Prototype is excess. It is what happens when game designers grow up with American comic books post-comics code and the type of Japanese animation that is more interested in overblown displays of power than telling a story. It is a game with rules that are designed to be broken at every turn. The player is rewarded for brazen and barbaric tactics. In Prototype, there are too many abilities and limitless power, yet no loyalty to an ideal. Like X-Men‘s Dark Phoenix, Alex Mercer is granted godlike status with no one to stand in his way. The game revels in bloodshed and in selfish pursuits that amount to little more than breadcrumbs on the trail of some government conspiracy. Prototype is advertised as a “superhero” video game. But Alex Mercer is no hero. He isn’t even an anti-hero. He is a plague on humanity. And at the end of it all, after everything he has wreaked upon the city of New York, this descriptor proves to be the most accurate.

After a few hours of play, Prototype will come across as a patchwork of unfinished concepts. On the one hand, it offers up such a varied selection of powers and skills that it will suit any playing style, and in theory adds levels of complexity to completing the tasks that are presented to the player. Yet on the other, Prototype provides two completely overpowered vehicles that will get any job done a lot faster, without the strategic use of Alex’s talents. This is a game that needs rules put in place. While I wanted to figure out other ways to approach Prototype‘s challenges, the winning strategy was to cause enough havoc to summon a strike team, and then steal their vehicles. Aside from some fairly engaging boss battles where vehicles were not options, the challenge in Prototype is the player’s own restraint.

Prototype suffers the fate of similarly themed films that are released in the theatres at the same time. The Playstation 3 exclusive InFamous covers the familiar “regular person becomes super-powered entity” theme as well, and the games were often compared to each other in the video game media circuit. This comparison was unfair, because aside from that one superficial quality they are completely different games. The most important difference being that InFamous approaches the situation with a morality angle – about as complicated as the one in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast – but still, it’s something to shape the behavior of most players.

The most logical comparison to Prototype is actually UbiSoft’s Assassin’s Creed. They are free-roaming games set inside the walls of a city, with optional objectives scattered about that can be completed in between the story-driven missions. The movement options are equally flexible, yet more amplified in Prototype – but then you’re supposed to be a superhuman. Subterfuge also plays a large role, in that your identity must be kept secret under most circumstances and to infiltrate some objectives. Of course, once you’re spotted you may as well prepare to kill everything in sight in Prototype. In Assassin’s Creed, especially near the end of the game, this kind of carelessness results in a quick death, as you are pursued by what seems like the entire city.

Prototype suffers as a concept because it is an old game. The appearance I can live with; despite the bland textures, monotonous architecture and aging graphics engine it’s not completely horrible to look at. Where Prototype shows its age is the underlying design. It could have worked five years ago when the “open world” trend was still being explored in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III‘s success. However this is 2009, and people have come to expect certain things from their “sandbox” games. Prototype smacks of a developer that is still playing catch-up to the design philosophy that lets players create their own experiences. Instead, they hope that all the stuff they included in the game – the variety of powers, the gratuitous violence, the numerous missions – will distract from the design of a developer that is still experimenting with the concept instead of refining it based on the games that have preceded it.

Yet there is something strangely fascinating about Prototype‘s ability to exaggerate everything. Whether it’s jumping 30 feet into the air from a standstill and landing in a crater, running from sidewalks up the sides of the world’s tallest buildings, or bringing down helicopters with a giant tendril, Radical Entertainment are constantly referencing the superhero as interpreted by an adolescent male. He’s full of angst, he has limitless power, and he is here to fuck shit up. The driver behind the whole story – discovering who was responsible for Alex’s condition – constantly asserts his hatred of authoritative figures and the selfish desires to find out what happened, no matter what the cost in human lives. Even Alex’s appearance – a fashionable leather racing jacket with hoodie that’s always up over his head – just externalizes the immaturity of the character¹.

In any game with an “open world”², the narrative will always suffer. So the game includes missions that must be completed to further the plot, unlock new areas or powers, or because the developers think this is A Good Idea. What Prototype does well is make these story based missions as clean and concise as any of the side missions, where parts of the “Web of Intrigue” are revealed through short movies. The Web of Intrigue consists of memories absorbed from the many civilian and military characters inhabiting the city. The similarities to the Weapon X project were startling – right down to the grainy footage that was used effectively in the X-Men films to depict pieces of Wolverine’s past. Some of the side missions require you to obtain these memories, while others can be gathered from people you find wandering the streets. None of them are truly disposable, as they all provide a small piece to support the story being told by the main mission. The fact that they are incomplete and so short allows them to be found at any time without sacrificing the narrative. However, the story consistently appears to be penned by an angst-addled teenager, making some of the events that transpire a little tough to accept without rolling your eyes. Alex’s need for information is one of the central themes in Prototype, but you’d never know it with the game’s unwavering focus on the violence that must always transpire.

Despite the game’s perceived openness, the actual execution of these side missions is immersion breaking. For example, if you are tasked with killing a certain number of soldiers within a given time limit, they will descend on your location once you get to the mission area. However, whether you succeed or fail in this mission, the military will suddenly disperse and it will be as if nothing ever happened. There is no high alert; the military aren’t even aware of your presence unless you break your disguise.

Where this system really breaks down is how the rewards are structured for completing the missions. Even though I enjoyed running around New York causing mayhem with no repercussions during the side missions, the experience points received don’t come close to the rewards for completing the story missions. So unless you just want practice with Alex’s various powers or are a completionist and want to obtain all parts of the Web of Intrigue, halfway through the game when Alex is loaded out with most of his special abilities there is no reason to pursue them any longer. It’s not like you’re saving people and there is some intangible reward for completing a mission because it was the right thing to do.³

Though I have to give Radical some credit, because they tried their hardest to keep the story out of the way of the player’s experimentation with the game’s environment and Alex’s powers. Because there are so many things that Alex can do, it’s as if they expect players to occupy themselves through mass killing and exaggerated acrobatics from the tops of skyscrapers. This can be broken up by few timed missions where you have to race across the city, or glide from the tops of the building to hit a target. These non-destructive missions can be pretty fun. But their marginal nature ensures the player knows that’s not what this game is about.

At the beginning of Prototype, the player is given a bit of background before being placed into what resembles The End of Days. Buildings throb with corruption, smoke fills the air, bodies and rubble line the streets. Around you, the people left standing shamble around like zombies and the remaining military garrison level entire city blocks to stem the tide of a viral outbreak. Alex has every ability in the game at this point, and you are given no other objective except to defend yourself in the chaos. Claws come out, and slaughter ensues in a shower of blood and severed limbs. Earthquakes erupt at your feet as you pound the ground with oversized fists. This is a glimpse of the future, as the remainder of the game will be told as a flashback. It’s another take on the Metroid or Castlevania approach where a fully equipped avatar is given to the player right away to hold their attention and instill a singular purpose: become this character.

At every turn, Prototype wants to convey this limitless power through Alex. He can smash tanks with his mutating fists and leap from building to building without even having to fly. And yet Radical Entertainment felt the need to give Alex such a prodigious list of abilities, that some even cancel each other out. Why would you worry about levelling your bare fistfighting skills, when you have the Hammerfist that can level people and vehicles alike? You can glide, but once you’ve maxed out the jumping and Air Dash abilities there’s really no need for gliding to quickly get across the rooftops of the city.

Aside from vague references to Alex’s condition being the reason for his powers, there isn’t any explanation given as to why he is able to do these things. How does Alex’s condition fit into gliding, the whipfist, or his ability to conjure spikes from the ground? It seems that the expectation of the designers is that you’ll want to play with this character simply because there are so many things that he can do.

Then there is the disturbing ability for Alex to absorb any human – whether infected or not – into his body. The “Consume” power adds health to Alex and gives him the appearance of what he absorbed, and the entire City’s population becomes a bottomless well of health regeneration. As if killing people indiscriminately wasn’t enough, innocent bystanders are a resource to be abused by the player in their pursuit of more death and destruction.

Prototype exhibits a total lack of regard for human life in almost all aspects of play. However, the most fascinating aspects of the game were the stealth and subterfuge elements that were inserted as if to counter the constant aggression from the player towards the game. Since Alex is a wanted man, it is essential that his powers aren’t used in the open, civilians aren’t killed in view of the military or the military be engaged directly. Disguises are easily obtained by Consuming any NPC in the game. A lot can be accomplished in disguise: whether it’s infiltrating a military outpost, hijacking a tank, or just trying to blend into a crowd after being noticed. Gaining the “Patsy” ability later on is ingenious: instead of just keeping your identity secret, you can actively call out civilians or soldiers as “The Enemy” for a quick distraction. As you can imagine it doesn’t end well for them.

