The Brainy Gamer

Scrambled

I've been reading lots of reviews and blog posts certifying Mass Effect 2 as the future of RPGs. It fixes what's wrong with the genre and sends designers of backward-looking games scrambling to the drawing board. It represents, as several notable outlets have noted, the future of storytelling in games and a lesson in how to do narrative games right.

I'm going to play contrarian here, but first let me say I think Mass Effect 2 largely earns the lavish praise heaped upon it. It's an exceptionally fine game with fabulous production values, and I've enjoyed just about every minute I've spent playing it. I'm not quibbling with the hype. Not much anyway.

I'm troubled by the mentality that games exist to invalidate other games; that the most effective measure of a game's value is its ability to surpass or trump other games that preceded it. Among its many praiseworthy aspects, Mass Effect 2's success as a kind of refutation of other games is considered an especially noteworthy achievement.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it mistakes streamlining for refinement. It assumes the fiddly RPG elements the game eliminates are vestiges of outmoded design. It presumes that frequent skirmishes and action-based gameplay are more fun or engaging than the strategic RPG elements they replace. It assumes that a dialogue-tree system of interactions enables a more sophisticated form of player agency. None of these assumptions are incontestably true.

I'm not suggesting ME2 lacks refinements. As an iteration on the original game, ME2 is chock-full of mechanical, interface, and visual upgrades. As many have noted, its shooting and cover system is vastly improved from ME1, and Bioware seems to have learned from its mistakes in this regard. ME2 improves on ME1 in all sorts of useful ways, and that's a good and praiseworthy thing.

But when we discuss Mass Effect 2 as the game to finally shatter RPG genre limits and chart a new narrative path, I think we project too much on a game that exchanges some limits for others. I want meaningful interactions with my environment, not pop-up notices for glowing blue frames. I want dialogue unbound by a nice/naughty/neutral triad. I want to do trivial things. I want lower stakes. I want to play a game that doesn't insist the future depends on me. I want a game that defines role-playing more broadly than dialogue choices. I want a game that won't insist my actions and movements (what I do, not what I say) are merely bridges to the next fight.

I'm not suggesting ME2 is a bad game because it fails to meet those expectations. On the contrary, I think it's a terrific game. I'm merely pointing out that while ME2 is unquestionably a high peak, there are plenty of other mountains worth climbing.

It's useful to consider how ME2 succeeds as a well produced RPG that elevates certain genre elements, and de-emphasizes others. But Bioware is up to more than simply rearranging the RPG furniture here. ME2 is a canny scramble of storytelling and game design highlights from previous Bioware games, Gears of War, Star Trek/Wars/Galactica, and The Magnificent Seven, among other influences.

What Bioware has accomplished with ME2 is less about refining the RPG or blazing a new narrative trail than about distilling and mashing up stuff that works from other sources. ME2 is a tantalizing cocktail of action, adventure, sci-fi, RPG, and shooter ingredients, poured into in a big cinematic shaker. 

Bioware knows what we who write about games ought to know better. Genre classifications are essentially meaningless, and it's time to drop them and move on. Three of the best games I've played in the last year - Mass Effect 2, Demon's Souls, and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor are all classified as RPGs, even though they actually have very little in common. On the other hand, IGN may classify MLB 09 as a "sports game," but I say it has more in common with Mass Effect 2 than Mario Baseball. More than ever, genre categories seem like arbitrary labels we apply to games so they can be properly shelved.

And, of course, the scramble extends beyond games. It's the Judd Apatow Effect. Inject moribund romantic comedy genre with lowbrow buddy-movie humor to create slacker-striver films with male and female box office appeal. It's Robert Plant and Alison Krauss; it's MMA; it's the Subaru Outback; it's Elton John and whatever flavor-of-the-week artist the Grammys pair him with. 

It's the inevitable trajectory. For better or worse, we like our entertainment scrambled. Sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes - as Mass Effect 2 skillfully illustrates - it does.

Digital feelies

    

Back before the dawn of time - before HD, virtual lens flares, and 14-button gamepads - text adventures lured us into their virtual worlds with smart storytelling, clever writing ... and feelies. If you're too young to remember feelies, well, I feel for ya because feelies were something special.

