Mass Effect: “Game”

If Mass Effect does nothing else (and it does plenty), it shows the importance of solid gameplay.  The game seems like the result of some designer attempting to shoehorn gameplay into his totally awesome science fiction story which, frankly, would have been better suited for film than a video game.

The folks at Bioware obviously have a very specific story they are trying to tell, which they try to cover up with the illusion of deep an meaningful player “choice,” although this usually boils down to whether or not you will pursue side quests and whether you will try to get a villain to join you before he inevitably refuses and draws a gun, or just skip the middleman and order your squadmates to attack.  When you’re not running around and navigating conversation trees (which is what they are, no matter how they try to dress them up as “Incredible, real-time character interaction”), you’re running around weilding one of four types of weapons, occasionally pausing the game to use the Force/biotics or to switch to a new type of weapon.  Most of the combat is just “shoot the big guy, shoot the big guy, use ‘warp’ on the big guy, wait for ‘warp’ to recharge, while shooting the big guy, big guy goes down, move on to next biggest guy.”  It’s not terrible, but there’s nothing innovative about this system, and this kind of thing has been done much better in other games (I’m thinking particularly of squad-based shooters “Star Wars: Republic Commando” and “Brothers in Arms”).

This picture is to keep you on guard.

Although combat is bland and uninspired, it pales in comparison to the sections of the game where you’re driving the Mako, an obstensively off-road vehicle that handles something like Stephen Hawking on speed, except Stephen Hawking would probably be able to aim a gun at an angle greater than 10 degrees from the horizontal.  Undoubtedly the worst, most grating, experience I’ve had so far has been a portion where I had to drive the Mako through several groups of rocket troopers and armatures where I was not allowed to save in between.  It was fun in that “OK, this is my character performing what is needed to complete the mission, even though the gameplay kind of sucks” way, but it ceased to be that when the third group killed me and sent me back to the beginning of the level, with my squad standing just outside the vehicle.  This section spawned a few questions I would like to ask Bioware:

1. Since when am I in combat if nobody is shooting at me, and there are no enemies on the radar?
2. What is the tactical advantage of a land vehicle that cannot shoot up when every race we could possibly be fighting have some sort of airborne unit?
3. Why can the car jump when the humans can’t?
4. Look at every single driving game ever.  Do you know how they differ from you?  They understand that vehicles are not people, and do not move like them.  Stop trying to make us control cars with the joysticks, please.

That last one was more of a demand than a question, but I just needed to round out that list.  Honestly, though, nothing brings me out the experience than suddenly going from cool, composed ship commander to epileptic student driver.

Now I’m going to go against what I said earlier about Mass Effect working better as a movie and talk about my favorite part of the game.  The Codex, for those not in the know, is where information about the setting is stored as you discover it.  But more than just a reminder of things you’ve learned in the game, it has tons and tons of background information that’s handily set aside for those who wish to delve into it, a lot of which is narrated.  I think even more than the plot and the characters, I’m in love with the world that the game is set in.  You never fight in ship-to-ship combat in game, but there is a lot of information about exactly how such a confrontation would go down, going in detail into heat signatures, weapon systems, and common tactics used in different scenarios.  This is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, if instead of hinting at the backstory through the plot, Tolkien simply attached an encyclopedia that was instantly updated with a few pages of history every time the reader saw a new name or location.  I find myself hoarding Codex entries so after each mission I can return to my ship and read through a big chunk of them all at once, bringing whole new levels of depth into the setting.  The world is extremely well crafted, and it’s really a shame that the gameplay and interactive options don’t do it justice.

Next time, hopefully I’ll have finished the game (I think I only have an hour or two left), or I may write about something else.  I wonder what my throng of undoubtedly sexy female readers would prefer.

Mass Effect: First Thoughts

A friend of mine recently lent me his copy of Mass Effect, the science fiction action roleplaying game released by Bioware for the XBox 360 back in 2008.  I’ve since clocked in around 8 hours on my first playthrough, not counting deaths and reloads, and I get the feeling I’m nearing the conclusion.  For this post I won’t put in any spoilers, but try to simply touch on the gameplay and give some of my impressions.

