Including the New York Public Library as a playable mission in the demo^[1] should have been a dead giveaway. As one of the signature setpieces in the film Ghostbusters, allowing players to take part in a second trip to this locale with familiar faces in tow, is essentially what Ghostbusters: The Video Game entails. It collects a series of touchstones for players to reminisce about, while attempting to tell a new story. Except the story reclaims entire sections of the film and its sequel, patching together plot points, locations and famous adversaries in what amounts to playing inside a world of Ghostbusters: Greatest Hits. You are constantly harangued by Walter Peck and the new Paranormal Contract Oversight Committee. You have to fight the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man (again). You get to destroy the Sedgewick Hotel (again). About the only thing interesting is the encounter with Ivo Shandor, the Architect of Dana Barrett’s apartment building from the first film, who remained a legend that was never really explored. In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, you discover how obsessed with the Gozerian cult he really was, as the Ghosbusters slowly uncover a plot designed by Shandor years ago, to bring about the coming of The Destroyer.

This brief incursion into Ghostbusters lore comes too late in the game, and it’s frustratingly obvious that the previous missions were filler to relive everyone’s favorite moments from the films. But as you play the game, its intentions are clear: this is not meant to be a video game as much as it is intended to be those Greatest Hits, as it was not designed for an audience who plays video games. Rather, it was created to placate fans of the movies that also happen to play video games.

As a result, both Terminal Reality and Atari are banking on this brand recognition to give the game a passing grade. Any critic or reviewer that has been paying attention over the last eight years would see this game for what it is: old, outdated, unnecessary. So why the relatively high scores^[2], respectable sales performance^[3] and praise as wistful recollections? The answer is simple: Nostalgia is a dangerous weapon used to great effect in the video game industry. It will beat people senseless – especially in a hobby that helped many people through their childhoods.

If Terminal Reality were feeling ambitious when they started the project, they could have made Ghostbusters into a game that stood beside other “open-world” ^[4] titles like Red Faction: Guerrilla, inFamous, and Prototype that seemed to be in fashion in the first half of 2009. The entire concept behind Ghostbusters is ripe for exploitation with this formula, where side-missions can be completed while following the main plot to key story-driven missions in the streets of New York City. Even the films themselves establish such a framework: the Ghostbusters are either starting out (Ghostbusters) or making a comeback (Ghostbusters II), completing small tasks on the way to fighting a greater evil. The entire film worked towards a final confrontation. This should be familiar to anyone who’s ever played a video game.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is not just another example of the lack of ambition on the part of game designers to develop a captivating product, but of the industry at large: stuck in the past assuming that the weight of intellectual property and the familiar will bear heavily on the opinions of those that play their game. Ghostbusters: The Video Game is not just old because it reuses scenes, jokes and events from the films, but also because of its unwavering approach to the game’s objectives. Its linear design is based on the most rudimentary of movie-tie ins. While the actual “ghostbusting” remains fun until the end, it’s hard not to view Ghostbusters: The Video Game as anything more than a third-person shooting gallery with proton packs. In this regard, the game fails on two fronts: it cannot provide an engaging framework for a game, and it cannot provide an engaging enough story to excuse the simple mechanics.

I was hoping for something like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, where the creators clearly took the source material to heart, and created a brand new adventure that may have borrowed from the original films, but didn’t overtly copy them. Instead, the game carried the spirit of the original source so that it wouldn’t seem out of place next to the films that inspired it. Ghostbusters: The Video Game had the potential to do this as well, and would have made the limitations of the game a little easier to tolerate. The story and script were handled by Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis – the writers responsible for the original films – and the best they could come up with falls hopelessly short of these expectations.

Ackroyd often said in the interviews promoting the game and his involvement with it that Ghostbusters: The Video Game is “essentially Ghostbusters III“^[5], or the sequel that everyone wanted but never received. And to revisit the same locations so predictably says a lot about their opinions and assumptions of the fan base. The fans want wish fulfillment, they want cheap thrills. They want the security blanket of their youth. And they got it.

The dialogue will make you laugh, and the sarcastic delivery of most lines will certainly bring you back to watching the movies as an impressionable youth. The fluidity of the dialogue is also impressive. Either the actors are drawing from experience, or more time than usual was spent in the studio. In either case, it suits the game and presents a playful atmosphere reminiscent of the films. Any scenarios intended to invoke fear are always undermined by a one-liner or wisecrack from one of the team, which is something the films did so well. However, the cutscenes between levels felt long, as if the development team were trying to assemble a movie. Except it doesn’t actually work when the game is already stripped to the bare essentials.

Apart from the infiltration of Ivo Shandor’s hidden island laboratory, players have seen everything else before. There is precious little information offered to substantiate the lore presented in the previous films. Reusing old plot points with different characters is common practice. To take Ghostbusters: The Video Game as the third film would therefore be a mistake, as I doubt any studio would support such a horrible script. And this is yet more evidence of the divergence between video games and their clumsy and pleading comparisons to the film industry: a bad plot in film is a pretty good plot for a video game, even as we “turn our brains off” as the reviewers love to justify. No one should play video games because they want to watch a movie. They would be wasting their time, and that of everyone else when they start complaining about the lack of interactivity afterward.

The depth to the system in Ghostbusters: The Video Game is through upgrades that can be purchased with money earned on each mission: better traps, four types of particle beams, modifications to the PKE meter. In other words, the most callous and unimaginative reason to ask someone to keep playing your game.

I’m willing to give Egon the benefit of the doubt for some of the weapons that were invented specifically for this game – the character was clearly a wizard with technology. They also keep with genre conventions to some degree: Boson darts are the shotgun, the freeze beam slows enemies, etc. However, simply pausing the game will allow the purchase of these upgrades. In fact, there is one mission where a new technology is suddenly activated on your proton pack in the middle of a mission, meaning you had been carrying it all along. I can understand the need for a certain technology to be available for a particular mission, but the mission progression should be designed so these upgrades could be purchased or handed out at the beginning of each. Allowing this kind of freedom to access new technology at any time removes the need for a planning phase. Even in such a linear game as this, the addition of something so simple would at least give the illusion of challenge.

Trapping ghosts is still satisfying right until the end. The game really makes you work for it. You feel the bend and pull of the makeshift equipment in your hands. With the “Slam Dunk” modification to the trap, ghosts can be captured in one shot if you Slam a ghost near a trap. In either case there is an exaggerated feeling of relief when the ghost is finally caught. You have to take a few seconds to regroup, even though there are five other ghosts floating around above you. The moment has to be savored. There are so precious few of them in this game.

A dynamic of the game that only reveals itself later on is teamwork. This isn’t as necessary at the beginning, where fallen teammates were an inconvenience during a boss battle. In the later missions, there are multiple ghosts requiring attention from your particle thrower, and even then they will require more than one person to knock it into submission. During these encounters, you need your teammates to survive. Even though a ghost may be seconds away from being trapped, you have to drop everything and revive your teammates or you will die attempting to do everything yourself. An example of this is in the Museum mission, where you must manage the ghostly possession of civilians as well as your own teammates, all the while attempting to capture the ghosts that are responsible. It’s a harsh lesson, but one that was clearly presented by the films. The war against the supernatural in New York City is not a solo effort.

In fact, starting with the fight against the Librarian partway through the third chapter, the game starts to show promise. Aside from the constant direction and commentary from your teammates, the encounters with large ghosts and mission bosses are challenging as you manage damage and try to recover teammates. It can be a frustrating system as you attempt to compensate for the middling squad AI, but at the end of each battle there is a sense of accomplishment. It’s like repeating the last 10 minutes of Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II each time. These encounters are the reason you keep playing.

And yet the game really starts to break down in the last act when travelling towards the final encounter with Shandor. It becomes difficult in the way you have to manage projectile enemies, swarming enemies, ghosts that must be trapped, and larger monsters. This is a sharp spike that throws off the previously established rhythm of the game. It is no longer about “hunting” ghosts, but fending them off with random blasts of particle beams just to get some space to do your job.