Feelies were physical items included in the boxed versions of Infocom games from 1984-1989. These small artifacts, most of them nuggets of sly inventiveness, were far more than window sill collectibles. They often functioned as indispensable tools to the player, providing contextual backstory, clues, unlock codes, and other data enabling progress through the game. Feelies weren't toss-in extras; they extended the game experience, literally, right into the player's hands.

If you're lucky enough to have played the original Leather Goddesses of Phobos (my mother's family hails from Upper Sandusky, Ohio, for those in the know), you will surely recall the scratch and sniff card required when the game instructed you to scratch a number and report the corresponding odor; the Adventures of Lane Mastodon 3D comic book (and 3D glasses) containing vital hints; and a catacombs map warmly welcomed by IF gamers accustomed to creating our own on graph paper.

Of course, feelies also served as a clever form of copy protection at a time when asking the player to type the 4th word from the 3rd paragraph on page 27 of the manual was the best safeguard anybody could think of.

If you'd like to see .jpg scans of every Infocom feelie, including game manuals and box art, I highly recommend The Infocom Gallery. This is why we have the internet.

To my surprise, I've been thinking about feelies since I started playing Mass Effect 2. It seems to me that Bioware is attempting - and one can see this evolving from its prior games - to embed content in and around ME2 that looks a lot like a digital version of feelies. It's not a perfect analogue (nothing compares to holding an artifact in your hands), but it seems to me they're tapping into the spirit of what Infocom tried to do 25 years ago.

It's important to note that I'm not talking about the ME2 collector's edition swag. An art book, a comic book, and a making-of DVD are nice souvenirs for Mass Effect fans, but they're commemorative items that don't deepen or extend the game. A bonus weapon may impact the player's experience, but it's superfluous by design. 

 

ME2 delivers its digital feelies via an extraordinarily rich in-game codex and by a decidedly un-extraordinary online service called the Cerberus Network. When first announced, I mistook Bioware's press release description of Cerberus ("a direct channel for our players to dive deeper into the intriguing lore of Mass Effect") to mean an online hub for players to gather and extend their experiences with the game. Silly me. Cerberus is Bioware's DLC channel that doubles as a disincentive system for players who prefer to rent or purchase a used copy of the game. 

But, ah, the codex. Reviewers have understandably focused on ME2's improvements to the original Mass Effect: upgraded shooter mechanics, streamlined RPG elements, polished cinematics; but precious little has been written about the powerful storytelling dimension of ME2's in-game codex. Slightly modified with a cleaner interface, it's the same gloriously overstuffed lore device that appeared in ME1, but its utility in the middle of a sprawling 3-part epic is greater than ever.

Like the fake "Dakota Magazine" feelie (dated 'April 2031') included in Steve Meretzky's masterful A MInd Forever Voyaging, ME2's codex enriches the storytelling by contextualizing it within a dynamic, self-contained world. It serves the practical function of helping players new to the Mass Effect universe get up to speed, but it also satisfies lore-hungry players who want to immerse themselves in a rich role-playing experience. Given Bioware's decision to simplify some of the game's traditional RPG elements, the codex plays an even more important role in this regard than in ME1. 

RPG scoffers may smirk, but to a devoted player it actually matters that the Asari reproduce through a form of parthenogenesis. That information, explained and archived in the Primary Codex, will impact a player's perceptions and choices. It's pertinent, not disposable lore. It also matters that these primary entries are delivered in spot-on 70s-era Disney-Tomorrowland narration by VO vet Neil Ross.

I miss the Infocom feelies and all the other fun stuff game companies once stuffed into boxes along with their discs. Mass Effect 2's terrific media-rich codex imparts a bit of that old flavor to me, even if it can't match the charm or tactile feel of, say, an actual letter to shareholders from John D. Flathead IX, printed on genuine FrobozzCo letterhead. 

Come to think of it, maybe a wee bit of humor would liven up the ol' Mass Effect codex. Hmm.

Note: The Mass Effect 2 cover art shown above was replaced by another design prior to release, but this one looks nicer next to the Planetfall cover.

