Biggest Disappointments
Army of Two
Spore
Stars Wars Force Unleashed
Mirror's Edge
Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Too Human

Weakest Justification for Neutering Mature Game Content
Emil Pagliarulo (no child killing in Fallout 3)

Complete and Utter Hardware Sales Domination
Nintendo (Wii and DS)

Complete and Utter Software Sales Domination
(Tie) Xbox 360's attach rate & Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion

Blatant Case of Imitation as Flattery
(Tie) Xbox 360's Avatars & Playstation 3's Home and improved Trophy system

Most Embarrassing Portrayal of Game Culture
Spike Video Game Awards

Laziest Sequel
Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Botched PC Port
Supreme Commander

Best Example of Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight
Konami for Rock Revolution

Got your own ideas? Post up your suggestions for more Dubious Distinction awards in the comments section.

Q1 Release Calendar Highlights for 2009

2009-01-07T20:07:00.000-08:00

The new year is upon us. Gamers and podcasters alike have been picking through the ashes of the madness that was fall/winter 2008. While internet debates continue to stir about whether 2008 was the "superior" year of gaming over 2007, they are also asking the most poignant of questions, like: How will 2009 stack up in the quantity and quality of game releases?

The first quarter of any calendar year is typically a quiet time for notable game releases. This year the slate is looking uncharacteristically exciting, thanks to a number of long-anticipated sequels and higher profile games that were delayed from their originally scheduled Q4 launches in 2008.

In order of release, here are my picks for games to watch for the remainder of this winter:

LOTR Conquest
I realize that I did not paint the rosiest picture in the post of my impressions of the demo a few days ago. Fellow bloggers have kindly advised me to try out the demo's multiplayer mode, claiming that it is a far more interesting experience than the tutorial-like single player trawl. Even with all my early misgivings about this game, it is overall a rather strong release to see in January of all months. With a heavyweight license behind it, a credible developer in charge and some very solid production values on display, LOTR Conquest is poised to make a very big splash... at least until some of the other Q1 games are rolled out.

Afro Samurai
I know very little about this Bandai Namco release. Based on the cult animé series, Afro Samurai immediately grabs the eyes with its visually striking art design, one that supposedly stays very true to the source material and seems to be a perfect fit for an edgy action-adventure game. The game will feature a unique bit of technology that will allow bodies to be cut -- and presumably separated-- at any point and from any direction. With the pre-release buzz nearly non-existent, my expectations are refreshingly blank. Here's hoping for a strong demo to hit XBL and PSN well before the game's retail launch.

Sacred 2
Action-RPG fanatics got their just desserts last August when Too Human stormed the shelves and was met with mixed reviews all around. The game failed to light a fire at retail but caught on with a devoted fan base who were willing to forgive the game's many glaring flaws and enjoy the unadulterated level- and loot-grinding mechanics. Sacred 2 will give Xbox 360 gamers a second shot of hack n' slash action this February, touting a vast open world, multiple player classes, ride-able mounts and 4-player online co-op. The PC version launched last November to unremarkable reviews and there were prompt complaints about the litany of bugs that snuck by the QA team. I remember many years ago how German developer, Ascaron patched the first Sacred to death and I sincerely hope most of the technical hiccups are ironed out before they unveil this ambitious action-RPG to the Xbox masses.

FEAR 2: Project Origin
Monolith's flagship shooter has suffered a bit of an identity crisis. With the FEAR brand locked up in legal hell for the better part of 2008, Monolith was forced to position the game as a spiritual successor to 2005's FEAR (released to 360 in 2006) rather than a legitimate sequel. Thankfully, the FEAR brand is back in its rightful home but the sequel still faces some hurdles on its road to acceptance. Similar to Valve's reliance on their Source engine, FEAR 2 has been developed on a retro-fitted LithTech engine, a reliable piece of kit that may be getting a touch long in the tooth. Players can expect the level design to open up beyond the drab office interiors of the first game, with pitched firefights spilling onto devastated city streets and even a few joyrides in mech-like war machines. I remain optimistic but I wonder if Monolith is getting stuck in a time loop. The industry as a whole seems to be over its fascination with corridor crawls and Bullet Time, so only time will tell if Monolith serves up a helping of retro-cool or just tired old retro.

Street Fighter 4
The one-on-one fighting genre has seen a bit of a resurgence these past couple years, so it's only fitting that we are a little over a month away from welcoming back the arguable granddaddy of fighter franchises. Street Fighter 4 has already been making waves in arcades overseas and with good reason. Marketed as a "return to form" for the series, SF4's game play will take most of its cues from the template popularized by Street Fighter 2 and its many variants during the 1990s. Featuring all of the original playable characters and a host of new personalities, the home versions of SF4 will also feature bonus characters not found in the arcade edition. Fans of Akuma, Fei Long, Cammy, Rose, Dan Hibiki, Gouken, Seth and Sakura can rejoice! These additions brings up the total roster to a staggering 25 characters. If this isn't the definitive version of Street Fighter for the new generation, I am at a loss to figure out what is. This may also herald the first time I lay down the money for an arcade stick or fight pad just play a fighting game.

Resident Evil 5
I am a relative neophyte to Resident Evil, yet another revered Capcom franchise that has been brilliantly managed and reinvented all these years. Sharing many traces of game play DNA with Resident Evil 4, this new game will deposit players in war-torn Africa in the continuing fight against the zombie virus. This game is sure to be a technical showpiece for both Xbox 360 and PS3 owners as it features some of sharpest graphics seen so far this console generation. For the first time in the series, co-op play will be supported from the ground-up, allowing players to step into the shoes of Chris Redfield or his newcomer partner-in-arms, Sheva Alomar. With so much going for this game, I wonder how it will be received in a world where Dead Space exists. Survival horror has always been a rather small genre in gaming, so it'll be interesting to see how a genre titan like Resident Evil fares in a more competitive, modern climate.

Halo Wars
My recent infatuation with strategy and war games has warmed me to the prospect of playing Halo Wars this March. Notable in so many different ways, the game nonetheless struggles to gain traction in the enthusiast press. You'd think the Halo brand alone would be enough to draw global attention yet all is not roses and sunshine for Ensemble Studios' swan song. The way I see it, the success of this game hinges on one thing: control. From the beginning, Halo Wars was touted as the only RTS developed to take full advantage of console hardware (this distinction has now been officially stolen by Ubisoft's excellent, EndWar). Where previous RTS games have been met with partial success due to cumbersome or incomplete integration of mouse-keyboard controls to a game pad environment, Halo Wars will be designed with just that peripheral in mind.

Even so, the overall design still seems to stubbornly adhere to the resource harvesting and base building formula established by Dune II in 1992. More so than any flaw with control schemes, this tired formula is the main reason I shy away from most modern RTSs. It would be more reassuring to know that Ensemble was also intent on shattering the harvest-build-rush paradigm of yore along with any innovations made to user-centered design. As it stands, we can at least be assured of a unique take on the Halo universe, as well as a solid, final release from one of the best RTS developers of our time.

The Impression Game: LOTR Conquest

2009-01-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

It's a fresh new year, which means right about now we should see the release of lower profile titles that were held over from the competitive holiday shopping season. Following in lock step with the movie industry, the months of January and February are traditionally viewed by game publishers as an ideal dumping ground for lesser (in either quality or marketing muscle) games that probably would have been eaten alive during the peak "Oscar buzz" months beginning in October of the previous year.

The upcoming LOTR Conquest from EA/Pandemic is certainly timed in a manner to suggest that it belongs in this category of Q1-released games of dubious quality. The demo was unleashed unto Xbox Live over the weekend and I gratefully gave it a test drive after throwing up my hands in exasperated frustration, blustering through Chapter 4 of Mirror's Edge as it were.

At it's heart, LOTR Conquest is a dressed up meld of DICE's Battlefield and Koei's Dynasty Warriors series. Comparisons to the latter franchise are never wholeheartedly flattering, so I did leave the demo's solo experience with an odd, unsatisfied aftertaste in my gullet (more on that later).

LOTR Conquest is a solo or multiplayer game that pits the forces of good versus Sauron's empire of infinitely expendable orcs. The demo guides you through various scripted sequences as you experiment with each available player class on the good side, of which there are 4, plus the opportunity to control a unique Hero character taken from the LOTR canon.