The first aspect of this game that really made an impression was the cinematic storytelling.  The cutscenes, which are all partially interactive, are well-acted, and the story they tell is genuinely riveting.  Rather than giving the player a list of conversation topics, or a list of canned responses as most games of this type are apt to do, in Mass Effect the player is allowed to choose between several different tones of message.  So, during a conversation, the player may choose “It’s hopeless,” but Commander Shepard (the player’s avatar in game) might say something like “It’s a lost cause, what can we possibly do about it?”

In theory this reduces screen clutter and makes conversations move along at a decent clip, but in practice it makes the player unclear on what exactly Shepard will do next.  While playing the game, I have said something that sounded like it would come out understanding, but in disagreement, only to have Commander Shepard shout down my team mate until he was so intimidated we left the conversation tree. (SPOILER ALERT: I left him for dead later, so I guess it doesn’t matter much.)

The conversation trees are also home to some of the worst railroading in the game, where the designers give the player the thinly veiled illusion of choice, when really all responses lead to the same dialogue or tone.  In one glaring example, two NPCs where arguing about a certain topic concerning the Genophage, and all of my input into the situation was pre-determined to side with one of the NPCs, even though I agreed with the other one.  It’s lazy game design, and it lead to what is supposed to be an emotional scene which actually made me feel frustrated and disconnected from the experience.

Outside of conversation, the gameplay is fairly solid, if not a bit bland.  Combat seems like it’s trying too hard to be Gears of War, with an added roleplaying element, although the cover system is too clunky and it takes too long to enter and leave cover to make it useful (granted, the fact that your allies take the good cover and charge headlong into rockets doesn’t help the situation).  I am grateful that red triangles appear over my enemies, because otherwise I would have no way to see them at the distances at which I am usually fighting, although that may be because of my ten-year-old college-dorm-room tv’s crappy resolution compared to what the game was designed for.

That feels like enough for now.  My next post I’ll probably touch on the Codex and the Mako, unless inspiration strikes and I decide to do something other than write about a game that everybody and his mother has beaten three times.

Blogs of the Round Table: Denouement

Denouement, besides being one of the rare words to not return pornography on page 12 of a Google Image search (although that status may have been lost by the time of your reading this, so proceed with caution), is also one of the many things that video games do poorly.  This month’s topic for Blogs of the Round Table is also probably the worst one for me to write a post about, especially as my first entry into the discussion.  To quote the website:

This is the closest I could get to a fitting image

How can the denouement be incorporated into gameplay? In literary forms, it is most often the events that take place after the plot’s climax that form your lasting opinion of the story. A well constructed denouement acts almost as a payoff, where protagonists and antagonists alike realize and adjust to the consequences of their actions. Serial media often ignored the denouement in favor of the cliffhanger, in order to entice viewers to return. Television has further diluted the denouement by turning it into a quick resolution that tidily fits into the time after the final commercial break.

But the denouement is most neglected in video games where it is often relegated to a short congratulatory cut scene, or at most–a slide show of consequences. This month’s topic challenges you to explore how the denouement can be expressed as gameplay.

I really should be doing schoolwork right now…

How the denouement is factored into game design is highly dependent on the type of game we are working with.  For our purposes there are three big categories of games, those for which story is a major factor (“Story Games” from here on out, e.g. Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, Fallout), those for which story is there to support the gameplay (“Action Games” for lack of a better term, e.g. Halo, Gears of War, Command & Conquer), and those for which story is either non-existent, or a purely emergent part of gameplay (“Crunch Games”, e.g. sports games, Civilization, Total War).

Currently, we mostly see denouement in the story games, for the obvious reason that they are trying to tell a story, and thus conforming to traditional story-telling techniques.  More often than not, however, we see a cutscene at the end, or an opening up of a freeform world which is left relatively unchanged from prior to the climax.  In a book or a film, the denouement is where we see the plot resolved, where the characters get their rewards, and where we see the world as affected by the events of the story.  Limiting the big payoff to a non-interactive cutscene or freedom to roam the countryside takes away a lot of the emotional impact of the denouement.