When better is worse

No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle is a better game than the original NMH. It streamlines or eliminates most of the problems folks complained about in the first game - vacuous open world, monotonous required side jobs, muddy visuals - and reviewers have rewarded it with generally higher scores (Metacritic 89 for NMH2 vs 83 for NMH). As 1UP's review notes, it "takes the fun parts of the original...and tries to make those the focus while practically quartering off the weaker parts."

So you should definitely play NMH2, if only to reward Grasshopper Manufacture for its signature pursuit of brash idiosyncrasy and deviant design.  

Sadly, NMH2 is also a worse game than the original in ways that can't be tallied on a feature checklist. Designer Goichi Suda missile-launched the first game at our heads - rough edges, obtuse objectives, design misfires and all - and his singular vision exploded on impact. NMH was a bombastic mess, but a startlingly prodigious one. When it appeared two years ago, NMH was the game for gamers sick of cookie-cutter games. A turd in the punchbowl.

Audacity is tough to do twice. The first time feels like inspiration; the second time can feel like calculation. NMH2 doesn't ease off on the stuff that grabbed our attention the first time. Suda's adolescent fascination with potty humor, sexual innuendo, splattering blood, and general bad-boy punkster 'tude permeates the sequel no less than the original. 

But discovery is a precious one-time event, and NMH2 faces a nearly impossible task in that regard. This cleaned-up, streamlined version of Santa Destroy doesn't grab us by the throat as much as it eases our re-entry. The original NMH may have been a better experience than a game, but its sequel reverses that formula and the result feels less satisfying. 

Remember that "joy of iteration" essay I wrote a while back? I guess I was lying.

It's hard to quantify such things, but NMH2 often feels less creatively invigorated than its predecessor. Indelible bosses like Doctor Peace and Harvey Moiseiwitsch Volodarskii have no equals in NMH2. The fabulously wacky boss intros are simplified and diminished, as are most of the strategies needed to beat them. 

Remember receiving phone calls from Sylvia on your Wiimote? The baseballs slung at you in Destroy Stadium that required you to hit them? The sprinkler system used as a weapon to shock you with your katana? Surprising and clever little ideas like these are missing from NMH2, and the game suffers for it. 

And I miss Travis' bike. Okay, okay, I know it was a pain to control, and I know the dead open world was a charming joke that wore off after about an hour. But Travis is a biker, and I say he needs his bike. I won't argue that an open world works better than NMH2's menu system, but I wish Grasshopper had found a way to connect Travis to his bike more inventively than an awful bike joust battle and an oddly meaningless open road ride near the end of the game.

After WWII, Italian Neorealism arose to challenge Hollywood's "tradition of quality," and the French New Wave later extended the argument. Those filmmakers objected to the values and standards of Hollywood production, arguing that such a system codified narrative and stylistic conventions and imprisoned artists in a paint-by-number process of filmmaking. The punk aesthetic Suda espouses advances the same essential argument.

Suda's second No More Heroes game makes a series of concessions to conventional game design that improve the game, but the overall experience feels diminished. So by embracing a certain tradition of quality, is Suda a sellout? Maybe, but I don't think so. 

It seems to me NMH2 suffers, not because of its smoother interface and less irksome gameplay, but because the game feels less personal, less defiant, less inspired, less insistent...less like the creation of an uncompromising artist with a head full of big ideas.

Wrap it up

 

Sometimes video games embarrass me. I get an uneasy feeling that I'm a grown man lurking around the "Young Readers" section of a bookstore. I don't belong there. Those books aren't meant for me. But I consume them because the other shelves in the store are barren.

Oddly, I don't get that feeling playing Animal Crossing or Paper Mario. It hits me when I play a 'mature' game like Gears of War or Modern Warfare 2. I endure the lurching stabs at profundity and empty ruminations on the futility of war - the stuff adolescent teens mistake for insight - hoping they will only briefly interrupt the shooting and cover system that keeps me playing.

If you're like me, you've probably made similar accommodations for countless games over the years. We roll our eyes and plunge ahead, hopeful that whatever save-humanity mission we're assigned this time will be a minor (and possibly skipable) distraction; a disposable wrapper around the real gaming goodness inside.

