Portable Games Roundup

I just wanted to say a few words about some portable games that I haven’t finished but want to talk about.  I’m not sure

Final Fantasy 4 DS

I finished the game back when it was called Final Fantasy 2 and I was playing it on the SNES, but I had absolutely no memories of it when I started up the DS remake.  I’m about 3/4s of the way through the plot and I think I’m suitably impressed with the storytelling.  Yeah, the gameplay very old fashioned and grindy, but the tightly focused linear gameplay is made up for by a strong story with well developed characters.  It even does the Metal Gear Solid thing of using gameplay – specifically the battle engine – in some of its cutscenes.

The World Ends With You

Another fascinating JRPG if only because the combat is an interesting mix of old school JRPG combat and ARPG combat.  Of course, the most interesting part of the game is its setting – an afterlife mirror image of Shibuya.  In a genre that’s mostly defined by fantasy, science fiction or in a pinch science fantasy, it’s just nice to see a roleplaying game set in a contemporary city with contemporary characters and situations.  The Japanese interpretation of death and the afterlife is interesting as well.

Final Fantasy Tactics PSP

The seminal SRPG.  Again, it’s been so long since I’ve played the PS1 original that I have no idea what happens in the game, but the classic “war of the roses” type storyline mixed with some elements of Japanese fantasy makes the storyline interesting to follow.  Like the early Final Fantasy games, it also uses gameplay to tell the story – in fact, most of the game’s story is told through the game engine.  The new voiced and beautifully animated cutscenes also help develop the characters and move the story along.  For whatever reason, the linear tightly focused and novel-like development of the characters and the plot just make the stories in these games very interesting even though in other games I find it mostly disappointing.

Anyway, time to gear up for Fable 2, Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2!

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

“War is hell”, as I’ve been told in many war films and games and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway does not trend far from the norm.  That’s what makes writing about the game so difficult – it’s so remarkable in its average-ness.  Now, don’t get me wrong – the game itself is solid and I actually appreciate the slower paced puzzle-like combat (know the four “fs”!) that you can’t find in any other game – but in terms of what the game does narratively, it’s just fairly lacking.

The game tells the story of a group of paratroopers during Operation Market Garden, following the story developed through the two previous Brothers in Arms games.  The fact that Market Garden was ultimately a failure, the developers of the game have the opportunity to present the darker side of the Second World War.  In fact, the tone of the game is sombre and depressing with the bombing of Eindhoven being the centerpiece of the game.  We see Germans execute Dutch civilians and we see a Dutch boy that we’ve rescued in an earlier mission killed by a German bomb.

But why doesn’t this resonate with me?  The designers chose to use cutscenes to tell the story but for whatever reason, these cutscenes fall flat.  On several podcasts, one common complaint is that the game doesn’t provide any context for the character’s behaviour – it assumes you’ve played the previous games and know these characters intimately, treating the story as if you were watching an episode of Band of Brothers in the middle of the series.  And I’ll admit that not knowing who these characters are did affect how I interpreted the story.  Baker’s struggle with PTSD and losing men around him should have been as effecting as Compton’s breakdown at Bastogne in Band of Brothers but it just doesn’t work.  I don’t know enough about Baker or the rest of the characters to be invested enough in his breakdown or any of the character development.

The designers do really try with their cutscenes though and there are several very impressive editing tricks that you’d only find in film – the reveal of what happened to Leggett and the history of Baker’s gun is perhaps one of the most cinematic cutscenes I’ve seen in gaming.  It’s just that the writing doesn’t seem to be up to par with the presentation.  The climax of the film features Baker recovering from the guilt he feels over the deaths of Leggett and the other men, triumphantly climbing atop a jeep to give the soldiers who are still alive a rousing and inspiring speech about war.  It’s a moment that should pay off, especially since it’s meant to lead into a sequel that is almost certainly going to be set during the Battle of the Bulge, but for me it just falls flat.  Even though I played through the entire game as Baker, I didn’t feel any connection with him.

Maybe like so many other games, there’s a disconnect with the gameplay and the narrative.  During the game itself, Baker and the rest of the characters are so anonymous that you see them only as pieces to be moved around the game field.  When a member of your team is hit and falls down, you don’t react and move on as if nothing happened.  Now, I understand that in a combat situation you can stop to nurse the wounded but for a man suffering from PTSD as a result of seeing men die around him, you’d think there would be some indication that these casualties are effecting.  Of course, there’s also the problem with the fact that no one really dies during the missions – characters only die in the cutscenes when the story requires them to die.  Any desire you have to keep your men alive is quickly evaporated when you realize that they won’t die anyway.

