Portal 2 Review

About a third through my playthrough of Portal 2, the realization dawns on me that I have been playing for three consecutive hours. Normally, for me, this would not be unusual, but the night before the final exam of my most difficult class in my Junior year, it certainly is. Portal 2 is one of those games that you’ll wish you were playing when you are not playing it and morbidly fear completing its campaign.

The Story and Humor

The game picks up some time after the events of the first Portal. Chell, the game’s protagonist, wakes up in a decrepit Aperture Science Hotel Room. From there, a bumbling personality core called Wheatley breaks apart the room and sends her through Aperture. Eventually, Wheatley accidentially awakens GlaDOS and sets forth a surprisingly involving, and very funny narrative.

Really, to give any more away is to spoil a lot of the fun of Portal. Learning the secrets and history of Aperture Science and its relationship to the vibrant world of Half-Life is a large part of the game’s appeal. Showing any screenshots from beyond the first quarter of the game would spoil not only the story, but also puzzle-solutions, environments and gameplay mechanics.

One thing that is safe to reveal is that Portal 2’s writing and voice-acting is phenomenal. Stephen Merchant, genius behind the British Office, makes his video-game debut with flying colors as Wheatley. His dry delivery of Wheatley’s lines perfectly characterizes him as a bumbling idiot, and listening to exchanges between him and GlaDOS are sure to leave many in stitches.

Perhaps most importantly, Portal 2 makes its greatest innovation in the delivery of its humor. Environments, not just scripting and dialogue, deliver laughs in a way unseen in any other medium. Be it a darkly humorous sign or a beautifully ruined office, Portal 2 delivers its hilarity in ways unique to the medium, and for that, it deserves high commendation.

Gameplay

Perhaps even more dangerous than story-spoilers, knowing about Portal 2’s in advance can absolutely ruin the experience because the game constantly introduces surprising new elements. For the sake of completion and to sate the interest of those interested, I will include information on it. That said, MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

Portal 2 begins simply enough and might come off as non-innovative to fans of the first game (in fact, a few test chambers are entirely recycled, albeit, in decrepit form). Simple staples from the first game, like conservation of velocity through portals, return for the first few test chambers. This is all fun and dandy, until Portal 2 decides to get creative.

The first thing that the game springs on you are “thermal discouragement beams”, which are lasers that can be directed into light-switches using mirror cubes and portals. The difficulty curve in the game is immaculate, and simple “teaching” levels give way comfortably to diabolically insane challenges that the player ultimately feels prepared to handle.

The pacing for Portal 2 is highly refined as new puzzle-elements are introduced at a near-constant rate, and just as the player feels he has mastered one element, that element is deployed in an innovative new way making it fresh again. For example, the lasers, an early-game element that feels pretty easy to master, is given new life as the player must simultaneously activate three light-switches using only one mirror cube. It is through challenges like these that Portal 2 achieves its incredible balance and remains fresh to its very end.

Later in the game, new, Portal-controlled environmental aspects, like light-bridges and ascension-rays, challenge the player in unexpected ways. Three types of special “gels”, orange, blue and white, alter the environment in clever ways. Blue gel turns any surface it is applied to into a trampoline. Orange gel-coated ground is slick and slippery and lets the player achieve incredible speeds, and white gel turns anything it touches into a portal-able surface. What is particularly genius about these elements is that the player never gets to control them directly. Instead, the player must utilize his/her limited abilities to indirectly solve puzzles by manipulating these gels and bridges in creative ways. This forces the player to think of all possible applications of the Portal Gun, and as a result, the player’s most powerful asset is his mind. This lends the challenges a Braid-like sense of cerebral bashing, making the difficult challenges incredibly satisfying to solve.

Not all of the challenges soar. In particular, one mid-game plot twist removes the player from the test-chambers and sends the player on a long-trek through Aperture’s ancient hallways, comes off as mediocrely designed in comparison to the “meat” of the game. The gameplay-shift this entails makes these challenges more about searching for the one area of Portal-able surface than using the Portal Gun’s capabilities. This effectively turns the game into more of an adventure game than a puzzler, and, while the detailed environs are a joy to explore, challenges become slightly tedious. Thankfully, this section of gameplay is brief and bearable.

Spoilers end here. Ultimately, Portal 2 is a nearly immaculate experience marred only by a short section of substandard puzzles.

Graphics and Audio

Running off the now-ancient Source engine, Portal 2 nonetheless looks surprisingly good. Ambient light and dynamic physics lend the vast corridors of Aperture a sense of atmospheric vastness comparable to the very first Metroid Prime.

