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.

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.

Beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, there is a hidden metropolis established by a megalomaniac tired of dealing with the confines imposed on him by the modern world. In the wake of a civil war that tore this city apart are the hordes of Splicers – humans horribly disfigured and disturbed by excessive self-inflicted genetic mutation. Plazas and hallways scarred by war and bedecked with posters advertising the use of these mutagens wait silently for the player, who will upset the stalemate in the battle for supremacy in Rapture and restore some kind of order. But to face the Splicers and expect to stand a chance, the player must do their own share of gene alteration – upgrading the ability to absorb damage, increasing physical prowess and gaining elemental offensive abilities. BioShock does its best to blend aspects of the first-person shooter with projectile spells, stat-boosting, and the point-and-click adventure games of old, creating an environment teeming with ideas inspired by the best of dystopian science fiction literature. It also reveals an engrossing story, and yet another argument against a society governed by an individual’s opinion on what is right without the checks and balances of the status quo. But somewhere among those many blood spattered corridors and in between the creepy ramblings of the 326th splicer I had to fight, the game lost me. Not for lack of interest I had gathered following its complex plot, but in the way it leaves its promise of moral ambiguity untouched, and leaves the player nothing more than an extremely attractive and original first person shooter.

Even though this review is a year late to the party, I can’t assume everyone has played and finished this game. I mention some significant plot points during the course of my analysis that will potentially ruin the entire experience, so please do yourself a favor and stop reading if you plan on playing BioShock eventually.

Another warning: this review is long. It is now the longest review I have ever written for Tales of a Scorched Earth. But that’s never stopped me before.

BioShock was the highest rated PC game of 2007, and one of the highest rated video games to be released in 2007. It received a seemingly endless stream of praise for creating a computer gaming masterpiece. You know, since the last one was released in 2004. Naturally, I felt compelled to experience it for myself to see whether the game would really live up to its reputation. While the high praise for Resident Evil 4 was mostly annoying to me, I actually believed the hype surrounding BioShock to the point where I felt bad for not being able to play it upon release. A number of factors prevented this, but now that I have finished the game one year later I feel that I am able to detach myself from what the popular opinion was at the time and review the game on its merits alone.

First I want to get the whole “spiritual successor” thing out of the way, because it seems to be an unnecessary talking point in every review I’ve read. I know Ken Levine’s past as a designer, and the title may have the word “shock” in it, but let’s be totally clear here: BioShock stands – and should be judged – on its own. Like any other game, it borrows heavily from the merging of different genres, game mechanics and themes that predated it, but I have yet to experience a game that has ever had such tightly controlled art direction. BioShock took the art deco aesthetics of the 1930s and injected them into the completely original setting and subculture of the failed paradise of Rapture. During the game’s introductory level, the moment the television screen in the bathysphere reveals the underwater skyline I was transfixed by the possibilities that lay ahead. Who built this place? Why is it underwater? And what was I getting myself into?

The quotable dialogue, posters and genetic experimentation interspersed through the entire game clearly pull their inspiration from dystopian science fiction and classic Hollywood. The ethereal soundtrack culled from old 1930s recordings echoes off of the walls of the first few rooms you explore that have clearly been ravaged by fighting. The first Splicers you encounter are dressed in party masks that cover their hideous faces. This sensory dissonance implants a real urgency to find out what happened.

However, in response to this initial curiosity the best that BioShock can come up with is a vending machine. That spits out a very grubby looking syringe. That you have to stab into your arm. Suddenly granted with the ability to shoot lighting bolts from your hands, you feel empowered. But that feeling doesn’t last long, because the shotgun and its various ammo types can be just as gratifying.

The use of Plasmids (spells) and Tonics (passive abilities) to enhance your character is one of the game’s focal points, but I felt they were constantly conflicting with the game’s unique selection of weapons and the way they can use different types of ammunition. Plasmids and Tonics can be found in the game, or purchased from another type of vending machine. The Plasmids and Tonics must then be equipped via a Gene Bank, where you can see the inventory of other Plasmids and Tonics you have obtained to that point. Instead of the dramatic syringe-sticking scene at the beginning of the game, once you can purchase new abilities from vending machines, it’s simply a matter of shifting some icons on-screen at the Gene Bank.