Victory is based on the aggressive capturing and holding of control points and it's this mechanic that draws the most parallels to the Battlefield games. Holding a control point confers a few advantages, such as offering the ability to switch classes and providing a respawn point closer to the front lines of war.

There seem to be all the core ingredients necessary for a rollicking fun multiplayer hack n' slash festival. Most of the player classes are tremendously powerful and capable of cutting down large swaths of orcs with only a couple button presses. The emphasis is on fast action, so there's no limit on mana energy for casting the Mage's pre-assigend spells or rationing the number of arrows in your quiver. The enemy hordes are constant, so your only real concern is to press the attack and keep the combos flowing.

The demo concludes with a clunky, lopsided duel against Sauron. Even stepping into the leather boots of a Hero character (sorry, his name eludes me now) did little to bolster my enjoyment of this set piece. Sauron freely tossed me around the battlefield, largely shrugging off even my stronger combos, interrupting my attacks and being a right pain in the ass like any good end boss should.

I can't help but have a very tepid first impression of LOTR Conquest. The rather mindless hacking of ineffectual enemy drones did remind me too much of Dynasty Warriors for my liking. I'm curious to see if there's any innovation to be found in the full retail's single-player campaign. Will it be a repetitious linking of the same control point conquest scenarios or will the developers surprise us with some interesting game play diversions along the way? Multiplayer is likely where most players will flock to and make their home, but even there I question the game's ability to grow the necessary legs to hold its audience's attention. I didn't get a sense of much strategic depth to the game play even though I'm confident some inspired strategies will emerge soon enough among the power elite. Yet what I played of the demo felt very superficial in both breadth and depth of design, so longevity should definitely a concern for anyone considering a purchase.

Finally, I just don't know if another game using the LOTR license really needed to be made. The mythology is old hat by now and while the Peter Jackson trilogy was superb, the Return of the King is coming on 6 years old now. This is one dead horse and I'm not sure any amount of genre plundering can breath new life into this revered but dusty franchise.

Best of 2008: Game Journalists and Personalities

2009-01-04T11:13:00.000-08:00

In no particular order:

Jeff Green
Greenspeak, 1UP Network, EA

N'Gai Croal
Level Up - Newsweek

Jim Sterling
Destructoid, Podtoid podcast

Shawn Elliot
1Up Network, 2K

Chris Dahlen
Save the Robot, The Onion AV Club

The Entire Edge Magazine Staff
Edge Magazine, Edge-Online.com

Honourable Mention: Geoff Keighley (Game Trailers), Adam Sessler (G4TV), Victor Lucas (Electric Playground)

Top Design Trends of 2008

2009-01-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

Written on December 24, 2008.
On this most wintry of Christmas Eves, my thoughts turn to this year's prominent trends in gaming that have shaped our play habits and primed our expectations for 2009. Other blogs and enthusiast sites have already been nominating -- and in some cases, even awarding -- various titles for "game of the year" accolades.

Believe me, I'd really like to join in the fray. I only hesitate to start proclaiming this year's best of the best because, despite my eager subscription to the "hardcore gamer" identity, I only play a fraction of the games released each year. My platform allegiance to the Xbox 360 doesn't exactly help with broadening my horizons either.

So with that reality etched into our collective brains, please allow me to enumerate the big trends of 2008. How did the big publishers surprise us? What's been in the zeitgeist among game development community? Will we see a continuation of these trends into 2009? In no particular order, I give you my list of Top Design Trends of 2008:

Morality
Giving players the sense that their choices mattered and had ramifications within their games was one of the most defining design trends this year. Given their complementary natures, it's also no surprise this trend coincided with some very high profile releases to the open-world sandbox genre, including Grand Theft Auto 4, Saints Row 2 and Far Cry 2. Moral choices also figured very prominently in 2008's top-tier RPG releases, most notably in Fallout 3 and Fable 2.

While the pervasiveness of morality is fast becoming a cliché or back-of-box bullet point, there remains to be much work done to better integrate moral dilemmas into the fabric of single-player stories that make them not only more emotional resonant but also more relevant to the core play experience. Both Fallout 3 and Fable 2 consistently bombarded players with opportunities to play the saint or the devil, with the resulting consequences pandering more to player's vanity or willingness to experiment than offering any dramatic shifts in how the story would unfold. Here's hoping 2009 sees developers taking more risks with moral choices, putting even more power into players' hands and letting them live with the consequences of their actions.

Social Networking/Community
For so long the domain of Web 2.0, the concepts of social networking in console gaming matured to an alarming degree thanks to the efforts of Microsoft and Sony. Earlier in November, Microsoft did the unthinkable by smoothly rolling out the first ever operating system update for a game console, dubbing it the "New Xbox Experience". With it's personalized Wii-like avatars and enhanced cross-game party system, the NXE simultaneously sought to grab a greater slice of the casual gamer market while offering greater flexibility to dashboard diehards who demanded easier and faster ways to play games with friends.

Not content to watch from the sidelines, Sony launched the public beta for Playstation Home in early December. Rendered as a 3D virtual world akin to the controversial PC MMO, Second Life, Home is being positioned as a social hub for Playstation 3 owners and publishers alike, stressing among other things social interaction completely unattached to retail games and a unique marketing platform for the Sony brand and their partners.

Edit: User-generated content also reached a new high. See: LittleBigPlanet, Guitar Hero World Tour and Far Cry 2.

Co-Op
2008 saw a deluge of games great and small that supported, often from the ground up, cooperative play between two or more players. This has been an often ignored style of play even as the first wave of current generation games arrived on the scene at the tale end of 2005. The co-op pendulum has swung the other way this year and gamers are better for it. We saw the release of Too Human, Army of Two, KUF: Circle of Doom, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Mercenaries 2, GTA 4, Saints Row 2, Fable 2, Left 4 Dead, Resistance 2 and Gears of War 2 to name just a handful of games that supported co-op play as more than just a lazy after thought. In a few cases, co-op play was designed as the bedrock for optimal game play enjoyment as was the case with Left 4 Dead and Army of Two.

Even smaller developers got into the act, with a bevy of top-notch Xbox Live Arcade releases leading the charge. Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 and Bionic Commando: Rearmed reminded us all that classic game design gave birth to co-op play as we know it. 2008 was indeed a watershed year for playing cooperatively with friends. There may have been a few missteps along the way, such as the trimming of Too Human's much vaunted 4-player co-op to 2-player and the atrocious implementation of Fable 2's co-op mode. Yet it cannot be denied the popularity of co-op and one can only imagine this becoming more of a standard feature in our games for years to come.

Zombies
From the intense, co-op centric survival dynamics of Left 4 Dead, to Call of Duty: World at War's undead fascist Easter egg, it was clear that the pop-obsession of pirates and ninjas of year's past has been handily usurped by all varieties of zombies. Even games that were not marketed as "zombie games" featured the filthy, shambling undead in some form or another. Case in point are Too Human's Helheim level and the ubiquitous wasteland ghouls of Fallout 3. If there existed a year-end award for "Best Zombie Porn", the undisputed winner would have to be Valve's Left 4 Dead. This is such a noteworthy release in the way it so effectively scratches two long-standing gamer geeks itches: essential co-op play built from the ground up and virtually experiencing the zombie apocalypse with your closest friends (or for more horrifying thrills, with complete strangers).

Classic Remakes
What was old is now new again. This philosophy was exemplified in a slew of downloadable and retail "reboots" of old and revered properties. The care and fan love that went into remakes was remarkable. Developers clearly wanted to do more with these games than just polish off a few pixels, add in a wide screen mode and call it a day. Instead of taking the easy route, they updated the classic formulas for modern times while still paying homage to what made the originals such timeless artifacts.

Capcom is the clear leader in the remake resurgence game with their loving tributes to Bionic Commando, Mega Man 9 and Street Fighter 2 Turbo all within a 5-month span. They consistently set the bar so high that we can only expect more quality remakes in 2009 from all publishers.