Portal 2’s best visual aspect comes in its artistic direction. The sterile test-chambers fall apart to reveal the “backstage” of the facility in all its vast, technological ruin. Different parts of Aperture showcase the company’s history, thus, visualizing a progressive history culminating with the modern era. The quality of the art-style, as well as the “living” feel of the incredibly animated rooms and backdrops as they are literally assembled as the player enters them, makes Aperture Science a fun and interesting place to explore, a credit that few shooters can live up to.

From an auditory standpoint, Portal 2 is also flawless. Procedurally generated music seems to compose itself as the player traverses through climaxes and crescendos within a level, and frames the player’s emotional and intellectual progression as he solves puzzles. For example, being launched into the air by an “aerial faith plate” speeds up the pace of the music and adds tense percussion beats while falling into a floating light-tube slows down and mutes the bass. Voice acting by Stephen Merchant and Ellen McLain remains flawless and hilarious. Jonathan Coulton, writer of the infamous “Still Alive”, returns for a catchy ending theme that wraps up the entire experience satisfyingly.

Multiplayer

Portal 2’s cooperative multiplayer mode is a unique campaign containing the game’s most difficult challenges. With two portal guns and up to four portals deployed, an unique type of synergistic thinking is needed for any level of success. That said, Portal 2 is not a game that can be enjoyed without voice chat or with strangers. Using only pings and gestures to communicate is severely limiting and leads to considerable frustration. Playing with a headset and with a friend, the game becomes considerably more playable, intriguing and fun. Ideally, Portal 2 works best in its splitscreen mode, which simplifies interpersonal communication significantly and paves the way for synergistic thinking nicely.

That said, Portal 2 would have benefitted with a set of competitive challenges and leaderboards. Challenge maps, one of Portal 1’s best aspects, are jarringly missing from this game. This harms the game’s already limited replay value and comes off as a missed opportunity for the developers.

Conclusion

In the end, the worst thing that can be said of Portal 2 is that it has some annoying fans. Even with its few flaws, this is one of the best puzzle games of the generation if not all time. Portal 2 fits the geniuses at Valve and Digipen as the foremost advocates of innovation and creativity in game-design. Strongly recommended. 4.75/5

Red Dead Redemption Review

I have been playing Red Dead Redemption for four months straight. I just completed the game’s story just last night. Red Dead Redemption is a game so incredible in scope, so mammoth in its ambition, so subtly flawed and so engaging in its narrative that it will leave an immutable mark upon its players and go down in gaming history as one of the most beautiful and detailed open world games of the decade.

Story

Red Dead Redemption is powered primarily by an imaginatively conceived world filled with symbolic (but not realistic) characters and very well written and often funny dialogue. John Marston, the game’s protagonist, will come across a parade of interesting people, each with their own detailed background, motives and philosophical position. Set in an unspecified region of the Southern Border in 1911 during the last days of the Wild West, Red Dead Redemption deals thematically with industrialization and the loss of cultural identity that consumerism brings. 

This theme of imperialism is communicated through John Marston’s struggle. A former gang member, government officials from the East kidnap his wife and son and will return them to him only if he were to hunt down the members of his former gang. Red Dead Redemption is a tale of a man attempting to escape from his bloody past while forces out of his control keep on dragging him back. To hunt down his targets, John embarks on an epic journey that will take him across the wilderness, through both geographic, cultural and moral boundaries.

Nonetheless, the methods through which the story is communicated are sometimes flawed. While the conversations that John has while riding with others are charming, funny and interesting, cutscenes are frequent and sometimes longer than necessary. Ludonarrative dissonance (where the player’s actions inbetween missions contradicts the behavior of the protagonist during missions and cutscenes) remains highly problematic, sometimes threatening to compromise the realism of John’s character as a whole. For example, it does not contribute to a believable character to have committed a mass murder spree in Armadillo and return to peacefully herd cattle at the MacFarlane ranch.

Gameplay

Red Dead Redemption, like Rockstar’s previous games, has of stuff available to do. Minigames and side-quests make up a wealth of content, making it very easy to become sidetracked from the game’s storyline missions. Gambling, hunting, collecting and questing opportunities are ubiquitous throughout the world. By simply wandering around, the player will come across strangers to help, hideouts to raid, animals to hunt, games to play and bounties to hunt. Succeeding where Grand Theft Auto had failed, all these activities are often very fun. The only dull activity available is herding, which is as frustrating as it would be in real life, which thankfully only occurs three times during the game’s missions.

All these activities would be undermined if the core gameplay were not fun, and thankfully, solid shooting and riding mechanics make Red Dead Redemption very satisfying and rewarding. Horses control perfectly, making the traversal of the vast world a breeze. Shooting however, takes a bit getting used to. On higher targeting levels, the crosshair is oftentimes too small to be useful and indistinguishable from the environment. Lower targeting levels solve this problem by practically putting the fighting on autopilot, targeting and tracking moving enemies even behind cover. Thankfully, the fantastic mission design and cover system make combat fun in spite of these limitations.

