Dante: “Where are the others? Why aren’t the other damned down here with me?”
Lucifer: “This isn’t their Hell, Dante. It’s yours.”
- from Dante’s Inferno

Dante’s Inferno is a half-hearted action game that gets caught up in its own spectacle. The offensive content of this video game is enough to repulse the casual observer, but those that actually play it will find its sins go far deeper: it is a video game that makes its own existence unnecessary with a combat system wrought by designers who have learned nothing about action games in the last five years. The result is an artifact that only serves as another reason why video game enthusiasts continue to bleat loudly and thump their chest while struggling to justify the cultural legitimacy of video games. Dante’s Inferno is a game that sought and received a lot of attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Electronic Arts’ campaign to promote the game was an embarrassing display, but fascinating in how it adapted to the response of the video game community. And yet the worst criticism levelled at the actual game upon its release was that it was a poor imitation of God of War, while glossing over the general offensiveness of the content – both visual and ludic – in what can only be labelled as acts of sloth. Dante’s Inferno is a mark upon the rich history of video games that reveals more failures than successes, but still manages to recognize the most noble of attempts. However, Dante’s Inferno has no hope of being a work as accessible or impactful as the ones that are the subject of so many retrospectives. Dante’s Inferno will be remembered, but not for the reasons Visceral Entertainment had hoped.

The biggest mistake that EA made with Dante’s Inferno was their marketing campaign¹. The callous way they manipulated video game culture did more to damage the public image of video games and the video game media than actually advertise the game itself. While the campaign may have received a lot of attention, the majority of it was negative and was mostly related to three things: the marketing push for “Lust”, the marketing push for “Greed”, and the fact that a lowly video game – surely the basest form of modern entertainment – was attempting to adapt an untouchable piece of classic literature. The most startling fact amongst all this degenerate drum-beating was how little was mentioned about the actual video game, as if this campaign was intended to distract from it.

In fact, when Dante’s Inferno was first rumored to be in development in late 2008, many people thought it was a joke. How could anyone hope to adapt a 700 year old poem and use it as the setting for a video game? The wells of creativity had truly run dry, and game developers were turning to other sources in the same manner that Hollywood has recently taken to trawling the shelves of comic book shops. This made Dante’s Inferno an easy target for critics: what better way to prove a video game’s worthlessness than pointing out how it represents everything that is wrong with the industry? The game became a pariah, and subject to the scorn of what seemed like the entire internet.

In the face of such adversity, the team responsible for Dante’s Inferno had to create a product that would surmount the horde of critics that were simply waiting for it to fail. One could argue the old adage that any publicity is good publicity, but the events leading up to this game’s release were setting it up for Daikatana-like disappointment. Buckling under the hype is not an option if Dante’s Inferno was to succeed in the eyes of the press and the game-buying public that accept their recommendations. It would simply be another nail in the coffin of video games’ cultural legitimacy.

The demo for Dante’s Inferno was released in December 2009 and showcased the setup for Dante’s journey into Hell. It was engaging in the sense that God of War was engaging: the game begins with the spectacle of fighting an omnipotent adversary, and moves forward in the name of cutting things to pieces while defying gravity with double-jumps and following button prompts as each new enemy is killed in dramatic fashion. This sampler proved to be enough to illustrate the game’s direction and its aspirations. Many of the game’s detractors labelled Dante’s Inferno a shameless clone, and this claim is not without substance. However, for those that would never get to try such a game otherwise, Dante’s Inferno initially appeared as a suitable alternative that would not require investing in more hardware. This assumption would prove to be wishful thinking.

After a few hours of play, Dante’s Inferno exposes itself as an unambitious entry into the third-person action genre, but a surprisingly structured adaptation of the poem. It is a rock concert of a video game: full of puerile imagery and middle fingers given to Christianity’s dark history. However, setting out to compare the poem and video game in a review would be folly; any player of video games who claims to have read it was probably just skimming the Wikipedia summary, anyway². Dante’s Inferno is not meant to be an adaptation in the purest sense; rather, it is a video game that wishes to turn Aligheri’s Hell into a battleground of depravity, parading horrid displays in front of the player as they are corraled through its wretched depths.

The designers at Visceral clearly did some research – every aspect of the Inferno itself as described by Aligheri is represented in some way, as if they made a list and checked everything off. While the imagery of Aligheri’s Inferno was left to the reader’s imagination, Visceral have tried their hardest to make the player’s skin crawl – it certainly took a twisted imagination to come up with what has been presented. And there really isn’t any other way this could have been done. This is Hell for a modern age: nothing’s shocking anymore, and so to get the player’s attention, the team of artists at Visceral had to overcompensate resulting in some questionable and outright offensive content. The atmosphere that is developed relies entirely on this principle, with the expectation that the egregious failings of the game will be forgiven. This would prove to be an arrogant assumption by the designers.

Dante Aligheri’s The Divine Comedy is no religious text; it is one man’s interpretation of the afterlife seen through the lens of the prevailing opinions of fourteenth century Christianity. Setting himself up as the protagonist allows the reader to see it through his eyes. To create a video game based on what is essentially a Tourist Guide wouldn’t be very exciting, though. There must be action. There must be jumping puzzles. There must be blood.