The final showdown with the mayor of New York City – possessed by the ghost of Ivo Shandor, no less – provides a two-stage battle that evokes something startlingly similar to the conclusion of Ghostbusters II. Though Terminal Reality must be given accolades for this encounter, as it is an extremely satisfying, drawn-out fight in the spirit realm, instead of the lucky shots at the end of each film that were favored in the name of pacing. The game’s plot had genuine closure, and all was right with the world (again).

So it’s quite puzzling as to why Terminal Reality assumed that multiplayer would be a big draw for people after the main game was completed, when all it really amounts to is a collection of random task-based missions that can be played co-operatively. It was wasted effort, considering that it had no hope of competing with more attractive options for online play at the time. And Terminal Reality wasn’t even responsible for this component of the game; it was contracted out to Threewave Software. Assuming that this freed up more time to be spent on the single-player campaign, the overall package doesn’t show it.

Nevertheless, there are the collective opinions of the press that must be resolved. If anyone took the time to consider what was being offered by the game, it would be very hard to justify the 78% average that the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 versions have received. Reading any number of reviews^[6] will yield the same sentiment: if you like Ghostbusters, this game is for you. But what if I like video games? No one dared look at this game critically, or in depth beyond pointing out obvious faults – it was perfectly acceptable to give the game an average score an move on, business as usual. There is no need to desecrate happy childhood memories. But sometimes there is.

Make no mistake: Ghostbusters: The Video Game is a tie-in to the films. The producers of the video game said as much: the release of the game was intended to coincide with the anniversary of the theatrical release of the first film, and the remastering of the films on Blu Ray. And yet any other movie tie-in is automatically approached with contempt by the video game press, as if these other video games were the reason the industry overall was being cheapened. Except that’s exactly what’s happening in this case. It’s just that no one wants to see it.

A recognizable piece of intellectual property can be made into a good video game – there are already a number of examples from recent years – but they, too, suffer the same fate of being intellectual property first, and a video game second. The most recent case of this is Batman: Arkham Asylum, where the general sentiment was “a Batman game that isn’t terrible.” How special developers Rocksteady must feel!

If players are happy to “play Ghostbuster”, Ghostbusters: The Video Game certainly succeeds on that crude level. But why should it get a passing grade just for fan service? It’s the same reason why video games should not be given the right of way because it supplies “a good story”^[7]. These are games, and should be judged as such from the beginning. Giving these types of games an acceptable grade assures that we we will see more of this half-hearted approach, proving once again that we are destined to recycle the same material with better graphical fidelity. Being satisfied with “good enough”, assures a future of being fed leftovers from the trough of nostalgia.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game isn’t long, and so despite the numerous faults that have been pointed out here it doesn’t take long to finish. The thrill of wrangling ghosts and capturing lasted until the end, even with the spike in difficulty. The production is also well done: Atari spared no expense in obtaining the music and original actors (they even dug up William Atherton to play Walter Peck). All the earmarks of a work inspired by these movies is there. But this is looking through the Ghostbusters Yearbook, and we’re all grown up now, and the Ghostbusters are old friends that aren’t as interesting as your remember them. Ghostbusters: The Video Game could have put a familiar face on the proven, comfortable sandbox/”open world” formula. Bust ghosts with your pals Venkman, Stanz, Spengler and Zedmore. But do it inside the structure of a game that is well-equipped for such a theme. Invent your own story. Save the city of New York again, on your terms.

So the question for the player becomes: Am I interested enough in a recycled story to continue?

Even though Ghostbusters: The Video Game takes place in 1991, the game is still stuck in its own past as a hopeless artifact of the 1980s. A retread referencing old jokes, old plot points and forever doomed to be a nostalgic curiosity. If Terminal Reality had worked on making a video game instead of a finely polished homage, there might have been something in Ghostbusters: The Video Game worth praising. As it stands, nostalgia is the selling feature and weighs heavily on the game’s proceedings. For some, that is obviously enough. However, complaining about a lack of advancement in video games, while cuddling with one that is mired in our collective childhood means there is really only one person to blame. And there will be no sympathy.

This is the second part of a two-part series. Read “Part 1: Discovery”

I started thinking about writing full length reviews of video games in late 2001. I was still at University. I was going to make a website and came up with some generic name I thought was edgy and reflective of what I wanted to accomplish. It was going to cover more than video games. I had some things to say about popular culture.

After talking to some friends at school about my vision, there was some interest in this collaborative effort. There was already a zine floating around our faculty, but it was horrible. It was a soapbox for people frustrated with school and mostly contained their annoyingly priveleged views on an “oppressive” society. Instead of being provocative or insightful it was lampooning popular culture with pedestrian observations and half-baked philosophy. I could do better.

Of course, when you rely on friends to produce something for free, it doesn’t happen unless you get on their case about it. And I wanted to keep my friends. Plus, the whole “trying to graduate from University with a degree” thing. The project died on the vine, and I gave up the dream. For the time being, anyway.

I graduated from school the next spring, and started playing video games while I looked for work. My comptuer was getting old, and at this point the most it could muster was Unreal Tournament and Civilization III. I read the issues of PC Gamer that were mailed to me to keep up with the industry and the hobby I loved. I hung out on the internet a lot, and read too many terrible reviews that people actually got paid to write. My head started filling with ideas again. I could do better.

I started thinking about another website. Something that would capture my love of video games and provide an outlet for my brand of scathing commentary. I would call it “Tales of a Scorched Earth”, because I am an insufferable Smashing Pumpkins fan. I would adopt the handle of “Gatmog”, because it sounded cool and it provided the mystery any good internet handle should have^[1].

During this time, I started playing and thinking about video games as if it were research. I built a new desktop PC after I got a job and some money. I had a new purpose: I would record my thoughts on video games, write some reviews and share them with others. The availability and ease of use of self-publishing tools made this easier than I expected. I thought I would be doing something different than the typical weblog, and I used that as inspiration.

I wrote a lot of reviews and embarrassing posts during that time^[2]. I published most of them. It was a start.

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002)

When Medal of Honor: Allied Assault was released, it recieved endless praise from the entire video game industry. The word that reviewers liked to throw around was “cinematic.” The movie reviewers liked to reference was Saving Private Ryan. Which was completely natural, seeing as how Spielberg himself had something to do with the game. But this was the start of a recurring problem with video games.

With the success of the Medal of Honor franchise, everyone wanted to tap into this new sub-genre. We started to see a lot more games use World War II as a setting. And the people that loved every single one of them would soon turn on them as fickle audiences often do. And not because the setting had nothing new to offer (Brothers in Arms proved that^[3]), but because it was simply a skin designers would stretch over the same tired FPS formula. Will World War II games ever be fashionable again? Will they ever explore anything deeper than gun-toting heroics? Maybe we’ll see a bunch of games about Iraq in 40 years that leave out all the bad parts, too.

I didn’t actually get to play Allied Assault until later in the year, when I upgraded my desktop. In hindsight, this was fortunate, as everyone was over the initial hype and playing Battlefield 1942. I played the Omaha Beach landing and took part in what everyone called “the most intense experience you will ever encounter in video games.” At the time, I agreed with these hyperbolic reviews. And I still do, mostly. It is intense. It is absorbing.

But is it accurate? And, even though we already know the answer to that, is it right to give these games praise for offering a sterilized simulation rather than realism?

The World War II genre is simply a manifestation of the gaming industry’s obsession with “cinematic presentation.” Big budgets and bigger expectations encourage developers to create the equivalent of Hollywood’s summer blockbusters, in the hopes that this will somehow contribute to the validation of the medium.

However, by doing this you have now have reviewers who base their opinions on how games reference the “source material”, which are movies, and are themselves not entirely genuine. No one who reviews one of these games understands what happened out there on the battlefield. You can’t expect a veteran to play this and give their solemn nod of approval^[4]. They fought so we wouldn’t have to. Why do we insist on reliving these horrible events? Why do we call it a game?