There is one “ludic” or “game-telling” narrative moment that I did find interesting.  As with most games of this nature, the first level is inevitably a tutorial that teaches you how to play the game.  Here, they get you to learn how to shoot, how to order your men around and the importance of suppression fire and flanking.  As you make your way through a hospital in Eindhoven, learning how to play the game, you eventually reach the end of the level where you are knocked down and surrounded by Germans.  The game proper then begins three days in the past.  As you work your way through the storyline, you eventually find out how you end up in that hospital.  What’s interesting here is that you end up replaying the tutorial level all over again so you know exactly what happens.  You race through the level heading toward the end where you know you will end up in a showdown with the German soldiers.  This is an interesting moment that manipulates your previous gameplay knowledge of the level in order to give you the feeling of agency.  It’s the equivalent of a film that builds to a climax that you’re introduced to right from the beginning (The Bourne Identity being one of many examples).  While this is the only example of “game-telling” in the game, it’s certainly worth mentioning.

Ultimately, I think the biggest letdown of the game is its inability to get across the “horror” of war either through cutscenes or through gameplay.  Sure, there’s the killcam with the slow motion shots of German soldiers being killed, but this almost trivializes gore and violence rather than emphasize any effect it may have on a soldier.  Call of Duty 4 showed that there are ways that games can explore war that other media can’t.  If Gearbox is given the opportunity to make the sequel that they’ve set up at the end of this game, I hope they look at games like Call of Duty 4 and try to implement some game specific narrative techniques.

Side note – they got Dale Dye to provide the voice of Colonel Sink in the game.  Now, I’m not invested enough to find out if this is meant to be the same character found in Band of Brothers, but I’m almost certain that it’s more than just a coincidence.  He may have consulted on the game and the designers may have thought it would have been a nice crossover with .

Second side note – Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts tells story of Market Garden from the perspective of the Germans.  I haven’t played the game so I don’t know how the story is handled, but it’s probably the only example of a Canadian/American representation of the Second World War that sympathizes with the “enemy”.  Admittedly, storytelling in the original Company of Heroes wasn’t all that remarkable either – mostly due to the limitations of the Real Time Strategy genre – but the fact that this is pretty much the Canadian/American version of Das Boot makes it worth considering.

Braid: An Analysis

Screen grabs are taking from YouTube videos found here and here.
(Who knew doing screenshots and captions would be such a pain?)

Also, the NeoGAF thread is here and the GameFAQs thread is here.

Now that it’s been a couple of weeks since Braid came out and people have moved on to Bionic Commando, I think we have a chance to reflect on it outside of the “bubble”. As a game itself, Braid is a great platformer/puzzle game designed to give you as many attempts as you need to complete a puzzle. Small annoyances that would make you go crazy in traditional platformers – mistiming a jump being the most egregious mistake one can make – are removed by the simple fact that you can reverse time at any point and try again. Of course, the downside is that the ability to easily retry a section also encourages a frustrating grind (I spent an hour trying to grab a star!), but I think that’s a small price to pay for the tremendous accessibility that the game gives you.

As for the “content” in the game, I really didn’t want to do a close reading of any section of the game. By now, the Atom Bomb theory has passed around the Internet and all I really want to say about that is that I’m glad more people have been exposed to the process of close reading. Present evidence, deliver argument, then conclude. For whatever reason, this process seems to be difficult to teach to undergrads... so maybe they just need something obtuse that forces them to think and to come up with something on their own. The only real problem that I have with this close reading is that it doesn’t address the larger context of the game, including the introductory books that begin each world and the events in the game itself (killer rabbits and cute plush dinosaurs?), and there may be contradictions or inconsistencies with this reading if you were to bring these elements into the fold.

What I want to focus on is the use of the time reversal mechanic and how that influences the integration of gameplay and storytelling. For the moment, let’s take the story we are giving at face value. You play as Tim, a person who may have made some kind of mistake with a woman in the past and wants to reconnect with her. Time reversal gives Tim (hey, Time without the “e”. I can’t believe I just noticed that!) the opportunity to correct his mistakes and even change the nature of causality (as one of the books points out, why are people punished for mistakes instead of rewarded for the learning experience mistakes can provide?) , allowing him to overcome several thematic obstacles in order to reach the “princess” who we assume is the girl he has been pining for throughout the game.

Throughout the entire game, you assume a level of agency that you become familiar with. Yes, each world treats time differently, but as the player you can always depend on the X button to reverse time regardless of the situation you find yourself in. Indeed, you come to expect that you will be able to fix any mistake you make in the game by pressing the X button to reverse time for a few seconds. The game wants you to have this agency because it makes the actual ending (World 1-1, not the epilogue) that much more personal. In World 1-1, you finally meet the princess you’ve been looking for. You see what appears to be the boss character, a very large man, carry the princess down to a platform above you. She jumps free of his grasp and he becomes angry, sending a wall of flame toward you from the left. In this final world in the game, you essentially must run through a final obstacle course to escape the wall of flame and, implicitly, reach the princess at the end of this ordeal. Additionally, as you play through the world, you get the distinct impression that the princess is doing everything in her power to try to help you get through the obstacle course. She’ll flip switches that raises platforms or lowers obstacles, allowing you to pass through the obstacles. In fact, perhaps in a moment that references ICO, you have to trust the princess to flip the switches for you – the wall of flame is mere centimetres away from you and the only option you have is to jump into a pit of spikes. Without any option, you make the jump and just as you are about to die, the princess flips a switch and a platform suddenly rises from the ground, saving your life and allowing you to continue through the world.