So Visceral came up with the idea of making Dante’s character a Knight of the Crusades, who is painted as a troubled and evil man. He sews pieces of tapestry to his chest in what appear to be fits of self-punishment, having been responsible for some unspeakable acts in the name of cleansing the Holy Land of non-Christians. There is certainly some underlying criticism of these events by the game’s creators, through a series of haunting montages done in stylized animation reminiscent of Gerald Scarfe’s work on Pink Floyd The Wall (1982).

The reason for Dante’s descent into Hell is because he wants to save the soul of his betrothed, Beatrice. As a result of Dante’s indiscretions in the Holy Land, she was killed in his absence and her soul is being held captive by Lucifer. She represents the symbol of purity and Dante’s broken promise, so naturally saving Beatrice is the only way Dante can redeem himself.

After Dante is stabbed in the back, Death arrives to claim his soul for Hell, beginning Dante’s quest to save the soul of Beatrice. Making Dante’s first major encounter a fight with Death says something about the game’s ambitions. This is Dante’s boot in the door, but he doesn’t leave without taking Death’s Scythe with him in an act that sets the stage for the exaggerated action that is sure to follow. Dante’s Inferno is typical video game pastiche, yet establishes itself as an epic, bloody adventure.

The game is clearly presented as Dante the character’s Inferno, so taking these liberties with the source material is expected. It is a man’s personal quest to atone for his sins, driven by the guilt of his actions while away from his betrothed. The shouting and virulent rage expressed by Dante while performing the more powerful of his attacks is pronounced. It is not just pure anger; it is a plaintive cry. He wants release from his suffering and inner anguish. For an instant one might even sympathize with the character. Then the game happens.

Dante’s Inferno isn’t coy about its influences. The combat’s fluidity and system of combinations make it an action game that at least meets the basic requirements of the genre, but it is far from being genre-defining. To create a God of War clone without improving on this inspiration draw obvious criticisms about its lack of ambition. What’s worse is that these criticims were used to elevate the God of War series to paragon of third-person action games. It is here that reviewers lose sight of the real issue: neither game is mechanically original, and if anything do more to further constrain the third-person action genre with prescriptive combat. One only needs to look at the negative reviews of God of War III to see that reviewers are finally recognizing a regressive design philosophy.

Shortly after obtaining Death’s Scythe, Dante gets the “Beatrice Cross” for his secondary attack. The Beatrice Cross is a multi-part projectile that resembles something out of the Castlevania series. With these two weapons, Dante has two paths for weapon and skill upgrades: Unholy (Scythe) and Holy (Beatrice Cross). To perform these upgrades, Dante must collect and spend souls. Unlike God of War and Darksiders, these souls are not random and available with every kill. To upgrade Unholy or Holy skills, you must either “Punish” or “Absolve” each enemy you are faced with. Punishing will grant unholy souls, while absolving will result in holy souls.

This is actually a good system in theory, even if it makes no logical sense that an undeniably evil man is able to absolve sinful souls. Apart from the standard mobs, Dante will encounter various historical figures or “Shades” as they appeared in the original poem and will be given the choice to punish or absolve them of their sins. Doing either will result in more souls than the typical monster, so these encounters are usually the ones that allow the player to upgrade the skills in each path, so it definitely becomes a conscious choice. Initially, experimenting with the first two tiers of abilities in each path gives a sense of depth to the game. The rudimentary combinations seem tight and serviceable.

However, after traversing the first circle of Hell, the combat system’s weaknesses start to reveal themselves. The Scythe feels thin and reedy in comparison to the chunky Chaoseater of Darksiders³ or the switchblade precision of the Dragon Sword from Ninja Gaiden II⁴. The Scythe was taken from Death himself, but presents itself as so much junk to be upgraded. There is a compulsion to hit the attack buttons harder, as if it makes a difference. There is a hit counter like any self-respecting third-person melee game, but aside from a couple of Achievements there is no reason to pursue drawn-out combinations. There are no style points like in Devil May Cry or the recent Bayonetta that grade the player on their performance.

As the game increases in difficulty, it becomes easier to punish souls because it is faster. Most lower-level enemies are actually killed in one hit by punishing them. The player is untouchable when absolving a soul (which involves mashing the “B” button repeatedly), but this does serious damage to the flow of action. As a result, the player doesn’t want to punish everything in sight because they are evil; they simply want to keep moving. This is more pronounced when absolving the Shades, which starts a ridiculous mini-game that determines how many Holy souls the player will get.

With even a few points spent upgrading the Beatrice Cross, the player doesn’t have to get close in order to engage any adversaries. Maximizing the Beatrice Cross powers through the Holy path of skills ensures the player is all but invincible for a good portion of the game. It can be used with no penalty (that is, no mana draw), and can be hammered until all feeling in the thumb is lost. Using the Beatrice Cross quickly becomes tiresome as the challenge is drained from the proceedings.

Combat is the primary focus of Dante’s Inferno, and it is exposed as weak and unsatisfying under analysis. It devolves into a utilitarian system that is tedious to participate in. The combat has been constructed to simply illustrate a point: the player is fighting things. The spells and special attacks that are supposed to add variety become worthless when under assault because there is no reason to use them, despite feeling compelled to do so. The game’s combat system is simply unwilling to comply. The player surmounts every encounter through brute force: the combat is an exercise in hammering on the same buttons over and over, just to survive and make it to the next area.