If Old Man Murray had the Start to Crate review system, I offer up The Vending Machine Dependency Test. BioShock relies too heavily on vending machines to supply players with everything they need in the game. Another example that immediately comes to mind is the recent Dead Space, which similarly uses vending machines in an environment that’s most unlikely to support them. It overtly expresses the designer’s inability to come up with an interesting or original way to hand over power-ups and weapons. No wonder there was an uprising! Weapons, Plasmids and Gene Modification were readily accessible by any member of Rapture’s community. Finding weapons that have been cast onto the floor, or unused ammo is far more believable in the wake of a civil war than buying things from vending machines that are amazingly still operable after such a violent conflict.

If BioShock wanted to add depth to the game’s mechanics via some light character customization, it does a horrible job of integrating it into the interface. BioShock treats Plasmids like other weapons, in that you can only see active ones alongside your equipped weapons. You can’t see active Tonics, nor can you ever view your other Plasmids unless you go to a Gene Bank. I can understand that this is necessary to equip them (it is do-it-yourself genetic modification), but just to see your inventory? And where do you carry all those weapons and extra ammo? The fact that there is no inventory or other stat-building reiterates how thinly this RPG-lite skin has been stretched over the typical FPS.

Eventually, the RPG elements just seemed to get in the way. They felt only half-realized, and with a full complement of weapons and modest supply of ammo under my belt I didn’t feel as much of a need to upgrade my plasmids or tonics. Certainly Plasmids make dealing with groups of Slicers easier (like Electro Bolt and Frozen Bolt), but they aren’t essential. Most seem like showcases for the designers to show how they can create clever weapons or copy existing ones, like Telekinesis. With all the terrible side-effects from splicing that you see from exploring Rapture, your character remains curiously pure – tainted only by the choice of actions towards Little Sisters in pursuit of ADAM. If Plasmids and tonics can be ignored or consumed with impunity, what purpose do they serve in developing your character?

In this regard, BioShock tries too hard to be deep. As the main character, you slowly discover how your life is central to the history and future of Rapture, and the game desperately wants you to make a connection with the character. This is emphasized by the game’s focus on the RPG-lite elements of Plasmid and Tonic upgrades, and morality play that is constantly paraded in front of you through interactions with Big Daddies and Little Sisters. But like Gordon Freeman in Half Life 2, you say nothing for the entire game – even as you end the life of Rapture’s founder (and your father). This emotional detachment may be one of many statements regarding the game’s interpretation of Objectivism, but I cynically offer the more simple explanation: if Jack didn’t kill Ryan and go running after Fontaine, the game would be over.

While BioShock allows players to save anywhere, they also introduce the feature of Vita-Chambers. These are basically respawn points in each game area that are automatically activated when you are nearby. When you are killed, you are automatically resurrected at these points without having to reload your game. Any ammo you had spent is gone, but if you were fighting a Big Daddy his health bar is exactly where you left it. Through dying and respawning it allows you to wear down tougher enemies that take away most of the challenge. A later patch to the PC version allowed people to turn off the use of Vita-Chambers, but the damage of the original design decision had already been done. Why include them at all? The technology used to create Vita-Chambers is explained in the context of the game world making it somewhat plausible – but why so many installations if it was still in the experimentation stage? I can see if it was to prevent the quick-save-and-reload mentality that often breaks immersion in FPS, but then why not include automatic save points which seem to be accepted by PC gamers? It’s a seamless way to integrate saving in-game, while not allowing players to exploit the system.

I also wasn’t really satisfied with the Hacking mini-game, a real step backwards from the simplicity of System Shock 2. As the game progressed, hacking became an annoying distraction while under fire and I mostly resorted to destroying turrets and cameras, or used Auto-Hacks. Tonics that slow the flow of liquid were good, ones that reduce alarm and shorting tiles are better, but why not a Tonic that decreases the overall number of tiles to make the entire hacking process shorter? I really just wanted to be in the game more, instead of dealing with these tack-ons to the experience.

Linearity and simplicity is not always a bad thing when you’re trying to tell a story with a First Person Shooter; Half Life 2 is a perfect example of this. Sure you were able to carry an entire arsenal of weapons in the back pocket of the Hazard Suit, but the game didn’t focus on how these weapons were arranged on your person or grant you the ability to affix a sniper scope to it. Guns were a defensive necessity for you to be presented with the rest of the story. The meticulous set-up of BioShock‘s core mechanics amounts to little more than window dressing on a game that at its core is essentially an unusually beautiful first person shooter.