Allied Assault got me interested in the history behind the events of these games. I started reading about World War II, and the famous battles and operations summarized and retold by its various missions. I wanted to know what it was really like. I read the first hand accounts of Allied soldiers who were just kids thrust into the front lines and expected to carry the weight of the free world on their shoulders.

In Allied Assault I had autosaves and quick reloads when I died. After reading some of these books, I found the whole concept disturbing. At this point, I wanted to study these games. I wanted to record and categorize the effect of this genre on people’s impressions of World War II, and war in general. I wanted to prove how out of touch our generation was, and how these events are being perverted by an industry.

And yet with all that introspection, I was ensnared just like everyone else the following year by Call of Duty^[5], designed by key members of the 2015 team who left EA to create Infinity Ward. This was a game I could get behind. You weren’t Rambo, you had buddies standing around with you joining the fight for freedom. See how much personality they had? See how everyone reacted when they died?

I wouldn’t articulate these feelings for another few years, in an article I wrote for The Cultural Gutter^[6]. I detached myself from the spectacle of it all. I thought about those 20 minutes spent in 2002 trying to beat the Omaha Beach mission in Allied Assault, and how I was annoyed at the number of attempts it took me to complete. Indirectly, these games still had a lot to teach me.

Rise of Nations (2003)

I played Civilization II along with everyone else in University. I stayed up way too late for “one more turn”. I tried out Alpha Centauri after Sid Meier left Microprose to form Firaxis in 1996. I felt that Civilization III was a richer game than its predecessor and probably the best in the series, even though the critical reception for Civilization IV has long since overshadowed it. When I heard that Brian Reynolds was leaving Firaxis to form Big Huge Games and was planning to make a real-time Civilization, I was a little shocked. Would this be a travesty or the breakthrough crossover that everyone had been waiting for?

I got Rise of Nations the week it was released. I played it for at least three months straight. I introduced it to friends and acquaintances that had never played Civilization, and whose experience with Real Time Strategy was the brute force reactive tactics of StarCraft and Command & Conquer. I watched as they succumbed to the spellbinding combination of civilization building and front-line battles. Tales of a Scorched Earth was almost ready and this would be the first review I would write.

My review for Rise of Nations became an obsession. I was struggling with the review style I would use on my website, as I wanted to avoid the type of product summaries that everyone else slavishly followed. I had to pick apart this game and figure out what made it work so well. I wanted to trace its influences back through video game history, and put words to Reynolds’ brilliance in how he selected the best aspects of these influences and combined them into a satisfying whole. As I struggled to find my voice, I also tried to develop my own rubric for reviewing video games with words and not numbers. While I was familiar with the criticisms surrounding either approach, I just wanted to write.

I never did publish that review; instead, smitten with the recent purchase of a Game Boy Advance I finished and published my review of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. A more simplified effort, and what I thought was the safer bet. I didn’t know what audience I would acquire, and I didn’t have confidence enough in my detailed analysis of Rise of Nations to think anyone would find it worth reading. Going back to read the Castlevania review is disappointing. I could have set the tone for this website a lot earlier.

Rise of Nations is stilll one of my favorite games. But it also remains one of the most important in the development of this website.

Metroid Prime (2002, played in 2003)

One of my friends got an XBox and Halo: Combat Evolved the day they were released. I was still in University. Naturally, I had to see for myself what everyone was getting excited about. Microsoft entering the console market? Preposterous!

Halo was a first person shooter, designed to be played with a gamepad. As an overzealous PC gamer^[7], I looked upon this game as an abomination. How could anyone get used to this? Nudging an analog stick provided nowhere near the same responsiveness or precision as a mouse. There had been numerous attempts prior to the XBox to bring FPS to game consoles, and this effort would be no different. I’d give it a try, just to say that I played it. I made it a third of the way through the co-op campaign in two sittings. You know, to humor him.

A few years later, Halo would be identified as not only the XBox’s “killer app”, but the game that made consoles a viable destination for FPS. With the introduction of XBox Live, people were playing Halo 2 online like I was playing Unreal Tournment a few years prior. This was it. The end was coming.

I refused to legitimize this shift in attitudes towards console gaming, even in light of what I called “PC Defectors”: developers and gamers who were growing tired of the PC as a platform, and moved over to the XBox for a more streamlined and hassle-free experience.

Back in late 2003, the Gamecube was subjected to a massive drop in price by Nintendo. It clearly couldn’t compete with the PlayStation 2’s stranglehold on the market, or the unexpected rise in popularity of the XBox. The Gamecube had a limited selection of 1st party titles, but no “killer app” that would sell consoles the way the Grand Theft Auto and Halo series did for the PS2 and XBox. At this cheaper price, Nintendo would settle for being someone’s second or third game console. This is how I got in.

I had heard about The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, Metroid Prime and Super Mario Sunshine. I knew they were good games, and reason enough to own a Gamecube. However I found myself connecting the most to F-Zero GX at the time, because I had so many great memories surrounding the SNES version. For $150, how could I go wrong?

Well, I was wrong. About the title I bought the console for, anyway.

Metroid Prime caused an uproar among fans of the series. Like everyone else I was astonished at how such an iconic side-scrolling action game could be transformed into a first-person shooter.

Metroid Prime was the game that proved me wrong about FPS on a console^[8]. Retro Studios made a PC gamer feel right at home with the Gamecube controller, creating an accessible blend of action and adventure in a vibrant new environment, while still retaining everything I enjoyed about the old Metroid games (even the backtracking!). The combat may have been made easier with the lock-on feature, but the controls were forgiving enough to allow me to get comfortable with the idea of using a gamepad to move and jump and shoot instead of the trial-by-fire approach to Halo’s brand of action. Metroid Prime may not have been a true run-and-gun FPS, but it allowed me to get comfortable with the concept. There was nothing to fear about FPS on a console.

While those sentiments were sincere, I still remained faithful to the PC. My aversion to console gaming wouldn’t be dispelled until much later.

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (2004)

Like everyone else, I bought Half Life 2 on the day of release. I can’t say my excitement was of Diablo II-proportions, but it was a day that would cement Half Life into the video game collective conciousness, after attracting a cult following since the original’s release. It would also mark the launch of Steam, which would bring Valve’s authentication servers to their knees. Half Life 2 redefined acceptable linearity in FPS by creating a compelling narrative driven by the player^[9]. I fully acknowledge it as one of the greatest games ever made.

Unfortunately, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines had to compete with the blockbuster release of Half Life 2. Being the first game to use the Source engine, it was rushed to coincide with Half Life 2’s launch, and it showed. The textures were plain and uninspiring, the facial animations stiff and inhuman, and there were numerous game-crippling bugs. Players and reviewers thought this was reason enough to overlook the game. There was Counter Strike: Source to be played, after all.

This would be devastating to the sales and critical reception of the game. It was Troika’s last effort before shutting down in February 2005. It was also their greatest achievement.

As soon as I finished Bloodlines, I wanted to play it again. This was a game that captured everything I loved about the tabletop RPG, and about computer RPGs in general. It was an example of what these games should be striving for. The voice acting was superb, and the dialog felt completely natural and engaging – something I wouldn’t encounter again until I played Mass Effect. I loved Bloodlines unconditionally, and as a result it changed the way I thought about video games. If a game is deeply flawed, yet so perfectly displays an aspect that defines the genre, it should still be recognized. Maybe I had too much of a personal investment in this game, but I made a point of advocating it to whoever I talked to. I even called it the best game of 2004 when everyone else was handing those accolades to Half-Life 2^[10]

In early 2005, I got an email from someone who read my review of Bloodlines. Up until then I had received a few emails since starting the website from random visitors with mostly disposable praise or criticism. The useful feedback usually came from the comments section after each post. I appreciated every single one.

This email, though. It was from someone who had been turned off of Bloodlines by all of the negative press surrounding it upon release. He saw no reason to pursue it.