Lots of talented designers are working hard to eliminate that wrapper. They want to integrate game/story/visuals/controls and leverage the power of games to reposition the player as creator and interpreter of his own experience. It's hard to find the seams in Fallout 3 because all of its pieces fit so tightly together.

Goichi Suda sees things differently. Suda loves the wrapper. He's not interested in eliminating it, nor does he ask us to accommodate it. Suda wants to decorate that wrapper, hang lights on it, set it to music - and then blow it to smithereens in a bloodbath finale.

The wrapper is Suda's cocky 8-bit soft-core sociopath Otaku graffiti, artfully spattered all over his bloody action-brawler, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. It evokes and exalts the same adolescent kid most games make me feel embarrassed to acknowledge. Gears of War is pitched at the 15-year-old who thinks he's playing an adult game; No More Heroes targets the adult who's got a hormone-addled 15-year-old lurking inside, farting at a funeral.

Travis Touchdown (even his name sounds like a kid made him up) is 42-year-old Suda's adolescent heterosexual male fantasy hero: a lanky, contemptuous, self-absorbed assassin with a permanent air of disinterested cool. Travis is wrapped in Suda. He plays the NES-era video games Suda played when he was Travis' age; he wears the same clothes; he collects Lucha Libre masks.

Travis is our conduit to Suda, and he's also our avatar. So the player's experience in NMH2 is heavily mediated by Suda's hyper-stylized vision of Santa Destroy, wrapped around a game about a assassin drawn into a game designed to entertain a game-obsessed audience. All held together (wrapped if you will) by a core design that repeatedly delivers high-voltage blasts of naughty, unrestrained, berserk catharsis - the very stuff your inner-adolescent craves.

Miles of style add up to substance in No More Heroes 2, and in my next post I'll try to explain how and why. In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to get your hands on this game. Your inner-adolescent will thank you.

The early exclusive

 

A modest little indie game called Mass Effect 2 appears tomorrow. You may have heard about it. It's made by an upstart Canadian studio called Bioware, best known for its previous sci-fi opus, Shattered Steel. If Bioware can manage to get the word out about this new game, I have a feeling it may do alright sales-wise. Thousands of copies sold is not outside the realm of possibility. 

But they'll need help to move that many copies, and I'm pleased to report that several outlets are jumping on board with effusive praise and hyperbole. Consensus seems to be forming around two main points: 1) The game is a vast improvement on the the original; 2) It elevates the RPG genre to as-yet-unseen heights.

• Pretty much everything that anybody took even the slightest issue with in Mass Effect 1 has been axed or rebuilt entirely. -IGN


• An astonishing RPG...daring, shocking and often awe-inspiring in its use of choice. This is the future of storytelling in videogames. -X360 Magazine


• A gorgeous experience and a staggering achievement. ... [Characters] are unique. They are individual. They are a pleasure to interact with on every conceivable level. [One of the] top five games of all time. BioWare, we love you. -NowGamer


• When you've finally completed every last side quest...sadness sets in - until you remember there's at least one more Mass Effect coming. -Official Xbox Magazine

Maybe Mass Effect 2 is exactly the outstanding game these sources claim it to be. I hope so. I'm excited to play it. 

But there's a problem here, and it has to do with print and online outlets granted 'exclusive' rights to publish their reviews before anyone else. Should we be troubled by the fact that these handful of privileged sources have assigned the game a collective average of 97? Does it matter that early exclusive reviews nearly always skew higher than those appearing later? 

When media outlets make deals with publishers to be first out of the shoot, their credibility is instantly compromised. And, oddly, they appear to acknowledge this reality even as they ignore it:

And as if our own misgivings over the revelation of plot points were not enough to throttle the very existence out of this very review, EA has also included a handy list of specifics we’re not even allowed to mention, let alone put into any kind of narrative context. Major characters, enemies, squad members, the list goes on. Instead then, we’ll tell you what we can, and perhaps when you witness for yourself the limits of our remit, you will forgive us this somewhat lethargic preamble. (from NowGamer's review of Mass Effect 2)

I don't mean to pick on NowGamer. I've read and enjoyed their stuff since they set up shop. But when you lead your review with "NowGamer is proud to present the UK's first review of BioWare's epic sci-fi RPG," I can't help questioning why a review outlet claiming to be 'reliable and impartial' should express pride at being first? Are we to assume striking a deal with a publisher - compromised by restrictions imposed by that publisher - is a praiseworthy act?