High-Profile Indie Games
If you are a budding games developer, I personally feel that 2008 marks the first year to be officially excited to be working in the field. The awareness and acceptance of smaller budget games on all platforms has exploded in the past couple of years and the trend has only reached new heights in 2008. Free-to-play Flash games are routinely making their way into "Best of..." lists in not only enthusiast publication but the mainstream press as well. The announcement of an established publisher picking up talent from the modding community is becoming a matter of course instead of a cute, general-interest story. I can't remember a time in recent history when there were so many paths to a sustainable career in game development.

The web has always been a platform for homegrown, DIY gaming but I can't stress enough the role Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have played with their respective console download services. They are all succeeding brilliantly, proving to themselves and to consumers that smaller games are not only profitable but serve as an essential breeding ground for innovation. Innovation, I might add, with a much lower price tag for risk which serves as a rather crucial motivating factor to innovate in the first place. Special accolades need to be served to Microsoft for launching their long-awaited Community Games service with the release of the NXE.

The increasing popularity of handheld devices -- along with the arrival of relative gaming neophytes such as Apple's iPhone -- will only reinforce the demand for games that make take less time to create and play but still maintain a standard of quality that can rival traditional boxed retails products.

A New Year, a New Toy?

2008-12-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

I am one payment away from paying off my 42" LCD I picked up early this year. With the Christmas season in full swing, I've added a new toy to my wish list. This is something that, much like my wide-screen television, I'd never thought I'd ever want.

That's right: daddy wants a 5.1 surround sound system.

Now I am by no means a wealthy man. My means are quite modest, which has caused me to vacillate between buying a full-blown sound system or surround sound headsets for the past few months. The back and forth is over now since I've decided that most of my apartment neighbours are fairly noise tolerant. Added to that, my roommate is rarely home when I'm gaming. When he is, he's not one to complain much at all. Not surprisingly, this is the same guy who I've lived with during my short-lived DJ days and has always enjoyed the deep pounding of bass against old wood paneling.

While the choice to finally go with a medley of satellite speakers all around my living room was not the easiest, my choice of specific brand and model is turning out to be a breeze. With the downturn in our economy and the cinching of my wallet, I've had to set my sights lower and settle for getting myself a solid entry-level system. A real-life and XBL friend strongly recommended the Logitech Z-5500. I've always looked upon "theater in a box" solutions with some suspicion. Components are cheaply made and the feature-sets often exclude any possibility of incremental upgrades to your home entertainment system.

My friend has managed to allay most of these fears. He bought the Z-5500 for his first foray into 5.1 sound several years ago before "manning up" to his current custom-built set up. He's had nothing but glowing things to say about the overall make of the speakers, the ease of use and of course, the fidelity and range of the sound produced. At $335.53, it's also priced to fit my budget and I am impressed that a model that's been out for so long is still being stocked and garnering so much praise.

So will I finally take the plunge? Will I make the choice this Christmas be a self-centered bastard and buy sweet gifts for myself? Most importantly, will I make the choice to pamper my ear drums? Well, there are still a few variables I need to sort out. The Z-5500 apparently comes in a wireless flavour as well, so I need to determine pricing for that more attractive model before exposing my plastic to more holiday spending abuse. There's also the little side quest I gave myself of trying to turn my girlfriend on to games by buying her a Wii (along with a gift that I know she'll enjoy unequivocally, of course!). Turning my beloved girlfriend into a gamer, even a very casual one, would be quite an accomplishment. It would a worthy feat, easily worth its weight in gold and XP. But... my ears yearn for the joys of the directional audio, and rib-shaking bass that even a modest5.1 system can provide.

No one can argue that right now, at this very moment, is a great time to be a gamer. But damn it, sometimes being a gamer during the holidays can be the most difficult thing of all.

Stop Talking About Trilogies

2008-12-11T20:38:00.000-08:00

There's a trend that's been bothering me lately.

This is the trend of the early trilogy announcement. It's not that it's an early announcement. I'd describe it more as a pre-emptive, even presumptuous marketing technique that is fast becoming a tiresome bullet point of any press release or developer interview.

Publishers and developers are equally guilty of this annoying habit. It is getting a bit out of hand. Yes, it's understandable that in the franchise-driven games industry that sequels to reasonably successful games are a given. This year alone has seen the birth of many notable new IP. Injections of new blood is always an exciting prospect, sometimes more so than reinventing a reliable but dusty franchise. The game creators are likely even more excited, eager to promote their new property and generate the necessary buzz to be noticed in a crowded, competitive market.

I have no issue with the trilogy as a concept. My main beef with the trilogy is that the term itself is being overused to the point where it is losing much of its intended meaning. I also sense that the term being exploited to provide a smokescreen for imperfections or broken promises, and this sort of abuse is taking place for old and new IP alike. First, I'd like to cast a disparaging glance onto new intellectual property.

A number of new intellectual property creators have touted their new games as being the first of a planned trilogy of titles. This could be stated very plainly, as was the case with Too Human, or hinted at slyly such as it was with Mirror's Edge and Dead Space. Okay, the first sin of announcing a trilogy too early is hubris. A brand new IP is in no position to even imagine a trilogy until some sales figures have returned some two, three, or four months down the road. These games need to prove themselves first. With the games industry so fickle and sequel-driven, upstarts that have just blown onto the scene with much hype and glitz are especially vulnerable to being blown right back to whence they came.

The tepid sales for both Too Human and Mirror's Edge are testament to this grim reality. Why count your eggs before they've hatched? Focus on putting out the best game that you can, make the fans happy and maybe you'll get your chance at expanding your universe for sequels, spin-offs and merchandising. Even if your game isn't a critical darling or a champ at retail, you might still have garnered a large enough following to warrant that comeback sequel.

Harping on trilogies makes my hairs bristle because it also provides an advance firewall against criticisms of any new IP. Whether it's stories that trail off with unsatisfying conclusions or eagerly awaited features that get cut before ship date, just the mere utterance of "trilogy" implies rewards, withheld and reserved for the future, even if the present product leaves so much to be desired. Too Human drew gamers' ire when they downsized their co-op offerings from 4 players to 2 in addition to telling a mess of a story that possessed neither a beginning or an end, leaving much of the narrative heavy-lifting to be done in later installments. In that sense, it's a real boon for publisher and developers to turn "trilogy" into such a meaningless buzzword. Far from meaningless, it serves as a rather versatile marketing tool. How many times have we heard unrepentant drivel like this:

"Well, we've always envisioned this game to be the first in a grand trilogy. Even if we left out features X, Y and Z, we're committed to developing this world and growing our franchise. This is just a small taste of the great things still to come!"

To be fair, it's not just the developers of new IP who are jumping the gun with their trilogy hype. Established franchises are getting in on the action and they're not just content to stoke the fires of their loyal fan base. In the case of Blizzard and Starcraft 2, they seem hell bent on incinerating wholesale the hard-earned goodwill they've accumulated over the years.

Back in October, they made the unfortunate announcement that they would be releasing the Starcraft 2 as a trilogy. Instead of a single boxed product containing the traditional full single-player campaign and mutliplayer modes, the single player campaigns would be released in a piecemeal fashion -- three in total, one for each race -- with full multiplayer support beginning with the first installment. Clearly, there were no sane minds present in the Activision/Blizzard boardroom to point out how preposterous this all sounds. Leave it to a billion-dollar company to redefine the very meaning of what a trilogy is.

Is a bloated, episodic sequel -- a sequel that is also a trilogy unto itself -- really what the Starcraft series needs right now? Now I don't doubt for a second Blizzard's ability to deliver a first-rate product of any magnitude. I only question the company's wisdom of sullying all the positive hype for one of their most beloved properties with a bizarre and unappealing marketing scheme. As one might expect, the fallout from this announcement has been rather lukewarm, with even staunch Blizzard supporters adopting a conservative "wait and see" stance on the matter. Meanwhile everyone else is grumbling, with accusations of "franchise milking" flying fast and furious over message boards and blogs. And I don't blame them their grievances one bit.