A new feature in Red Dead Redemption is “deadeye mode”. By pressing R3 with a weapon drawn, the player can temporarily slow time down to precisely target specific spots of the body and make extremely stylish shots. Deadeye is not as essential as it otherwise is on higher targeting modes, but nonetheless it remains integral to Red Dead Redemption’s appeal.

Red Dead Redemption is not perfect, its initial hours are tedious, exposition-heavy and gameplay light. The first few missions have Marston attempting rather menial tasks around the MacFarlane farm. Oftentimes, these tasks are frustrating (AKA: herding) and punctuated by frequent and lengthy cutscenes. Only when the player unlocks new areas and abilities does the game become much more involving. 

Graphics/Art/Audio

Graphically, Red Dead Redemption is both artistically and technically years ahead of other games. Running on Rockstar's RAGE engine, the game features advanced lighting effects, incredible character animation, detailed textures and dynamic weather effects. These engine features are used to realize an incredibly atmospheric art style featuring an incredible variety of living ecosystems and environments. Practically every kind of conceivable Western environment is present in Red Dead Redemption, forests, plains, chaparrals, deserts, canyons and mountains are all depicted in incredible detail and color. Rockstar’s art team has utilized the technical prowess of its engine to create some of the most jaw-droppingly breathtaking vistas ever seen in a video game. In a time where more and more developers create dark urban and postapocalyptic worlds, seeing a setting inspired by nature is both refreshing and pleasant.

Need more persuasion? consider the screenies below.

The game’s animation is also beyond superb and features the incredible attention to detail that permeates throughout its every part. Characters are affected dynamically by physics and move realistically, seeing the muscle ripple underneath a horse’s skin is unlike any thing seen before. Hair, long a problem in realistic games, is a non-issue here. Shots and falls look painful and will make the player wince in their mo-capped brilliance.

Finally, Red Dead Redemption is an auditory treat. Voice acting is some of the finest I have heard in years; the game is spearheaded by strong, funny and emotionally involving writing and the nuanced performance of Rob Wiethoff as Marston. Powerful sound effects lend combat special intensity and natural environments a lively placidity. Music frames narrative moments nicely and gives a strong emotional backdrop for the story to take place.

Conclusion

I am really just nitpicking Red Dead Redemption’s few flaws, those of which are a perpetual element of any open-world action-adventure game. Although ludonarrative dissonance and an overly slow start detract from the game’s impact, Red Dead Redemption is still one of the richest, most inspired and involving virtual worlds that Rockstar has conceived in the past decade. Highly recommended. 4.75/5

Vanquish Review

In a future Earth, overpopulation has limited Earth's livable space. The Marin Headlands are blanketed with Skyscrapers, Hillary Clinton's clone is president and a country-sized satellite floats above the planet. Communist robots wage war on the United States and a bionic-armed commando engages in ridiculous banter. Yes, this game is Japanese, and yes, it's a Hideki Kamiya game. It's Vanquish, and it is the most creatively gleeful shooter to come out of Japan since Kamiya's own Resident Evil 4.

History

Hideki Kamiya is one of Japan's most beloved game-directors, rivaling the likes of Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima. The mastermind between Resident Evil 4, Phoenix Wright, Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, Kamiya's games are renowned worldwide for their sheer uniqueness and style. Vanquish, much like his previous projects, is a Japanese game intended for a Western audience. Kamiya's latest game is an Eastern take on a decidedly Western genre, the third person shooter.

Gameplay

Vanquish, being developed by a Japanese studio, bears a considerable uniqueness from its Western third-person cousins. Where Gears of War and Army of Two focus decidedly on moderately-paced movement and strategic cover, Vanquish has more in common with classic 2D shooters of the 8-bit era. Pattern recognition and bullet dodging rule the day here and are controlled by mechanics similar to those of other Kamiya games.

Besides the prerequisites of moving, shooting and taking cover, Vanquish features two other major mechanics, those being boosting and slowing time down. By using a constantly replenishing power meter, Sam Gideon, Vanquish's cigarette chomping protagonist, can use suit-mounted rockets to propel himself forward at lightning speeds. Boosting from cover-to-cover to behind enemy lines for a powerful melee attack only to again boost away makes for thrilling action that is incredibly fun to watch. By tapping the boost button as an evasive dash is made, Sam can enter a mode of slowed-down time, where careful decisions can be made and weak points specifically targeted. Combining these powers allows for a tactical strategy of attack-and-retreat to be preformed. Needless to say, a strong influence from one of Kamiya's previous works, Viewtiful Joe, can be seen explicitly here.