I'm not operating under any illusions here. I'm aware that game devs and publishers need to generate awareness and excitement for their products, and media outlets were making deals for exclusive coverage long before video games existed. But it seems to me there's a significant difference between an exclusive interview or preview and a final review. Magazine and online editors should refuse them as a matter of principle.

Got any openings?

 

A few days ago I wrote about the first hour of Bioshock and its shrewd method of establishing a world and delivering exposition. The game may unravel a bit later on, but it does a remarkably effective job of setting its hook in the player during the early stages of the journey through Rapture. 

This prompted a discussion with several of my students about games and their capacity to grab us or leave us cold. Naturally, we began tossing around titles of games with great openings. 

One student cited Halo's intro sequence as especially magnetic, drawing him into a fight. Another mentioned the G-Man's "Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman," and stepping off the train in Half-Life 2's City 17 with no clear objective or destination. One student claimed that Peggle's opening levels possess a mysterious power to lure players, game vets and noobs alike, into its mad can't-stop-playing vortex.

I thought it might be fun to expand the conversation here by including your 2 cents on the question. Can you think of a game you've played that contains an especially effective opening or beginning? If so, why do you think it work so well?

Like my Peggle-addled student, you needn't limit yourself to narrative titles. All games face the same imperative to hook players early on, lest they grow bored or frustrated and move on to the next time-wasting, brain-shrinking, culture-in-decline activity.

So, what do you say? Got any openings?

Deliberately vague

 

Pop Quiz: Name The Game!

• Clue 1: It's one of the most enduring video game series of all time.
• Clue 2: More than 60 iterations have been released since 1994
• Clue 3: Versions of the game have appeared on nearly every major post-NES gaming system, including SNES, PC, N64, PS1, PS2, Saturn, Dreamcast, Gamecube, Wii, DS, PSP, iPhone, and a card game version.
• Clue 4: It features big-head characters with no mouths, ears, noses, or legs.

If you guessed Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū (lit. "Live Powerful Pro Baseball"), you win. You peeked at the picture, didn't you?

It's become fashionable for the western games media to roll its collective eyes at the Japanese market and its endless appetite for cute games we wouldn't be caught dead playing. Those silly Japanese consumers are gullible too, mindlessly gobbling up the latest Tales of Super-Robot-Pokémon-Yu-Gi-Oh-Gundam tossed at them by an industry mired in expired ideas. So sad.

If we let go of the arrogance that often clouds our perceptions of Japanese games, a certain patronizing attitude that allows easy dismissal of games that appear childish or cartoony, we may occasionally discover a game that surprises us with its depth and sophistication - a game that employs visual abstraction as a deliberate design ideal, rather than a concession. Power Pros Baseball, as it's known outside of Japan, is such a game.

Why play a sports game that goes out of its way, not only to avoid visual verisimilitude, but defeat it? If graphics hold no interest, why not just play a text sim like the terrific Out of the Park Baseball? In other words, why would an adult gamer (and self-confessed baseball nut) find a big-headed chibi version of Albert Pujols preferable, even superior, to a version that strives to capture his likeness?

Two reasons. One is simple, and the other requires more explanation.

The simple answer is that Power Pros Baseball is an incredibly deep and feature-rich game of baseball. Its pick-up-and-play controls connect to a complex and highly-configurable simulation that incorporates deep, stat-driven season and franchise modes; the best create-a-player system I've seen; and two separate RPG modes, each a blast to play. 

So, Power Pros Baseball is a fun, insanely detailed game that succeeds best where it matters most: under the hood. That's the simple part. 

Trickier to explain is why, 15 years after their first appearance on the SNES, the original cartoony player designs still serve the game so beautifully. Tricky, because we're about to take a tumble with aesthetics, and that's where things get a little, well, abstract.