That is, until he read my review.

At that point this person, whoever they were, completely validated my existence. I wielded the power to influence people to play good games; I wasn’t just screaming into the void with opinions no one cared about. This is the most valuable piece of feedback I have ever received in the entire life of Tales of a Scorched Earth, and I will never forget it.

After that I knew my purpose. I would not be content to simply play video games and write up a review. I wanted to critique them. I wanted to contextualize them in our culture, and provide more than just references to other games. I wanted to cut through the hype and evaluate a game on its own merits, not popular opinion. I wanted people to recognize the flawed ones that deserved better.

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is the reason this website still exists.

Gears of War (2006, played in 2008)

When the ad campaign started for Gears of War, I was filled with seething rage. My allegiance to PC gaming was as strong as it had ever been, and seeing Epic use their Unreal Engine to create what appeared to be a third person shooter in some darkened and grunge-layered science fiction setting felt like a betrayal of the highest order. These were the same guys that brought us the brightly colored and meticulously balanced Unreal Tournament 2004. What started with Halo would soon completely reshape the landscape of first person shooters and multiplayer gaming on the console. It was a sobering revelation, and I despised Gears for perpetuating this trend.

Time passes, people have children, and they tend to unclench a little. Maybe that’s all I needed.

In the summer of 2008, I bought a laptop to replace my desktop. In hindsight this may have forced my hand in the decision to purchase an XBox 360. But I’ll get to that.

I got Gears of War for my PC, because I wanted to try it out for myself. I already had a XBox 360 controller from my time with Assassin’s Creed, and I used the HDMI-out to plug my laptop into the TV. It was an instant XBox 360!

I played through most of the campaign. Visually, the game was a lot more detailed than what I originally gave it credit for. The duck and cover, shoot and run mechanics flowed naturally, and I was able to get a grip on the control scheme for the most part. But something didn’t sit right. I tried with the mouse and keyboard, but it felt sluggish and unresponsive. I didn’t like the story, or the neverending stream of gender stereotypes and macho overcompensation coming from my television. I gave up on Gears of War. I moved on to something else.

In November 2008, I played Horde mode in Gears of War 2^[11]. It taught me to use the 360’s controller for shooters, and revealed an “endless mode” with an intensity of play that stripped the game down to its basic elements. I loved what I was experiencing.

I went back to Gears of War on my PC and finished it. I then started to write one of the longest, most positive reviews I have ever written at Tales of a Scorched Earth^[12]. Playing the game long after it was released I could ignore the press, and write what I truly felt about the game. Writing the Gears of War review was the most fun I’ve had since starting Tales of a Scorched Earth.

So I bought an XBox 360. I had to be able to play Gears of War 2, you see.

I was wrong about Gears of War. It is a prime example of the exploration of video games’ basic tenet: kill or be killed. It is Space Invaders with a Lancer, and yet it refines a mechanic for FPS and third person shooters that would be shamelessly copied by the video games that followed it.

Gears of War taught me to slough off platform evangelism. If there is a good game somewhere, I should play it. I dispensed with any rhetoric I had written in the past^[13]. I would focus on the games themselves, not get caught up in the fanboy politics that accompany them. I revisited a pact I made with myself shortly after starting this website: I will write here until I have nothing more to say about video games.

And since expanding my horizons with the XBox 360, I have a lot to say about video games.

“If you loved the films then this is the game that you have been waiting for.” – Extreme Gamer

“If you’re a fan of the movies this alone is largely enough to look past the game’s failings.” – Total Video Games

“If you dug the movies, there’s no reason that you should be disappointed with Ghostbusters: The Video Game.” – IGN

Reading the recommendations^[1] for Ghostbusters: The Video Game (2009) is infuriating; the reviews that avoid hauling out these useless tropes are in short supply. Though I can’t blame the reviewers entirely – it’s a function of the industry, and we’ve been programmed to tolerate it. The video game industry has an entire sector dedicated to parading our childhood out in front of us whether repackaged (just look any major XBox Live release), or bundled on some compliation disc. And it always seems to garner a wistful response from the video game media.

Yeah, I remember those times, too. They were great, weren’t they?

And we all know what happened with The Phantom Menace and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. After the initial euphoria wore off from years of waiting, we saw these endeavors for what they really were: cash-ins by creators who had lost touch with their creations a long, long time ago.

So why Ghostbusters? When you think about it, it’s been close to 20 years since a proper Ghostbusters game has even been made^[2]. Ghostbusters is the next logical target, waiting like some vein of precious metal to be exploited. Is Ghostbusters: The Video Game intended for the demographic of gamers who are slowly losing interest in the hobby because it no longer speaks to them? Digging up a beloved franchise is the easiest way to draw this audience back in; it’s clearly working for Hollywood lately^[3]. There was also plenty of turmoil surrounding who would actually publish Terminal Reality’s tribute. Originally to be published by Sierra, the merge of Vivendi with Activision in 2008 ejected Ghostbusters: The Video Game into publishing no man’s land. The internet erupted with righteous fury. It was obvious why people wanted this game: it represented their youth, a comeback of sorts for a franchise that never seemed to get the treatment it deserved.

The game was eventually picked up by Atari, and released last month. Which also happens to be the 25th anniversary of the 1984 theatrical release of Ghostbusters. I think the whole thing was staged.

From the outset, Ghostbusters: The Video Game has nostalgia working to its advantage. Like video games themselves, Ghostbusters was created during an era of consumable culture, of iconic characters, action figures and Saturday morning cartoons. That’s why Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Transformers and G.I. Joe still resonate with us. It provided characters and worlds that were so distinctive, entire product empires were built upon them. We were being exploited then; we just didn’t realize it. And now they’re back for more.

Ghostbusters II (1989) for DOS was my first (and last) video game experience with the franchise. I remember the game being frustratingly difficult, but it still managed to give the impression that Activision had created a kind of simluator. You would go on ghost busting missions, collect slime for experiments, earn money for new equipment – but limitations in technology resulted in a game that felt patched together with action sequences and needless puttering around in the laboratory screen. The game structured the missions around the main plot points of the movie, but the effort to design something different than the usual action game was there. Or maybe that’s just me being nostalgic.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game starts with you as the nameless “Rookie”, following around the veteran Ghostbusters Ray, Egon and Winston. The developers spared no expense in recruiting the film’s original actors to reprise their role in the game. The animated sequences and one-liners will elicit a laugh or two. At first, I couldn’t stop staring at the flashing lights and details on the proton pack. It was hypnosis. I couldn’t believe they had created the proton pack exactly as I had imagined it. But before critical blindness induced by nostalgia is allowed to set in, the game introduces its brand of action.

The structure of the mission included in the demo feels uncomfortable at first. You are hunting a ghost; the game doesn’t present you with a steady stream of opposition. Instead, you walk around staring at your PKE meter and wait for the arms to go horizontal. This was clearly the more faithful approach, but the presentation doesn’t make for an exciting video game. The controls are typical of third person shooters, but stripped of all recent conventions like leaning, taking cover, and crouching. Because you aren’t using a conventional gun, the game uses an “overheating” mechanic similar to Mass Effect, where fire must be controlled with bursts from the particle thrower. The manual venting option allows you to cool down your proton pack instantly, and follows a rhythm reminiscent of the active reload in Gears of War. There are other types of beams that can slow down or stun enemies, but these are just ornaments dumped into the game along with paid upgrades to make it appear deeper.

As a game, Ghostbusters doesn’t really have a lot to teach you. You are expected to go through the motions, listening to Egon’s instructions or Ray’s reactions to what’s happening. You fire the particle thrower and you destabalize ectoplasm. Yes, this is a Ghostbusters game.

I’ll admit, Ghostbusters still managed to hit me where it counted: it tapped in to that feeling of being 10 years old and wanting to be a Ghostbuster, to strap on a proton pack with the quack scientists that somehow managed to save New York City. Once again, nostalgia is wielded by the video game industry to great effect, making the game seem better than it actually is.