As you approach the end of the map, you see the princess approach her bedroom and as you get closer to reaching her, she falls asleep in her bed. When you jump to the space just outside her bedroom, time suddenly freezes and you lose all control of the game. You aren’t told to do anything or if anything had actually happened and instinctively, you reach for the X button because you’ve been trained that pressing the X button will fix any problems. When you do press and hold the X button, the game suddenly resumes – but instead of reversing time, time actually progresses normally. If you release the X button, the game stops and will only continue if you hold the X button again. An ability that previously gave the player a tremendous amount of agency suddenly becomes suffocating, uncontrollable and most importantly, unreliable.

A scene in which it seemed as if the princess and the player were working together in order to escape the evil boss character and imminent death now becomes extremely warped and twisted. Rather than be the valiant hero trying to reach the princess, you end up being a creepy guy standing outside of a girl’s bedroom, staring at her as she sleeps. Eventually, she wakes up, notices you and runs away from you. You try to follow her, running the same obstacle course but this time in reverse. Everything is exactly the same, but the entire scene is replayed through a distorted perspective. Rather than try to help you through the obstacle course, the princess is now actively trying to stop you from completing the course by dropping obstacles in your path. Indeed, moments where you thought that the princess was trying to save you from death were actually moments where the princess was actively trying to kill you. When you reach the end (or beginning, depending on your perspective) of the world, you see the boss character shout at the princess. While you first thought that this character was evil and had kidnapped the princess, it actually turns out that this character is a valiant knight, saving the princess from the evil character – YOU. Eventually, the princess jumps into the knight’s arms and they escape off screen. At this point, you are given control again but the only thing you can do is go through a door and head toward the Epilogue world. From this sequence, it’s undeniable – you aren’t the hero trying to reach and rescue the princess, you are the villain that the princess needs rescuing from!


There is one small example in this sequence that I’d like to point out here, because it will help explain how I come to my ultimate conclusion. As you watch the scene unfold by holding the X button, you will get to a scene that will be familiar to you. When you first encountered this segment of the map during normal gameplay, you see that the princess hit a switch that rotated a wall that was blocking your path. When you return to this segment during the “hold X” portion of the game, you see that the princess flipped this switch in order to block you from using a ladder to reach her. This is an example of what I believe is one of the themes of the game – the revisionist nature of memory. Assuming that this sequence is what “really happens” in this game world, all of Tim’s time reversal power is simply Tim re-imagining his life experience in his head. Most of us have experienced a moment in our lives that we replay in our heads, trying to figure out how a situation would have unfolded differently if we had just said something or did something different and this is exactly what Tim has done throughout the entire game. Indeed, this is why World 1-1 is the last level of the game. At this point, you are in the “present” in the game’s temporal continuity and you, as Tim, have simply replayed Tim’s memories in your head, revising and optimizing his memory in the process. Maybe Tim tried to ask a girl out and she told him to fuck off before going home with another guy. In his head, he’s able to “reverse time” and fix this memory so that he’s able to convince the girl to stay with him.



Now, for most players, this is basically the end of the game. And as it stands, this ending alone is a rather noteworthy example of how ludic and narratological experiences can work together to tell an effective story to the player. After you exit the Epilogue world, you are dumped right back at the beginning of the game. Everything appears to be exactly the same, except in the night sky, you see a group of star outlines forming a constellation in the night sky. This is the only clue that you get that tells you that there is much, much more to the game.


So what do I make of the eight secret stars? There’s the metagame aspect that’s worth looking at for a moment. First and foremost there is no achievement for getting the stars. When you complete the game for the first time, the only achievement that is listed as incomplete is the speedrun achievement. Whereas Blow wanted people to try for an optimal run-through of the game (the official speedrun time is 45 minutes for the entire game) as a challenge for the player after the game was complete, he didn’t mind if people ended up missing this second layer of challenge. In fact, going by NeoGAF and GameFAQs, there were many players who did not know about the stars until reading them (myself included).

One poster at NeoGAF suggested that this was a way to poke fun or at least acknowledge obsessive gamers who are completionists or who try to find ways to break a game/find secrets. Indeed, the first star that you can get (in World 2) requires you to sit by the game for two hours as a slow moving cloud platform scrolls to the left side of the screen. It’s almost reminiscent of that cancelled Penn and Teller game where you had to drive a bus across the country in REAL TIME (8 hours one way) and you had to sit and hold the controller or the bus would crash and you would have to start over. Now, Blow isn’t that much of a sadist and as long as you glance up at the screen once in a while, you don’t have to babysit your controller. But it’s almost as if he expected you to find something else to occupy your time as you waited to get this star and I believe that Blow is trying to put you into the headspace of Tim. Just as Tim is determined to use whatever means he has available to him to reach the princess, you are willing to put in the extra effort to reach these stars even if you do not know what the end result will be.