With sheepish nods to Picasso and Pollock, I'm hardly the first to suggest that abstraction can reveal a more truthful truth than realism. Despite their limited features, Power Pros' character models easily convey the players they're meant to depict, and they do so far more expressively than their rubber-faced photographic counterparts in games like MLB 2K9. 

Massive-polygon-count Albert may appear more human-like than big-head Albert, but I would hardly call his next-gen incarnation more 'believable.' I've seen Pujols play in-person several times, and Power Pros' smiling, playful, glowering, angry mini-Albert comes much closer to the truth of the man than the animation-looped mo-capped version, in my view. 

If we limit our scope to batting stances and swing mechanics, MLB 2K9 has it all over Power Pros. Except when it doesn't. The problem with verisimilitude is its insistence on perfection. Every little inconsistency is a failure. Every blip in the fielding animation a lie. Power Pros' tight controls and smooth animations are meant to enable the player playing the game, not re-enact a particular MLB player's quirks. In this way, Power Pros tells a more useful truth about the game of baseball than MLB 2K9.

Power Pros embraces a visual aesthetic that communicates fun. And, wait a minute, aren't these games supposed to be fun? I've been a devoted console baseball player since RBI Baseball on the NES, and if there's one thing I can say with certainty about the evolution of the genre, it's that realism delivered through graphical muscle has not, in fact, made playing baseball sims more fun. Quite the contrary, actually.

I'm not here to suggest designers stop building sports sims that strive for high degrees of visual realism. MLB 09: The Show was one of my favorite games last year - I love the grass and the sunlight and the sounds of the crowd it conveys. We're getting there. I think. Maybe.

I'm simply suggesting that a fair assessment of the latest Power Pros game will show an equally (but differently) compelling baseball simulation with deeper stats, more customization, more modes of play, and a control system free of the convolution that's overtaken most console sports games. Plus, it's got big-head players with no legs. And that's a good thing.

Build me a world

A stage setting is not a background; it is an environment. Players act in a setting, not against it. We say, in the audience, when we look at what the designer has made, before anyone on the stage has time to move or speak, "Aha, I see! It's going to be like that!" 

--Robert Edmond Jones, "The Dramatic Imagination"

Building a world isn't easy. The novelist, the playwright, the filmmaker - all face the same daunting task. Establish a place; communicate a style; commence your story; hook your audience. 

And the clock is ticking. You have roughly 10 minutes. If you haven't conveyed a world that intrigues us by then, you've probably lost your chance.

Narrative video games present no less a challenge. In some ways, the stakes there are even higher. Not only must the world intrigue me, but I must also feel compelled to occupy and explore it...and I've plunked down $60 for the privilege. 

Bioshock succeeds in this regard better than any game I can think of. Revisiting Rapture with the Vintage Game Club has brought into focus how effectively this game establishes a world chock-full of detail, expressiveness, and storytelling punch. As virtual world-building, Bioshock offers some valuable lessons on how to do it right.

Spoilers ahead.

The first hour of Bioshock is essentially a layered set of introductions to the world of Rapture and the game itself. Every narrative game must manage this balancing act of storytelling and teaching, but Bioshock excels by thrusting the player into a series of events and locales loaded with ambience and backstory, trusting the player to learn by exploring. 

The banners, the plaques, the discarded artifacts, the architecture that surrounds me - all converge as individual pieces of a great story puzzle you will piece together. As my friend Roger Travis has suggested, the player behaves similarly to Oedipus in this regard: a well-meaning detective who ultimately tracks down himself.

When I emerge from the water gasping for air, the game offers no HUD and no instructions. I'm on my own. When I reach land and look over my shoulder, I watch the plane slowly disappear into the sea. The prediction delivered to me before the crash, "Son, you're special. You were born to do great things" will be tested now.

I notice an open door, and I enter. As Justin Keverne noted on the VGC forum, "You are alone, and ominously, you are expected." The first thing to grab my attention is a giant red banner that reads: "No gods or kings, only man." Bioshock's stark declaration of principles, accompanied by the jaunty strains of "Beyond the Sea." A tonal collision that will be repeated many times in a variety of contexts. 