Implementing denouement into gameplay for a story game should be relatively easy.  Most story games have some sort of conversation system.  Gameplay does not really need to be affected in any way to bring denouement into the picture, simply change the gameworld as appropriate (raze cities, bring magic back to the Mystical Forest of Lor Leliel, bring the guards back from the front lines to the cities, whatever), and make sure that NPCs can describe or comment on the changes substantially.  The reason this is not done very effectively now is because it involves creation of content, which is already difficult enough with today’s graphics systems.  If the story calls for a town to be destroyed, nobody wants to pay an artist to create a new, destroyed version of the town, as well as the writer to rescript several dozen dialogue trees to take into account the change.  In this case, either the story would be rewritten, the changes would be made much less drastic in game than portrayed in the story, or the game will simply end in a cut scene.  Really, there’s not much that can be done to improve the denouement of a story game that is not being done already on a much cheaper scale.

“Action Games” (and I will use the term in quotes to distinguish from the recognized genre) are a different beast.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t play Halo for the deep and involving story (actually I don’t play Halo at all, but that’s another post).  Short of implementing new gameplay mechanics, there really isn’t much option for expanding the story beyond the thrilling conclusion.  Once you destroy Halo (I’m speculating here, I assume this is how the first game ends), there’s not much else for you to do gameplay-wise.  I suppose one could walk around the mothership or start training new recruits, but very few people are going to want to keep playing if the game becomes “talk to the officers, they will congratulate you and let you know how Earth is doing.”  For “action games,” cutscenes are appropriate.

Crunch games are another beast entirely.  I use the term here mainly to refer to turn-based-strategy games and sports games, although I’m sure there are other types of game in the category.  Take for example the Madden games.  The biggest draw to these games for me has always been the Franchise mode.  There is no overarching story here, other than “you are coaching a football team,” but through gameplay, wins and losses, trades and recruits, the player builds the story of his coach.  Similarly, for TBS games, there is very little story to begin with, but the player creates the story of his empire through victories on the battlefield (or techs researched, city improvements, what have you).  With sports games, there is no real denouement possible beyond “you have retired, and now you are a sportscaster” or “you have died.”

For a strategy game, however, I often find that the game ends as things become interesting.  Once I build my perfect empire, what happens next?  With my enemies crushed or allied to me, what do I do with my military?  Do I maintain the troops, but use them as a purely defensive force?  Do I occasionally send forces in to keep the other countries in check?  What kind of economy does my country support now that I am the only global superpower?  What exactly does a “space race” victory entail?  For large scale 4X games like this, there is a lot of unexplored territory for what happens next.  Perhaps it is beyond the scope of a game like Civilization or Rome: Total War to portray not only the rise, but the fall of a glorious empire.  A game where great powers arise and then stagnate from the inside before falling to outside invasion, or descend into civil war, would be extremely satisfying to the history buff in me, and would bring closure to a game which would normally end with total conquest and immediate victory.

I don’t know of any video games that do this successfully, but if one exists, it could be my favorite video game of all time except for Portal.

Please visit the Blog of the Round Table’s main hall for links to the rest of this month’s entries.

Saint Vader

I haven’t posted here for a while, but I found this fascinating.  I have a feeling that three thousand years from now archaeologists will find this and come to the conclusion that we have been visited by aliens.

Geeks and Glasses

For the purpose of this discussion, let us put aside the vast gaping petty differences between the modern nerd and the modern geek.  Of course they are different breeds of being, but this post will focus on their similarities.  The name used for the collective group that contains all nerds (vile scum of the Earth) and us geeks (who will one day rule the world with a zombie-ninja army) will, hereafter, be “Flumph.”  If you understand the reference, you clearly fall into one of those two categories.

Oh yeah, that's the ticket.