Of course, the real rub is that one of the stars is only obtainable if you haven’t completed the puzzle pieces in World 3. This means that if you’ve played and finished the game, you’ll have to make use of the “restart game” option and start over from the beginning. This may be frustrating if you’ve already completed the game... but much more so if you’ve spent the time to try to obtain the other stars. But I think Blow did this expecting that most players would not see that star and would have to restart the game. This not only implicitly nudges the player toward completing a speedrun, but it is also another attempt to put the player into Tim’s mindset. As you play through the game a second time, you know all the solutions to the puzzles in the game and your sense of agency is tremendously increased. Not only do you have the power to reverse time, but you know exactly what will happen in the future as well. As the player you actually have MORE power than Tim since at this point, you have full control of time. Yes, you can’t fast forward time but since you know exactly what will happen (especially in World 4 when your movements dictate the how time flows), it is an implied prescience that Blow wants you to experience as you replay the game.

This new sense of power leads to the final star in the game which, not coincidentally, is found back in the last level in the game, World 1-1. You play through the exact same scene again, with you trying to get to the princess by navigating the obstacle course, but this time there is an important difference. You’ll notice that two of the switches are immune to the time reversal mechanic (this is the “glowing green” game mechanic introduced in World 3) and that these switches block off some of the obstacles that slow down your progress. This gives you the clue that you should be able to exploit the timing of the level by flipping the switches and using your time reversal powers. If done correctly, you literally break the timing of the level and are able to get to a location in the world well before you should be able to. Again this whole sequence requires you to know exactly what happens in the world beforehand, relying on your ability to “see into the future” in order to figure out that you have to break the timing of the level in the first place. When you do this, you are able to not only reach the princess but get into her bedroom as well, as this is where you’ll find the final star in the game.


The game’s original ending is both a comment on the futility of agency, your power to reverse time ultimately does not help you get to the princess, and hints at the revisionist nature of memory, as I suggested above with an analysis of what happens in the original ending. With this ending however, agency is completely restored to the player and the “optimal” reality is the one that prevails. I’m not sure what Blow is trying to suggest here. Perhaps this is meant to be inspirational – if you try hard enough, you will be able to reach the princess after all. But it may also hint at a darker message, that when the trauma of the “truth” is impossible to accept, you’ll keep trying to undo the truth in your own imagination until you are unable to see reality at all. For me, the message isn’t what’s remarkable about the game – lots of the games have tried to impart a message to the player. No, what’s remarkable is that all of this is done THROUGH gameplay without any dialogue or without relying on a cutscene. Not only is it left up to the player to find her own interpretation of the ending (nuclear bomb allegory or not), the player also CREATES this ending. By integrating both endings so tightly into the gameplay, the player almost becomes Blow’s co-writer and is fully involved in how the ending will unfold.

Ultimately, this is why I think the game is one of the more important texts of this generation of games. Blow pushes Ken Levine’s “story through gameplay” design choice in Bioshock further, not only allowing the player to create the ending but also a chance to interpret the ending as well. If I were to ever teach a course about ludology and narratology, this game would be at the top of my syllabus. Thankfully, a PC version of the game has been promised by Blow, but even if this wasn’t the case, I would make my students purchase an Xbox 360 in order to experience this moment in gaming history themselves. Braid gives me hope as both an enthusiast and an academic that games are close to a breakthrough that will finally show that games have their own mechanical and rhetorical storytelling devices.

Indiana Jones and the Forgotten Post

Ah! So I completely forgot to post about this in my grab bag post and I'm busy working on actual writing, so I'm just going to repost my own post from NeoGAF. And hey, this is just a stream of consciousness blog for my own purposes anyway, so why not?

Here's my first post:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=331015

I'm going through a mini LucasArts adventure game marathon and I'm on Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. I really haven't gotten too far into it yet, but I think the opening has got to be one of the best designed game openings that I've ever seen.

There's no menu screen.
There's no introductory cutscene.
There's no tutorial.

The screen just starts on the room and suddenly Indiana Jones crashes through a wall as the Indiana Jones theme plays in glorious midi. Indy tells you that he's looking for a statue and without any other instruction, the cursor pops up and you have control of the game.

You slowly move the cursor around and explore the various objects in the game. You click a statue and you fall through a trap door! As the screen transitions to the next scene, credits are displayed on the screen just like in an Indy movie. This continues through various screens, introducing you to the basic game controls and the plot of the game (those evil Nazis are at it again!), playing out like the beginning of any of the Indiana Jones movies.
What's doubly genius is that these screens are all "safe" screens in that you can't die and you can take as much time as you want, so the only way you might get stuck is if you don't know how to use a mouse or you can't read English.

I don't know if you're supposed to read the manual first or if games back then didn't feel a need to hold your hand, but imagine if a shooter like Halo 3 dropped you right in the middle of a firefight the moment you started the game. You don't even see a menu to start the game or a cutscene to set up the context. It'd be such a great way to put you in the moment right at the start without giving you a moment to breathe.