The initial impressions of the design clearly showed it was dictacted by a philosophy that only required it to be passable. Fans would be placated as their favorite characters and memories of the films suddenly materialized on screen to interact with. This tempted me to reject the game as so much patronizing bullshit. This skeleton of a design that wanted to push all the right buttons left me feeling that maybe this was the start of another trend, where nostalgia itself is a feature of a video game.

And then they got one thing so undeniably right.

What does it feel like to trap a ghost? Ghostbusters: The Video Game makes sure you know. I surprised myself with how positively I reacted to the action; it was the most fun I’ve had with a video game in years. (And this includes blowing up large buildings with perfectly placed charges in Red Faction: Guerrilla). The game lets you feel like you are wrangling a ghost at the end of your proton beam. Moving the ghost into position over the trap, the failed attempts, working together with the computer-controlled AI – Terminal Reality has constructed the essence of trapping a ghost. This was the film’s signature moment. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man will be what is remembered, but capturing ghosts was what we wanted to do when we were younger.

Ghostbusters then becomes an interesting specimen in the video game industry’s assault on our nostalgia, because it captures the moment that matters while making it feel so legitimate.

This is a Ghostbusting simulation. And it is the only one of its kind. For that I have to give the team at Terminal Reality some credit: they may not have laid the groundwork for an exceptional game, but I take their homage to the fabled franchise of our youth as an act of sincerity. If only Hollywood could be as respectful of our memories.

I can only speculate whether this sentiment is built to last for an entire game, or will fade after the tedium of the rudimentary combat and repetitive missions set in. Even though I already know the answer, I feel I owe it to my 10 year-old self to give Ghostbusters: The Video Game a fair chance. And that’s probably what Atari was banking on.

When Red Faction: Guerrilla’s friendly tooltip “Hit LB while near a wall or an obstacle to take cover” popped onto the screen, my eyes were rolling to the back of my head in pre-emptive disinterest. But I played through the demo anyway, and discovered there is something more to this game. Or at least, developers Volition deserve a lot of credit for making it seem that way.

For its use of the ubiquitous duck and cover dynamic in third-person shooters, Guerrilla still plays more like Lost Planet than Gears of War. The controls feel a little too loose and imprecise. The “steady aim” is simply a zoom-in on the aiming reticule’s current position, instead of the solid over-the-shoulder view you get when aiming in Gears. The weapon switching mechanic was implemented contrarty to convention, too – the obvious choice of the D-pad was passed over in favor of the right shoulder button to bring up a selectable menu mapped to the four thumb buttons. It takes some effort to get used to, and often caused accidental weapon switching due to the additional step in selection and the buttons in close proximity to each other (unlike, say, the radial menu used in F.E.A.R. 2). It’s almost as if Volition wasn’t paying attention. However.

Despite being a bit clumsy in the way it integrates taking cover and gunplay, I felt like I had more freedom to pursue the objective in the demo for Guerrilla. Gears of War always made a point of herding the player through each level, to ensure the action was strung together seamlessly so the player could get back to using those incredibly refined controls and firing that lovely Lancer. Guerrilla, on the other hand, has a broader scope in mind. It presents an “open world” for missions to be completed. Another one of those review-ready, game design marketing phrases.

I can’t really blame Volition for trying to do this with Guerrilla because of their success with the Saints Row series. It’s a design decision that could effectively ruin the franchise for fans of the original FPS Red Faction games. However, it’s clear that Volition thought about how best to implement this to maintain the existing subject matter in the way Guerrilla is presented, and I think they got it mostly right. At the beginning of the demo’s mission, I never felt that I was being forced in any particular direction except to reach an objective. I could sneak around until I was spotted and the colony’s soldiers were alerted, or run in guns blazing. There is no health pool; rather, the game uses the popular method of regenerating health when taking no damage. Aside from the flexible approach to the mission, Guerrilla still follows many of the other current conventions of the third-person shooter genre, and I had to wonder where it was going. It didn’t apply any one aspect of the game’s dynamics especially well, and in the first few minutes of play was in danger of losing my interest. So I started breaking things with my hammer.

One of the features that made Red Faction such a landmark in PC gaming was its showcase for the Geo-Mod engine, which was released shortly after “ragdoll physics” (a.k.a. Havok) entered the game reviewer’s vocabulary. With the introduction of Geo-Mod, we had to read “destructible” as well. Guerrilla provides the latest version of this engine, with results that have actual impact on the game’s core mechanics.

Volition was wise enough to include the best examples for the use of this engine’s capabilities at the start of the level. Because every single environmental object can be destroyed in this game, there is always the risk of losing cover, which is now an essential part of combat. Charges can be thrown to blow up the side of a building and expose your position, or that fenceline you were using to corral troops into a choke point could be cut down by heavy machine gun fire from an enemy support team. Since there are vehicles available in this game to cover longer distances, these can be driven into a bank of explosive containers to cause a distraction or take out larger structures. It also follows that cover can, in effect, be created from debris resulting from explosions or collapsed structures. This is in stark contrast to a game like Fracture (2008), that only permits this kind of activity in areas where the designers wanted you to do it. Combat in Guerrilla often becomes a spectacle with this ridiculous display of physics, but there are environmental implications that directly affect the way it progresses.

Guerrilla also provides a suitable challenge. On Normal difficulty, there was always a risk of instant dealth if you weren’t under some form of cover – even if it was simply peeking around a corner or aiming through the window of a building. That alone made me think about my actions, and resulted in multiple attempts because of my sloppily executed plans. I actually played through the beginning of the demo about 15 times, but most attempts were used to test the responsiveness of the AI and gauge the damage I recieved with the “run and gun” method. I was even convinced that it was reasonable that the entire colony’s garrison was out to kill me – I was the lone rebel that would upset the balance bewteen them and the subservient colonists. And this is where the game gets really fascinating.

The mistake that many action games make is dropping the player into the middle of a situation and expecting them to take care of it on their own. The “One Man Army” phenomenon has been around as long as video games – probably cemented by Wolfenstein 3D, and simply reinforced by every shooter that has come out after it. Call of Duty, one of my favorite games of all time, made a point to move away from this general design. Especially in the face of the Medal of Honor series, which always seemed to revolve around one guy turning the tides of war in favor of the Allies. While the AI in Call of Duty was occasionally suspect (and likely the reason that Brothers in Arms introduced active direction of squad AI in WW2 shooters), the game always made sure there was someone by your side, fighting the good fight with you. You could protect your squad mates, but if they died they were almost immediately replaced with someone else and no emotional response from anyone. Guerrilla tries its best to avoid these conventions.

Morale is used as an environmental influence on the NPC colonists that are distributed about the map. There are colonists everywhere who see you, a member of the Red Faction, as the one that will unshackle them from the oppressive regime of the EDF. Blowing up EDF outposts, destroying EDF propaganda posters, killing EDF soldiers and causing general havoc within the work camps will increase morale in the area, which decreases the hold of EDF over the colonists. Similarly, if you kill one of the colonists during a firefight – even if you’re in the process of protecting them – the morale of the colony decreases, and they will be more inclined to run and hide than stick around to see the outcome. The missions in Guerrilla are all to further the cause of the Red Faction, and by extension increase morale. When morale in an area is high enough and the bullets start flying, a colonist might stoop over an EDF soldier’s corpse and pick up a gun to join in the fight. You might be the catalyst for the Revolution, but it’s clear Volition wants Players to know they don’t have to see it through alone. This is a much needed dimension in a game that on first glance (including my own) could easily be labelled as another copycat.

Red Faction: Guerrilla initially appeared as a game I should be reserving the typical scorn for in the way it mechanically repeats the trends in third person shooters. But I found reasons to keep playing, and I’m glad I persisted. From start to finish, the mission had a genuine flow to it: sneaking around turns to calculated street fighting turns to lumbering around in bulky mechanical armor, which ends with jumping on the back of a truck and firing a gun in a rail sequence. While it may have been contrived by today’s standards, it didn’t feel forced. Where previous installments were typically FPS-oriented and designed for a PC audience, this is a game that seems to want to take advantage of these recent trends in game design and provide its own flourish to the formula. Sure there are missteps, but it was abundantly clear at the end of the mission I played that Volition is trying to evolve this series. And I want to see where it goes.