If this fault in the combat system is not detected early in the game, it will most certainly be exposed in the game’s latter half. The difficulty⁵ increases unforgivingly to compensate for a repetitive and unchallenging combat system, clumsily concealing what should have been an increase in the combat system’s complexity. There are enemies that are suddenly able to block all of Dante’s attacks, have unblockable attacks, and the player is forced into situations where the magic abilities that were previously untouched must be relied upon, while hammering away on the Beatrice Cross for crowd control. To have combat become monotonous after only a third of what the game is offering means the designers have made a mistake. It leaves the player no choice but to hate the game for the painfully limiting constraints of what should be its strongest attribute.

Yet in spite of the uncontrollable wells of anger that spring up due to the game’s inability to control its own difficulty curve, there is still the need to continue. There is a nagging curiosity to see what else Visceral has created for their interpretation of Aligheri’s Hell.

And nothing says “Decent into Hell” like rappelling with human entrails down the faces of cliffs made up of undulating corpses. These brief interludes allow the game’s scenery to be taken in; to hear the moaning of restless souls begging for mercy that never seem to fade into the background. And there are a number of foreboding areas that successfully convey Dante’s role as intruder: the bubbling pools of human filth in Gluttony; the river of boiling blood in Violence; the Forest of Suicides where Dante finds his mother and continues his downward spiral into self-loathing.

Yet these are modest interpretations of Hell when compared with the inhabitants of each circle. The Temptress and her outward-reaching crotch-tendril⁶. The shapeless Gluttons that cover Dante in all manner of excrement. The hook-armed babies that erupt from the exposed nipples of a 40-foot zombie Cleopatra. These were the wretched of humankind as imagined by Visceral to make the player squirm. And it works, until the veneer of repulsion is scratched away by the frustrating limitations of the combat system and replaced with simple hatred of the obstacles.

And if it wasn’t enough just to observe the environment, the designers felt the need to make its presence known through pointless interactions with it, like mashing buttons to open doors, chests, and fountains. There are the puzzles solved with barely a thought, serving only as interruptions to the flow of play. It becomes hard to justify the forgiveness of a game that relies on a distressing aesthetic to obscure its failings.

Rather than divide the game up into obvious stages, Visceral stuck with the structure of Inferno and placed the “Boss” characters where they appear in the poem. For example, King Minos – the sorter of sinful souls – must be fought before entering Hell proper (after Limbo), and Cerberus guards the gates into Gluttonous realm. Some areas don’t have bosses, and others bring forth characters from Dante’s life who must be slain and absolved. There is resistance everywhere, and it’s made frighteningly clear that the player shouldn’t be there.

However, the Boss encounters are just more examples of how the game’s combat system fails to emerge from self-sabotage. The Boss creatures are disturbingly impressive to behold – that is, until you have to fight them. There are no “hot spots” in the purest sense; rather, there are prescribed routines that must be followed in order to proceed to the next damage state. And this would be almost bearable were it not for the stilted and imprecise controls that are aggravated in these isolated scenarios, and weapons that feel powerless against them in what feels like intentionally drawn-out fights just to show off the design of these creatures. There are tight windows of opportunity that must be taken in each of these fights, and punishment for missing them is always a significant portion of Dante’s health bar. This is not balanced difficulty: this is the designers resorting to unfair tactics. The response, naturally, is hammering on attacks when these opportunities arise, and using defenses like Divine Armor to recuperate while still being able to take damage. This teaches the player nothing of the game’s combat system – only how to survive it. When the boss creatures are defeated, it is not the glorious thrill of victory that is felt. It is exasperated relief that these battles will never have to be fought again.

In what seems like inches from completing the game, The Malebolge is introduced. The description of each area is taken from the poem, but the theme is not. The ten pits are set up as a series of discrete challenge arenas and bear a resemblance to the hidden challenges in Devil May Cry 4 – something only skilled players should attempt – but they are optional in that game. Instead of carrying themes like the rest of the game, the Malebolge throws an assortment of monsters at the player that have been fought countless times before, and issues a directive that must be completed prior to gaining access to the following pits, such as get a 100-hit combo or stay aloft for eight seconds. This is the sign of a developer who has run out of ideas or time (or both), but through some slavish sense of duty wants to remain faithful to their source material. There was no buildup of difficulty in these challenges, just a bunch of random encounters with some arbitrary way of measuring success. The dramatic change of pace for the Malebolge effectively kills any momentum that was maintained to that point, making the subsequent fight with Lucifer feel like an obligation.

It’s only fitting that the final battle with Lucifer is longer than the others – this is the end of Dante’s journey through Hell. However, the challenge of Lucifer is not one that was fostered and developed for the duration of the game, like the Archfiend in Ninja Gaiden II. The player is suddenly expected to apply skills learned during the gauntlet of the Malebolge (if they were paying attention and not just trying to survive it), and make it through Lucifer’s two forms.

Realistically, the first form of Lucifer provides no course of action for the player except to continue hammering the same attacks as they have been for the whole game while hoping they will make it to the next area. The quick time events allowing the use of the Scythe during this sequence further illustrate its frustrating ineptitude as a weapon. If the player manages to make it through this encounter, they get to face Lucifer on foot.