Why do Flumphs have glasses?  Now, clearly, not all Flumphs are bespectacled cretins, hermits, or perhaps pariahs, from society.  Yet the standard stereotype associated with them includes glasses, poor fashion sense, lack of friends, and terrible or non-existant haircuts.  This is a stereotype, of course, but all stereotypes are rooted somewhere.  For a long time I never understood why some Flumphs carried a certain air of, shall we say, aloofness about them.  Now that I have joined the ranks of Flumphs With Glasses, I think I have a better grasp of the stereotypical (archetypical?) Flumph, if not completing any sort of transformation myself.  This is what I noticed about myself, that I think may carry over to other Flumphs:

1. We love puzzles. Not all of us love the same kinds of puzzles.  Some love proving mathematical theorems, some love solving rubik’s cubes, some love putting together game mechanics that don’t fall apart, but they are all puzzles of some sort.  And we love them.  We don’t enjoy them, they are not a hobby, they are a way of life.  This tends to get in the way of other, more common, pursuits, such as partying, womanizing, or watching sports.  Why would we do those things when we can spend those precious hours implementing a mini-map in the computer role-playing game we’re making?
2. We measure status differently. For most of the world, status is determined by a few key factors.  Money, attractiveness, and style.  Many times, these three factors are intertwined.  The key thing, though, that determines status in any situation, is power.  Money = Power, Attractiveness=Ability To Find Powerful Mate=Power, Style=Indication That You Recognize Social Trends=Ability To Contribute To Said Trends=Power.  This is how status works in the “real world.”  For the Flumphs, however, there is a different definition of power, depending on which particular group you are a part of.  Especially when groups communicate via the internet, normal factors become nearly moot.  The ability to code an effective website, or the know-how to put together a computer are considered much more powerful than how closely one can follow fads.  When web-designers or computer programmers demand so much status in a community because of their talents, rather than their physical resources, “normal” marks of status become exponentially less important.
3. We are curious. I just learned this.  We are a very curious people, not in the weird sense (at least not in this context).  I have yet to meet a Flumph who does not want to learn as much as he can about his favorite subjects, and about the world around him.  This is why I wear glasses now.  I have shown, over eighteen years, that I am perfectly functional without them.  But I just want to know.  I don’t want to miss anything because I took them off so I could look cooler.  This is one of the reasons I personally don’t drink or do drugs, as well.  I want my mind crystal clear, at all times, to take in whatever is available to be taken in.  I believe I heard somewhere that Isaac Newton had sex once, didn’t much care for it, and then moved on.  He was a Flumph, I’m sure.  He wanted the experience, had it, and then went on to learning about different things, rather than repeating the same activity over and over.
4. We care too much. This is the bottom line.  We want to experience.  We support other people who want to experience.  You don’t see us partying every Friday night because we have better things to do.  Or maybe we just tell that to ourselves.  Some wear pocket protectors because they are practical.  We don’t necessarily respect the “cool guys,” and we don’t care if they respect us.  So while they laugh, the rest of the Flumphs say “it’s OK, let’s go launch pumpkins out of that trebuchet you built.”  That’s much more important than how geeky it looks to protect one’s pocket.

Of course, there’s always the stray Randall Munroe, who is smart, beautiful, and well-adjusted, the holy trinity of personhood.  Oh, how I envy him.

The Future Is Now!!!

So today is my last day home before I cross the abyss into adulthood, from whence I can never look back, where I will forget my past and devote the rest of my life to keeping on one path of discipline and structure perpetual adolescence, from whence I will return home fairly frequently, and also stay in touch with the friends that matter, and probably continue to slack off and focus on whatever tomfoolery happens to pique my interest at any given moment, but hopefully to a slightly lesser extent than I currently do.  In short, tomorrow I leave for Bucknell.  Meaning don’t expect the blog to update anything remotely resembling regularly, but still check back every day, because the page views make me feel good about myself.

Wish me luck, beautiful readers!