Blizzard has really put a gigantic foot inside their collective mouths. Instead of building positive hype for their hotly anticipated sequel, they've carelessly mired themselves in PR back peddling and a battle of semantics. Blizzard has earned itself the luxury to take however long they need to release not only Starcraft 2, but anything at all. Very few game companies have that luxury. It beggars comprehension to think that Starcraft 2 is such an epic undertaking that, even for Blizzard's generous development timetable, the game will have to be released in measured, protracted spurts if the game is to come out in a timely manner at all.

It's this unhealthy obsession with trilogies that is increasingly getting game companies into trouble. Maybe there was a time when a trilogy was cause for excitement and anticipation. Now, in this sober climate of company closures and layoffs, I'm not so sure gamers are so easily titillated. Now, in an era when there's still heated contention (and confusion) on what constitutes a sequel, a standalone, an expansion, a DLC, a micro-transaction and an episodic content, the last thing any company wants to do is to use the word "trilogy" lightly.

Let's simmer down on trilogies for a while, shall we? Let's continue putting out good games, pushing out the new IP and let's wait for the fans, your consumers, to vote with their wallets before you go hastily announcing two sequels, plush animal toys and five movie tie-ins. Oh wait, we're not talking trilogies in this situation any more.

No, my dear: that's synergy.

And the Zombies Came to Town

2008-12-09T20:31:00.000-08:00

I really brought out the pom-poms in my last post about Dead Space. Here is a wholly unoriginal piece of entertainment, crafted with such precision and buffed to a blindingly polished sheen, that it is really impossible dismiss it as anything but a fantastic entry into the survival horror genre.

Left 4 Dead has recently stepped into the ring of scares and made its presence known. The shock wave has hit the Xbox and PC communities with equal force and if one thing is certain, there are a lot of dollar signs headed towards Gabe Newell and Valve. But what's the big deal?

L4D stands in stark contrast to so many qualities that define Dead Space as a superlative horror experience that I'm tempted to pull out a running tally sheet of all the differences that separate them. I'll spare you the drudgery of course. After all, the superficial differences are apparent enough from the get-go: zombies versus space mutants, 4-player co-op versus single-player, action versus suspense.

Now that I think of it, it's that last dichotomy that really encapsulates the unique strengths of these two games. For all its refined controls and high-tech gadgetry, the success of Dead Space is founded on the same principles as a ride through a haunted house at the amusement park: it is tightly scripted, extremely orchestrated and often times, very predictable. That I still hold my breath or fuddle around with my controller when the scares manifest is a testament to the skill of the game's designers.

Left 4 Dead aspires to these same goals but it goes about it from a very different place, both technologically and stylistically. The game's "script" is governed by an AI-driven Director who plays a role equivalent to what a Dungeon Master would be for old pen and paper RPGs. The Director's job in L4D is to spawn zombie hordes into the level for players to fight. The pace and intensity at which it spawns in the nasties is determined by a complex formula that takes into account the players' performance, their overall health, the speed they are moving through the map, their weapons and myriad other factors. The Director's ultimate goal is to craft a challenging and different experience for the players each time they play, even if they are replaying the same map numerous times.

Qualitatively, the fluid work of the Director, combined with the constant company of your companions, AI-controlled or otherwise, makes for a game that is less about horror and more about survival. After a few play sessions, the user becomes intimately familiar with the threat, which renders them dangerous but hardly mysterious or terrifying. The familiarity of each map, designed to be played multiple times, also becomes a matter of rote memory. Additionally, winking references to pop culture and gaming as a whole are embedded as graffiti and other artifacts throughout the game's various "safe room" checkpoints. It's these sort of touches that ground the game in a very defined, self-referential space that precludes it from taking itself too seriously. If Dead Space could be compared to Ridley Scott's Alien, then Left 4 Dead can be said to share more DNA with James Cameron's Aliens and maybe with an extra strand of pre-Spiderman Sam Raimi for good measure.

And lest you forget the horror of humanity itself, Left 4 Dead goes to great length as showing us that the enemy is often not the "other" but rather the man standing watch behind your back. The scares don't come so much from the presence of ravenous zombies but from the ease with which a well-armed but uncooperative party of survivors can quickly turn into zombie gruel. "United we stand, divided we fall" is a mantra that rings all too true if you expect to have any success in Left 4 Dead.

If you've put any amount of time into Dead Space or Left 4 Dead you will not be hard-pressed to recount situations where you have felt alone in the dark. Both games use such different techniques to capture isolation, dread and horror. And both games are essential plays for horror fans of all stripes, doubly so if you are also a shooter aficionado.

Acrobats are the New Zombies

2008-12-08T10:55:00.000-08:00

What's the hottest look in gaming this season? No, it's not the undead, contrary to the current onslaught of a nasty flu bug (Left 4 Dead), nasty reanimating aliens (Dead Space), irradiated ghouls (Fallout 3) or Nazi zombies (CoD: World at War). Gore and necrotized flesh is sinfully unattractive any way, not to mention awful-smelling.

No, the new hotness this fall is beholding the lithe grace and beauty of an acrobat. Leading the charge is Faith, of Mirror's Edge. The EA/Dice production turns the FPS genre on its head, giving players all the free-running prowess they possessed in last year's Assassin's Creed, but restricting them to a first-person perspective. This entails all the nausea-inducing moments you might expect as Faith jumps, tumbles and rolls her way through a dystopic amalgamation of near-future Hong Kong and Singapore. The critical reception has been mixed so far but there has been near universal praise of EA's courage to even attempt such a unique take on the creaky FPS genre. Arguments abound on the Internet message boards about whether ME should be given special merit for its daring design or suitably docked points for committing some predictable gaming sins. Specifically, halfway through the short 6-hour campaign, the level design rebels against its original mandate and dials down the parkour, forcing players through restrictive jumping puzzles and mandatory combat engagements.

Crystal Dynamics is also out to prove that what is old is new again. Tomb Raider: Underworld has landed on shelves in all it's dual pistol-wielding glory. Laura Croft, quite possibly gaming's version of Madonna, attempts to reinvent herself once again by, ironically, returning to her roots. The style of play is much like it was in Legends, with less emphasis on the automated gunplay and more focus put on the exploration of ancient, exotic environments. Staunchly old school, Laura is strictly a climber and flipper. Sure, she may have a couple new moves in her toolset but her acrobatics exist solely to scale her up another cliff face or get her around the various anti-tomb raiding security measures. The reviews so far have been generally solid, but one can't help but shake the feeling that Laura, while seemingly ageless in her game world bubble, is actually that fading, wrinkling starlet hanging over your shoulder, pining away for the "good ol' days".

Our final gymnast is also another entry into another long-running franchise. The new Prince of Persia is a reboot of the classic series, intent on erasing some bad taste left over by the moody, emo-centric stylings of the previous two Prince games on the PS2. This latest efforst takes all the death-defying leaps of Mirror's Edge into the third-person view, replete with a desolate fantasy world, sword play and a life-saving female companion. Of all the acrobatic games mentioned thus far, I'm most intrigued by this one. The reviews have pegged it as an all too short adventure and balanced a touch too far towards the "easy n' accessible" end of the difficulty scale. A longer experience awaits those who choose to fully explore the linear environments for collectibles. The tug of war between playing a simply beautiful, enchanting game and my need to receive a stiff challenge has me torn about purchasing PoP. Perhaps the best I can do is to wait until the holiday dust settles off and I have completed more of those new releases I have piled on top of my 360.

Ditto for Mirror's Edge and Tomb Raider...

Between the Covers: Edge Magazine

2008-11-28T16:39:00.000-08:00

I bit the bullet and subscribed to a gaming magazine yesterday, something I have not done since the glory days of CGW and PC Gamer when they had just started packing in demo disc with each issue... a 3 1/2 inch floppy disc, that is.

But this post is not to prove just how old I am. No, I wanted to talk about my new, year-long subscription to Edge magazine, a publication that I have casually picked up at the news stands these past several months and one that I have thoroughly fallen in love with.

If you needed any proof of the vitality of print media in games journalism, you needn't look much further than Edge. Standing tall with authority on the store shelves, the magazine dwarfs all other gaming zines in both size, writing quality, scope of coverage and design aesthetics. Holding a weighty issue in hand, you'd wonder if you've picked up the video game industry's answer to Wallpaper. Edge publishes very large issues packed with articles, printed on very high quality stock. The sheer glossiness of it is almost off-putting were it not for the many nuggets of gaming goodness hidden within.