The implementation of the Disguise system is impressive; you can disappear almost instantaneously as long as you can find a covered location to hide and change your appearance. In fact, evasion itself becomes a game once a strike team is alerted to your location. When Alex is fully equipped, running away from a strike team over skyscrapers, diving into alleyways and grabbing civilians to change your appearance can be extremely gratifying, and resembles the many escape sequences from Assassin’s Creed. And yet the game doesn’t really encourage this resolution because you are rewarded more experience points for killing the strike team rather than avoiding them. It’s this straightforward approach to conflict that begins Prototype‘s collapse under its unusual need to constantly parade every method of destruction imaginable in front of the player.

With all the planning that went into Alex’s multitude of abilities, Radical still felt the need to include controllable vehicles in the form of tanks and helicopters. This was a grievous miscalculation on the part of the designers, as it undercuts one of the game’s key themes: providing ultimate power through Alex himself. Vehicles detach players from this philosophy as they impart the easiest way to complete any mission. Start killing people to attract the attention of the military who will summon a Strike Team, steal their vehicles, and total annihilation of the opposition isn’t far behind. Near the end of the game when the missions become tougher as most of the city is infected and your identity is harder to disguise, it becomes second nature to run to the nearest tank and start plowing through the crowd. Prototype is no longer a superhero game; it is Grand Theft Auto with tanks.

Even the story missions don’t pressure you to use your powers. While some may force you to purchase an ability to proceed, you don’t actually need it; it’s just a way for the designers to help unskilled players make the mission more manageable. It’s not like there is a roadblock preventing you from physically proceeding, like in a Metroid or Castlevania adventure. There are no rules in how to advance Alex’s abilities; the open character development system allows players to purchase any of the abilities as they become available through the course of the game. But because there are so many, and they are all but overridden by vehicles, what is the incentive for players to spend any time developing the ideal character build? Aside from additional health points and the vehicle piloting skills, there’s really no need to focus any attention on the other skills except to get past the story missions that require them as prerequisites. Alex can do some amazing things, and the idea of perfecting combinations and devastator attacks is certainly appealing. But when there is a skeleton key for every single objective in the game, the player’s experience is short circuited by making the easy route so accessible.

Radical Entertainment wanted to convey power; they wanted to show Alex as an elemental instrument of destruction. Regardless of the loose connections to a story that reveals his origins, he has no allegiance to a cause. He will kill and maim and destroy until he finds what he is looking for. About halfway through Prototype, I started to question the game’s motives and messages. Between all of the carnage and explosions and chaos, is there a message? Or is Prototype exactly what it seems: a playground of death and destruction, even worse than the criminal fantasies of the Grand Theft Auto series?

When I’m running through the streets of New York, I can kill whoever I want, whether for sport or to Consume them for health. I might attract the attention of the military; perhaps even cause them to chase after me. But if a strike team arrives, there is no risk of me being captured. There are two outcomes: either I die fighting, or I kill the entire strike team leaving countless victims behind (innocent and military alike) and receive an experience point award for this result. It’s not like being chased by escalating police forces in Grand Theft Auto; in those games, there is more of a chance of me dying. The only real solution to avoid the wrath of police pursuit is escape. In Prototype, I am granted the powers to overcome an entire army. There is no risk of failure, only inconvenience.

Prototype gives no constraints to the player, and no moral compass to let the player know where they stand in the game world. There are no penalties for killing innocents or the military aside from attracting attention; instead, you are rewarded for killing people indiscriminately with health or experience points. Alex’s motives are selfish, and everything in his way is expendable in the search for the reasons behind his condition. It’s a teenage power fantasy horribly unbalanced in favor of the player, where great power comes with no responsibility. Prototype is a game desperate for limits and rules; we have already advanced past the playground stage in open world games. Prototype only serves as another example to illustrate how much the lauded “freedom” aspect of sandbox games are taking on negative connotations.

Upon inspection, Alex Mercer has no personality, either. He is rage, he is angst, he is a plague personified. He is actually one of the most reprehensible characters I’ve ever played in a video game. Nevertheless, Prototype tries its hardest to ground him in humanity by including a sister that is the catalyst for most of the main missions, even one that requires him to save her. Except Alex is all but invincible; there is no danger in any of his pursuits. How can we possibly sympathize with this character! It’s an aborted attempt at adding depth to his personality, because in every single act before and after these interludes with his sister he is responsible for the deaths of hundreds.

The story takes an unexpected – and completely inconsistent – turn near the end of the game, where the target you were after isn’t your target anymore, and there is a lot of exposition where you are supposed to nod your head profoundly, learning the real reason for Alex’s condition. Alex is a virus that has taken human form, and is responsible for the infection of New York City. Then he has to fight an arbitrary boss character. What was gained in the aftermath? Peace of mind? Alex wasn’t even human; none of this should matter to him. It feels like a disingenuous closure to justify what has happened over the course of the game. The ending seems so completely disassociated with the proceedings that it’s almost as if Radical thought they had to come up with an ending just so people would stop playing, because at the end of the game Alex is practically a god, and could easily consume, terrorize and destroy the city until it is dust.

And yet I played this game until completion. I was gripped by its unrelenting need for attention as another building crumbles, or another frightened mob of civilians is mowed down by a tank under my control. I stared in awe as Alex leapt across the city, yanking helicopters from the sky and destroying them with a flying kick off the roof of a skyscraper. Prototype is purest spectacle. I was able to tolerate it, even accept it for its duration, because it speaks to some power fantasy inside all of us, where we daydream about the ability to produce some hidden talent for exacting fatal revenge when slighted. Prototype taps into this primordial dark side, and for a while I liked it. But like Dark Phoenix, I wondered how long I could sustain giving in to these urges while sacrificing my humanity as everything around me turned to death.

Prototype is instant gratification if you enjoy violent video games, but it is severely lacking in focus. It is confused, just like the adolescent personality it often reflects. There is no message, except that being a bad person can be fun, rewarding and perfectly acceptable. As an exercise in inventive displays of power, Prototype had the potential to demonstrate a system that makes constructive use of Alex Mercer’s powers. Instead it overloads the player with features, to thinly disguse the lack of meaning and senseless destruction behind their activities. Prototype is a video game desperate for limits. As it stands, it is adolescent fantasy taken to new heights of excess, where infinite power is given with no moral guidance. And with the freedom imparted to do anything, it seems like an awful waste without motives to stand for something, instead of nothing.

Within the first fifteen minutes of playing a video game, I can tell if it will be good. I have yet to decide whether this is a useful skill in the context of adult life.

Services like Steam and the XBox Live Marketplace have effectively streamlined the process of consuming game demos, often before a game is available for purchase. This strategy is part of any publisher’s winning marketing plan. Let the masses jump on the game to provide free word-of-mouth advertising, and then watch them argue ad infinitum in every corner of the internet, since no one can be proven wrong. This is the ideal way to arrive at launch day. The review scores hit the usual aggregate sites based on the media’s preview copies, and people rush to the stores not just to get their hands on the game, but to prove everyone else wrong.

I am not usually such a person.

I have played and reviewed many demos since the inception of this website. In fact, I find myself relying on them more for the 360 than when I was solely a PC gamer. New PC games don’t stay expensive due to the high shelfspace turnover at electronics and even specialty retailers, whereas console games seem to retain their price a lot better¹. When I’m thinking about a new game purchase, reading exaggerated reviews and watching video samples of the game in action aren’t enough.

This makes the demo extremely important to someone like me. And once I start making notes on my first impressions of a game, it’s hard to stop. Most demos I’ve bothered to play provided me enough information to settle on an opinion. I knew the games weren’t going to get any better. And in the case of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, I was ensnared by nostalgia in the hopes that I would be playing Ghostbusters III. I wish I could say that was true.

Then there was Batman, a license that wields even more brand power, arriving in the form of Arkham Asylum last month to an unsuspecting audience. There was suprisingly no hype to speak of; no previews out of the usual. The demo was made available two weeks prior to the full version’s release. It caught a lot of people off guard, myself included. Everyone was excited over the possibility that a video game starring Batman was actually good. Naturally, the initial impressions were positive – and they spread.

I played the demo the week it was available for download and was prepared to post a negative review based on my impressions. There is no way the game should be receiving overwhelming praise. Except something held me back. My experiences with the game felt unfinished.

Surrounding myself with the opinions of people I know and who had played the full version, my suspicions were confirmed: the Arkham Asylum demo was terrible.

In the anticipation of a game that is sometimes years away, arguments will erupt about its quality, often hinging on such damning empirical evidence like screenshots and whether they were faked or not. Massive armies of the overstimulated who have nothing better to do will swarm websites like Gamestop² and NeoGAF and Amazon leaving comments about a game that they haven’t played, and likely isn’t even finished yet. Meanwhile, our favorite video game news outlets will be given their monthly ration of screenshots to post, and the whole process begins again. This is how the machine works. And video game culture at large not only accepts it, they love it.