Several boss battles are impressive in scope and breathtaking to see, elevating awe at these moments to Shadow of the Colossus-levels. These battles are some of the highlights of the experience, and are influenced heavily by classic Japanese 8-bit shooters. These bosses frequently have one-hit kill moves that must be avoided or countered. Needless to say, battles against the giant Argus robots fit into the world of old-school pattern memorization, tell-recognition and reaction. The battles are fun, tense and look great.

Graphics/Sound

Fortunately, as a Kamiya game, Vanquish posseses an incredible visual style that is as fun to look at as to play with. Incredible artistic touches inspired by classic anime such as Neon Genesis, Casshern and Gundam lend the game a distinct flavor of its own, its bleached colors stand it stark contrast with the saturated greys and reds of Western third-person shooters. Character models are intricately detailed, and the number of moving, glowing or smoking parts on any given robot is incredible. Awe inspiring set-pieces are massive in scope, and with thousands of bullets and rockets flying about at any given time, it is surprising that the frame rate remains steady even on 7th generation hardware. Sam's ARS suit is a particular highlight, and its many animations lend combat an intensely visceral edge despite the minimal blood effects in the game.

Speaking of animation, static screenshots don't do justice to Vanquish's varied environs. The game looks better in motion, and the surprisingly unobtrusive QTE-sequences bring some of the absolutely coolest finishing moves to be concieved since Gear's original curb-stomp. Dashing up an Argus's leg to transform into a drill and punch a hole straight through its body is exhilarating, memorable and fun, the silly approach to such a concept bringing a smile to even the most jaded gamer.

Part of the fun of Vanquish is the vast variety of locales that the game's firefights are set. A collapsing highway in the sky, a giant zero-gravity tube and the innards of a skyscraper-sized metal behemoth are highlights in the experience. The sheer joy of discovering what new crazy idea that Kamiya's team conceived is a major aesthetic in the game.

Unfortunately, Vanquish does not sound as good as it looks. Voice-acting is as generic as the character archetypes that populate the game's treaded fiction. (Intentionally?) Highly theatrical gravelly voices characterize soldiers. Evil characters speak slowly and sinisterly and arbitrary curses are flung about that battlefield. Whether or not Kamiya intended to satirize the American shooter with this auditory portrayal of characters is debatable, but highly likely. The soundtrack is comprised mostly of techno, and while it may frame the action well, don't expect to download its tracks after playing.

Conclusion

Despite the praise that I have bestowed upon it, Vanquish is short.

Playing on the standard difficulty level, it took me several hours to complete the game beginning to end, including the numerous deaths I suffered. Uninteresting, rote-based challenge levels offered little incentive to explore non-campaign content. There are also no multiplayer modes avaliable at all. Vanquish is still fun to replay though, numerous online leaderboards offer a competitive incentive to blast through levels as quickly as possible, racking up high scores. The high quality of Vanquish's campaign also adds to its value. While it may be short, it is very sweet.

Ultimately, the question of the game's value comes down to you. Would the brief-but-fun campaign and gleeful style be worth sixty dollars to experience? Vanquish is brief and features generic story and characters, no doubt, but its smile-inducing sense of fun makes this a game that any shooter-fan must experience at sometime, albeit, not necessarily at full price. Recommended. 4/5

Discussing the EMA Case with Senator Leland Yee

On Sunday, December 19^th, my good friends Sean Patrick and Devan Patel, along with myself, had coffee with Senator Leland Yee. Yee was the author of the controversial ABs 1792 and 1793, which attempted to governmentally regulate the sale of mature games to minors. The bills were deemed unconstitutional by the State Court in 2005, and their constitutionality was again discussed in a November 2 U.S. Supreme Court meeting. I wrote an open-letter to the Senator with my particular objections to the bill, for which the meeting was called to discuss.

After spending a short time watching Sean play Obsidian's Alpha Protocol, we walked down to Starbucks to meet with the Senator and his aide. We introduced ourselves as Juniors from Stuart Hall High School and talked about our relationship with gaming (Devan and Sean being consumers and me being a writer and artist). 

Yee, a developmental psychologist, began the meeting by discussing the “Bobo Doll Study” regarding youth aggression, in which children emulated an adult model violently abusing a human doll. It is common knowledge among the psychological community that exposure to violent imagery causes desensitization to violence. The Senator thus did not contend that there was a causal relationship between game-consumption and real-world violence, a position that I strongly object to. Several notable anti-game critics have held considerably more theatrical viewpoints on the matter, Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton come to mind, such people have recognized Grand Theft Auto to be a public safety hazard. Yee thus held that the desensitizing effect of game justified the bill.