Proceeding on, visual artifacts fill my head with impressions of this place. Plaques with quotes from Ryan; gold seals commemorating Art, Industry, and Science. I enter into darkness, but doing so triggers lights that flash on as if to welcome me. The place is begging me to explore it, and so I do. It feels worth doing.

A slide show narrated by Ryan continues the ideological indoctrination, but the scratchy audiovisuals and the deserted environment make everything feel disjointed. Something is terribly wrong here. I can see it and feel it, even though the game has yet to offer much beyond clues.

My capsule rises, and Ryan proclaims "I chose Rapture!" followed by the big reveal: a spectacular view of an underwater city surrounded by glowing neon. This is surely one of the greatest opening sequences in all of video games. As my capsule docks (accompanied by more visual propaganda ""All good things of this earth flow to the city"), I'm reminded of my arrival on the train at the beginning of Half-Life 2.

Helplessly watching a man being killed through a glass and hoping this creature won't notice me, the dark suspicions planted in my mind are confirmed. Now Bioshock's world-building turns to aftermath, and everything around me tells a story. 

Discarded protest signs: "Ryan doesn't own us!" and "Rapture is Dead" suggest I'm entering the ruins of a place gone horribly wrong. Abandoned drinks, cigarettes, purses. People left here in a hurry, or were killed in a hurry. More tonal collisions: a huge colorful painting hangs on the wall - a Diego Rivera-esque mural depicting happy smiling mother, worker, and child. It's a failed utopia. Not exactly virgin territory for sci-fi horror, but fertile storytelling territory nonetheless.

The eerie sounds of the place convey even more dreadful impressions. Sloshing water, odd singing in the distance, groaning metal - all terribly ominous and persistent. This place is about to blow, and I need to get out of here.

My first view of a Big Daddy and Little Sister comes in a half-conscious state lying on the floor, my blurred POV view cockeyed. It's like I'm not sure I'm seeing what I'm seeing. Atlas is talking to me, but I'm only half-hearing him. Sensory overload. Keep moving. 

I get up and move forward, and I'm met with a splicer screaming "I'm not a bad person! I'm not a bad person!" The next one screams "I can control myself! I can!" I realize the game is sending me a variety of messages that all suggest one thing: control is the issue here. It's underneath everything. Gaining control, maintaining control, losing control. I've felt it from the moment I walked in.

The shadow of a woman comforting her baby. A married couple's quarrel. The audio diary of a lonely woman named Diane McClintock. All of it lures me in and compels me to act, piecing together what happened here and sometimes killing to survive. 

The audio diaries are exceptionally well-delivered. These would be lazy narrative shortcuts if they were the primary means of delivering story, but they're only one channel. They add texture and detail. Most of what I've learned so far was conveyed through my own exploration and by paying attention to my surroundings.

One hour into the game, I spot a little girl stabbing a corpse with a syringe like it's a toy. The game makes me feel like I'm spying on her. I'm tempted to intervene, but I know the game isn't ready for me to do that yet. This creates an interesting tension between what I want to do and what the game wants me to do. And it's at this moment that I realize I've awakened from the game's narrative spell. I've bumped into a limit, as it were, and I'm briefly derailed. 

Soon enough, I'll be back on board, eager for what's to come. But I know that nothing I'll see or do is likely to surpass that first mesmerizing, world-building hour. It's the game's most notable accomplishment, in my view, and it's why Rapture itself remains Bioshock's greatest achievement.

A good place to die

 

I'm delighted to report that I'm writing a new monthly column for GameSetWatch called "Abbott's Habit," and I hope you'll check it out. My first piece contrasts the game worlds of Demon's Souls and Assassin's Creed II. Sometimes artist-conceived environments can be more effective than those drawn from real life, and I try to explain why these two games illustrate that point.

Here's a snippet:

Imaginative artist-conceived game worlds can draw players in and entice them to explore the unknown, accentuating discovery of a landscape unbound by the limits of verisimilitude. Demon's Souls' crumbling derelict world visually reinforces the sense of despair and moral decay that defines the player's experience in Boletaria. The world itself feels alive and unfixed, a hostile force to overcome. 