Back in the early days of PC Gaming, demos were essential for getting the word out about a game. This is how the Shareware scene started. Publishers would release the first mission or chapter of a game for free, and you would have to pay to play the rest of it. These chapters were often made up of sub-missions, and provided enough content to be classified as a game in itself. For a while, this was enough to support a fledgling game development community and allowed it to compete with the big studios and their boxed games available on store shelves.

Shareware was a sign of good faith on the Publisher or development house. They’ll give you a full-featured part of their game, with the intent that you will become a paying customer. Sometimes it worked.

The best part? By the end of that first mission you knew exactly what the game was about, because no features were left to be unlocked – there were just more missions ahead and you could easily extrapolate what the rest of them would be like. Does anyone remember that Quake was distributed as a demo? The full version was available on the $5 CD-ROM, waiting to be unlocked. Of course, that worked out really well for id when software pirates had cracked the key generator and people were playing the full game a day later. I saw this as the the start of the demo’s decline as an actual slice of the game. Sure, PC Gamer and other magazines included demos on disc, and as consoles started distributing games on CD and DVD their enthusiast magazines did the same. But a publisher’s approach to the demo was forever changed. It was more of a preview – not a sample of a game in its finished form. In fact, some demos go so far as to say that it isn’t even representative of the final game. So why release it at all, if things are bound to change?

Of course, the opposing argument is that games are just too big and complicated now, and there’s no way that you could convey its essence in something that is designed to be played in twenty or thirty minutes. Some publishers feel that a demo isn’t even necessary for their game, as it’s just not conducive to the typical mission-based shortening that occurs. Instead, they’d rather let their audience pick up the full version and try it for themselves. And then the game becomes another statistic in the “unfinished” pile.

A good demo should be long enough to allow you to gather some intelligence about the story (if any), get comfortable with the control scheme and mechanics, and show every feature of the game (within some reasonable constraints of the story revealed) to get a feel for what the full version has to offer. Usually that happens in the first mission of a game, because the beginning of any game should be the incentive to continue. I should not be spending the next eight hours trying to find some hidden brilliance to appreciate a video game. I do not have that kind of time. I don’t think anyone does. Unless they are masochists.

The demo for Arkham Asylum is horrible. It is poorly assembled and a woefully inadequate representation of the final game. If I had let the demo make my decision, I would not have been playing it the last two weeks. The demo is two gigabytes of nothing. It goes through the motions of an opening movie, some combat, and a stealth section that is actually a small part of a “stalking” concept used to great effect throughout the full game. It ends with the setup to a boss fight that never happens³. The demo is made up of sections that were actually much farther apart in the full version. Worst of all it was too short, which left me doubting whether the game was even worth my time. If a demo ever does that, it is doing something wrong.

If the creation of Rocksteady’s demo was so arbitrary, they could have picked better locations and scenarios to present the game’s features. There was combat, sure, but it was so rudimentary that it made their system seem so generic. There was no wall-breaking or climbing. There was no hunting for secrets or alternative paths of entry. The way the demo was constructed fails to incorporate Arkham Asylum‘s greatest asset: its focus on exploration. Instead, it feels like it was created to make the game seem safe – predictable, even. My biggest complaint was the inability to use shadows for hiding, but the game makes up for it once you learn to use Batman’s tools to surprise instead of stalk. You’d never know it from the demo, though.

Is the new driver behind creating a demo to keep as much as possible from the player, to ensure that curiosity wins out? Batman could have started with all of the gadgets so that they could be experimented with. There aren’t that many. Allow the player to set up explosive charges to stun enemies, instead of being limited to the Batarang or Inverse Takedown⁴. The demo for Ninja Gaiden II gave the player all the weapons⁵ and provided the first half of the first chapter in the game. By the end of it I knew I had to buy it. Not to learn more about the game, but to play more.

I finished Arkham Asylum last week. My experience with it was positive; I’m glad I bought it. But I almost didn’t. If it weren’t for recommendations from friends and seeing some impressions in the raw on Twitter, I would have stubbornly passed it by and missed out on a solid video game while the machine kept going.

Demos have evolved into barely interactive commericals. They are the music videos to a video game’s LP. They give you all the flash with no context, leaving you hanging to the point where you often have no choice but to rent or buy the game to make an informed decision. But the average game purchaser doesn’t always have that kind of money lying around, or time to spend making this determination on their own. So they turn to reviews and the often completely unrelated scores that accompany them in the misguided hopes they’ll provide that missing insight. The Hype Machine claims another victim, and keeps on going.

In the view of the massive, lumbering machine that is The Video Game Industry, demos are no longer a necessity to make a sale. In fact, they don’t have to exist at all. Some publishers don’t release demos until a game has been out for a month. But this is just a bonus. Those early adopters that have to play right now? The publishers already have their money, and these games are now stitting on a shelf in the “Used” section of your local video game shop. And that salesperson behind the counter? He’s telling the guy that just got $15 for a pile of recent titles about some screenshots for this new video game. Better put that money down now to reserve a copy. It’s this year’s must-buy.

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 have¹.

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 time². 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 that³), 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 approval⁴. 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 Duty⁵, 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 Gutter⁶. 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 gamer⁷, 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 console⁸. 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 player⁹. 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 2¹⁰

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 2¹¹. 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 Earth¹². 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 past¹³. 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.

Magic: The Gathering is a property that formed the foundation of a tabletop gaming empire for a new generation of gamers, changing the face of a hobby that until then was buried in basements and isolated in musty smelling comic book shops. And yet its history in video games is pretty shameful in the numerous attempts to bring this brand even further into the mainstream. While most of the titles bore only a passing resemblance to their inspiration¹, Magic: The Gathering Online (2002) was the closest thing you could get to actually playing the card game.

The recently released Duels of the Planeswalkers (2009), available on Xbox Live Arcade, is not Magic: The Gathering Online. It is the card game pared down to its most essential components.

As an ex-Magic player that dropped out shortly after the Ice Age expansion in the mid 1990s², Duels has reawakened my respect for what Richard Garfield created in the game of Magic: The Gathering. Despite launching the completely ridiculous trend of collectible card games.

Much like my time with Games Workshop’s Warhammer, I found that the amount of one-upmanship that goes on in these hobbies borders on the unfair if you have unlimited resources (ie. Money) to sink into your collection. Players who don’t invest as much money in the hobby are immediately at a disadvantage when going up against the players who are well equipped and dialed right in to the latest cards and strategies for maximizing the return on their investment. The arms race continues until the only ones left standing are the demigods with ultra-powerful decks containing hundreds of dollars worth of cards. Of course, going into tournaments there are rules for this to balance the playing field, but I’m just generalizing here for the sake of my argument.

Duels of the Planeswalkers is a pre-packaged Magic: The Gathering experience. It successfully captures the essence of the game, without bogging down the player with a ton of cards that all end up doing basically the same thing when you really look into it. And this seems to be the biggest complaint about the game: the lack of comprehensive deck building tools.

Duels gives you a set number of decks to unlock through the single player campaign, while also unlocking individual cards for use in customizing these decks. “Customizing” is a very loose term in this context: you’re either using it in the deck, or you aren’t. There’s no way to get new cards after they have all been unlocked, and you can’t create a completely new deck. For some people this is too limiting, and makes this interpretation of Magic somehow less authentic.

I don’t think the Campaign mode is particularly interesting in the way that it creates “characters” for you to fight; I’d rather have seen an AI controlled player that randomly selects one of the pre-built decks and plays with it, which would provide the most replayability in single player mode. However, I don’t think this was the game’s main thrust. The Campaign mode was put in to get players familiar with the mechanics of play, to (re)learn the rules, and to get comfortable working in high pressure situations. At first, the inexperienced player will feel overwhelmed while they get acquainted with the cards and the rules of the game itself. And this is just the set-up. What Wizards and Stainless wanted to ultimately produce was a game that approximates the experience of playing the card game with humans in the online mode.

By limiting the number of cards and decks, the game is already pre-balanced. New players will never feel like they will be overpowered by some unknown card, and experienced players will be able to make the most out of their decks from the beginning. This effectively curtails the arms race. There is a ceiling that is predefined: once everything is unlocked everyone is going to be using the same cards. In the end, it simply comes down to luck (just like the real thing) and being skilled enough to use the cards at hand to overpower your opponent.

Putting in the Challenge mode was a terrific idea, as I found it to be an excellent training tool. It is a collection of “puzzles” that sets up one turn where you must win the game with the cards in play and in your hand. It encourages players to test their knowledge of the game; to solve a puzzle by taking advantage of its nuanced rules. This would then carry over into the Campaign or online versus mode, where you are working with the same cards and with enough luck and determination can put together a similar last-ditch counter-attack. However, there are only eight of these challenges and the advanced player will rip right through them.