The Senator also held that it was the state's responsibility to protect children from harmful forces, likening his bill to laws passed in the early 20^th Century outlawing child labor. Whether or not the desensitizing effect of violent games would be on the level of the atrocities that child coal-miners faced in the Industrial Revolution is debatable. Furthermore, he again acknowledged that games did not pose a public safety hazard, if this was so, then why would the law be necessary to protect children? Is psychological desensitization enough to justify the distinct treatment of violent games to violent film, comics and literature?

Yee also emphasized the distinction between what he considered “violent games” and “ultraviolent games”. Nonetheless, the disparity remained extremely vague. I brought up Sony Santa Monica's God of War III, a game so graphically violent that even I recoiled at the gore. Yee responded by saying that God of War III would not be affected by the bill because the subject of its violence was not human in nature, “creature violence” did not fall under the bill. Apparently, the genocide of thousands of harpies and minotaurs did not deserve recognition.

Senator Yee stated that the “ultraviolent” games that would be affected by the bill depicted violence between human characters in a patently offensive manner. While Gears of War would not be considered “ultraviolent”, considerably tamer games would be. Nonetheless, the distinction remains extremely vague. The T-rated Uncharted and Goldeneye feature shooting human enemies as their primary mechanic. Over the course of their respective campaigns, the player kills hundreds of pirates and terrorists. Nonetheless, the relatively innocuous nature of such violence is on a level infinitely lower than that of Manhunt and Soldier of Fortune, which feature human dismemberment as an option. Under the law, would Goldeneye fall under the same group as the far more disturbing Soldier of Fortune? T-rated games feature human violence as a primary mechanic, and under the bill's verbiage, such games would be grouped with the likes of Postal, even while sci-fi/fantasy games like Halo are not affected.

The Senator also held that the bill was ultimately intended to assist parents in determining what content their children can access and that parents can choose to opt out of the policy by purchasing violent games for children, thus, pre-informing parents about content. Thus, the bill would reinforce the measures that the industry already takes in order to police its own content. Built-in parental controls by console manufacturers, the ESRB, ID check at retail and the refusal of console companies to license AO rated games are such measures. By governmentally reinforcing the industry's standards, notable risks arise given the degree of power the state gains over it. This ultimately makes the bill redundant to the industry's already held policies, rendering it a rather unnecessary exercise of political power over content advisory and the medium itself.

Senator Yee then asked us about our own gaming habits and the degree of parental control that our families had over our play decisions. Despite our dissenting viewpoints, the meeting was ultimately respectful, interesting and productive.

Upon the conclusion of the meeting, we returned to Sean's house to celebrate the merit of games by playing many matches of Call of Duty: Black Ops. I came out with mostly negative spreads, but found respite in the AK74u, stun grenade and claymore. Devan and myself were involved in an epic tug-of-war over the central control point in Nuketown. 

Explorations in Gaming: The Most Misunderstood Medium (Part 1)

For the last year or so, I have been blogging considerably less than I had before. While I was able to push out 89 postings last year, 2010 brought a meager 49 postings. I also have not written a major blog post since last year’s Nerds and Popularity. I am embarrassed to say that a tenfold increase in gaming time was responsible for my declining blogging productivity.

Some years ago, developing and enhancing this site was one of my top priorities online. As I turned on my computer, I browsed the web and thought about content to upload to this site. It served as a good outlet for me to explore personal thoughts, share the better ones with the world and chart my personal intellectual development. Since then, such topics have tropped out of interests and video games have come to fill that void. My most-visited sites used to be Wikipedia, Flickr, Blogger and DeviantArt respectively and has since shifted to Facebook, Wikipedia, Gamespot, IGN, GamesRadar and Swap.com.

The tenfold increase in gaming has also changed my personality in noticeable ways. My sense of humor has grown dry, consisting of deadpan references to obscure video games in inopportune moments. Just yesterday at Quiz Bowl practice I blurted, “IMRAN ZAKHAEV!” when prompted with a Middle Eastern Russian imperialist. Sunday Sites are now almost exclusively reposts of IGN and GamesRadar articles. My fundamental relationships with others have deteriorated as I hold little interest in professional sports, television and the opposite sex. Thus, in this post, I will attempt to explore and defend video games and the relationship with the gamer to his games. Games have quickly become the most misunderstood art form of our day. Spreading a greater understanding of the nuances of the medium is my goal with this post, which will be part of an ongoing series titled “Explorations in Gaming.” 