Wanted (2008) was a certified entry into the category of brainless entertainment. It is gun porn with bending bullets, for those that still enjoy watching movies with physics defied at every turn. Wanted expressed every subjugated office worker’s fantasy of escaping the life they have made for themselves by settling. Yet despite its pandering to such puerile fantasy, Wanted still worked on some level as a joyride through an adolescent’s brain after they’ve been given a gun and permission to set things right in the world with it.

After I saw the movie, my first thought was where is the video game? This is material positively ripe for exploitation with the medium. Forget The Matrix, because Wanted paints that overwrought philosophical morass with spattered brains and spent casings.

There is one scene in the Wanted film in particular that takes headshots to a new level of disturbing: Wesley, the main character, shoots a man in the eye, jams the muzzle of his pistol into the gaping eye socket and continues to shoot at the remainder of his adversaries through the back of the dead man’s head. How he is able to drag the body attached to his gun like that is a question saved for the same people who thought up the flying leap at the beginning of the film, or how someone is able to shoot bullets with another bullet – but this is beside the point. Wanted: Weapons of Fate could have capitalized on the graphic violence and physics-bending gunplay. But it didn’t. Instead, it comes across as a reheated misson-based shooter that copies the latest trend of duck and cover with bullet-time effects.

The best developers GRIN could come up with for someone’s introduction to the game is running from the cargo area of a passenger plane to the cockpit, while some guys with guns block your way. Who are they? Are they the bodyguards of the man you just killed? It’s a passenger plane, so there’s no way it would be a political figure. This obvious question is never answered. The game just wants you to shoot, and ogle the bullet curving and slow-motion as you jump from cover to cover. And settle.

The controls are clumsy. They ignore conventions set by previous games. The primary reason I even set aside time for this game is to see how they implemented the bullet-bending mechanic that was made so incredibly fascinating by the film. It’s there, but it’s fucking terrible. Bending bullets should be seamless. I should be able to fire a bullet around the corner at hidden adversaries without an early onset of carpel tunnel syndrome. Directing the curve with one of the analog sticks while holding the right shoulder button and releasing it to fire is contradictory to the regular fire, where you actively pull the right trigger. The angles of bullets are also limited. Yes, you should be governed by your current position, but I want more flexibility. Rotating the curve of the bullet feels incredibly closed in, almost as if the flight path was dictated by the environment and not your character’s viewing angle. And you should be able to have a distance gauge, to be able to move the curve closer or farther. We are working in three dimensions here, right? There was also little regard for materials used for cover. If I want to shoot at a guy behind a wooden crate, the bullet should pass through. Or at the very least, the crate should be destroyed after a few shots. This is basic game design, GRIN. I have only seen one portion of the first level and already the game is behind.

There is a crippling lack of creativity in presenting the film’s gratuitous violence in this game. Instead, Weapons of Fate plays it safe and creates a generic third person shooter. Except we don’t need any more of those. Take the licensed property seriously. You are supposed to be an assassin with preternatural skill in this game. How about planning missions out, like it was in the movie? Stalk the quarry, gather intel – fight off minions to get to him if necessary. Kind of like Assassin’s Creed. Make the final assassination satisfying by creating a varying set of moves and skills to use, that should come with being an assassin (Not like Assassin’s Creed). The scope of this game feels so limited, I can’t help but feel that it was a complete waste of the license.

Weapons of Fate should feel glossy. It should have the top notch production and attention to the details of killing people in impossible ways that were in the movie. I want to see teeth flying out of mouths when I pistol whip them. I want to see a trail of brains coiled around a bullet when I shoot adversaries point blank (thank you, Team 7). Wanted could have been the gaming world’s next Soldier of Fortune. Instead, it settles for the uninspired goal of joining the Gears of War and Killzone club. But why? It had a solid premise to build upon that gave ample opportunity to create a shooter needing no excuse for egregious violence.

There are three difficulty levels for this game: “Pussy”, “Assassin”, and “The Killer”. It’s pretty obvious which one reflects the developer’s ambitions.

My first exposure to Gears of War was a commercial that aired in late 2006 featuring Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World”. It was an awkward insertion of a popular song for what appeared to be a grungy, blood spattered action game for emotionally stunted adult males. If I heard that song in, say, a Final Fantasy commercial, that would have been entirely justifiable – predictable even – for the series’ melodramatic tendencies. But watching these juiced-up football players bedecked in pock-marked bulky armor fight off what appeared to be zombies, or insects, or insect-zombies to such a mopey tune was a jarring spectacle. What message was the advertisement sending me? Was I supposed to feel sorry for these battle-weary soldiers pressing on in some city decimated by war to defend the human race? Were these men actually sensitive to the death and destruction around them? My first response was that it was merely a ruse to get me to think this game would be something different. It wouldn’t be about killing endless waves of the faceless alien invader; rather, it would explore the human condition and man’s response to being thrown into a war he didn’t want to fight, but was damn well expected to end.

After about two solid hours of playing the game, I stopped thinking so hard about this. Gears of War is not a statement about the atrocities of war in modern times. The arrangement between Gears of War and its player is much simpler. The game inscribes upon the player the desire to fire a gun – repeatedly and with extreme prejudice. It encourages hooting and hollering and much chest-thumping after each challenging firefight. It revels in the act of shooting a weapon so much that it becomes the only reason you come back to the game. And the game leaves you no other choice but to love it in return.

Gears of War has become a kind of figurehead for the “hardcasual” movement – genres traditionally for the hardcore adapted to be accessible – to the point where anyone who likes it must obviously be a brickheaded cretin and have no taste in video games. It’s always the fate of any successful title, and feels a little more petty every time it happens. But to dwell on that point is to miss the game’s biggest strength: it allows itself to be picked up by almost anyone and have its essence immediately tapped by the Player. That this experience can be enjoyed by the hardcore and casual alike is a feat worth recognizing.

Halo ushered in a new age of shooters that were adapted for the console; Gears of War is the only shooter I have played since that managed to create controls that I feel perfectly comfortable with. Cliff Bleszinski has mentioned that he was inspired by the shooting controls of Resident Evil 4, but Epic has not just improved them as they have perfected them, creating a template that all console shooters should adhere to from this day forward. Playing the PC version allowed the use of Mouse/Keyboard, and I did try it for a short while, but I found myself switching back to my Xbox 360 control pad. They felt jittery and their cold precision took me outside of the game. I felt like I was cheating myself of the experience of playing the original game as it was intended.

Gears of War isn’t just about running into an area and shooting everything in sight. Well, not totally. Yes, the game is on rails as you are coralled through corridors into each new area. But Gears breaks up this motion by employing a duck-and-cover system that slows down the action into bite sized exchanges of gunfire. Working with this mechanic is the Crimson Omen, which is just a fancy name for a damage indicator at the centre of the screen. Take enough damage in a short period of time, the screen turns red and you’re dead. This seems to be a pretty ubiquitous concept in the design of modern shooters, but in the case of Gears of War it’s entirely appropriate. It allows the focus to remain on shooting, because instead of constantly referencing a health bar the primary objective is to survive – instant death could be at any moment. It’s another example of how the game forces you to live in the moment. You’re getting shot at – take cover. Find a good position to return fire. Move on to the next objective. It implies an urgency in the game’s pacing. You don’t want to stop the forward momentum.