Some might say that this game is simply a focus-grouped promotional tool for the upcoming release of the 11th Core Set that will get people out and buying into the physical card game. I would partially agree; It’s pretty clear from the beginning that Wizards and Stainless focus-grouped the shit out of this game, but it was to make it balanced for new and experienced players to enjoy the essentials of Magic: the Gathering. It’s no Magic: Online, but to me that was always for the players I mentioned earlier; they just don’t want to go out and physically buy the cards. Those players will never touch Duels because it is not meant for them. They should stop complaining.

I must admit I felt the pull of my old card collection, long since sold, after playing a few rounds of Duels. But it’s just another box of stuff that would end up collecting dust in a closet somewhere in my house. I’m glad I can pick up this game, play it, and put it away knowing that I have spent only $10 for an experience that will remain timeless.

Ninja Gaiden II is unyielding. It represents my history with video games: a time when I was too stubborn to resist the challenge from an indifferent master that taught the path of practice, patience and persistence. Only a few months ago, the entire gaming community was busy falling over themselves to proclaim that nostalgia and accessibility were the true winners in 2008 (Braid was basically a more forgiving version Super Mario Bros. with a generous layer of whimsy slathered on top). However, they ignored an accomplishment that was just as important in this era of reheated video games disguised as the triumph of independence. Ninja Gaiden II preserves the history of the franchise while reminding us why video games were so irresistible to us all those years ago.

While critics and hobbyists continue to complain about the length, price, and difficulty of modern video games, there is one game that defied this call to submit to the needs of video games’ aging audience. Ninja Gaiden II stands alone, upholding the virtues of its forebears from the 8- and 16-bit generations, challenging players at every turn, taunting them, provoking them to attempt to “beat” the game if they dared. It mocks their frustration at the difficulty, its spartan save points allowing only a brief respite, while complaints continued about the repetition and dependence on button mashing. Apparently, nobody has the inclination to repeat entire stretches of a third-person action game anymore, let alone figure out bosses and actually defeat them. Ninja Gaiden II is born of the Old School: it does not agree with the current philosophy of video games, which states that it must be accessible or have some kind of meaning to be worth playing – let alone be worthy of discussion.

Indeed, Ninja Gaiden II is “Old School”, but not in the ironic or patronizing sense of the word. It is of an Old Philosophy, one that has been lost over the years to improvements in graphics, compromises for accessibility or the obsession with coming up with that ever elusive project that will cement video games in cultural legitimacy. We grew up with the Old Philosophy, because that was the most common way video games could add value to its experience. What kind of production could developers put together when writing music and coding graphics for 8-bit video games? Instead, they made them difficult, taking cues from their cousins in the arcades, where the entire point of an arcade cabinet was to take your money. They wanted you to insert credits to continue, even though you weren’t ready for what would come after. These were games that encouraged players to learn the mechanics to the point where it was like breathing, to appreciate the steady increase in difficulty, and the challenges these games posed. Because at the end of it all, when the bad translations scrolled up the screen in a half-hearted closure to the story, you felt like you accomplished something. There was skill involved – and whoever completed that game clearly had some. Any player that had the patience and perseverance to truly learn the game was rewarded. Even though no person outside of that arcade cabinet, TV screen or the subculture itself would be able to appreciate or acknowledge the feat. This was the life of the video games enthusiast, and the reason why we played them.

The remake of Ninja Gaiden (2004) for the XBox is widely recognized as being one of the most difficult games in the modern generation of consoles. Tecmo even capitalized on this popular opinion by repackaging the original game as Ninja Gaiden Black (2005) with a more forgiving difficulty setting. Except if you choose it Ryu wears a pink ribbon on his wrist. With this obvious contempt shown to gamers not worthy to play his game, it only follows that Tomonubu Itagaki and Team Ninja preserves this ruthless approach in Ninja Gaiden II while dialing up the blood and gore to levels that will inaugurate it as one of the most violent video games ever made.

There is so much blood in this game, it becomes ridiculous. Decapitations and severed limbs are a matter of course in every fight. Ninja hop around on one leg, bodies explode. The blood gushes from the faceless Spider Clan ninja, the green sludge spews from the necks of the demon minions of the Greater Fiends. There is a move that Ryu does if he has been standing still for a while, where he flicks the blood off of his sword into a puddle on the ground. Is this nonchalance towards the violent indulgence exhibited by the game a statement? Are we to laugh with Itagaki, or be shocked by how this little flourish has shown that violence is past the point of being offensive in video games?

However, instead of focusing the game’s design on what it is good at – the slick, faced paced action, the variability in limb removals, the challenge – it tries to work this action through a story. And while what I’m about to say could be applied to most games with terrible writing, Ninja Gaiden II is one of those titles that could have done without. There is no need to explain. Just give me a sword, and I’ll kill every last thing that comes across the screen. So I’m not going to bother explaining the story. It is beyond vacuous, and bears no weight for the action that is presented by the game.

What must be understood early on in Ninja Gaiden II is that unlike most modern video games, it is not set up for the player to succeed. The quicker the player comes to this realization, the easier the rest of the game is to digest. The game wants you to lose. It wants to kick your ass, and break your will to continue. It is up to you to gain the skills to surpass its increasing levels of difficulty, a concept that has been obfuscated by games that coddle players with level grinds or allowing them to carry entire arsenals in their back pocket. Ninja Gaiden II will try and humiliate you at every turn. It will send enemies that do not despair when their comrades are murdered in front of them; instead, they pick up a severed limb and try to beat you with it.

Acknowledging the fact that the odds are stacked against you is an important step in accepting the Old Philosophy as presented in Ninja Gaiden II. There are times where the game is so spectacularly unfair that it appears impossible – but it isn’t. Once you figure this out, there is a natural rhythm to the combat. It will begin to feel comfortable. You defend against attacks, the staccato clanging of swords punctuating the action, but you can’t stay in that position forever. You must time your openings carefully, and inflict as much damage as possible before the process begins again. As the difficulty begins its steady ascent there has to be thought put into attack combinations strung together to cut through mobs without taking heavy damage or using up the meager inventory of healing items. And there are a lot of mobs.

The mechanics of Ninja Gaiden II are everything you would expect from an action game. Starting with the Dragon Sword, there is really no need for the Player to venture out of this zone since additional levels can be purchased to inflict more damage. This is true of every weapon, as long as you have cash to spare. Experimenters might find that the other weapons produce a more dramatic bloodbath or higher damage at the sacrifice of speed, but the game prides itself in providing an extremely straightforward experience. There is often no need for this behavior.

It’s not enough to show the Player how gruesome each enemy’s death is (a design element taken to new heights by the God of War series) – Ninja Gaiden II will score you on it. The game encourages multi-hit combos that defy the laws of physics. Ninja Gaiden II fully integrates an online scoreboard, which brings back arcade-like competition. The Karma scoring system shows that there are games willing to exchange in currency other than frag counts. It also once again reveals Ninja Gaiden II‘s foundations in the Old Philosophy.

In the midst of all of the violence the game makes a well-defined point about how it expects you to traverse each level. There is a fair amount of jumping puzzles and wall-running, which made me admire how a game that hinges on the pain players inflict on their enemies can integrate such seamless and satisfying mechanics for movement through its environments.

Yet when you actually pay attention to the game’s incidentals – the manufactured environments, the generic guitar riffs chugging in the background, the bland, plastic textures and boring character designs – it would seem like there was very little inspiration behind it all. There is no way this can be anything other than intentional, to bring the action and difficulty of the game to the very forefront. Just give me a sword.

If only Team Ninja could have let this game’s natural difficulty run its course. There is a point in this game – it is unmistakable – where you will feel like you are being bullied by the designers. After running a gauntlet of enemies and it feels like it’s time for a break, you face a sub-boss that explodes when it dies. After that, you face a new kind of rocket-launcher wielding ninja where you are forced to use your bow regularly. This presents the game’s most fatal flaw: the reliance on distance attacks to defend against enemies that have inhuman accuracy. It’s a wrinkle in the game that may completely alienate players that have been patient up to this point.

This fundamental change goes against everything that had been learned. This isn’t meant to be a game that emphasizes distance attacks. Weapons like the exploding shuriken are meant to keep enemies at bay, not actually deal with them. Ninja Gaiden II gives you a selection of bladed weapons to cut things with. And we should be able to use them without fear of some unseen enemy shooting at us from off-screen.