I wonder, have there been any other games that just started with gameplay and no other introduction? Or is Fate of Atlantis unique in this regard?

Edit for clarification: I'm trying to think of, to borrow N'Gai Croal's term, the "game telling" version of this concept. Where you immediately start with gameplay and it is only later that the game mechanics/controls are introduced to you.

Heavenly Sword and it seems like the X-men 2 game would be other examples.

And this lead to a discussion of what the term actually meant... and, sure, if you're talking about convention "literary" stories, I definitely agree. But at some point, rightwhen the thread died, I came up with this:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=12377731&postcount=118

That's fine, but I guess I'm in the camp that believes gameplay/the ludic experience is itself a narrative mode, that learning a game and how to play a game is as much the narrative experience as the traditional elements such as the names of the characters or the plot.

Maybe I'm up my own ass (probably am), but I think most games, when teaching gameplay and controls, follow some form of Freytag's triangle - from the slow build/introduction (tutorial, first few levels) to the climax (the first time where you have learned enough about the rules of the game to put all the pieces together to defeat a boss or pass a level) to the denoument (where you are familiar with the rules so that you don't need to think about what you are doing).

I dunno. Maybe Braid has been fucking with my brain and making me over think things that I shouldn't think about.

I still believe this and I think it's a pretty interesting way to introduce someone to a game, given that most games begin with a start menu then slowly ramp you up with the gameplay and the controls.

Of course, there are the Castlevania and Metroid games , but that's not quite the same as simply throwing you in and then going back to develop your personal "ludic" narrative. The most important aspect would be the "cold open" that takes you into a game experience without any set up, menu screen or otherwise.

Assassin's Creed was close, but I think it fell into the Metroid camp more than say the Heavenly Sword camp.

Anyway, back to the grind.

A Grab Bag of Thoughts

I thought I’d jot down some thoughts on the various games I finished recently. I may revisit them eventually. I’m too tired to write up something about Braid at the moment.

Rocketmen: Axis of Evil
Part ARPG, part dual-stick shooter, this game is based on an IP created by WizKids. The only thing that I want to say about it is that the universe is one of the freshest takes on science fiction that I’ve seen in a while. It’s just a riff on 50s SF serials, but it doesn’t try to be either scientifically consistent or take itself too seriously. Flash Gordon, eat your heart out.

The only really noteworthy aspect of the game that I want to write down is the fact that it follows the recent trend of breaking the fourth wall. One of the mechanics in the game is to tap on X repeatedly in order to activate various consoles in the game – and that’s exactly what the characters in the game tell you to do. Then, the character you play will get this funny look on her face and mock the simplicity of this game mechanic.

There’s a moment at the end of the game where your “handler”, Zach, pokes fun at you for being afraid of the overwhelming odds against you. Your character replies, “Well, you’re just a NPC character! It’s not like you’re in any danger!” While not as clever as the first Psychomantis battle in MGS, but it’s a nice way to bring levity into the game and is perfectly consistent with the setting and the universe.

Star Control 2/The Ur-Quan Masters
I’d refer to SquadCast #6 for some real discussion of the game... suffice it to say, if I were to write some kind of “top 10 games list” (yuck), this game would definitely make that list. I can’t believe I missed it when it came out in the 90s (misspent youth indeed) and I’m even more surprised that no one else has tried to make a game that tried to copy the game since (Yes, there was Epic Game’s Solar Winds, and I haven’t played it since it came out... and while it was another space-shooter adventure game, it definitely was not as open or in depth as Star Control 2).

What’s so remarkable about this game is how the many pieces come together. The first game was a deeper take on the original Space War, featuring two ships going head to head in combat. Branching off from that, Star Control 2 takes that combat (calling it Melee) and builds an entire space exploration and management game on top of it. It’s not quite the 4X of Master of Orion, but the ability to influence empires and at the very least explore planets to exploit their resources gives it that 4X feel. On top of the two seemingly disparate game mechanics is what is essentially an adventure game or RPG.

If there was ever a case to be made for the idea that games are both simultaneously ludic and narrative experiences, this game is it. First and foremost, there IS a story. I won’t go into detail, but you basically have to save the galaxy from the evil aliens with the help of all the good aliens. How you do that is based on how well you explore the galaxy and manage your relationships with the alien races throughout the galaxy. How well you do this effects how the game unfolds around you – you can see the galaxy map slowly change as time passes. And of course, this effects how the plot unfolds as well – your successes in the game are directly reflected by how the characters in the game react to you, as are your failures. It’s the perfect fusion of gameplay and story, as your ludic experience influences your narrative experience and vice versa. A small example of this is the fact that when you start the game, you have a limited number of replacement crew because there are only so many human beings that can staff your ship. If you start losing crew members, it slowly becomes more expensive to replace them. However, if you complete a specific quest, you’ll be able to constantly replenish your crew for free (or close enough). There’s a story reason for the economy in the game and the game mechanic effects how the story is played out.