A Time of Asteroids and the Birth of Obsession

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one” ~ Mr. Antolini

I remember that there was a time when I had yet to discover gaming. I was about two years old at that time; I mostly read and drew to entertain myself. At three, I was given access to my dad’s Macintosh, where he kept a considerable number of games. The first game I ever played was a clone of Missile Defense, along with Odell Down Under, Oregon Trail and Asteroids along with a crapload of edutainment titles. I must say that playing them was no revelatory experience. While I did play games on that computer frequently, I had yet to encounter the experience that would entrance me for life. 

In 1998, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time entered my life, I had played Super Mario 64 before, but nothing was like this. That was an early revelatory experience. The fantasy world of a 3D Hyrule permeated my early childhood fantasies, I would make up my own dungeons and Zelda stories with my imagination. I would be Link in my daydreams. The next game to conquer my imagination and daydreams would not come until I discovered Pokemon, which would entrance my fantasies and dominate my mind for years. Dreams of adventuring the countryside, chasing creatures and battling trainers would be all I would think about. Needless to say, this opened the door for a lifelong love… or obsession with gaming.

Like most teenagers, I have changed a lot over the years. I have lived through phases of anger, cynicism, silliness, fear and pretension. Notably, my love of video-games has remained unchanged and has only grown stronger. I love video-games for the profound experiences that they have given me, both emotionally and intellectually, nonetheless, gaming has had its detrimental effect on me, encroaching upon my interests outside of gaming, my ability to succeed socially and tackle interpersonal issues.

Wasted Time: Mainstream Perceptions of Video-Games

“Computers, long a symbol of depersonalization, were cast as ‘tools for conviviality’ and ‘dream machines.’ Computers, long a symbol for the power of the ‘big’-– big corporations, big institutions, big money-- began to acquire an image as instruments for decentralization, community, and personal autonomy” ~ Sherry Turkle (The Second Self)

When most people look at video-games, they see them as a waste of time. Indeed, while talking to my high-school peers, I discover that the general consensus is that games have grown stale and boring and are only fun when played with friends. Despite the commercial success of Wii Sports and Modern Warfare 2, the overwhelming majority of teenagers treat games as casual, social pleasure. While I have no opposition to enjoying games in this way, the sheer depth and nuance of the medium makes such a cursory glance rather disappointing. Despite the technical and artistic prowess of both independent and corporate developers, the mainstream perception of games as quick, cheap entertainment remains largely unchanged.

Video games do have their fair share of detractors. The mainstream media is well known for holding often silly and uninformed views of video games. For the most part, these pundits take video-gaming at the surface level, believing violence, not refined design, to be the main appeal of video games. This is a gross generalization that assumes that gamers are no more than a philistine population seeking to simulate violence as graphically as possible. This view is flawed, as it fails to account for the fact that several recent ultraviolent games, such as MadWorld, Manhunt 2 and Postal 2 were notable commercial failures. If ultraviolence were the main appeal of games, then the massive casual game movement spearheaded by 2006’s Wii Sports would have never started.

Ph.D student Vanessa Gorely says, “Video games are extremely prevalent in our culture, but they haven’t been paid much attention as a cultural phenomenon. Most attention has been paid to the negative aspects of gaming and not the good aspects of it.” Gorely is correct in this regard, the vast majority of people view gaming as boring, nerdy, socially-isolating or a societal threat. They do not acknowledge that gaming can be a truly enriching experience that can entertain, stimulate and entrance. Video games, particularly those by indie developers, have grown into a viable medium for artistic self-expression, indicating that gameplay is not a waste of time, but a means of personal development and life-enrichment. At the same time, there is no denying the profound effect that games have on their players and the mystery of the human-computer relationship.

 Intellectual Gaming: Using Games to Address and Convey Points

"If you think a game is 'Madden 2008,' then hey, games probably aren't art." ~ Jonathan Blow

In a 2008 lecture, Jonathan Blow said that 95% of independent game developers fail to complete their game, 95% of that population fail to make a fun and meaningful game. Oftentimes, developers design with high production-values in mind failing to design fulfilling mechanics and dynamics and arouse the desired response in the player. Blow is regarded by many to be the most preeminent intellectual in the gaming community, his 2008 puzzle game Braid is regarded to be the epitome of personal expression through interactivity in a medium dominated by multi-million dollar corporations. Lauded for its ingenuous four-dimensional mechanics, semi-autobiographical commentary on contemporary gaming, humanization of enemies and intellectual significance, Braid brought new ideas to game development, smashing the Hollywood-emulation mold that corporate development adhered to for so long. 

Perhaps Braid’s critical success can be attributed to its intellectually stimulating atmosphere and meaningful gameplay. Its ambiguous and surprising ending has been interpreted to mean a wide variety of things. From an emotional chronicle of a painful break-up to a psychological exploration of a Manhattan Project developer, interpretations are varied, thoughtful and interesting. Braid is unlike most mainstream games because its mechanics are an integral part of its storytelling whereas other games use a story to wrap together mechanics and dynamics.