As a result, this change in pacing creates such a pronounced wall of difficulty that no amount of healing potion spamming or resurrection talisman will allow passage through. At this point, Ninja Gaiden II wanted me to quit. I already had unlocked the “Indomitable Spirit” achievement[1], which was a polite way of letting me know I suck. The game was basically telling me I was not worthy to continue and I should go play Burnout Paradise, growling something under its breath about “fighting spirit.”

During the previous levels, Ninja Gaiden II let me feel good about myself with a challenging but steady progression through each Chapter. But with the recent increase in difficulty, the game was telling me that it is serious about its no mercy philosophy. To succeed, you can’t just memorize the controls of this game. You have to learn them. You are either in, or you are out. My 12 year-old self saw this as a challenge. And that becomes the only reason to finish the game – the pursuit and realization of the Old Philosophy.

To add to the frustration, Ninja Gaiden II is old school in the sense that the camera is absolutely fucking horrible, with swimming controls from 1997 (I’m looking at you, Tomb Raider). The ultimate indignity was a boss battle that required me to stand on a 2 x 2 piece of stone in the middle of a lake while firing the bow, which often gave way to profanity and intense hatred directed toward the game after I fell into the water and had to reposition myself. Both of these mechanical limitations are experienced only for short portions of the game – but they are important portions. If the player cannot see what they are doing in the midst of a boss battle because the camera is stuck behind some rock outcropping instead of Ryu, paralyzing frustration often results.

Still, if you were willing to listen, the game had always been warning you about this. The lowliest minions make you work for each kill. What might seem like a crowd of easily dispatched, faceless ninja often turns into a chaotic display of paraplegics trying to kill you. They are incapable of giving up, of failing their mission. They will run at you with only one arm, sword slashing wildly through the air. If they have no legs they will throw explosive shurikens from the ground. They’re not giving up. Why should you?

There is a part at the end of Chapter 6 where I faced off against Volf, the Ruler of Storms. He is a giant werewolf with four arms. The battle takes place in a coliseum in front of his people, a massive, undulating crowd of slavering werewolves. After Volf is vanquished, a cutscene is shown where the crowd goes berserk and bellows for the blood of Ryu. I thought to myself, “Hey, maybe I’ll do some super ninja jump and get myself the hell out of here.” But as the scene ends, Ryu picks up the newly acquired Crescent Scythe and is expected to fight his way out. A mob of werewolves approached and I got to work cutting through the crowd. My heart sank at the prospect of cutting the limbs off of this tidal wave of hairy beasts while my healing items were slowly depleted. I soon gained a feel for what the weapon could do, and with that a new confidence. Though after a few mobs, my sidekick appeared in her fighter jet to pick me up. Deep down, I wanted to stay. I wanted to face them all.

There are a number of instances like this where Ninja Gaiden II attempts to overwhelm the player with enemies in an act of psychological warfare against the player. An ascent of Mount Fuji starts a sequence where you fight a stream of 200 Ninja in a narrow hallway. This is a perfect example of the essence of the game, and provides some of the most enjoyable action I have ever experienced. After that, I wanted to fight endless waves of ninja for the rest of the night. It’s probably why Team Ninja released the Mission Mode DLC, which features an endless mode that pits you against infinite waves of enemies (not 50). Within the context of this game a test of skill has been created that can easily be extracted into its own game. Ninja Gaiden II deserves recognition for that.

By comparison, then, the bosses in the game seem almost boring. Their design is adequate, but their attacks are relatively similar because most of them are humanoid, or have a very obvious “hot” stpot that must be attacked. To compensate, they usually have one or two attacks that do massive amounts of damage. As a result they are straightforward fights, and require more damage management than actually learning a complex pattern. This inconsistency is further shown by how the sub-bosses and final bosses between the Greater Fiends were actually more challenging than the Greater Fiends themselves. Most of the bosses are re-used later in the game, either by adding another one to fight at the same time, or in the case of the Greater Fiends, have a more powerful attack. Nevertheless, they are easy enough to beat if you have been paying attention.

As if to remind us that he is still running things, Itagaki makes the final showdown with the Archfiend a true test of the player’s worthiness. The endgame sequence consists of four straight Bosses – with the Archfiend, the final boss, taking two forms. With only one save point and whatever money you happen to have on you, it requires management of healing items, and brutal efficiency in correctly executing every single attack. The game’s reliance on the bow manifested itself again in new and painful ways during the fight with the Archfiend’s first form, which was probably the hardest sequence I had to play through in the entire game.

So when I finished Ninja Gaiden II and saw that I had died 244 times while trying to complete it, I could put the controller down in silent appreciation of that very moment, the moment that 14 hours of play prepared me for. Like the fight with RAAM in Gears of War[2], it was the culmination of everything that preceded it. This wasn’t just closing off an arbitrary (and mostly terrible) story, or providing some ominous-looking creature and saying it was the “last boss”. The Archfiend, as ridiculous as the story makes the whole encounter seem, is the biggest and most challenging boss in the game. To survive is to remember what the rest of the game has taught; to be victorious is to have the skill and determination to surmount the challenge. Ninja Gaiden II is an element on the periodic table; you cannot break down its essence any further.

Ninja Gaiden II is the last of a breed, I am sure of it. Video games seem conflicted right now – do we want simple or complex? Short or long? Difficult or accessible? It seems that there is a trend towards creating video games that must be more accessible reinventions of old concepts that capitalize on nostalgia for an aging audience. At 30, I am this aging audience, and while I feel there are benefits to these endeavors, they should not by any means be considered the future of the medium. That would both be short sighted, and incredibly dangerous. What is preserving our history? How can we find the defining moment of the medium if the view only points forward? Some will say that even the original NES Ninja Gaiden (1988) was one of the hardest video games ever created, but to turn to casual recreations of our past and expect them to convey the same impact is purest folly. Let the younger generation learn to appreciate the difficulty of a video game. Ninja Gaiden II may be easily dismissed as “least improved sequel” [3] or “unfairly difficult” [4], but these are excuses. Itagaki and Team Ninja dared to release a difficult game in Ninja Gaiden II – almost for its own sake – in humble devotion to the Old Philosophy of the video game. To ignore that is to ignore the history of the medium and the hobby that established them in popular culture, and the current culture of video games is at a loss for doing it.

1.The “Indomitable Spirit” achievement gives you 5 gamer points for choosing to continue the game 100 times. Kind of a joke, really.
2.Please read my Gears of War review again. It’s obvious that Cliff Bleszinski and Epic learned a lot from Japanese game design.
3. Gamespot nominated Ninja Gaiden II for “Least Improved Sequel” in 2008. The question I have to ask is: what did they expect?
4. In their review, Eurogamer said that Ninja Gaiden II is “unfairly difficult.” I can see this coming from a website that was responsible for most of the unfettered praise I complain about at the beginning of this article.

It has ninjas and big swords, so it must be cool. Right?

At least, that’s what From Software is hoping. Trying to come up with a list of “must have” games for the 360 in 2009, I came across the platform exclusive Ninja Blade. In concept, it sounded great: standard hack ‘n slash action starring a ninja, and it’s by the same team that brought us the Otogi series for the original Xbox. When the demo was posted on Live a couple of weeks ago, I was pretty excited to give it a try.

Until Ninja Blade revealed its first Quick Time Event (QTE) mere seconds into the game. After hearing some kind of pep talk from the leader of a group of sky-diving ninja, you jump out of plane and are immediately asked to “Press X to attack!”

What are you attacking? It’s not really obvious until after you see the animation of the winged demon-creature crumbling to molten ash under the stinging blade of your sword. At this point my hopes for the game suffered the exact same fate.

I imagine it was what I felt after being presented with the “dodge a boulder!” scene from the beginning of Resident Evil 4. Though Capcom had the audacity to mix up the buttons on each attempt, at least. And I think that’s what bothered me about Ninja Blade‘s approach to QTEs. There’s always a second chance. In fact, there are unlimited chances: Ninja Blade will reset the scene and you can try it as many times as necessary to get it right. No dropping back to the previous checkpoint and having to repeat entire sections of game to get better at it. It just lets you try again.

Quick time events should be abolished. They do not belong in video games, especially as a core mechanic for an action game. Instead of skill to complete a sequence of moves, it requires you to obey what is shown on the screen and possess a meager collection of electrical signals shooting from your brain to that thumb on the X button. All of a sudden some complicated animation is shown and the gamer is happy. Look what I did!

None of this feels natural, because the player is no longer in control of the action. There are inherently limits in video games; there have to be rules to limit the scope of any game. But with QTEs, you are directly at the mercy of the game’s pacing, and are effectively being told how to play the game.

This is particularly prounounced in the fight against the giant spider Boss. Some video games still adhere to the conventions of boss fights. There is often an attack that must be dodged by recognizing the boss’s “tell” that he going to launch it. Or learning an attack pattern to find the weak spot and exploit it. It will take many tries to get this right, and then ultimately defeat them. But not in Ninja Blade. Not only did it focus on the target areas in a brief cutscene before the fight, they were the only areas that were accessible to hit. It may as well be another scripted event; it leaves no decision making on the part of the player. Just keep whacking that hot spot, you’ll defeat him eventually.