As for the universe and the story itself – in some ways, it shares a lot with Rocketmen in that it’s pulpy science fiction. That said the original dev team managed to create a world with so much personality that if you enjoy science fiction on any level, you’ll love all the characters in this game. The aliens range from the typical sexy blue skinned alien women to the atypical gaseous blobs that somehow managed to evolve on a gas giant. Even if you ignore the gameplay innovation, the story and universe itself is a gem that should be canonized alongside Star Trek and Star Wars.

While no game has tried to use this formula, Mass Effect did come awfully close. Though there is no ship combat, you are thrown into a galaxy that you can explore at your whim. That said there was simply no reason to go around exploring the universe unless you were off collecting items for quests or purposely trying to gain XP. The fact that travelling from system to system required a load screen combined with the dubious Mako planet sequences, I’m not surprised that most people simply ignored the exploration aspect of the game and stuck to the main story. Even then, your exploration didn’t have any effect on the main campaign (although, to be fair, a completely separate side campaign about Cerberus awaits those who choose to go off the beaten path), so the game didn’t encourage you to explore the large galaxy map anyway. And while I do like the Mass Effect universe and it is certainly more expansive than the Star Control universe, it just pales in comparison. Star Control feels alive and compels you to find out more about the different aliens that populate the galaxy. Mass Effect? Not so much (although, those Elephant-looking aliens were pretty cool).

One final point to make is the fact that the game is a product of its time. It’s HARD. Really HARD. Like all old school adventure games, you’ll want to have a pen and paper with you in order to take notes because there is no quest log or even any in game reminders of where you need to go. Also, the game world is constantly in action, almost like a Rogue-like – it’s not quite a full blown simulation, but as time passes scripted events will unfold. You can change what events unfold, but the races will do their own thing as you go about your own adventure, meaning that if you take too long to initiate the end game, the evil aliens will win and you will lose the game.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Now this one will be really short since most people should know what this game is all about. To be crass, you can call it Tomb Raider with a man... but I would call it Sahara: The Game (Yep, as in the 2005 Matthew McConaughey action film). In short, you play Nathan Drake, descendant of Sir Francis Drake, in search of the older Drake’s missing treasure. And as we’ve learned from Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, every time someone searches for some ancient, missing treasure, bad things happen.

The first thing I want to point out is that the game was directed by Amy Hennig – and as one of the few women in a position of power on the creative side of game production I just think it’s worth pointing out. At the very least, I think it’s a very big reason as to why Elena Fisher comes off as a normal character and not some kind of archetype – she’s neither a damsel in distress nor a scantily clad and heavily armed bad grrrrl.

The second thing I want to point out is that this is a game that I would rather watch than play. That’s not to say that there’s anything bad about the gameplay... it’s just that it’s not interesting in any way. The platforming can get tricky because sometimes that crack in the wall turns out to be a texture that you can’t hold on to, leading to a potentially nasty fall. The shooting can be frustrating as well, but that’s because the game is trying to encourage you to use melee attacks – the brutal combo specifically. No, the gameplay is perfectly serviceable but it’s the cutscenes that shine. Fully mo-capped and featuring great voice acting, these cutscenes play out like scenes from a big budget Hollywood film. Greg Edmonson’s brassy score (including the beautiful main theme) only add to how well produced these cutscenes are.

I’m just not sure if this is a good thing though. On one of the post GDC 2008 1up Yours podcasts, Hennig defended the use of cutscenes to tell a story, pointing to how the player can break how the story is delivered in Half Life 2. To that point, I definitely agree with her and I can see why a game director would want to wrest control from the player at certain points in the game in order to tell the story that holds the game together. But if this is a game where I’m perfectly happy watching through the cutscenes in lieu of actually replaying the game, isn’t that a problem? Uncharted isn’t as incongruous as Grand Theft Auto 4 or Metal Gear Solid 4 when it comes to using cutscenes to tell a story, but I can’t help but wonder if there was a better way to integrate the storytelling into the gameplay itself rather than rely on conventions set by filmmakers.

In keeping with the “movie” presentation, one final observation is that through some kind of technology trick, the game NEVER needs to load after the initial load. That means the game seamlessly moves from one level to another, creating the effect that you are playing one large, epic level rather than a series of smaller levels. The only way you know that you’re in a new “chapter” is when the game overtly tells you. It’s a neat trick that helps you forget that you aren’t playing a game, if only momentarily.


Well, that's all for now. I'm avoiding the Braid post because... well, my brain can't take it!

Metal Gear Solid 4: The Breast Game Ever

Wow, I thought I’d try a tortured pun and I realized that I probably should never do that again. Anyway, as I mentioned in the first part of my MGS4 review, there was more I wanted to talk about. Unfortunately, I was so self-indulgent when it came to the discussion of cutscenes it just wasn’t going to happen.