The articles themselves cover the usual gamut of interviews, developer spotlights, previews, reviews and news bites. They also have regular features dedicated to careers in the games industry, typically spearheaded by a lengthy examination of a current or burgeoning games development hotspot (eg. Singapore) as well as pages upon pages of local developer spotlights. This focus on the games workforce is a big indication of Edge's more holistic approach to the industry and makes the reader feel like an insider rather than an outside consumer constantly looking in. To wit, the overriding raison d'etre of Edge seems to stem from a real passion for the industry as opposed to a desire to push products and justify advertising dollars.

One needs only to flip to any Edge reviews section and find a palpable sense of restraint compared to the rest of the magazine. A few high profile reviews may dominate some full pages but the majority of reviews are packed together in tight columns. They are written with a amazing economy of words yet never wanting in insight. Unlike other video publications which showcase their review scores with splashy fonts and graphics, the Edge staff almost seems embarrassed to score games, relegating the numbers (they use a 10-point scale) at the conclusion of each review with zero fanfare.

Above all else, it is the style of the writing that has won my heart and made me a believer in magazines once again. The text can be impenetrable at times and annoy those who are not used to creative sentence structure. But let it be said that they don't treat their audience like idiots. They have the most unusual previews in that they actually include pointed, sometimes very critical observations of games still in development. Gushing first-looks are rare and if done, you still feel like their enthusiasm is well justified. It's not a style that would sit well with someone like Denis Dyack, but we the readers benefit immensely. We get our lovely screenshots, some hard facts and juicy promises, but the sobering reservations help us manage our expectations accordingly.

If you have any love for the printed word and video games, you owe it to yourself to sample an issue off the news stand. As a high-quality import, Edge doesn't come cheap ($15 Cdn) and they are usually only found in specialty magazine stores and book stores. To save some money, you can subscribe and save an impressive 30% off the cover price.

Points of Comparison, Screaming all the Way

2008-11-23T12:42:00.000-08:00

Oh, the horror! Xbox 360 owners have been blessed, and perhaps damned, with a double-bill creature feature this autumn. I refer of course to EA's Dead Space, released in October and the newly available zombie opus from Valve, Left 4 Dead. I've finally been able to come up for air from my daliance with Fable 2, Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 to swing the spotlight onto our season of horror and disect Dead Space and Left 4 Dead. What it is about these games that makes us gamers tick? And why, given the crowded holiday season avalanche of games, should a horror-minded gamer give either of these titles a serious try?

Emotionally, I think both games strive for the same goal and they both succeed tremendously in their own approach. They are here to incite terror, to thrill, to suspend and to make you dread the thought of stepping around that next dark, unexplored corner. From a design and game play perspective, the styles taken by EA Redwood and Valve/Turtle Rock could not be more jarringly disparate.

Let's dismiss the obvious differences right off the bat. Dead Space is set in the future aboard an alien-infested starship. Left 4 Dead deposits the player in Generic America, in the near if unidentified future, battling a zombie menace whose origins are intentionally shrouded in ambiguity.

Dead Space, when you get right down to it, is EA's attempt at capturing that slice of the survival horror pie so long loarded over by Capcom and its storied Resident Evil franchise. Although it is a new IP, the game is also not shy about borrowing play mechanics, stylistic cues and story elements from both movies and games we've seen in the last decade and beyond. As a creative endeavour, Dead Space is probably as derivative as it gets. It takes the player on a rollercoaster ride through a haunted spaceship. But for me to reduce the experience into such simple terms is by no means a way of criticsm. More to the point: Dead Space is one hell of a haunted rollercoaster ride. Just don't expect a brave hurtle into the unexplored realms of game design theory.

There's no denying its derivative roots and the design-by-committee feel of the overall game play. You play as Isaac Clarke, a space mining engineer sent out with a small security detachment in response to loss of contact with a behemoth "planet cracking" mining ship called the Ishimura. Naturally, what started out as a routine tech support house call quickly devolves into a nightmare, as you discover the inhabitants of the Ishimura are largely dead and in their place are mysterious, parasitic creatures known as Necromorphs.

With this basic set up established, the game propels you forward on a desparate fight for survival as you fend off monsters and attempt to repair the Ishimura, which has since fallen into a miserable state of repair. The deteriorating ship proves to be convenient mission-generation tool. Your surviving cohorts have separated from your position but maintain radio contact, perfect for sending you on various errands into the ship's underbelly to repair this or that. It's woefully transparent and gamey, but it is really all the skeletal storytelling you need to send me into the terrifying darkness, plasma cutter in hand.

The best way I can express my liking of the game is to sum it up in one word: polish. If it doesn't sound disgusting for me to say, Dead Space oozes polish out of every pore and orifice it possesses. It's almost as if the developers fully embraced their derivative approach as a challenge to themsevles. Yes, we may be shamelessly borrowing odds and ends from so many other games that came before, but we're also going to show you, using these same ingredients, what the perfect recipe looks like. The graphics, though limited in artistic scope and colour palette, are striking and fit the mood perfectly. All the animations line up, the effects are wonderful and the various monsters are suitable grotesque.

The sound design plays an equally important role, layering provocative ambient sound effects with a stereotypical horror movie soundtrack to alarming effect. The crispness of the audio serves as a playing aid, warning you to potential dangers and scripted sequences as well as keeping you well on the edge of your seat as you open the next airlock, fearfully anticipating the unknown horrors beyond.

As well as Dead Space nails down these aesthetic necessities, I don't think they quite compare to what's been achieved with the play control and UI design. In my experience, survival horror games tend to work on the premise that you never feel completely in control of the situation, beginning with the very avatar that is under your command. The protagonists in these games are often just regular folk thrown into extraordinary circumstances. As such, controls lean towards the sluggish side, with slower movement, cumbersome fighting mechanics and even a limited field of view. Never have I felt like I was controlling Master Chief while playing an older Resident Evil game or Alone in the Dark.

In a sense, Isaac Clarke is not much different from his survival horror predecessors. He is simply a regular man in a desparate situation. The difference is, Isaac has some incredible tools at his disposal in the form of modified (and actual) weaponry and a powerful space mining suit not unlike the environment suit worn by Half-Life's Gordon Freeman. Playing Dead Space, I never felt like a useless, fragile whelp. Isaac can perform two amusing, if weak melee attacks. The camer controls are extremely tight and responsive, which makes aiming a breeze. And the weapons... oh the weapons, they sure do pack a punch. Yet despite these defenses, the game succeeds by still offering me a challenge and making me feel threateend for most of the journey. My enemies are vicious and legion. Ammunition for my varios armaments are also sparse, forcing me to place my shots carefully. This can be difficult when you have a trio of screaming mutants bearing down on you from different directions. Isaac's space suit has a handy stasis ability that freezes objects in place, allowing you more time to land those killing blows, but this power is also an expendable resource and sensitive to overuse.

And last, but certainly not least, I would be remiss if I didn't heap some praise onto the ingenious ways EA Redwood has handled the user interface in Dead Space. It really is a perfect storm in this case. There is no HUD in the game. Essential player information such as health, oxygen and statis energy levels are displayed on the back okf Isaac's space suit. Since you spend the entire game above and slightly behind his shoulder, this data is always in plain sight. Ammunition read-outs are simply displayed on the weapon you are currently wielding. The real crowining achievement with the UI, however, is the way menu-driven displays are handled. Nearly every type of map, menu or inventory display is presented as a holographic projection either from Isaac's suit or from a computer terminal (inexplicably, there are store kiosks stocked with weapons and medical supplies in every section of the Ishimura). This may not sound like such an amazing feat now. In action, this HUD-less presentation is slick, attractive, practical and just even a little bit sexy. Granted, not every game will be able to cop the same kind of tricks to achieve a HUD-free interface, but we now have a standard against which to base similar, future efforts.

Now I have gone on far too long about Dead Space and left no room for the new belle of the ball, Left 4 Dead. Join me in the next post as I breakdown all of that game's special qualities and provide a post-mortem on the impact of two stellar horror games in the span of a single month.