Ninja Blade isn’t completely uninspired, however. There are sequences where you can go wild with a katana or that big stone sword. It provides a sequence where you fly down the side of a skyscraper to get from one combat area to the next. The sense of scale and speed were perfect through this part of the demo.

But the enemies are far too generic, and while they’re some kind of infected horde they might as well be the burlap sack creatures from Devil May Cry 4. They feel too random, like a pack of wandering skinbags for you to slice up. Not an unstoppable force bent on your destruction. The enemies in Ninja Gaiden II (2008) are varied, and always on the attack whenever you appeared. The game was relentless. It presents bottleneck after bottleneck where you are the only obstacle in their way. Why do I feel like I have a choice to fight the creatures in Ninja Blade?

Nevertheless, the action in Ninja Blade is well scripted and fun to watch. The fight with the giant spider contained some action events involving a wrecking ball on top of a skyscraper. I’ll readily admit it elicited a “holy shit” from me. However, reading the limited number of reviews on the Japanese import, this is pretty representative of what the rest of the game has to offer. But I don’t want to watch a video game. I want to play it¹.

I really had this game built up in my mind (reawakened ninja obsession?), but after experiencing it I couldn’t figure out what this game was selling me. There was nothing there. Like Afro Samurai, it takes a winning concept (extremely violent swordplay) and panders to an audience that doesn’t want this type of game. If anything, Ninja Blade taught me to appreciate the stubbornness of Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja to stick to classic video game design. It provides challenge in its purest form, and certainly a more entertaining experience than waiting for my turn to press the button.

Ninja Blade represents a corruption at the heart of video games. It is not part of a new genre, but an actual path forward for those that think games are too difficult, too long, or do not provide an easily digestible story (and for those that are keeping track, Ninja Blade has no story worth pursuing). It’s slowly happening, so those that think this is a legitimate entry into the action genre will accept it and move on to the next one, not even realizing they have been pressing the “Next” button in a slideshow.

Why shy away from a design that demands mastery of the controls and the core mechanics? This is what we grew up with, what we lived for. This reduction of player investment is not a noble pursuit. It is regression to a new mean.

1. Once again, I refer you to my review of Resident Evil 4. To this day I still cannot get over the praise heaped upon the game that effectively broke the franchise.

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.

Updated February 22, 2009 with some new thoughts on weapon durability and the game environment.

Now that the existence of Dead Rising 2 has officially been confirmed, the masses can begin speculating on its contents from the few screenshots that accompanied the announcement.

As rumored last year, Capcom is working closely with Vancouver’s Blue Castle Games to develop the sequel, which in their anticipation will result in “a even better game”. In order to maintain the design intent of the original game, key team members from Dead Rising at Capcom Japan are meeting with the designers at Blue Castle at least once a week through video conference, which in the opinion of Capcom’s Keiji Inafune is just the first steps in Capcom’s “Global Design” initiative. I have to admit I was a little curious why such a successful IP was farmed out, but it’s reassuring to know that the project is being guided by its original creators.

At this point, the only confirmable detail is the game’s environment: a casino. Whether this is modeled after downtown Las Vegas, Atlantic City or simply another enclosed complex like the Willamette shopping mall remains to be revealed. The setting alone has me pretty excited about Dead Rising 2‘s potential. An “adult playground” as Inafune puts it, where roulette wheels become weapons of mass destruction.

I love the original Dead Rising; I’ve said before this was always a game I wished I had been able to play upon release. Now that I’ve experienced the full version, the sequel is one of my most anticipated games of the coming year. I plan on writing a full review of Dead Rising at some point, but I find this to be an excellent opportunity to sketch out my main complaints with the original game and label them as expectations for the sequel, instead of cluttering my analysis with a wish list of improved features.

Keep the overall time limit, but be a little more forgiving for the main story. Time was the underlying mechanic at work in the original Dead Rising. You had 72 hours to follow the main plot and discover the cause of the outbreak at Willamette. While this lent an incredible sense of urgency to the entire game’s proceedings, I felt that it was a little unforgiving in the way it forced you to adhere to an arbitrary schedule. If I was out beating on zombies and forgot to look at Frank’s watch, I would miss the lead-in to the next main mission and the game would end. It was frustrating because it didn’t feel like events unfolded naturally; the story progressed only at set times. However, having a time limit for the whole game created an underlying need to always be doing something, whether completing a quest or trying to make it to the next mission. It made you plan your time in between story events carefully to get the most out of the experience. For Dead Rising 2, the designers should leave the overarall time limit, but give players a more flexible “opt-in” approach. If they don’t want to follow the main quest, they don’t have to and the game still continues, but they miss out on the game’s story. It would be like Infinite mode in Dead Rising, where the Player “wins” by simply surviving. Of course, basic quests should be available for people who aren’t content to simply smash in the heads of lots and lots of zombies.

Change the quest delivery system. I have to give Otis credit. He kept his eye on things in Willamette and made sure no one was left behind. Except that he would always interrupt me when I was trying to defend myself. The walke-talkie was a clumsy quest delivery system, because whether you wanted the quest or not, as soon as you answered it a quest was added to your list. Even hanging up would elicit a snarky comment! The guy was relentless. For Dead Rising 2, I would be happy with a simple RPG quest system, which opens up quests by discovering the helpless NPCs or situations directly. It would reward exploration instead of following the instructions of someone in the safety of the Security Room, and would allow players to ignore the quests altogether if they choose to.

Variable Weapon Durability. One of Dead Rising‘s unique strengths is that almost everything can be a weapon. But what I didn’t like is how every weapon has more or less the same durability. That is, a Lead Pipe lasts about as long as a 2×4 or a Bowling Ball or an Electric Guitar. Capcom made up for this by adding in a “book” system that increases the durability or adds bonuses to certain weapons as long as you carry the book in your inventory, but this takes up a valuable slot. The current system seems to be in contradiction with Frank’s character levelling system, which only addresses hand-to-hand moves and not skills with weapons. Why are weapons and power-ups so disposable? Shouldn’t Frank gain at least some bonuses for using melee-based weapons all the time? I can see where the original design came from, though: it forces inventory management and with a limit of resources it contributes to that underlying feeling of tension I mentioned earlier. However, when I’m in the middle of a crowd of zombies and suddenly my bowling ball disappears after only a few hits, it’s a little puzzling. Naturally the developers don’t want players searching for the “best” weapon that lasts the whole game, but varying the durability of weapons based on their material would add a new dimension to this tension. Yes, that Lead Pipe will last longer than that Baseball Bat, but how much longer? Making the higher durability weapons less common or a little tougher to find would also balance this out.

More unique weapons unlockable through completing quests. After defeating the True Eye cult leader in one of Dead Rising‘s quests, you get his ceremonial broadsword. It is a magnificent weapon. Once it broke, I knew I would never hold it in my hands again. But having access to its attack speed, damage and excellent raw durability for that short while was worth it. Dead Rising 2 needs more unique weapons like these. Obviously the quests can’t be re-completed to get the weapon again, so once the weapon is unlocked and destroyed I want it to be spawned somewhere else in the game world. And it will be up to the player to find them.

Improve or completely redesign guns and shooting mechanics. The guns are the worst weapons in Dead Rising. What should be the most reliable weapon to use is all at once the most tedious, least effective and unsatisfying. Borrowing controls from Resident Evil 4 (probably why I hate using it), the gun must be aimed in an over-the-shoulder zoomed-in third person view. There is no separate acquisition of ammo and no reload – you have to pick up more guns for that. You can run around while shooting in regular third person view, but don’t expect to land many shots. And compared to the other bludgeoning-type weapons or the swords, the guns are suprisingly weak and ineffective in dealing with groups. Keep the crappy controls if you must adhere to the “Resident Evil Guide to Shitty Controls for Shooting a Gun”, but at least make the guns in Dead Rising 2 more powerful and worth using an inventory slot for. And make ammo separate. If you’ve gone out of your way to find a good weapon, you should at the very least be able to keep it and reload it.

Make Zombies spawn randomly. There were certain areas in the Willamette mall that I knew weapon-wielding zombies would hang out. After running out of bullets, or when I needed a new knife, there was always Chubby the Police Officer or Hawaiian Shirt Dude to rely on to hook me up. After I had already killed them 10 minutes prior. Make these guys tougher to find, especially if they are carrying more powerful weapons. Randomly respawning common zombies would also create the illusion that the player really is being overwhelmed, instead of regenerating a bunch of models that were there moments before.