In this form, Lucifer does not inspire fear – only more exasperation. He is identical to all the other humanoid bosses that were encountered in the game. Aside from some very powerful distance attacks, his movements and melee patterns are predictable. The player watches as Lucifer’s manhood swings between his legs during the battle, as if possessed. The only distraction is wondering how many animators it took to create this feature.

After Lucifer’s patterns are learned it becomes a war of attrition with distance attacks because it is the only way to mitigate damage. Lucifer will also begin to block the Beatrice Cross at some points, forcing the use of the Scythe and further highlighting its decrepitude. The fight lasts what seems like an eternity, as a steady rhythm of Beatrice Cross attacks and rolling dodges is engraved into the mind of the player while they slowly chip away at Lucifer’s health bar. The fight with Lucifer is not so much giving the player a final exam as it is pulling the rug out from underneath their feet.

After defeating Lucifer, Dante is shown naked and reborn, looking at the shores of Purgatory. The heart sinks at what EA and Visceral have planned for this series. What is Dante going to do next? Take on Purgatory? Purgatory is full of people who are allowed to atone for their sins and make their way to the top of a tower into Eden, and eventually Paradise. It’s hard to wrap the mind around what someone would even fight in Paradise. While one can allow Visceral a little flexibility for making the killing happen where it actually makes sense, basing a game on anything other than self-flagellation while ascending a tower is a challenge destined for levels of criticism only hinted at during the buildup to Dante’s Inferno. And since Dante’s Inferno was not universally reviled⁷, someone is thinking about a sequel. Probably two of them.

The Hell of Dante’s Inferno is disturbing, but it is effective. It represents Aligheri’s visions of the worst of humankind, often degenerating into parody to make its point – but it is made nonetheless. Visceral obviously took the time to create a Hell that would both revolt and captivate, to ensure the player is engaged in their surroundings. However, this is no walking tour of Hell. This is a video game, and the easy disassembly of the combat system proves there is little to retain the player when it is easily grasped and mastered through its circumvention. Dante’s Inferno manages to work as the structure for a video game, but it is the execution of the game that is enough to make anyone familiar with them want to throw their controller through a window in disgust. A game that could have risen above mere imitator with the support of its source material becomes frustrating and unnecessary. It is the Hell of Mashing 10,000 Buttons. From the incredulous first announcement to the repugnant advertising campaign, Dante’s Inferno will not be forgotten. Indeed, Dante’s Inferno will receive its place in video game history for many reasons, but not one of them is because it was a good video game.

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.

The “Gaming Made Me” series of video game retrospectives started by Rock, Paper, Shotgun came from games industry writers, journalists and the designers that make them. It’s become a kind of collective autobiography sourcing the video games that shaped who they are.

Of course, the cynical part of me expected this community-driven effort to consist of mostly name-dropping key titles from the history of video games. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the response of webloggers that have taken up the mantle where Rock, Paper, Shotgun left off¹.

So now I feel the need to contribute, because I think it is absolutely necessary for anyone who loves to play or write about video games to recognize the ones that got them into the hobby. Or in the case of game designers and professional writers, what made them get into the industry itself.

I have been into computers since very early on in my life, and playing computer games was a natural extension of that interest. However, I had no idea that this hobby would result in me creating a website to talk about them. I’m no industry figure, weblogging personality or budding game designer – I’m just a guy that loves to play video games, and write about them. For the people that truly love video games, they are as important as the books they read or the movies they watched when growing up.

For any game weblog, I’d say that writing something like “Gaming Made Me” is more essential than an “About” page. It’s important to let readers know where the author is coming from, and what games influenced their lives and opinions of what makes a great video game. It provides context for the reviews and criticism they produce.

At this point in my life, video games are no longer just a hobby. They have made me a writer, and they have taught me to be critical of things beyond video games. Both video games and this website have become such immutable aspects of my life, that I can’t imagine it without them.

It was hard to come up with this list. So hard, that I had to split it into two. I wanted it be a list of games that shaped me as a player of video games, as well as my viewpoints on what makes a great video game, instead of simply rewording a “favorite games of all time” list. So I’m not going to list off the Zeldas, the Half-Lifes, the Thiefs, or the Rainbow Sixes. That would be too easy for me. No name dropping of the classics and pretending as if they meant something to me in my early development as a gamer. The following list of games got me started in the hobby, tempered my opinion of the medium, and introduced me to the genres I love. Most importantly these are the games that eventually led me to write about them². They are the ones that left an indelible mark. And for that, they must be recognized.

Alley Cat (1984)

Bill Williams’ Alley Cat was one of the first games I got for my IBM clone desktop PC when I was nine years old (it had been out for a few years). The PC had no hard disk, and I had the game in PC Booter format – it booted right into the game without the need for an OS. The computer and game arrived in my house at the same time a lot of my friends were getting NES consoles for their TVs. I thought the whole home arcade thing was stupid. I could do more with a computer.

Except that all I had for my computer was a monochrome monitor. So I could play Alley Cat in black and green, or black and orange, or black and pink, or black and white. That’s some variety! Who needed the NES and its 8-bit graphics and low-fi chiptunes. I had a PC speaker.

Obviously, these experiences established my allegiance to PC gaming at an early age.