Left 4 Dead 2, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Valve

Remember the computer games of the 90’s?  Remember when a videogame was successful,  sequel could be expected within the year, often on the very same engine as the first game?  I don’t – I was too busy clicking various parts of the screen on Castles 2 until I either got to fight something, or build something – but I’ve heard it was great.  The first two Fallout games came out in 1997 and 1998, a year apart.  Warcraft came out in 1994, with Warcraft II following in ‘95.  Command & Conquer: Red Alert came out in 1996, one year after its predecessor.  The first four games in that series were all released within a six year timespan, including various expansions and spin-off titles.  All of these games are today considered classics, and in every case the sequel is lauded over the original game.

I’ve never heard of any protests against this kind of development cycle in the golden age of PC gaming.  A developer made a game, it’s critically and commercially successful, and they make another game very quickly, which fans are more than willing to shell out [insert 90s equivalent of $60 here].  So why the sudden protests against Valve releasing Left 4 Dead 2 so soon after the first title?

Well, the internet’s a funny thing.  Valve, you see, were the developers behind the Half-Life series, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, all of which were hailed as brilliant, all for different reasons.  With Team Fortress 2, one of the major draws was Valve’s commitment to releasing free downloadable content (DLC) for the game fairly regularly.  Within the lifespan of the game, these updates have included new weapons, new class abilities, new maps, new gamemodes, and, most recently, new hats.  Now, disgruntled fans claim that Gabe Newell, managing director of Valve Corporation, promised consistent updates to the game, which exists almost in its entirety in multiplayer cooperative mode, including new weapons, characters, infected, and campaigns.  So far, this video is the only real evidence I’ve seen to support these claims:

Choosing to overlook the blatant unprofessionalism of this video for a moment, the “promises” made here all sound like these people don’t have any concrete plan.  There are no promises made, only vague “maybes” and “probablys”.  Many customers feel that, because of these claims that Valve might sometime put out DLC for Left 4 Dead, and hopes to do it on a regular basis, they are somehow entitled to these things, because they purchased the game based on that knowledge.  Their fear is that, with Left 4 Dead 2 coming out only a year after the original release, Valve will stop updating the original game, thereby going back on their promises.  Even if all support were to cease after L4D2, Valve has already released DLC that included a new gameplay type and maps, and with even more on the way.

But support will not cease with the release of L4D2.  Gabe Newell has stated many, many times that he still wants the L4D community to be supported, and this includes new releases for the original game, as well as modding tools becoming available.  Other companies have proven that it is possible for old games to garner support, the clearest example to me being the original Everquest, which is still getting expansions even after its sequel came out in 2004.

And either way, basing a buying decision off of pre-release hype is a very dangerous route to go, anyway, as Peter Molyneux proves time and time again (still can’t get Dungeon Keeper working, by the way).  As a general rule, any developer will lie through his or her teeth to sell a game.  Not that they’re all necessarily corporate scum, often they are just very enthusiastic about a new product, and take the “OMG this game is gonna be awesome look at all this stuff we’ll hopefully get done and bug-free in the next four months!!!!!!”  In this respect, Valve has been historically, and is being now, very responsible when it comes to promises (Half Life 2: Episode 3 excluded, which is OK, since I have yet to finish Half-Life 2.  Take your time, guys!)  Not buying a new game because the last one was a disappointment is valid.  Organizing a boycott and clamoring on about “consumers’ rights” is nonsense.

American colonists boycotted English tea because they thought they were being unfairly taxed.  Gandhi boycotted foreign goods because he felt they were contributing to Britain’s domination of India.  Several countries boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s military aggression in the Middle East.  41,497 people (as of this writing) are boycotting a video game because it came out too soon after another, similar videogame.

Discuss, which of these groups do you think needs to rethink its priorities?