Boss battles should be more interesting. I want more variety, and less reliance on gunplay – especially if the controls remain the same. Make solutions to defeating boss characters interesting! Dead Rising with all of its usable material had so much potential for trap setting in advance and using your immediate surroundings to defeat a boss. I so very badly wanted to topple scaffolding onto Isabela and her motorcycle during that fight. Though no button combinations to defeat bosses, please. I want to feel like I have some control over the process.

Why limit usable materials to weapons? While we’re on the subject, I want to be able to use my surroundings for just about anything. I want to create barriers to move zombies into a choke point to easily take them out, or topple over structures to dispatch large groups. And how about introducing easy access to some explosives, like creating your own molotov cocktails? They’re great fun in Left 4 Dead. About the closest I got to this feature in Dead Rising was dropping a propane tank into a mob, and shooting it from afar. But it’s more challenging than it sounds.

For the sake of my sanity, overhaul the NPC AI. There was nothing more frustrating in Dead Rising than escorting a bunch of people that just end up a zombie buffet. I wasted far too many weapons on these people in the hopes that they could defend themselves. Dead Rising seemed well aware of this shortcoming, because you were rewarded for saving people as well as bringing them back to the Security Room. The rescue missions are essential in a game like this. So if I’m going out of my way to save someone, I want to make sure I don’t have to babysit them the whole way.

Do not add co-op. Please. This seems to be a design descision that is granted these days, but I liked how I was alone in the world of Dead Rising. Sure it had its moments of (often unintentional) comedy that lessened the impact of the situation, but in the end it was me versus an entire fucking shopping mall full of zombies. It was an incredible feeling. Co-op, whether split-screen or online, will remove some of this atmosphere and turn it into a bit of a joke. I don’t want to go on a zombie killing spree with my friends. I want to survive. I want to feel the lonliness and desperation against overwhelming odds.

Lose the camera. I can only assume that the new main character is not a photojournalist, but some guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’s wearing a pretty nifty racing jacket too! While the camera was the perfect gimmick in Dead Rising given Frank’s mission in Willamette, I don’t think it was necessary. There were experience points and Achievments to be gained from good photos, but the photo system didn’t really offer much to the overall game. As such, there’s no need for anything like this in the sequel. I would rather see more work put in to a better variety of quests and missions.

More Save Points, but not a new save system. There were a lot of complaints about the save system in the original game. They were too far apart, artificially extending the length of the game by forcing players to replay entire sections. I’ll agree that there were too few, but I don’t want the original system to change too much. Saving in games is a tricky thing when you start talking about realism, but I think Capcom’s decision to use Bathrooms as save points was certainly a more practical approach. It’s a room that made sense to be repeated throughout the mall. I don’t want the ability to save anywhere, because this completely removes any tension in the game. If the player isn’t worried about making it through a shambling mass of zombies with their NPCs in tow, what are they doing except beating up a bunch of slow moving targets? I also don’t want to see the use of checkpoints, because this will inhibit the original free-form design of the game. The original game automatically saved once key mission objectives in the main storyline were completed, which I think is a completely acceptable compromise. If the developers can come up with a similar scheme with more points reasonably spread out for Dead Rising 2, I’ll be satisfied.

Better Writing and Character Development. Yes, this is a game about a Zombie invasion, but Capcom’s story behind the Willamette outbreak was like a bad Resident Evil outtake (and really, that is saying something). There is a certain amount of tongue in cheek involved in telling a story like this, but I think someone took it a bit too far. The characters were cliché, the source of the virus and the location of the outbreak had a tenuous link, and everything was conveniently isolated within the walls of a shopping mall. Frank grew on me through the game; you had to admire his infallible dedication to the job of getting the scoop on this phenomenon. But everyone around him was a caricature, and the sub-plots surrounding the NPC rescue missions ranged from B-Movie horror to adolescent parody of American action films. Also, no more big breasted schoolmarms with hair the color of their skin. Obviously good writing is a request of most games and it rarely materializes, but try and indulge me with a little more effort, guys.

As if my current playlist wasn’t big enough, I now have at least five more titles to make my way through in the months ahead. Finding time for these new adventures and keeping up with my writing was a challenge, especially when the novelty phase was still underway. After many late night binges, I think I’ve finally flushed it out. I have regained my original focus and want to get back to posting regularly. Except now I’ll have even more to write about.

Spending time with this console over the past few weeks has resulted in the following (occasionally startling) revelations:

• I should have purchased an XBox 360 sooner. Like, in 2006.
• I can see why former PC-exclusive gamers have no problems making the 360 their primary game platform. Avoiding the hassles with hardware upgrades, compatibility, the process of installation and DRM are the obvious examples, but a lot of what the XBox 360 does can be compared to a media center PC. By including these features in one package, it can be considered an entire replacement for a the average PC dedicated to entertainment.
• I used to think FPS on the XBox 360 was impossible, especially for a person coming from a formerly PC-exclusive background. After playing the F.E.A.R. 2 demo, I am now thinking about getting Far Cry 2 for the 360 instead of sitting here wondering if I have to turn down all the settings for it to run on my laptop. I would have considered these thoughts forbidden a couple of years ago. It’s testament to the design of this controller, though I suppose only a few developers of this genre have been able to truly master it.
• XBox Live, while convenient as a method of online distribution and matchmaking, is still just a ruse intended to rob the consumer blind. There is no need for a tiered subscription system. Why I should pay extra to do something that the entire XBox Live system was originally intended for (and what I can do on the PC for free) seems like an insult. Even Sony has gotten wise with the PS3. I don’t care about Achievements and Gamer Points and a free online profile. I want to play my games online. Also, by separating “Microsoft Points” from actual money and creating denominational “Points Packages”, people think they aren’t spending as much as they actually are.
• XBox Live is also the reason why many indie and community game developers have reached a much wider audience, by making it incredibly easy to access and experience their work. This was a real eye-opener for me, as aside from the critically acclaimed titles of the past couple of years, I never would have thought to look any further into this entirely different, self-sustaining gaming universe. There is enough content on Live Arcade that you would never have to purchase a single packaged product for your 360 if you didn’t want to.
• I find it extremely disturbing that the release-then-patch process is in full effect on this console. It seems that every new Arcade game, demo or new physical media I introduce to my 360, there is a patch waiting for me. The attitude previously held by PC game publishers and devlopers has now made its way into this realm, and it’s extremely disappointing. What if someone never puts their XBox online? Not everyone has a network connection easily accessed near their TV, or are willing to drop $100 CDN on an overpriced Wi-Fi adapter. For some casual users, this will certainly be true. Will they be missing out on essential after-market support? It’s an interesting problem that was never encountered by the PC gaming industry, which was safe to assume any PC had some form of connection to the internet.
• I would rather download a demo on XBox Live than on my PC. It is a painless procedure that ensures that I will have a preview of a product in my hands that will simply work. The large selection of demos available out of the box and Microsoft’s commitment to getting early exclusives is also making rentals seem unnecessary. Like on the PC, most of the demos I tried gave a solid impression of what is contained in the full version of the game in order to make the decision to pursue it further or move on.
• The new XBox Dashboard puts Apple TV – and frankly any media playing aspects of Mac OS X – to shame. It is clean looking, organized, and seamless in the way it integrates other media on a home network with the standard features of the game console. Microsoft’s partnership with Netflix was also a brilliant move. I have used my 360 enough for music and movies now that I can’t see how we lived without it.
• I used to think the whole Achievements and Gamer Points framework was a ridiculous concept. Now that I’ve experienced it first-hand, I think it’s a brilliant strategy for building a game-centric community and providing significant replay value to existing titles. Though some games certainly do a better job of using Achievements than others. I don’t think we will see anything else come close to this system. Steam has tried, but they don’t have the same reach.

And just like that the XBox 360 has suddenly become an essential part of my gaming repertoire.

I took advantage of the Boxing Day shopping frenzy over the weekend and picked up an XBox 360 Pro Holiday Bundle at a discount that was hard to ignore. This is a purchase I had been deeply considering since my life-altering experience with Gears of War 2‘s Horde mode. My familiarity with the console was mostly limited to some time with it shortly after launch, so I’ve been relatively out of touch with what has been released for the console since then. I was also a bit disappointed at the lack of hardware upgrades: the Elite is still hoarding the 120 GB hard drive, and there is still no Wi-Fi out of the box even after three years. Though I guess I should be thankful that the power supply hasn’t burst into flame yet.

Since getting back into gaming this past summer, I’ve tried to keep myself aware of the titles capturing the most buzz on all of the next generation consoles. Over the past few days I familiarized myself with the new XBox dashboard and downloaded a grab-bag of demos: the critically acclaimed and a few others that I was interested in. I’m still looking for a good RPG other than the obvious selections of Mass Effect, Fable 2, or Fallout 3. Feel free to add any other recommendations in the comments; this is my second leap into the console world since the Gamecube in 2003.