I played the living shit out of Alley Cat, mostly fueled by a white-hot jealousy of the friends that had an NES and Super Mario Brothers. So I got good at it. And for what appeared on the surface as a game for kids, it’s actually pretty hard. Jump into a window in an apartment compex, play a mini-game: a maze in a giant piece of cheese, a fishbowl with electric eels…it was pretty surreal and often frustrating. One of the mini-games involves seducing a female cat to increase the difficulty level, after which the other mini-games could be replayed. Alley Cat helped me define “keyboard bashing.”

Alley Cat was the first computer game I remember committing myself to, even if was for the wrong reasons. I consider it the start of both a rewarding and extremely damaging relationship with video games.

SimAnt (1991)

After the success of Will Wright’s SimCity, there were a series of games developed to leverage the “Sim” brand, which included SimEarth, SimLife, SimAnt, SimTower, SimTown and SimTunes. Little did we know this was just the beginning of a publisher’s business model built on the sales of expansion packs!

SimAnt is generally considered to be a critical and commercial failure for Will Wright, as it seemed to be too eccentric a riff on the SimCity formula. Instead of focusing on large scale empire building or ecosystem shaping, SimAnt was about digging tunnels in the ground, collecting food, managing population happiness, defending the colony, and avoiding lawnmowers. Most gamers weren’t ready for that.

A friend gave this game to me to try, because he thought it was cool. I was 12. I was so past the age of thinking bugs were interesting, so why would I want to create an electronic ant farm? The whole concept seemed ridiculous. Nevertheless, the game gripped me for months. It was better than SimCity: this game taught me about sustaining life³. I was so captivated by my ant colony, striving every day to keep my Queen alive so that it may prosper, that I began to assign my own narrative to it. I would later use these ideas to write a short story for my school’s creative writing contest, where I described a lowly ant’s adventures in saving his colony. I won fisrst prize for it, too. People thought it was such a creative and original concept. If they only knew it was inspired by a video game.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis is my favorite game of all time⁴. It made me love computer games, and electronic games in general. It made me appreciate good scripting, dialogue and voice acting. It made me believe that an original story based on a well-known property could actually result in a good game. It also made me wish it had been made into a movie.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was the first game that helped me break down the barrier between “toy” and “medium” for video games. It is a game I go out of my way to play once a year, like watching a favorite film or reading a favorite book. The endgame brings sadness because I know it will be over soon. I have yet to encounter a video game that instills these feelings. Fate of Atlantis made me realize video games would be part of my life forever.

Diablo II (2000)

After finishing Ultima VIII: Pagan, I needed something similar. The game had captivated me with its isometric viewpoint, simple combat, epic quests and inventory management (really! I would have to leave excess stuff in people’s desk drawers and then come back to get it later). In response came Blizzard’s Diablo. While I would have to wait a year to play it (didn’t have the horsepower in my PC), I knew it was The Answer. See, Ultima VIII still had elements of adventure in it, as the world of PC RPGs hadn’t yet made the transition to the action-ready clickfests most of them have become. And you can thank Diablo for that.

Though Diablo was just the beginning of an obsession for me. The claustrophobic setting of a church with stairs that go down, down through relentless packs of monsters, down straight into hell, would occupy most of the time I spent with my computer. With Battle.net, Blizzard gave us multiplayer and co-op and (theoretically) endless replayability with their randomly generated dungeon levels, but it started to get tiresome. And with the release of Starcraft, the teaser trailer for Diablo II included on the disc confirmed its existence. It also gave me my reason for being as a PC gamer.

The wait for Diablo II was torture. It was the self-inflicted hell that the hero at the end of Diablo endured. My appetite for news on its development would not be appeased. I looked at screens, learned rumors of the new class types and the expansive maps that we would be treated to. The scheduled release was Spring/Summer 2000. I waited.

Closer to this time , I went to a local electronics superstore and asked for a specific street date. The woman who worked there looked at me funny and said, “You’re the 14th person to ask me about this game today. What’s so special about this Diablo II?” I had to bite my tongue at that point. Clearly society would never understand the cultural impact of video games.

I was away at University the week the game came out. I had to wait until the weekend to pick up my reserved copy, which was back home. After waiting over two years, you’d think that a few extra days wouldn’t matter. But knowing that it was there, waiting for me, just made it worse. Incidentally, I vowed to never pre-order a game after that. It hadn’t yet become as widespread a trend, but I could see that pre-ordering at a specific location tethers you to it. It provides no advantage over picking it up at any other store. Instead, you are made a prisoner with your own money and the con artists laughing at you from behind the counter.

But we are talking about Diablo II, the computer game.

The night I picked it up, I installed it on my parents’ computer. Over that weekend I must have logged close to 20 hours and stayed up way too late. I put the savegames on a diskette and packed up the CDs to go back to school. That week, I finished the game. In all it took me about four days, completing every quest and visting every random dungeon. I had beaten Diablo again. But where was Baal? The solid prospect of an expansion pack after I had finished the game helped sustain the euphoria of victory. These would be the best games ever made.

Of course, I was able to look past the hideous low resolution graphics (releasing a game in 640 x 480 game in 2000? Really, Blizzard?), the repetitive nature of the quests, and the game’s nefarious ability to make you want to collect things while in the perpetual loop of clicking a mouse button. Diablo II would provide the model for Blizzard’s own MMORPG, and an entire genre would be dominated by this game in the years after its release.