Public Enemies: Hollywood Needs More Movies Like This

I’m no fan of action movies in general. Transformers, 300, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.  For the most part, action of the big boom variety, or the car chase variety, or even the crazy martial arts variety (although it can make for exciting moments, provided the film has enough meat to carry it, i.e. The Matrix).  I don’t think Michael Mann’s Public Enemies really qualifies as an action movie by today’s standards.  There are no giant explosions, no unrealistic feats of physical dexterity or strength, just good ol’ fashion I-shoot-you, you-shoot-me, waste-hundreds-of-rounds-on-the-area-around-you, you-fall-down-eventually.  And I loved every minute of it.

Back in the 70s, they knew how to make action movies.  The budgets were low, the guns were blazing, the blood was cherry red, and they filmed car chases on busy roads without first closing off the street.  The bottom line is, without CGI and bottomless Hollywood budgets, action movies just felt real back in those days.  The only recent films that come close to that kind of down-and-dirty, dare I say, pulp action are the Bourne films, and Public Enemies.

I really want to talk about the rest of the film, about how Johnny Depp took on the role of John Dillinger, Public Enemy Number One, with the air not of a slick, cool, in-control conman, but a man who acts like that on the outside, but inside just feels like a kid in a candy store, and when that part of his character comes out, it makes for the most rewarding parts of the movie.  I want to talk about Marion Cotillard’s Billie Frechette, and how she plays the love interest as an actual character, and does a damn good job at that.  I want to talk about Christian Bale’s reprisal of Batman, sans cape, intellect, and depth of character.  But, really, what sticks in my mind are the countless shootouts, the oh-so-satisfying “rat-a-tat-tat” of the Tommy guns, and the crystal clear view my brand new glasses gave me.

So, in conclusion: Hollywood, less explosions, more small arms fire.  Thank you.

Lack of Things To Write About…

…has led to a lack of written things on this blog.  So, instead of a real, insightful (ha!) update, I will instead post a list of some of the things I have been thinking about since I last updated:

• Glasses make everything so much clearer!  I honestly thought that things were supposed to be kind of blurry far away, but everything is so crisp now!  It’s like I’m playing Fallout 3 all the time, and just waiting for my computer to crash.
• I love the fiction behind Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, and I really wish I could get into it, but when the smallest legal Chaos Space Marine force costs $50, plus $25 for the Codex, plus the baffling amount of $57.75 for the core rulebook, the prospects look slim.
• But I’ve got to find some sort of proprietary war game to scratch my itch.  Maybe Warmachine?  Don’t know much about it, except that it’s relatively widespread, and cheaper than Games Workshop products.
• Writing an informative, yet not-too-self indulgent, yet entertaining review of The Beatles’ Revolver is harder than it first appeared.
• I’m fine with Blizzard taking as long as it wants on Starcraft II, as long as it doesn’t go the way of Ghost.
• Maybe if I actually played through games, I would have something to write about.

So, that’s that.  A few other interesting tidbits to tide you over until I find something more meaty to write about:

Currently Reading: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Most Recently Viewed: The Hurt Locker

Recently Obtained: The Beatles – Past Masters Volume 1

Most Anticipated Thing: Elemental: War of Magic (and my God, how I’m anticipating this game, you, like, have no idea)

Now, please go do something productive with your time, because God knows I’m not.

Glasses…

Apparently I need them.  The optometrist described it as feeling like “it’s a whole new world.” So far away things aren’t supposed to be that blurry after all.  (When my five-year-old brother found out, he started pointing to things around the house and asking if they were blurry, before asking me what blurry means)  It all makes sense now.

This might account for why 3D movies were hard for me to watch (in fact, it almost certainly does).  I haven’t seen any feature length films in 3D, but whenever I watch a 3D show in, say, Disney World, characters that are close to me always split into a double image.  I just chalked it up to a limitation of the technology, but maybe, if other people haven’t had similar experiences, it’s just my faulty old-person eyes.  I would test it on Up, but they don’t seem to be showing it in 3D anymore, meaning I can now safely write a review at some point, knowing that I have seen the movie as it was intended to be seen.

On a side note, the optometrist noted that I passed my driver’s test because all the letters were very big.  The woman fitting me for frames told me that they would help for night driving.  How little they know.