So, what more could I possibly have to write about? Well, the only other obvious issue in the game that hasn’t been done to death by other writers in their reviews – the representation of women. In a previous episode of the Player One Podcast, I believe it was Greg Sewart who made the flip comment that Kojima is a pervert. I don’t think he’s that far off base though, based on what I’ve seen in the game.

Now, I don’t want this to come off as some kind of condemnation... but because the game is so heavily invested in cutscenes, it’s almost unavoidable to draw on elements of film analysis to analyse the game’s representation of women. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that Naomi Hunter is needlessly fetishized and sexualized in the game. Let’s forget the fact that she doesn’t wear a bra or button up her shirt, because that’s just too easy. Just pay attention to the way she’s shot in the game. The slow lingering shots of her legs and her chest bordered on creepy voyeurism and are a textbook example of the concept of the “male gaze” if there ever was one. That’s not to say that the male gaze doesn’t exist in other games. Indeed, because games are interactive and many games feature both control of the character and the camera, many times the player is entirely complicit in objectifying the female body: posing Lara Croft being the most famous example.

The difference is that since these are cutscenes, this is what Kojima wants you to see. For whatever reason, he wants Naomi to be sexualized. I honestly don’t know if there’s a deeper reason behind this or if he just wants to fetishize this imaginary woman. An easy explanation is that by eroticizing Naomi’s anatomy, the player will understand Otacon’s attraction for her. What’s interesting is that there’s an easter egg in the game where the player is given the chance to stare at Naomi’s legs. When Snake drops his cigarette during the cutscene when he first meets her in her lab, the player can press L1 to enter first person mode to look at Naomi from Snake’s perspective. Is Kojima saying that Snake is attracted to her as well? Or should this be categorized with the rest of the “male gaze” shots in the game?

And, honestly, it’s not just Naomi. The Beauty and the Beast Corp is similarly sexualized. When you defeat their “beast” form and first see their “beauty” form, they crawl at Snake suggestively and the camera does its best to show as much as possible. Another easter egg here is that if you have the camera and you do not kill the “beauty” in a few minutes, the game will cut to a scene where you can use the camera on the “beauty” and have her pose like a model. Some of the shots of Laughing Beauty posted on line were obtained this way. Whereas Naomi’s objectification may be explained in terms of the story, these scenes are simply fanservice. What’s extremely disturbing is that after you make the “beauty” pose for you and finish her off, Drebin comes on the Codec and proceeds to tell you her terrible backstory. “So, this girl went around killing children because she couldn’t stand their crying? And then I just made her pose for me while I took pictures of her? Good times!”.

Another easter egg that just defies explanation is the fact that during a Codec
conversation with Rosemary, if you shake your Sixaxis, you can move her breasts around. I suppose this is just Kojima’s unexplainable “wackiness”.

What’s odd is that not all the women are sexualized. Yes, EVA was extremely sexual in MGS3 and even in her current incarnation as “Big Mama” she doesn’t mind wearing an extremely low cut shirt that shows off her bosom, there are no awkward shots that linger on her chest or any other part of her anatomy. Meryl is similarly free of the male gaze of Kojima’s camera. Indeed, while it’s almost impossible to ignore Naomi’s objectification by the directing, the scenes featuring Meryl are almost free of any overt examples of the male gaze (And at the very least, by not overtly sexualizing Meryl, her aggressive no-nonsense attitude isn’t compromised, so it’s not quite a joke that she accessorizes her wedding dress with a holster and a gun). Mei Ling makes an appearance in the final act of the game and during the briefing and Akiba is clearly enthralled by her. But his male gaze and his attempt to grope Mei Ling are chastised by Meryl, indicating to the player not only that sexualizing women is problematic, but that Kojima is aware of that very fact himself. Indeed, the representations of these three women in the game seem to run counter to how the BB Corps and Naomi are represented.

I don’t believe this contradiction is ever resolved. I suppose one could suggest that the “weaker” women are sexualized while the “stronger” women are able to avoid the male gaze, but all of the women have a certain sense of agency in the film. Naomi is the one that brings about the destruction of The Patriots, playing both Liquid Snake/Ocelot and Vamp in order to achieve this goal. The fact that the BB Corps characters are bosses in the game elevates them above all of the other soldiers in the game. So, if there is a reason why Kojima wants the player to sexualize Naomi but not Meryl, I’m not sure what it is.
It’s worth pointing out the fact that for some unknown reason, Liquid’s top soldiers are women. Not just the BB Corps, but the FROG soldiers as well. While the BB Corps’ inception is explained by Drebin as an exploitation of their extreme trauma and this explanation might be applied to the FROGs, it does seem odd that men wouldn’t make it into Liquid’s personal army. Is he suggesting that women suffer more from war trauma and thus more exploitable? Or does Liquid simply get off on having a harem of women who are heavily armed? If there’s an answer, it’s not provided in this game.

Again, I’m not trying to condemn the game. In fact, I think Meryl may be one of the strongest and most developed female characters in games today. I admire the fact that the game is deep enough to allow for the opportunity of analysis, which is more than can be said for a lot of narrative based games. The representation of women is just an issue I wanted to address, since it’s an issue that has been largely ignored in other reviews and analysis.