Braid (demo)

I went to this game immediately. Not only was it the most talked about title on XBox LIVE Arcade for 2008, it was the most talked about game, period. Fiery debates raged between those that thought it was overwrought twaddle and those that believed it would change your life. Skeptical as always, I went in expecting twaddle.

After being available for four months and topping many year-end lists, Braid carries with it the burden of enormous expectations. This isn’t usually how I like to approach a game, but I just couldn’t wait to try it for myself to have some snide comments for my own year-end wrap up to fuel the continuing debate. But after completing the meager demo levels, my initial reaction was a feeling of emptiness. That’s it? Super Mario Bros. meets Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time?

The loosely strung together story, which amounts to a bunch of text that can optionally be read at the beginning of each level, is a collection of the most purple prose I have ever read in a game. If this is the reason reviews like Dan Whitehead’s famous wank-session at Eurogamer are produced, I want no part of the future of games criticism.

When the Barney look-alike says “I’m sorry, but the Princess is in another castle”, the reference might have actually been funny if Braid wasn’t so busy taking itself too seriously. And I don’t want to hear another drone telling me I’m “missing the point entirely” or “don’t get it”. The point of any game is to be entertaining, and if a player must peel back the disguises of obscure cultural references behind some interchangable protagonist’s life story to “get it”, I think the game’s designers are the ones missing the point (the atomic bomb? Seriously?). The in-game art is exceptional, but the game itself is not art. It is a platformer.

Dead Rising (demo)

Dead Rising is one of the games I regretted missing in 2006. It certainly feels like a Resident Evil game in the way it over-dramatizes the laughable storyline, but it does away with things like atmosphere and contrived suspense in favour of what people really want to do in a Resident Evil game: kill lots and lots of zombies.

The slow moving zombies practically allow themselves to be destroyed with all manner of weapons provided by the game’s environment. This is a definite change of pace from the chaotic action of Left 4 Dead as the massive, undulating crowds are rarely overwhelming. Weapons are also breakable, and this provides a bit of tension when that bat you were swinging has suddenly turned to splinters in your hands.

Based on what I was able to play in the demo, the action in Dead Rising seems pretty superficial, but I’ve read that there’s a lot more to do in the game than just kill zombies. I’m trying to track down a copy of the full version so I can make a better assessment.

Mirror’s Edge (demo)

If I could get every minute back spent reading self-appointed game criticism pundits fiddling with this game…Oh, forget it. The aesthetic of Mirror’s Edge is breathtakingly original, and I have to give DICE credit for creating something that isn’t another war-themed first-person shooter. These sterile environments are host to what is essentially an expansive jumping puzzle in a first person shooter. Except I can’t see my feet. It’s been a thorn in the side of any first person shooter player (even for Metroid Prime!) So why are these complaints absent from every review? Easy. They are too busy praising its originality.

I don’t care about the trend of “parkour” or “freerunning” or whatever the hell they are calling it now, but I will certainly give DICE their due for attempting such a game. But let’s be totally honest here: if you’re going to focus on jumping, let the player see their environment from a reasonable perspective. You know, like Brad Borne did with Mirror’s Edge 2D. Hopefully this is being created for XBox Live Arcade, because I will be getting it. As it stands, for washed out parkour fun I’d rather be playing Assassin’s Creed.

Castle Crashers (demo)

This shameless throwback to medieval beat ‘em ups like Golden Axe is a fucking revelation, brought to you by the creators of Alien Hominid. The visual comedy and overt references to its influences are hilarious to behold. After playing this game it becomes perfectly clear why XBox LIVE Arcade succeeds on the backs of these no-frills action games. I will be getting the full version.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Since its release on XBox LIVE Arcade last year, there have been a lot of people waxing poetic about its greatness in the pantheon of 2D platformers. But does anyone really know why this game is a 2D classic, and one of the best games of all time? Or do game reviewers and journalists just keep citing it because they know that’s what they’re supposed to say? (I also see this a lot with Gunstar Heroes – note to Microsoft, toss this one on XBL Arcade, too!).

The game is a curiosity for the Playstation generation, bravely released in an era that advanced 3D graphics for non-computer users. It is also difficult in an old-school platformer kind of way, from the days where it actually took patience and skill to run through a sequence instead of relying on auto-saves or save points that pop up like weeds all over a level. It was a refreshingly original take on the Castlevania universe by not giving you a whip, but arming you with other weapons, allowing the use of armour and providing a set of unique spells. It was before the series got unnecessarily complicated with 3D iterations and the convoluted magic systems of the portable series. This was the last great Castlevania, and for a while, the last great 2D platformer. I’m going to have to a write a full god damned review, aren’t I?

Though it is labelled as HD I probably could have played this on my PC with a decent emulator, as the sprites and animations feel like they were just bumped up to 1080i. Otherwise, the game plays like I remember it.

Kung Fu Panda

The first of the bundled titles that came with the console. Incredibly, this is a licensed game that doesn’t make me want to jump out of a window. Kung Fu Panda smartly focuses on straightforward action, fluid controls, and (thankfully) professional voice acting including Jack Black himself. It integrates well with the storyline of the movie, without veering too far off to make it seem that missions were thrown in to make the whole thing a game. My daughter also enjoys the cartoon violence and sound effects. This might actually be worth finishing.

Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

The second of the bundled titles that came with the console. This is the first I’ve played of the Lego series of games that seem to be all the rage lately. Its cute factor is frequently nauseating, but it is fun to play. I can’t see myself spending too much time with it, though. Well, except when the little one asks for it by name (Indiana Jones bricks?)

Ninja Gaiden II (demo)

After playing the family-friendly Kung Fu Panda for close to two hours while my daughter watched in excitement, this was a welcome bloodbath. Atrocious cutscenes and polished spandex abound in the sequel to one of the original XBox’s premier titles, a game I always wanted to play for myself. The new Ninja Gaiden may be set in the same universe as Tecmo’s Dead or Alive, but do we really have to continue to watch Ryu hopping around in plastic pants through carefully constructed environments almost entirely devoid of character and substance? Is that really the best Team Ninja can do with the 360?

However, pushing graphical boundaries is not what this game is about. The combat is fast and merciless and aggressive. The mutated ninja sent to kill Ryu have no tactics, except to close in and repeatedly cut him with swords and beat with fists and throw shuriken.

With only the first level included in the demo, it’s tough to make a call on the difficulty. It’s challenging, but not impossible. It also doesn’t lend itself well to button mashing as some might have us believe. It’s no Assassin’s Creed, but the combat requires a bit of timing and proper use of blocking techniques. There is a new regenerative health system that rewards the calculated assault. There is also Ninja Magic.

There is so much blood in this game, I actually wondered if I was getting sensitive to the violence. But then I realized that the people who I was cutting up were actually coming back for more without any arms, or hopping on one leg, to finish the job. It was both ridiculous and satisfying to put the sad bastards out of their misery. I miss Shinobi, and for twenty minutes this game filled that void. I want to play more.

Devil May Cry 4 (demo)

This list is getting long, so I’ll mix it up with a Haiku to express my feelings for Devil May Cry 4.

Fancy pants wields sword
and glowing devil gauntlet
wind sighs through white hair

Wow, even writing that poem makes me want to go back and slice off bulging mutant limbs in Ninja Gaiden II.

Fracture (demo)

Maybe I’ve been too much into Gears of War lately, but Fracture seems like such a poseur in the latest deluge of third person shooters set in an embattled future.The big problem with this game is wasted potential. The ability to harness the earth itself to create cover and move through obstacles seems like a great concept gone to shit in the designers’ efforts to capitalize on the angry, futuristic shooter market. I don’t care that there’s a civil war – make a game that is fun to play!

The controls are passable, but the combat is not nearly as satisfying as Gears. And the earth shaping dynamic seems limited to certain areas of each level, which makes it completely useless as player advantage. If I can only use the ability when the game tells me to, what’s the point of introducing it in the first place? Also, game reviewers: please stop using the word “romp” when reviewing this type of game. It undermines their grittiness.

Gears of War 2

Now that I’m over how great the controls are and how enjoyable this series is to play, I can pay attention to the reasons why I’m supposed to be killing things. I had no idea it would be so disappointing. The story is a crippled mess of wartime cliché and forced emotion, and the dialogue seems less snappy and immediate this time around. Maybe it was bad in Gears of War and I just didn’t notice.

There are many notable additions to the game’s combat dynamic, and they only serve to further substantiate a solid formula. It is action all the time; it is shameless bravado; it is endlessly appealing. The Gears of War games are slowly becoming some of the greatest I have ever played. It continues to amaze me.