Hard Times Equals Hard Choices

2008-10-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

So this global credit crisis is really throwing a wrench into the works for me. It has put the temporary brakes on my job hunting campaign, narrowed my chances of getting a raise, put the boot to some of my investments and yes, it's making an already difficult winter game release season an even more arduous excercise in cost management.

Before the economy decided to keel over and take a prolonged No. 2 on my face, I pretty much had all my ducks lined up as follows:

Rock Band 2
Dead Space
NHL09
Fable 2
Fallout 3
Gears of War 2
Left 4 Dead

That list of goodies has now been decimated to:

Dead Space
Gears of War 2
Left 4 Dead

I suppose whenever you're forced to tighten the wallet, you begin to prioritize and soul search a bit more than usual. I've got Dead Space in my hot little hands and so far I do not regret this purchase at all. It's got a meaty enough campaign to tide me over until Gears of War 2 drops in November. I still very much want to grab Fallout 3 on day one, but I've now relegated that title to a "read Metacritic and forums first" status. My rationale is that it's a single-player game, so it's not like it's got a freshness timer on it like a lot of multiplayer-focused games do.

Keeping Gears 2 on the list was easy. Even though the hype had not sunk in until the last couple of weeks, I know that I am guaranteed my bang for the buck. Like the first game, Gears 2 is one of those rare "total packages" that comes around only once or twice a year: full-featured multiplayer, co-op and a full story mode to boot. If I'm going to bet on any sure-fire hit this winter, it's got to be Gears.

Rock Band 2 and NHL09 were both pretty easy to cut. For me, they represent known quantities, with one of them saddled with the disadvantage of being a sports game, which have always ranked very low on my list of buying priorities. Rock BAnd 2 has been getting some great buzz but... I can hold off. Rock Band 1 still keeps me entertained and it's not like I"ve been clamoring for the new set list or planned to purchase the new instruments right away. I've got enough plastic instruments cluttering my space, thank you. If push comes to shove, I will at least wait until the start of January to pick this up, seeing as a couple close friends will be in town and RB2 will be the perfect bonding activity for us.

Last but not least, we have Fable 2. How did I decide to cut that but keep Left 4 Dead on my list? Simple: I love zombies and I hate falling for Peter Molyneux's hyperbole. The latest Fable 2 article in Edge magazine has made me quite excited to see how this epic action-RPG has turne d out. Since I've never played the original Fable, however, I see the sequel as too much of a wildcard to gamble on until I've seen a bevy of positive, nay, outstanding reviews. I'm well aware of the poor reputation that Fable 1 has garnered over the years, so I'm sitting this one out as an interested observer for the time being!

So you see, in uncertain economic times even the hardest buying decisions like whether to stock up on instand ramen or Kraft, or Left 4 Dead or Fable 2 can be resolved with a little mental Pro/Con checklisting. Weighing out the pros and cons, plus asking yourself what truly gives you the greatest amount of joy, goes a long way to saving the wallet and your sanity.

Too Human: Top 8 Title Update/DLC Requests

2008-08-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

The reviews are in and the fans have spoken. If you can say the dust has settled now that the game's been out for a week, then yes, I guess the brouhaha is essentially behind us. Players who are taken with the game, present company included, are quietly enjoying what is likely to become the most critically savaged one-million plus seller this console generation. The skeptics will have moved on to other pursuits, perhaps compiling a "Best Of" mashup of Denis Dyak video clips for posterity sake?

Too Human has easily eaten up over 20 hours of my personal time since its release last Wednesday. Like with a certain brand of India pale ale, those who like Too Human, like the hell out of it. It's a divisive game for sure and that's to be expected for a game that's stewed in development hell for so long, it's become the stuff of legends or myths. Compounding the extended development cycle has been the dev studio's very outspoken president, Mr. Denis Dyak, who has never met a mic or camera he didn't like. His unquestionable passion for his game has both helped and hindered the public's perception of TH, although I'm inclined to feel that there was a not long ago, maybe around the time the last GDC ended, when Dyak could have zipped up and just let the demo and the final release truly speak for itself.

But I'm focusing on the mundane, the superficial and superfluous. This is just gaming press and Internet drama cranked up to 11 when all you really have at the end of the day, is one humdinger of an addictive Diablo clone... for the Xbox 360. Finally. Fuckin' finally.

I'm loving this game. It's fast becoming my favourite title for the 360. And you know what? The game is rather chock-full of glaring flaws and design oversights. I have a few ideas, sort of a wishlist, for what I'd like to see addressed in the inevitable title update and DLC. I'll begin with the bug fixes:

Title Update fixes

Graphical Glitches: Minor stuff, like Valkyrie feet sinking into the ground and floating bodies. Smoothing out the cutscene animations would be nice but I realize that may be too large of an undertaking.

God-Awful Menu SFX and Sound Loops: the Equipment and Stats menu screens make my ears bleed. 'Nuff said.

Sound Options: This omission puzzles me to no end.

Advanced Online Matchmaking: Let me search for games based on other players' levels and include a message for the type of game that I am hosting, such as doing a level run or playing to get an Achievement.

Coat of Polish: This is harder to put my finger on. Menu navigation needs to move faster. I also really wish there were notifications for completing rune quests and finding the last piece of an armour set. Show me the most recent batch of loot that I've picked up in the Equipment screen, sorted from most powerful on down. Little things like this...

And on the DLC side of things:

Expand the Number of Players in Co-op: If not 4, then at least experiment with 3. Even playing 2-player, I've noticed that the action can reach intense levels and kill poaching can be a small issue. With 4 amped-up Level 50s sliding around, I'm sure that would present some design issues... readily fixed by scaling up the difficulty of enemies but, how would the frame rates and net code be affected? With Denis Dyak slyly hinting at the possibility of increased co-op fun, it's likey not as big a design problem as some make it out to be. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

New Enemy Types: A new critter doesn't even have to be that unique. Do a nastier variation of the trolls or driders or goblins. Do a minor palette swap but give them a cool new ability to combat.

Bonus Challenge Areas OR a New Stage to Beat: I would love to continue Baldur's adventures just a little bit longer before warping back to the Hall of Heroes and having to do it all over again. A fifth bonus act doesn't have to be that fleshed out or large... just make it memorable and fulfilling for players to fight through.

Podcast Spotlight: GFW Radio

2008-08-15T20:53:00.001-07:00

I love this podcast. Jeff Green and the 1UP PC crew bring the funny in so many different ways each week. It's a shame their print magazine didn't survive Ziff-Davis' cost cutting. Not for want of trying: I loved the GFW magazine when it was Computer Gaming World, a publication that, as sad as it sounds, helped me get through high school. GFW magazine had it's heart in the right place and would have thrived were it not for the steadying decline of PC gaming and Microsoft's own lackluster initiatives to boost PCs as an attractive gaming platform.

I'll wipe some tears away for CGW another day, but for now, I want to raise a toast to some quality podcasting. If the GFW Radio podcast is to be the sole remnant of the CGW/GFW legacy, then I say that's a fine way to go out, friends.

The latest episode was so good, I had to listen to it twice. Yes, I was incredibly bored at work as well, but the content of the podcast was simply too good to let it pass through just once. Often described as the "brodeo", the GFW Radio podcast is best defined by its all-male cast of 1UP PC gaming editors. Show are usually lead by former GFW magazine EIC, Jeff Green, who aside from being a hardened old vet, also possesses one of the most immature sense of humour this side of the age of 40. He's also got a hilariously shrill voice for podcasting.

The other members of the crew are also funny in their own way. Although he has a habit of dominating segments and seeming to enjoy the sound of his voice a bit too much, Sean Elliot always provides the laughs with his exagerrated impressions, voices and unique terminology. His "Heroes of the Web" segments are sorely missed and they just don't seem to do them very often any more. In these, Sean hunts down real gaming forum posts written by the most hard of the hardcore, and reads them aloud, funny voices and all, to hilarious effect.

Episodes tend to follow only the loosest of structure, which will frustrate listeners who are more accustomed to more organized podcasts like KOXM or the Major Nelson show. On the plus side, you'll be treated to side-splitting, inappropriate tangents such as furries, fan fic love and suckling Yoda's milk.