Braid is not the only case for intellectual gaming. Indeed, video-games have already begun to make their way into educational institutions. The University of Calgary has already planned to add video-games to their research library. Wabash College in Indiana has already placed Valve’s 2007 puzzler Portal on its required summer material for incoming freshmen. Addressing “fundamental questions of humanity”, Portal has been analyzed by critics and compared to Goffman’s sociology book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. The character of GLaDOS, Portal’s omniscient, insane AI, is known for exploring themes of identity and conflicts between public and private selves. The fact that a video-game has made its way into a non-computer science college course signifies that video games are indeed a respectable and important part of modern culture.

Intellectualism in Mainstream Gaming: Commercial Success, Risk Taking and Satire in Grand Theft Auto

Intellectual gaming extends beyond obscure critical successes. 2007’s Bioshock and 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV were violent, mainstream (albeit traditional) commercial hits that held significant messages. Unlike the aforementioned games, which used gameplay to make their messages inseparable from the interactive experience, these games use atmosphere and cinematics to convey their messages respectively. This reliance on Hollywood-styled presentation detracts from the overall uniqueness that the interactivity of gaming affords.

This cinematic style can be attributed to the immense cost and risk involved in making mainstream games. GTA IV took 5 years and $100 million to produce. If it were to flop, then the combined efforts of hundreds of artists, engineers, marketers, administrators and writers would be undermined, causing significant economic disturbances. Realtime World’s MMO APB was a notable commercial failure, taking 5 years of development and millions of dollars. Within six weeks of its release, it was announced to be shut down due to its commercial unsustainably. Such commercial failures are why major publishers are unwilling to support experimental gameplay and champion the emulation of movies in games. The sheer number of differing voices involved in corporate game development makes it difficult for individuals to express themselves in these kinds of games.

Despite the clear distinction between presentation styles, some mainstream games still make an effort to pose challenging intellectual questions validating gaming. Bioshock received universal acclaim for its serious analysis of philosophical subject matter. It heavily criticizes Ayn Rand’s objectivism and theorizes over the ethical implications of a Randian society modeled after Galt’s Gulch. The game was commercially successful and told its story through methods unique to video games. Bioshock is considered to be one of the greatest video games ever released for its daring risk-taking and thought-provoking thematic material.

The oft-maligned Grand Theft Auto IV, popularly believed to be a celebration of violent street life, holds many redeeming values to be unearthed by deeper analysis. By depicting a realistically written, emotionally complex and humanly identifiable tragic protagonist through subtle nuances in animation, GTA IV garnered universal praise from critics. In his memoir Extra Lives, Tom Bissell extolled the game’s personally impacting environment and dialouge, writing that “[while] GTA IV’s dialogue has no bearing on its gameplay… it does make it one of very few games in which listening to people talk is not only enjoyable by sociologically revelatory” (168) Indeed, while most casual players ignore the intellectually stimulating writing, GTA IV is deserving of a considerable amount of respect in this area, particularly because of the media’s ample misunderstanding of it.

Missing Out on Life: Fulfilling Oneself Through Games (or not)

“So what have games given me? Experiences… most of which are as important to me as any real memories… I wanted games to show me things I could not see in any other medium… I wanted games to tell me a story in a way no other medium could… Then I wanted games to redeem something absent in myself… maybe all a game can do is point at the person who is playing it, and maybe this has to be enough.” ~ Tom Bissell, Extra Lives (182)

There is no denying that games hold a profound effect on the player. For heavy enthusiasts like myself, video games encroach heavily upon real-life commitments and relationships. While games may have infiltrated my subconscious and caused problems in real-life, I can absolutely profess that I cherish the presence of games in my life for many reasons.

But that is a story for another post. Stay tuned for part 2 of Explorations in Gaming: The Most Misunderstood Medium.

Five Essential Games

The following is a column that I wrote for the roundtable, reviewing games for Holiday 2009. This was a particularly fun article to write, and I thought it would be important to share it here on My Back Pages: Question the Answers.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is by far the most popular game at Stuart Hall. Noting this, Stuart Hall’s taste is regulated mostly to mainstream super-hits. For this set of reviews, I have focused on true classics in desperate need of greater attention. Enjoy.