Assassin's Creed II seems to want to deliver an open-world experience to the player, but for the most part that world is look, but don't touch. The game offers two awkwardly implemented city tours (the first carrying a box through Florence for Leonardo Da Vinci; the second a walking tour of Venice courtesy of Alvise da Vilandino), but these introductions serve little meaningful purpose since the only real rewards for exploring are locating hidden chests, feathers, glyphs, and other collection-oriented gameplay add-ons. Despite their extraordinary visual presentation, these great Italian cities usually function as little more than labyrinths for acrobatic chase sequences.

You can read the entire article here. Many thanks to editor Simon Carless for the opportunity to write for a site I've long admired.

The wrong game

Somewhere between its preview at E3 last June and its release last month, a subtle change was made to the warning screen that appears at the beginning of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

Here's the original, from a developer walkthrough shown at Konami's E3 press conference:

And here's the screen that appears in the released version of the game:

As writing goes, the original works better than the revision. It's punchier, and it grabs the reader more boldly than the grammatically improved version. If I had my way, I'd keep the red background and fonts from the revision and replace its text with the original.

Why the sudden obsession with an opening screen? Because it's a metaphor for something more pervasive about this game and its curious construction. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories aspires to immerse its player in a nightmarish experience. It means to do so by leveraging the interactive mechanics of the hardware it relies on to deliver that experience. And it very nearly succeeds. 

But clinging to genre tropes and gameplay formulas - in other words, making the game less messy, more structured and familiar - separates the game from its defining vision and diminishes what could have been a deeply evocative first-person experience. 

Shattered Memories is a game with too much "game." Just when it begins to gather momentum, plunging the player into an eerily deserted environment full of shadows and ghostly residue from painful events, suddenly you find yourself stuck in a room forced to solve a gumball machine puzzle. Or you enter an abandoned card shop, piecing together clues that suggest your lost daughter may have been here, when you realize the door has locked, and you must decipher clues inside greeting cards to extract a key code to get out.

The jarring incongruity between the disturbing experience Shattered Memories can be, and the puzzle-solving Silent Hill game its developer insists it must be, repeatedly destoys a state of mind that few games induce. When you shine your flashlight on a child's swing and catch a glimpse of a ghostly figure there seeming to beckon you forward; when you slowly approach and are abruptly accosted by a sharp noise and flash of light, followed by a child's voice emanating from the cellphone in your hand, you may forget you're playing a video game. Soon enough, unfortunately, the game will remind you.

And that's a real shame, because this is the first game I've played which fully exploits that white thing with the strap we normally call a Wiimote. In Shattered Memories it functions as a flashlight (your primary means of navigating most of the game's envronments), cellphone, camera, notebook, and GPS. Each of these tools are smartly integrated into the game as helpful and necessary devices, rather than gimmicky tricks for the Wiimote.

I'm not suggesting Shattered Memories shouldn't function as a game. The nightmare sequences, which essentially work like survival missions requiring you to flee an assortment of demons until Harry Mason wakes up, integrate a form of gameplay that deepen and reinforce the narrative. Unlike hunting down yet another key (usually "hidden" in plain sight), these ludic sequences plug directly into Harry's desperate need to escape a nightmare of his own making. 

As a "re-imagined Silent HIll," I wish Shattered Memories had further departed from the Silent Hill formula by channeling its gameplay into the activities this version enables so remarkably well. It should have trusted the player to explore its loaded environments and piece together what happened unimpeded by arbitrary puzzles that feel forced and uninspired.

Clearly, many Silent Hill fans enjoy puzzles, and one can argue they're a signature part of the Silent Hill franchise. But this game repositions Harry as a man with no weapons or ability to fight, and it redefines the player's relationship to the game's environments. We often toss around the word "immersive" when we discuss video games, but few games are built to go there as well as this one. It's too bad the re-imagining left some things off the table.

Shattered Memories could have been a game that charged the player to find his own way, grappling with the puzzling problems of life, instead of arranging gumballs by their colors. Given the aspirations of its creators and the great possibilities it conveys, Shattered Memories sadly feels like the wrong game.