That the actual topic of PC gaming is so tangential actually helps the podcast keeps its flavour. PC gaming news hardly registers with me anymore, yet I can listent raptly as Jeff Green and co. discuss at length things like WoW addiction, Steam, software piracy and many other PC-centric items that I cannot really relate to. It helps that they're also flexible enough to talk about console games as it relates to PC gaming or their own personal gaming activities of the week.

I can't recommend this podcast enough. Ditch the amateurish, prattling podcasts spawned from blogs and resist the structured, toe-the-line quasi-pro broadcast nonsense of "official" podcasts. GFW Radio straddles the line perfectly between these extremes to deliver an experience that may not be relevant or concise or understandable, but will still keep you entertained.

The "Waiting for Too Human" Playlist

2008-08-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

Too Human has won me over. I ran hot and cold with the demo on my first playythrough but 1.5 replays later has made me a believer. I've come to terms with the apparent weaknesses with the game's design, put them aside and now eagerly anticipate what will surely be a phat loot-dropping extravaganza. The pre-order allure of unique armour sets I have resisted and now I'm counting on just picking it up at the local Future Shop on Day One.. or Two or Three. There's no big rush, seeing as I've got a pretty full dance card lately.

Mass Effect
I am having a surprising amount of fun using my fresh Shepard on a brand new playthrough. This time around, I've switched to a female Vanguard on Veteran difficulty and I'm exclusively using Ashley and Garrus for my ground team. My original purpose for playing through the story again was for Achievement-mining, of which I've secured a handful already. But my superficial intentions have been rewarded quite well, as I'm appreciating the character development and combat systems so much more this time around.

It's come to the point where I regret using a Soldier class on my first attempt with the game. I'll say it right now, the Soldier class is boring and cuts out a lot of the sublteties inherent in BioWare's elegant, if simple, RPG-action hybrid design. You can basically bulldoze your way through all the mission as a Soldier and there aren't really a whole lot of interesting skills to develop. Distribute your skill points into assault rifle and armour and go to town. I even continued using my original soldier Shepard on a Hardcore difficulty playthrough and it's still rather easy. Barring a few unlucky sniper or rocket hits, I'm invincible, and the game REALLY comes across as a third-rate 3rd-person shooter.

Things are a little different as a female Vanguard. First off, Shepard is so much sexier and the female voice talent is quite a bit more professional and unique than the stock macho male voice. Secondly, I'm actually using my skills and putting more thought into advancing skills and crafting my team. Since I'm not a pure fighter, enemy encounters are actually intense and in some cases quite difficult, since I'm constantly juggling skill recharges for all member of my team. The biotic skills, though a rather poor imitation of Star Wars force powers, are still very fun to use and work great in conjunction with the shotgun, which is surprisingly fun to use in comparison to the assault and sniper rifles.

So yeah, having loads of good times with this old game and really hope the second pack of DLC gets announced soon. Although I wasn't terrible impressed with Bring Down the Sky, it was still a much needed break from the insufferable, boilerplate design of all the core side missions.

Soul Calibur 4
I was really digging this game but recently got very frustrated with it like I eventually do with all fighting games. The controls are pretty tight, but there are just so many moments where I think I've executed a move and it doesn't come out. And when you're trying to defeat The Apprentice on Arcade mode, that just equals a seething pit of white hot rage in my gut, causing me to curse like a mad sailor and abuse my poor controller. I'm taking a break from SC4 for fear that I will send my gamepad sailing out the window and into traffic one of these days.

Everything Else
Yeah, aside from Mass Effect it really is a mishmash of games. I was hooked on Oblivion for a while in July and managed to make some more progress with my sub-level 20 Crusader. The my birthday rolled around and I picked up a load of games that I briefly flirted with: Shadowrun is fun but very esoteric and I barely find time to meet up with a good group to play with; TMNT is a nice "cool off" game and great for Achievement farming; Burnout Paradise is surprisingly fun and I've managed to forgive it's somewhat wedged in open-world design philosophy. Some of the races are very difficult and the game's stubborn inability to not let you replay a race instantly has quickly put the game on my backburner list. Still, the Cagney came out last week and I'd be willing to give it another whirl when I tire of Mass Effect.

What else? Bionic Commando: Rearmed, of course. Havne't played too much of this yet. I was too tired to really appreciate the game when I downloaded late last night but I hope I'll be able to give it a fair shot tonight and post some impressions or a quasi review.

Price Schemin' and Braid

2008-08-06T19:48:00.001-07:00

I played the Braid demo today, sneaking it in between an obsessive play session with Soul Calibur 4 and my impending departure for work this afternoon.

I wholeheartedly recommend you try out the trial for Braid if you haven't already done so. The game's visual design is charming, surreal and more than a little artistic. The core gameplay, a clever rethinking of the standard 2D platformer, hooked me in initially with it's interesting time manipulation feature. Being able to rewind time at any moment makes the game incredibly forgiving, but forms also the crux upon which the games levels and puzzles are designed.

The only things that turned me off about Braid was the silly, overwrought writing and the price tag.

I think at any other time, I would have happily plunked down the Microsoft points for this game. What is the standard for new games these days? 800 points. I could imagine myself paying 800 points for Braid. However, XBLA titles have seen an upwards price drift in the last few months and I'm beginning to question the cynicism behind such a trend.

A couple of months ago I laid out my cash -- 1600 points, was it? -- for the Penny Arcade Adventures and I've barely touched it, let alone finish what is purported to be a mere 5-hour romp. The game is no doubt fun and has fairly high production values, in hindsight I just fail to see why the game justified a 2x price hike over the usual Arcade fare. It just seems to me that Microsoft's digital download service is headed in the direction of Canadian telcoms, where standard services rise in price inexplicably with no supporting improvement in the actual quality or quantity of service. Recently, the pricing structure for SMS messages was changed so that customers now pay a fee for receiving phone messages along with the usual fee for sending. Why? I never got to read any press releases on the subject, but I am sure a well-worded explanation was given to obfuscate the simple fact that telcoms were just interested in higher profit margins on what is franky a very a popular, ancilliary feature.

So getting back to why I decided not to purchase Braid... it's a fabulous piece of work by indie developer, Jonathan Blow and I wish him the best of luck with his debut XBLA release. I sort of let myself fall into the price hike trap with Penny Arcade, however, and I'm not about to let that happen again. I just feel that, on principle, the game is not deserving of a price hike, as good as it is, and this serves as a test bed for the Xbox team to calibrate their pricing and see how much more we are willing to pay for our Arcade games. And let's not be naive here. Braid, just as much as Penny Arcade Adventures, was a highly anticiplated game. It was written up in gaming blogs and showered heaps of critical praise months before release and those sort of good tidings give a company a lot more room to charge a premium price.

Maybe I will change my tune later on, when I find myself bored and without a stack of retail games to keep me occupied. I may remember Braid, think "what the heck" and plunk down my precious points. There are worse things in the world than over-paying $5 for a good piece of entertainment. But for now, I'm quite content to vote with my wallet and not contribute to the sales figures for this game. Greedy execs don't need any more encouraging if you ask me.

Ninja Gaiden: No Concessions, No Mercy

2008-05-26T12:13:00.001-07:00

Whenever I bemoan the mollifying effects of mainstream popularity on video games, I like to remember the Ninja Gaiden series as one of the last remaining bastions of the so-called "hardcore" gamer.

From its humble beginnings as a coin-op to its rise to fame on the original Nintendo 8-bit console, Ninja Gaiden has always stood out in my mind as the prototypical gamer's game: unforgiving, with a steep learning curve and very little hand-holding for the uninitiated.

The series has moved gracefully into the current generation of console, namely the Xbox 360 and the latest addition is set for release in only a week. Ninja Gaiden 2 will continue the adventures of Ryu Hayabusa, the last of his ninja clan, on his quest to... do something or other. The plots behind these games never did make a lick of sense, either due to cultural differences in storytelling, poor localization, confused writers or more likely, a little bit of everything.