 

PC. Half-Life 2 – Valve Corporation

Half-Life 2 is easily the greatest first-person action game ever made and one of the most atmospheric. Its dystopian near-future world is frighteningly believable and imaginative, contributing to an original and gripping story. Excellent voice-acting and facial animation are to this day unsurpassed.* The frantic combat might come as a bit of a culture-shock to those raised on Halo and Call of Duty, but brutal AI makes encounters entertaining. Nonscripted enemies will pathfind, suppress, flank and take cover, using a small variety of unique guns as well as use physics objects as weapons. The gameplay variety within Half-Life 2 is huge, each chapter capitalizes upon a different gameplay mechanic. Puzzle, squad-based, vehicular travel, turret-defense, stealth and horror elements are found throughout the game, preventing it from ever becoming repetitive. Half-Life 2's eighteen-hour campaign is one of the best ever found in a shooter, and is one that fans of the genre must experience. The game costs $20 on STEAM. It is also available for mainstream consoles as part of The Orange Box for the same price.

 

PS3. Uncharted 2 – Naughty Dog

Uncharted 2 was released to a metascore of 98 and was hailed to be the best game on the Playstation 3. The absolutely gorgeous game plays like a hybrid of Gears of War, Zelda and Tomb Raider, with the gunplay, puzzle and platforming elements from each respectively. The graphics are among the best seen on a console, its varied, colorful and photorealistic locales make for impressive set-piece sequences. Decals and textures are matched only by Crysis. Its gripping story is enhanced by fantastic voice acting and facial animation, which were the only to surpass Half-Life 2 in quality. Uncharted 2 is highly cinematic in nature, its action sequences are intense and involving, making the game fun to watch as well as play. Strong stealth, puzzle and precise platforming elements prevent the game from becoming repetitive and add variety to the lengthy campaign. Robust multiplayer rounds off the $60 package, with variants on deathmatch, team deathmatch, domination and capture-the-flag. Difficult and satisfying co-op missions make the game incredible. Uncharted 2 is this year’s most likely contender for Game of the Year and a game that shouldn’t be missed by any action enthusiast.

 

Wii. Okami – Clover Studio (Ported by Ready at Dawn Studios)

Okami is the freshest and most original action-adventure game in recent years. Intense attention was given to the games graphics, and it shows. Okami is a magnificent-looking game, using cel-shading robustly to create a watercolor/woodcut art-style, making the massive world a joy to explore. Fantastic music, gameplay and thematic content make it a particularly refreshing experience. The 30-hour story casts you as an incarnation of Amaterasu, a Shinto kami. Combat and exploration is influenced by the Zelda series, melee combat in the enormous world is done by rhythmic swings of the Wiimote, far more interesting is the Celestial Brush mechanic, allowing you to interact with the environment in any number of ways, including solving puzzles and dismembering foes. Drawing bombs, suns, moons, lightning bolts and flames and turning those into objects make for radically different gameplay. However, by far the most invigorating aspect of Okami is its story, which definitely has a Luddite edge to it. Plants and flowers flow in your wake as the player moves throughout the world and antagonists are based on some aspect of civilization, like illness or environmental destruction. Having the player restore a dead, rotting countryside makes for one of the most memorable moments in recent gaming. Okami is simply amazing and a game that anyone must experience.

 

Xbox 360: Shadow Complex – Chair Entertainment

Shadow Complex is a 3D side-scrolling action-adventure game, a nostalgic tribute to Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It is also the most inexpensive game on this list, retailing for 15 dollars on XBLA. Fantastic writing by Orson Scott Card of Ender’s Game fame powers forth this fantastic action game. Its gameplay, right down to the shooting, exploration, character development and minimap, is highly reminiscent of Super Metroid. Upgrades to the player character are numerous and hidden all over the large world. Basic rifles give way to fantastic foam guns, double-jumps, wall climbs and missiles give the player plenty reason to explore the 2D world. Shadow Complex runs on the Unreal Engine 3 and is easily the prettiest downloadable game around. This game, like Super Metroid, is short, clocking at nearly six hours. But given the low price, as well as quality and replayibility, this is easily a must-play for Xbox 360 owners looking for both retro appeal and modern advancements in 2D gaming.

 

MOBILE. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars ~ Rockstar

When Chinatown Wars was unveiled, it drew a great deal of disappointment. Screenshots made it look like a throwback to the days of the top-down perspective of the original GTA games. When it was released, all fears were proved wrong. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars despite its visual similarity to the games of old, had much in common to the recent Grand Theft Auto IV. Liberty City was still gigantic despite the 4 GB limit, with a multitude of things to see and do, driving remained fun with realistic physics and a huge variety of vehicles, changed however is the gunplay and travel, which have evolved due to the top-down perspective. Despite the glowing critical reception, Chinatown Wars flopped when it was released, selling only 90,000 units in its first few weeks. A price cut was announced and it was ported to all three portable platforms. Chinatown Wars is the closest thing that portable gaming might ever get to console-like complexity. Given its wide availability, there is little excuse not to own it.