Much criticism has been directed at Gears for being unoriginal, and not much of a challenge since taking cover isn’t always required on the lowest difficulty setting. That may be true, but where Gears excels is the delivery. The repetition in the dive-for-cover, crouch, peek, aim, fire, crouch, fire pattern in each encounter makes it second nature, to the point where the game takes on a natural rhythm. I have yet to see a more meticulously crafted refinement of the genre. Every one of the game’s features revolves around shooting a gun, or facilitating the act of shooting a gun. Take cover and aim, or take cover and blind fire to suppress an enemy. It makes reloading an active distraction. Instead of reflexive button pushing, Gears introduces the “Active Reload” where you can reload faster or gain damage bonuses for a perfectly timed reload button press. Mess up the timing, and it’s precious seconds before your gun is usable again. It makes you want to focus on reloading to get it right.

Of course, there’s the Lancer. The Lancer represents a landmark in weapon design. It is a gun that I used for the entire game. Even when it was out of ammo, I used the pistol. I didn’t want to drop it for fear of losing this essential appendage. Never before has a weapon’s melee attack been so incredibly satisfying. In first person shooters, melee is often just using the butt of the gun to push enemies back, to buy some time and get a good shot. It might even work. With the Lancer, there is a genuine feeling of comfort knowing that the chainsaw bayonet is always available for an instant kill. Successfully biting the Lancer’s chainsaw into the flesh of the Locust, their black blood spraying across the screen with Marcus providing the guttural growl and the chainsaw buzzing, always buzzing, until the Locust finally falls. These types of theatrics are simply externalizing something that was felt by every PC gamer since using the chainsaw in Doom, and as such are completely necessary.

The setting of Gears of War might as well be in the Warhammer 40,000 universe; the trivial reasons behind the conflict on the fictional world of Sera and the character design for the Gears are clearly influenced by it. By the end of the game you get the impression that maybe the Locust weren’t invaders, but were always there, awakened by bloodlust to exterminate the encroaching humans. The Gears are just dirtied-up Space Marines sent out to do the heavy lifting – and clearly enjoy it. Having the player portray the anti-hero Marcus Fenix, who makes it clear from the start he has no respect for authority, simply reinforces who this game is aimed at. For co-op, the game introduces Dom: a long time friend of Marcus and his wingman for the entire game. While two more members of Delta Squad are added later – the sarcastic Baird and showboat Cole Train – you spend most of your time in game with Marcus and Dom.

Both the appearance and behaviour of these characters are parody of actual humans, and yet they work because of the game’s subject matter. As a result there’s a certain charm to the way the characters are exposed in the game. Marcus is always grumbling about being the Army’s errand boy. Dom grounds the game with humanity in his quest to search for his missing wife. Baird always has a wisecrack and often saves the day with his mechanical know-how, and Cole Train is either talking smack or cutting loose with a “Whoo!” that would make most pro wrestlers blush. These attributes are instant gratification, and do not require any further investment in the characters. Because Gears of War fully subscribes to the less talk, more action approach. And it does that so very, very well.

Gears of War presents a bleak landscape that has been decimated by war. There are only a few colors on its palette that are all too familiar to those experienced with the id software school of level design. There are plenty of destroyed buildings and burned out cars to create a vast supply of cover, choke points and sniper nests. When the game goes underground into the realm of the Locust, the same drab tones are punctuated by lakes and rivers of bright green imulsion, an apparently valuable substance that was never fully explained. The way Gears of War weaves in and out of these locales is as seamless as the way you duck in and out of cover.

The flow of this game is almost perfect: there is barely time to breathe, but you never feel overwhelmed. The action is brilliantly paced in between the spartan in-game cutscenes that deliver only the bare essentials, so the game gets you back into the action where focus belongs. You get the feeling that it is only you and your squad fighting this war, and this ridiculous situation is made worse by the nature of the missions you are forced to go on. Retrieve this item, repair this structure – as if Delta Squad was really just a gang of intergalactic repairmen. But these are reasons that were thrown into the mix because the player needs an objective in this type of game. Simply taking territory and killing everything on the map isn’t incentive enough for players, according to Epic’s designers. Because they studied video games, and they want to show the player that they understand the needs of the action gamer. They want the player to feel like they have accomplished something, represented by a boss battle or blowing up some random piece of machinery. This dangling carrot – or even the prospect of a payoff – helps drive the action forward.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always result in the most satisfying encounters. Much has been said about the inclusion of a driving mission that features another appearance of the darkness-loving Kryll, where you are tasked with driving a vehicle that cannot move and use its weapon at the same time. I can see what Epic was trying to do here: create a driving mission that actually has some tension in it, so the need to keep driving is always there to disguise a set of shitty, unresponsive controls. I could shoot a Lancer all day long, performing Active Reloads to the tune of The Presets’ “Let’s Go”. Seriously. The natural flow of the game was broken by a very clumsy sequence that serves only as an irritating obstacle that must be surmounted before the shooting and chainsawing can resume.

The squad in this game is essentially Marcus and Dominic. Cole and Baird show up from time to time for the larger setpiece battles, but you will always be depending on Dom to watch your back. For the most part, Dom’s AI is serviceable. He will defend objectives, take cover when necessary and try not to get himself killed – too much. So when depending on Dom becomes hazardous (or pointless), the use of cover and less brazen tactics will assure survival in the single player campaign. When incapacitated, squad mates resuscitate themselves when all Locust are cleared from the area anyway.

What’s more impressive is the adversarial AI. In fact, it is often shockingly methodical. Just when you think you have the perfect position and start taking pot shots at the Locust, they suddenly see what’s happening to their comrades and come after you. They will suppress and flank – just like your own squad is doing – to get to your position. They will pick up weapons from their fallen brothers, and will often be equipped with the same things your own team is.

This was a brilliant design decision by Epic, because with it they have effectively dispelled all preconceptions about First Person/Third Person shooters as merely exercises in target practice. The Locust are equals on the battlefield and behave as realistically as you would expect in the context of the overall game’s mechanics. They will all at once seem organized and efficient, while brandishing the kind of fearlessness that is frightening in any enemy. With that said, what really bothered me was the Locust’s uncanny ability to sense when I was aiming the Longshot sniper rifle. In well hidden positions, I very rarely could get more than one shot off before they all started ducking or running right towards me, even if members of my squad were the more immediate threats.

This frenetic exchange of tactics results in a new kind of firefight; conflicts that broach new realms of intensity. I could probably stop writing at this point, and simply say that Gears of War is about firing a gun in a series of well-orchestrated firefights that make you feel like thumping your chest or barking like a wild animal after each battle is won. It brings out both the best and the worst in people that play video games. But this game deserves more than that. So I must continue.

Gears of War establishes its formula early on, because it wants to give casual players the most complete representation of the game so they won’t be intimidated by the introduction of new features or a change in pace. All of the tools available in the war against the Locust have been used by the end of the first Act. The player then hands themselves over to the game’s story, where they are exposed to various setpieces, more challenging areas to fight in, bigger monsters to kill and the frat boy banter between the members of Delta Squad.

The extra levels in Act 5 for the PC version of the game lead in to a battle with a Brumak – a creature previously only revealed through the game’s cutscenes. It feels gratuitous in the context of the overall game, but the buildup to this encounter is almost palpable, to the point where there is no other choice but to include the Brumak in a money shot that almost overshadows the endgame sequence (almost). Defeating the Corpser was only pushing it into imulsion; fighting the Brumak was a legitimate contest. It’s a shame that because of the callousness of Microsoft and Epic owners of the Xbox 360 version of the game will never get to experience this. Though the game’s AI is once again the reason for the encounter’s difficulty – Dom would often get himself stomped by the Brumak after running right up to it.

After the fight with the Brumak, the resolution of Gears of War starts with a battle to get onto a freight train carrying the Lightmass bomb that has managed to elude the grasp of the Gears. It’s not a very subtle metaphor for the climax: Marcus and Dom must fight their way through the cars of this speeding frieght train on a collision course with their final objective.