There’s no arguing Diablo II‘s impact on computer games, and video games in general. The simple “Click-Kill-Reward” concept had never been used to such devastating effect. This was a game I could install and play like some would play Solitaire, to pass the time. Everything became mindless, reflexive. I don’t think I’ve finished a game so many times as I did Diablo II. Hardcore mode provided an outlet for the experienced Diablo II player, where the character dies permanently. Losing my level 43 Sorceress stacked with a selection of rares and uniques to some pack of Fetish Shamans casting Inferno forced me to new depths of humility.

Diablo II was also responsible for something else. Back in that summer of 2000, another game was released. It was called Icewind Dale. Creating a mostly storyless dungeon crawler with the familiar rules and deep game mechanics of Baldur’s Gate had me equally gripped after I had finished Diablo II. So I decided to write an essay comparing the two. I thought Icewind Dale was the better game. I used pathetic excuses like “deeper”, “better soundtrack”⁵ and “nicer looking graphics”. I published the article on a website dedicated to games that didn’t last long. In time I realized I had betrayed a game that provided so many hours of enjoyment, and created stories I could share with the friends that also obsessively played it. Diablo II galvanized my love of PC gaming, and video games in general. Video games were more than a distraction to me at this point. I thought about them all the time, about their multiple layers of presentation, and how they were quickly establishing themselves in our cultural consciousness.

I began thinking about a proper website. I would have to write more about these things.

This is the first part of a two-part series. Read “Part 2: Critical Mass”

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.

Now that proper BioShock 2 video previews are circulating instead of scanned magazine covers and wild fan speculation, I can’t help but feel like the gaming public is being duped and they don’t even realize it. Or maybe they don’t want to realize it, because BioShock has already been granted its lofty position as a new standard for video games, and no one dares knock it off its pedestal for fear of losing that anchor for cultural legitimacy. Even though I don’t share this opinion, I was willing to see this game through because it at least made an attempt at a philosophical statement, whether I agreed with its implementation or not [1]. BioShock may have failed as the game that showed such promise in its first 10 minutes, but at least it prompted a discussion that was not mostly Games-Are-Art wankery. And I’m not talking about how the game made you go out and buy a copy of Atlas Shrugged; I’m referring to the way it makes the “choice” in video games we love to complain about a mostly empty gesture. Maybe this statement was intentional; or maybe it was just an honest, unfiltered reflection of game design as it stands today.

I can also respect Ken Levine’s position on the finished product: he acknowledged the shortfalls of the original game [2, 3], and knew there were things that could have been better, or fully realized. He had a particular endpoint in mind – the character that results from the adventure should reflect the choices made in the game, however insignificant or arbitrary they may have been. The end of BioShock was about coming face to face with what you, as the character, had wrought upon this underwater dystopia. And you should be made to reconcile the results of these decisions.

BioShock 2 is set in Rapture again years into the future, even though in the original game we were eventually tasked with its sabotage and ultimate destruction. And while I can accept that some plot contrivance will surface explaining how some parts of the colony were able to survive during the time between games, I can’t help but wonder why. A game like BioShock – one that attempted to retain a deeper meaning throughout its duration – demands that the story come first if they are to retain interest in the microcosm they have established. Is the story beneath the sea, or up on the surface where a clash of civilizations at odds with one another could be further developed? BioShock ended on a bad note, whether ADAM hungry players want to admit it or not. The “Good” ending is basically a non-event. Why would I want to continue the life of an old man surrounded by orphans? So a bunch of splicers took over a nuclear sub. What happened after that? It’s a mutant apocalypse waiting to happen, and I was the cause! Why can’t I be responsible for fixing it?

At first glance, BioShock 2 is going back to Rapture to do all the things that should have been done in the first game. Why am I supposed to care about walking around outside of Rapture now? The threat of flooding was always at the back of our minds while wandering through those tunnels, but it never happened. Is 2K Marin trying to make up for this oversight?

The Player wakes up as a Big Daddy, and as if to silence the people that will harbor the “been there, done that” attitude, this particular Big Daddy can use plasmids. And, like the original game, he can either harvest ADAM directly from Little Sisters or taken them on as partners to do the harvesting. While it may seem exciting to fend off a bunch of splicers while your partner harvests ADAM, I don’t see how this choice holds the same initial gravity as the original game. A Big Daddy has already been shown to be all but indestructable, and could easily plow through the game killing Little Sisters and Splicers with impunity. You are (presumably) a human that was turned into a Big Daddy, but there is no history there. At least in the original you were a man that through convoluted plot turns and exposition was able to appreciate some of the human elements sprinkled throughout the storyline that would make it seem those token morality plays actually meant something. Instead, the approach used for BioShock 2 dresses it up as an action game that renders its own existence pointless.

But I know 2K Marin thought about this. “We’ve already established that Big Daddies are basically invincible. How can we make this different?” Everyone sat around the board room table looking down at their hands. And then I’m sure somone piped up: “We’ll Make a Big Sister!” in what must have seemed like veritable flash of genius.