In preparation for the new game, I've popped the Xbox original back into the tray to mentally prepare myself for what is sure to be many frustrating sessions of bloody death... my own death, that is. In a grudging bid to perhaps gain a larger slice of the gaming audience, the sequel will feature 4 difficulty levels, the latter 2 will be unlocked only after you've completed the game on one of the default levels. This time around, the lowest difficult setting will indeed be a bonfide "easy" mode in stark contrast to the first Gaiden's "Normal" and "Hard". (And in case you haven't played it, Normal difficulty was a devilish challenge: certainly no cake walk)

Still a gamer with some sense of pride, I won't be planning to begin my Ninja Gaiden 2 adventures on the lowest setting. No, I would rather cut my teeth on the original and get myself properly warmed up. I will jump into the new game on the Normal setting, with every intention of getting my rear end served to me on a plate. But wouldn't any self-respecting gamer do the same?

And here is the rest of it.

A Downside to the Story-Based Sandbox?

2008-05-14T17:45:00.000-07:00

Grand Theft Auto 4 solidifies Rockstar North as the reigning champion of the story-based sandbox action game. No other title in this genre can boast a more impressive story (in content and execution) or present players with more ways to screw around aimlessly if they so please. With that said, I wonder sometimes if the two halves of their formula - this flexible open world combined with engrossing, story-based missions - can be at odds with itself.

More on this after the jump...

There's an embarrasment of activities to engage in outside of the central story missions. Your in-game cellphone typically rings off the hook as Niko is deluged with requests from friends and contacts to go "hang out". Spending quality time can mean anything from going out for a beer with a cohort you helped rob a bank with the day before or taking a date out to see a cabaret show, followed by a suitably PG-rated night cap sequence.

Your Niko may be more of a loner, so simply wandering the city searching for those trademark easter eggs provides enough respite from the grind of pursuing the main storyline. From shooting "flying rodents" to sniffing out stunt ramps or browsing through the hundreds of fictitious websites, you're rarely in need of company if all you're aiming to do is kiill some time unproductivtely. For a more productive time sink, more justice-minded Nikos may commandeer a cop car and go on a solo crusade against Liberty City's most unsavory, wanted fugitives.

These distractions contribute to the creation of a much richer, varied world in GTA4. They also make for a fantastic "failure cushion". That is, when I find myself stuck on a particular story mission, I don't feel compelled to quit the game in frustration. There's so much to do in Liberty City, I simply cleanse my palate (and cool my jets) with a taxi ride or a round of ten-pin before taking another crack at that crucial mission. It's also to the game's credit that there is rarely only one story mission marker pinned to your map. Find yourself tiring of running errands for the Italian mob, well, try your hand at doing some dirty jobs for the Irish gangster down the block. The game rewards persistence but it also encourages players to go at their own pace and to explore the world as thoroughly as possible.

Of course the downside to this rather freeform structure is that the story missions themselves can lose a lot of momentum. When attacked head-on, one after another, these missions really do connect well with each other and form a cohesive, logical story arc that is quite engaging. I've sunk in about 35 hours into the game now and started out just playing the story missions. As these missions became more difficult, I started to branch out into the optional activities some more, which has really helped me to keep my sanity but has also removed my involvement in the plot. It's ironic then that the more I play, the more I have to make a concerted effort to get myself engaged in the story again.

What will eventually happen is my need to complete every drug run or street race will dry up and the siren's call of wrapping up the story will bring me back in line with the story. I almost wish the Rockstar North developers had implemented a clever way of keeping you locked in the story, yet also allowing you to do a lot of exploration and optional side quests.

Putting Too Much Movie Into The Game

2008-05-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

I tried out the demo of The Bourne Conspiracy last week and it made me ponder the wisdom of game designers to slavishly emulate the feel of movies in their games.

The term "cinematic" is bandied around a lot in the gaming press and it's been used as a much as a crutch as well as a real descriptor for talking about certain games. Yes, I agree that games like BioShock, Mass Effect and GTA4 are all very cinemetic experiences. With the exception of Mass Effect, I would go on to argue that these games give the impression of watching a movie not out of any sort of outward intention toi emulate the conventions of film. Their cinematic qualities are more of a natural side effect of the many design choices that were made to create a better game experience.

Please hit the jump for the rest...

In contrast, my time spent with The Bourne Conspiracy demo has given me the impression that developer High Noon Studios has created a game whose mechanics are in service to creating a cinematic experience, much to its detriment. What's curious about this design choice is that the game itself is not based on any of the Matt Damon movies but rather on the Bourne franchise as a whole as established in Robert Ludlum's series of novels. That didn't stop the developers from taking many stylistic cues from the 3 Doug Liman/Paul Greengrass movies, from the settings and scenarios and the choreography, right on down to the shaky cam technique so effectively used by Greengrass in the latter two movies.

And I can't really hold that against them, can I? After all, the books are old news and gamers are most likely to identify the Bourne mythology to the Matt Damon movies. And with both games and movies being such visually-oriented mediums, it really was a no-brainer for any developer to crib some style notes from the movies. My real beef coming away from the demo is that the developers went too far in that direction and are at a serious risk of releasing a final game that wants very badly to be a movie but ultimately fails at being successful at either.

Play the demo yourself and you'll find that all the ingredients for a good game are in place. The graphics and other production values are top notch and there's a palpable sense of urgency much like the one you feel when watching the Bourne movies. The level design and control mechanics, however, literally railroad you down a scripted path of events. Oh, not just any events, mind you, but the ever-popular quick time events are used quite liberally at key moments during a level. I"ve never been a fan of quick-time button press sequences for many different reasons, but as "gamey" mechanics go, sometimes having it is better than nothing at all. The quick-time sequences in the Bourne demo rely on you pressing a random button at precisely the right time. Failure to do so results in the game ending and a reload to the last checkpoint. Really? Video games have come a long way in the last 20 years and I'd like to think we've long left behind game design principles first introduced by the likes of Dragon's Lair. Apparently, some people think that so long as it contributes to the cinematic pacing of their level, an unforgiving, timed button press is an adequate play mechanic to use over and over again.

Movies and games are very different mediums that share some overlap in how they're consumed and appreciated, but they are still fundamentally different forms that require very specific skills and expertise to do them properly. As games become more sophisticated, I hope developers continue to exploit all the strengths that make games what they are and make that their prime directive. Games, by their particular design, story or genre WILL evoke cinematic qualities. Just look at GTA4 and all the memorable, movie-like moments that sprout from its masterful, open-world play environment. The game may make nods to movies, in the way it renders cutscenes or the option to switch to a dynamic, "movie camera" when driving a vehicle but it never feels like it's going out of its way to BE a movie.

I wish I could say the same for The Bourne Conspiracy, a game that feels indebted to movies so much that it loses its true identity.

Blogging About Town

2008-05-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Last week I joined the blogging team at Adult Gaming Enthusiasts, or AGE. I jumped at the chance to start writing for the site, having been a member for the better part of the past year and also having enjoyed the civilized camaraderie of the mostly "mature" community there.

Now that I've essentially divided up my blogging potential, I hope to use this blog to explore game design with more in-depth articles. I realize PMB has been a blog searching desperately for a clear mandate for a very long time now and writing longer posts that are more focused on analysis and discussion makes more sense for me. "Hard facts" and news bites are more the domain of the AGE blog, so we you won't necessarily find me waxing poetic on my love for GTA 4 over there. Maybe on the forums, but the blog will largely be free of editorializing.

I still hesitate to make any promises about the future of this blog, however miniscule. I don't know what it's been lately, but I've had a hard time sitting myself down to write even the laziest piece on a news item or even about my own play time on the Xbox. The days do seem shorter than ever and I have no doubt my job as an IT administrator has played a role in causing me to shy away from the monitor and keyboard when it's not entirely necessary for me to be there.

I also feel like I want to write about something else. Games blogging has been a convenient platform for me to practice my writing as well as go on at length about my favourite pastime. I could be reaching that saturation point, however, where my life just seems too occupied by games in that I play games during my spare time, listen to a half dozen video game blogs, read gaming sites and forums and then find enough time to blog about the games industry... it can get a bit much. Or rather, I want to keep up with my blogging but when it comes down to actually writing something right there in the moment, I suddenly find my will has been sapped by some invisible force.

I'm still not ready to concede defeat yet so stay tuned for some new material on th blog. I promise! I think...