RAAM, a General in the Locust army, is waiting with the bomb. It’s actually a bit of surprise, because the last time this character appeared was in the game’s first Act when he killed off Kim, which made Marcus the leader of Delta Squad. It’s strange plot device, as if Epic was trying to tie the beginning and end of the game together. I never felt I was out to get RAAM in the game; I was always in pursuit of the next objective. But the fight with RAAM is necessary for closure. It is also incredibly hard. Not just because I was constantly worrying about whether Dom was going to get his ass curb stomped again, or trying the avoid the Kryll immediately drawn to any position I took up. This final confrontation is made difficult because you can’t just pull out The Best Weapon (there is none), take cover and chip away at RAAM from a distance. This fight forces you to use every single tactic you learned while playing the game up until this point. Killing RAAM is a fitting end to the game, because it makes you feel you like you have defeated the game itself, and all it has to offer. It is a perfect culmination.

At the very least, Gears of War positioned itself comfortably next to Halo as an original, exclusive and highly bankable IP for Microsoft’s console. But it also brought accessibility to a genre with an unassuming execution of controls, refined game mechanics and deliciously simple objectives. I didn’t realize how much I loved Gears of War until I started explaining the game to others. These wide-eyed, passionate and often one-sided conversations would basically be reduced to the following statement: Gears of War will make you feel like a man.

I have a list of my favorite games of all time always in my mind when I play. It is constantly referenced and compared as I gain new experiences through video games, though it is rarely updated. Gears of War helped me get past my contempt for the trends of video game culture and its influence on modern video game design, and accept the game for the achievement that it is. The shameless machismo and gun pornography may capture a different audience, but the polished production and unwavering focus on its goal assures Gears of War a position in the halls of video game legend.

Anticipating Resident Evil 5 was clearly a mistake. After playing Resident Evil 4 twice and subsequently labeling it “the most overrated game of 2005″, I should have known better than to expect anything different from a sequel banking on its progenitor’s critical and commercial success. But I can hardly be blamed in full for this misconception after all the posturing in the demo’s press release citing Halo and Gears of War as influences on its enhanced control scheme. This is only slightly true, as playing through the demo’s two available levels would painfully reveal.

The actual controls used in Resident Evil 5 share more in common with Resident Evil 4 with a few additions, but they are still clumsy and unnatural. Sure, one trigger is AIM and the other is SHOOT, but how about that awkward inventory selection screen? The D-pad can be used to quick select weapons, but there’s no on-screen menu or feedback like in Gears.

What is clouding the issue – and I explain this in my lengthy analysis of Resident Evil 4 – is that these controls are new to the Resident Evil series, and as such are only praised by fans who had to deal with even shittier controls before. But to ignore all the advances that have been made in console-based shooters in the last four years is to say that they don’t matter, and that the average gamer interested in getting into the series had better start learning some new controls. This is especially relevant now that Capcom has basically abandoned the horror aspects of the game and created a simplified shooter.

Contrary to what the designers at Capcom may think (and some fans, even) slow-turning tanks are not fun to control and only induce frustration, not fear. For the entire length of the series, Resident Evil fans have been making excuses for poor controls to the point where people actually stand up to blindly defend them when they are questioned. These controls have not adapted to genre standards, despite publicly referencing them.

The series is no longer scary. Resident Evil is not a horror game anymore, it is a third-person shooter. Why were enhancements made to the controls in Resident Evil 4? To make it easier to kill things. If killing things is more important than developing story or tension, then you have made a shooter. Except these controls were only half-realized. You can’t move and shoot; Even Dead Space, a game widely recognized as being based on Resident Evil 4, allows you to slowly move your character while aiming a gun. It is not unrealistic to expect a human to be able to do that, perhaps with reduced accuracy – and this is reflected in most games. You must be aiming your gun to be able to reload. There is also a context-sensitive melee system that makes no sense when you are surrounded by a pack of zombies. There should be a melee action button for whetever weapon you are holding and that’s the end of it. I should not have to equip my machete.

Resident Evil 5 certainly makes the most of the XBox 360 hardware: the visuals show serious improvement over Resident Evil 4, especially with the main characters. And that’s probably the only positive thing I can muster about this game. The Zombies/Infected as a collective are boring. They seem more human than ever before. Even Resident Evil 4’s denizens were more exciting because decapitating them or shooting limbs off would reveal an enemy that could smack you around from afar with evil-looking tendrils. In Resident Evil 5 the “zombies” are eager to run in for the kill, but stop suddenly in the general vicinity allowing you to queue up that laser pointer and blast away.

Resident Evil 5 is vanilla; it is unoriginal and it is playing it safe. Co-op may be where games are gravitating towards, but even that is not preventing this demo from being some of the most unexciting gaming I’ve ever experienced. Make me scared again, Capcom. Return to the horror roots of this franchise and stop trying to compete with shooters. There are already too many of them.

I’ve been playing Dead Rising for the last few weeks, and must give credit to Capcom for capturing what it’s like to actually be threatened by a crowd of zombies. Sure, shooting a gun is about as satisfying as punching myself in the side of the head, but at least I can pick up a baseball bat and swing that for a while. In its current form, Resident Evil is offering nothing more than a bunch of slow moving targets to aim a laser pointer at. I never liked Resident Evil 4, so maybe I was a bit naïve thinking that Resident Evil 5 would win me over. This game is for Resident Evil fans, and they can have it. For a tedious exercise in survival horror, I’d rather go back to Dead Space.

If the hype surrounding Horde mode in Gears of War 2 was to be believed, it is the only reason you need to own this game. It made me wonder if the gaming press had finally lost it, by eclipsing a retread of the previous single player campaign with what sounded like some clever variation of multiplayer. In his review of Gears of War 2, Tim Rogers writes:

Let’s go ahead and mint a brand new law to be obeyed from here on out by all those seeking citizenship in the kingdom of videogames: if your game isn’t fun enough to be enthralling in the context of an endless mode, nothing else about it means shit.

Is this an exaggeration, or an epiphany on the elegance of the game mechanics behind Horde mode in Gears of War 2?

I had the opportunity to play both the single player campaign and Horde mode over the weekend. The single player campaign starts off in almost the exact same fashion as the original game (Hospital = Prison). After the first chapter it felt too familiar; this was nothing new, and I can hardly get excited about a few new weapons. From what I’ve read, the story of Delta Squad in their endless battle with the Locust doesn’t have much to offer either, but this is an action game and I was too busy falling in love with the controls again to notice.

I’m still making my way through the PC port of the original Gears of War, and one of the stand-out aspects of the game for me are the controls when played with the XBox 360 gamepad. The third person shooter is always a dubious proposition for me as a PC gamer – especially noticeable when compared with my recent adventures in Dead Space – but Gears is one game that perfected them on the first attempt.

After a few rounds of Horde, I felt myself getting even more comfortable with these controls. The bursts of action enclosed in encounters of increasing difficulty forced me to be quicker with each wave of Locust; with only two of us playing I had to be. I stopped trying to reach for a mouse. I felt myself being programmed.

Horde mode strips away the missions and the story and the meaningless objectives that take you from point A to point B. It dumps players into a multiplayer map and throws a varying collection of Locust against the players. There is only one objective: survive the onslaught. The Locust increase in number and difficulty, mercilessly, until you get through all 50 waves. Or you die. It is you versus the game itself.

As a result, the game’s mechanics are front and centre. Everything available in the game is here for use and is on display and open for criticism. As such, the controls are revealed to be every bit as good as I originally thought. The concepts that form the very core of playing Gears of War are fucking brilliant in their simplicity. This is not a tactical FPS that gets bogged down in implementing what can only be called video game realism. Nor is it pure action, that is satisfied in putting a big gun in your hand and asking you to repeatedly pull the trigger.

Instead, Horde lets the player experience the best parts of Gears of War over and over again. Duck and cover, suppressing fire, flank, chainsaw the living fuck out of anyone that gets close enough to do so. And even when you die, it’s still pretty enjoyable. You managed to survive one more wave.

By Cliff Bleszinski’s own admission Gears of War 2 will almost certainly never see the PC; and for that reason I feel the sudden need to own an XBox 360.