Aside from the obvious lack of creative vision, the fast moving, always observing Big Sister will play a prominent role in this game. This new character positions itself in the game world like the SA-X in Metroid Fusion – a character that is your shadowy reflection, appearing every now and again to let you know who you’re eventually going to be fighting. This is really what the first game should have been like; by making Big Daddies recurring characters that could be defeated with a little persistence it lessened their overall impact in the game world. Of course, this all depends on whether Players are willing to convince themselves that this new technology was invented in the nine years since the original BioShock, by people who were only partially jacked up on Plasmids. Or was it there all along?

BioShock 2 also hopes to recapture the suspenseful environment that made the original game so unique in its delivery. But it’s already been done! By staying in Rapture, Players already know what to expect from Splicer subculture, unless 2K Marin are going to reveal some Ultra Mutant Splicer or other scientific mastermind that was strangely absent from the first game. This decision is basically admitting that the original game had nothing to say at all; it just provided a pretty new environment to shoot things in. That’s really what’s happening here, as I am told that I “finally get to drill people” and “shoot the rivet gun” as a Big Daddy. I find it extremely hard to accept that the peak of creativity ended at the halfway point of BioShock. But with these video previews of the game in action, that’s essentially the extent of 2K Marin’s sales pitch.

BioShock 2 ignores the groundwork that was laid, and instead focuses on a Player’s insatiable need to shoot at things. Big Daddies weren’t that interesting – they were part of BioShock‘s environment and became only obstacles at the end of the game. Apart from the fact that Rapture is already destroyed, BioShock 2 doesn’t appear to explore the mythos of Rapture as much as it wants to rewrite it. Instead of carrrying the story forward, it wants to go back and “do all those other things you wanted to do in Rapture.” But it’s too late, guys. We want to see what’s next.

According to 2K Games, the plan is to eventually have six BioShock games in a story arc to rival Star Wars[4]:

Look at Star Wars. It’s a fight between good and evil, just like BioShock [and every other game in existence, it would seem - ed]. If we spin it the right way and get the right twist of innovation, we can make six parts of it, as Star Wars did…we have to be careful not to cash in.

At least they’re being up front about their aspirations for the franchise.

Notes:
1. Refer to my review of BioShock, a year late to the party.
2. In an interview from September 2007, Ken Levine reveals that the “black and white” endings weren’t his idea; he would have rather seen a better representation of the Player’s choices in the game. But those choices had to actually have an impact in the game first, Ken.
3. At GDC 2008, Levine gave a talk about how he “screwed up BioShock’s story”, by making the climax too soon. As I said in my review, it’s basically a revenge mission after the halfway point.
4. Christoph Hartmann, Global President of 2K Games confirms more sequels of BioShock are in the works.

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.

While we didn’t encounter any bugs in the build we played, at the last moment before going to press, we received word from Gearbox that their commitment to fixing a one-in-200 crash bug has delayed final code of the game. In addition, Ubisoft was unable to provide specific information about possible DRM restrictions at press time. In keeping with our policy of reviewing finished code, we are withholding our score until next issue when we’ve played the final. In the meantime, we feel that the text detailing what we saw in the build we played will be helpful to you in making your game purchasing decision.

Being my usual cynical self, my first reaction was: what were you doing reviewing unfinished code? Furthermore, if specific information about DRM was required to provide a final score, what in the fuck is Spore doing with a 91%?

Is this another way of saying that exceptions are made for the big releases? That something as restrictive as the DRM that comes with Spore should simply be ignored in the interest of getting that high-rated exclusive review to press? In all fairness to PC Gamer, from what I saw in the other game reviews they do mention where games have potentially intrusive DRM in a sidebar.

Yet in the same issue, the review of Crysis Warhead has a note that says:

Although we know that Crysis Warhead will use SecuROM copy protection and require online activiation, there was no word at press time about the exact number of installations that will be permitted per copy…nor whether those installations will be revokable.

And despite that nebulous advice, the game got a 73%.

Hell’s Highway seems to be the exception here, and calls into question what should constitute a comprehensive and fair review in the age of DRM.

I’ve followed the saga of Spore‘s DRM and the backlash from fans, gamers and consumers of said product, and while EA has made the token gesture of allowing gamers to install it five times instead of three, the precedent has already been set: gaming software is disposable. By accepting the EULA and subsequently installing whatever copy protection or check-in application that runs alongside the actual game, you are essentially agreeing to terms that allow you to use the software temporarily, and completely on the terms of the publisher. Spore isn’t the first title that ignited such a response from gamers: Both BioShock and this year’s PC version of Mass Effect used similar technology. Though in BioShock‘s case, the DRM was removed by a later patch in response to complaints.

Despite this criticism from the game-buying public, the influence of these practices by publishers to protect their software are still absent from most reviews, and how it affects the game playing experience. In the interest of reviewing the game itself and not getting caught up in technical issues, I can understand this approach. But to me, this is the same thing as talking about minimum system requirements. It certainly affects the replayability of the game if you can only install it a limited number of times. And what about the game’s posterity? Will this authentication work in 10 years? The ability to play any game I own whenever I feel like it is a comforting thought – but this appears like it may be a luxury of the past. The once simple act of installing a PC game is becoming a more involved process; I only have to look back at the angry mob waiting for Steam to register their retail copy of Half Life 2 just so they could play it. And this, it seems, was only the beginning.