Battlefield: Bad Company

I’m going to put off further MGS4 ramblings for a while to talk about Battlefield: Bad Company. Bad Company is DICE’s first game with a true single player story-based campaign, relating the events of the player controlled Preston Marlowe and the other members of the eponymous Bad Company. Based on films such as Kelly’s Heroes and Three Kings, the misfits that make up Bad Company decide to take a side trip away from the war in search of gold. There really isn’t much to say about the story as presented in the game itself. It’s a story that’s relatively safe, taking place in fictional locales and featuring completely generic characters. Like the soldiers in Kelly’s Heroes or Three Kings, Bad Company is disenfranchised by the US Army, but any true anti-war or even anti-bureaucracy commentary is limited to glib one-liners. Oddly, character development itself is limited to promotion videos released before the game in the form of video diaries in which the characters explain their motivations. In the game itself, the characters are limited to their archetypes. Sweetwater is the overeducated big city college boy, Haggard is the simpleton from the south and Redford is the gruff veteran Sergeant who is days away from home. Marlowe, standing in for the player, remains as blank and generic as possible – like many other player characters in FPS games – in order to avoid imposing a character onto the player. With fictional settings and standard war film characters, needless to say that plot itself is fairly safe as well. Our heroes eventually disappear from the US Army’s radar and manage to make off with the gold.

That’s not to say that the game doesn’t offer the comedy of those films. Haggard’s obsession with violence and demolitions certainly offers a few laughs, as does the introduction of Serdar, the eccentric dictator of Serdaristan. Indeed, the absurdity of flying a gold plated helicopter was enough to get me to laugh out loud, a response that not many games can illicit from me. But, the comedy is far from biting. As David Ellis said on a segment for the 1up Show, it’s the type of comedy found in Dumb and Dumber. I don’t want to hold that against the game though. The fact that DICE chose to make a war comedy game in itself is worth praising. In a genre where most developers are trying to emphasize how realistically they can depict the worst aspects of war (the upcoming Brothers in Arms and Call of Duty games promise to be extremely “gritty” in their “dark” depiction of war), it is refreshing to see someone try something different. At the very least, it broadens the genre and perhaps opens the door for other developers to try to provide alternative depictions of war. It’s also worth noting that the video game parodies that were released a week before the game came out were amusing and a good indicator of the humour the developers deployed in the game itself.

I guess I should say something about how the story is actually told in the game. Perhaps coming off of the overly verbose cutscenes in MGS4, I didn’t mind that most of the story here is told through cutscenes either. That said, the final boss battle where you have to shoot down a helicopter with a rocket launcher (or, if you’re a bit crazy, with a laser designator) made me pine for a boss battle with an unnaturally attractive mercenary supermodel in a skin tight animal costume. I do appreciate that they managed to incorporate comedy into their level design and gameplay. I did mention the gold plated helicopter, but there is also a level which takes place on a golf course... and of course, on a golf course, there are golf carts. I will say that being chased by a Russian tank while driving a golf cart through a sand trap is a moment that I would have never imagined playing in a game. It was a ludic moment that made me appreciate how level design and open ended gameplay could create an interesting, but strictly optional, narrative.

One bit of miscellany that I’d like to bring up is the fact that the characters are supported by a faceless woman somewhere away from the fighting. I don’t know if there’s something I want to say about this specifically... certainly there are games that feature female soldiers, but I think it’s an interesting trope that’s used in games. What I like in particular is that in the game the characters sexualize and fetishize her voice. Her call sign, “Mike One Juliet”, becomes “Miss July” among the men in Bad Company, referring of course to the depiction of women in a certain adult magazine. I really don’t want to read into this too much, but needless to say, I found it interesting that it was actually addressed in the game. In Gears of War for example, it’s taken for granted that an attractive woman is giving support to the main characters in the game. I’m sure the developers at Epic Games wanted the player to know that she was attractive, since they took the time to include her in one of the opening cutscenes, but to what end? The female support voice was also found in both Rainbow Six: Vegas games, a few of the Splinter Cell games, and probably in several other games that I am forgetting.

I also feel that I should briefly touch on the gameplay. I want to leave most of that stuff to the other reviews you find out there, because having me tell you about a game’s “tight controls” is probably meaningless in a sea of reviews that write about how a game controls. I just want to point out that this game is perhaps as close as DICE will get to putting a game like Battlefield 2 onto a console. I am frustrated sometimes by the lack of buttons (weapon switching and position switching in a vehicle can be aggravating), but it’s just as fun as BF2. The only major limitation is the lack of team communication (according to DICE, this is due to latency issues) and a console player base that approaches online shooters mostly as team deathmatch who worry only about their scores. But if you’re looking for a new BF2 experience, BF:BC is definitely worth playing... at least until BF3 is released. God, I feel like I just stole that from one of an infinite number of reviews out there. At least I didn’t call the Gold Rush mode compelling.