I don’t expect a reviewer to hold up a final verdict because DRM details were not available, or if the reviewer agrees with these practices. DRM isn’t going anywhere, and at that rate no game would ever get a score (certainly a good day in my book, but that’s a topic for another discussion). But I do expect to have some discussion on its effects on the game present in the review. Gamers should be made aware of what they’re getting into with each purchase. Once the user has accepted the EULA and is ready to install the game, the chances of returning it for a full refund just dropped to 0. If they are unsatisfied with any aspect of the game they are basically stuck with something they don’t want. They’ll be lucky if they can unload it on the secondary market, but for PC games that’s becoming an equally daunting proposition as modern DRM works towards isolating installations to the original machine. Indeed, DRM is now entrenched in PC gaming culture, and it’s about time that game reviews started addressing more diligently, or at the very least more consistently.

So what have I been doing the past year and a half, aside from taking care of our beautiful daughter? Not a lot of gaming, that’s for damn sure. Once they start walking it’s impossible to keep up without feeling physically and emotionally drained at the end of every day. But it’s a good feeling of tiredness. Watching a child explore the world for the first time, with their only hardships consisting of having their face washed or going to bed every day at 9pm is often hilarious to observe. With free time becoming more of a commodity after establishing a fairly consistent schedule, I thought it was time to play some games and start writing in earnest again.

While I may not have been able to play games as liberally as I used to, I checked out some of the bigger titles and still kept myself informed of where popular culture was moving. Everyone had a Wii, the Nintendo DS was the most popular handheld, I was drowning under the recommendations for Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and the retro titles released on Xbox Live had me pining for a 360. I was asked (repeatedly) why I wasn’t using Facebook by friends and relatives alike. I became obsessed with discovering new music, which included an unhealthy attachment to Last.fm.

There were many times where I genuinely wanted to relaunch the site – the evidence is pretty clear in previous posts – but I don’t think I was ready. I had started a few reviews of games I had played in those months, but I never got the old feeling I had when I was writing here regularly. I had disconnected myself from the games industry at large, other gaming weblogs and the games themselves, and was content to play the few titles that my aging PC would allow. But mostly, World of Warcraft.

Last summer a friend and I got the crazy idea of starting up characters in World of Warcraft again, now that we were both getting into some predictable routines with our children. I thought I swore off the stuff for good two years ago, but once we got started it was pretty clear that this game filled a long-dormant need to play games. This time we had a party of three real-life friends that only played together, with the goal to reach level 60. For a while it worked out pretty good. But then everyone got busy, the commitment for instances evaporated, and I was paying World of Warcraft insurance instead of actually playing the game.

In late 2007, BioShock hit – a game that I was looking forward to as much as everyone else, and the only title in the last year I truly felt I missed out on when it hit stores. The subsequent glowing reviews and recommendations I received made me want to cry on the inside. I was out of the loop. Though now that I’ve played through it I can honestly say that it was all I needed to make me want to write again. But I’ll save the rest for my review.

After missing Bioshock and playing Call of Duty 4 on the lowest settings, I was faced with the cold hard truth that if I was to get back into PC gaming in earnest, I’d have to get a new computer. My gaming rig was about to turn six, and I was tired of reading about “minimum system requirements”. So this summer I finally set aside some money and ordered myself a customized XPS M1530 from Dell. A purchase that was mostly driven by technolust, I still consider it a fairly practical acquisition for me, as I now have no excuse not to be writing. The specifications are certainly not equivalent to what you can get for a desktop at the same price (true of any laptop), but it can handle Gears of War and Assassin’s Creed, and Crysis with a little help from third party video drivers.

During my time away from games and Tales of a Scorched Earth, I did the usual soul-searching any long time readers are probably all-too familiar with. Was the effort really worth it? Given the state of gamer culture before and after the games weblog phenomenon peaked, does it matter that a voice that attempts to promote thoughtful discussion on games exists? And I don’t think it does matter. Well, at least to the degree that I once thought it did. More people get involved in this hobby every day – and most don’t care about the details. They want to know if it is worth dropping $50 on and whether they can play it with their friends. They go to Metacritic or Gamerankings. I think I just needed to ignore this unfortunate side effect and take the proverbial leap into writing again. I love games and I loved writing about them, so why should it be so hard to get back into it?

Now that I’m playing with some regularity again, I realize that there is still so much more to say about gaming and game culture. I was happy to churn out 2,500 word essays on the best and worst games I have experienced. I liked knowing I was able to share those experiences with others who shared this passion for games, and even happier if it prompted a worthwhile discussion. As one reader pointed out in one of my final posts before the break, it is purest folly to expect to “keep up” and have that act as the driving force for writing about games – there’s no time to enjoy them. I don’t want to treat my website as something to maintain; rather, it should be a place to record these thoughts on gaming whether or not they are validated by readership.

I guess that’s just a long way of saying that updates will resume their quasi-regularity and continue to be painstakingly crafted. Tales of a Scorched Earth may fall silent for a little while again, but I will always be back. I can’t abandon the hobby that has provided so many hours of enjoyable entertainment over the course of my life and a source of excellent subject matter for my writing. I will always be a gamer at heart; there is no reason for me to hold myself back in the face of so much noise that surrounds the industry.