Lightning proves to be very useful in this game when you’re dealing with enemies that don’t figure out standing around in water results in instant death.

BioShock often collapses under the cumbersome weight of its mechanics, to the point where the narrative flow suffers. I made up my mind early on that BioShock was just a first-person shooter with a more complicated weapons upgrade system, so I decided to focus on the story elements that were being fed to me in between trips to the many vending machines and searching for potato chips and unused EVE in garbage cans. Finding out the rest of the story was really the only reason I kept playing the game.

However, BioShock could have made a more concerted effort in getting plot elements across. Tape recordings can be interesting when used sparingly, and help fill in the gaps between interactions with the main characters of the game, but they shouldn’t be the only method of delivering the plot. There was also too much time spent on how important plasmids were to develop my powers within the context of the game, instead of giving me more information to piece together what is probably a fascinating history for Rapture. Because Gordon Freeman doesn’t speak, Half Life 2 did a great job of integrating newspaper clippings, propaganda posters and random chatter between NPCs as a way of expositing the storyline without forcing you to sit through cutscenes or tape recordings. Although BioShock has its own share of posters that can be pieced together to form what likely happened in the last weeks of Rapture’s organized society, there just wasn’t enough neutral information being provided to make me feel like the game was allowing me to figure things out for myself.

Since tape recordings are so valuable in providing more story, it makes you want to explore the game world itself – the gardens of Arcadia, the twisted artist’s sanctuary of Fort Frolic, the dilapidated apartments of the lower class in Apollo Square. BioShock does its best to make that possible by providing a number of additional sections of each level to uncover, that may only provide a few power-ups or tape recordings but aren’t necessary points that must be visited to proceed. And seeing this paradise gone bad sprawled in front of you make these side trips far from tedious. Every new environment, every blood spattered wall and scattered corpse makes you speculate on what happened. BioShock does its best to disguise your predetermined path.

But why the lack of variety in enemies? While interesting concepts, the Splicers look too much like generic zombies, and the last type of Splicer you will ever see in the game is revealed in the third chapter. Big Daddies are also awesome to behold the first few times, but once I saw them as obstacles to more ADAM they were simply a tin can I had to blow up to get the prize inside.

If only there was more depth to this dynamic than a superficial guilt trip.

BioShock certainly illustrates an original gameworld and absorbing story, but most people who have played the game seem to attribute more to the game’s morality play in the way it presents the ADAM-hoarding Little Sisters, despite it being completely misplaced. Back to the RPG-lite elements: ADAM is an important resource in the game; you need it to purchase new Plasmids, upgrade existing ones, or buff base attributes like Health and EVE. If you choose to focus on developing these abilities through the game, the resource becomes quite critical. In fact, you need it to survive. And that’s where BioShock introduces the Little Sisters.

At one point in the beginning of the game, you witness a Little Sister injecting a Slicer’s corpse with a syringe. It’s a creepy scene that resembles a carrion bird picking through the leftovers of some derelict battlefield. The Little Sister is harvesting genetic material from these corpses, where it will be converted into ADAM by a parasite living inside the Little Sister. You learn this shortly after, when you are presented with a scene where a Big Daddy has been slain and the Little Sister remains. You already know the ADAM is valuable – that’s why all the Slicers are going after Little Sisters and the Big Daddies are required to protect them. You even know at this point that ADAM will be required to get through the game, though how much is the reason for the difficult choice that follows.

Do you kill the Little Sister and harvest the ADAM-rich parasite? Or do you save her, and submit to the possibility that you will eventually be rewarded for your mercy? The game even makes a big deal out of it by presenting a giant dialog box to confirm the choice. At that point, you only have the word of Dr. Tenenbaum to go by. The problem with this setpiece is that you aren’t given specifics for a critical decision that will affect the outcome of the game. Will you still get ADAM? Or something else? It isn’t made clear, and at that early point of the game there is not enough information given to the Player to make an informed decision, especially with ADAM being the most essential resource in the game next to EVE. Or maybe bullets. Since ADAM is needed to progress, the cautious player will always lean towards harvesting the ADAM – it is needed to “level up” the main character. Had Tenenbaum alluded to the quantities of ADAM that would be received (even just outright saying you’ll get half), perhaps players would approach this pivotal scene differently.

However, this is ultimately where BioShock fails as a game that offers up morality for debate. The true effect of that moral choice is limited to this first encounter with a Little Sister, because even if you decide to save her, but still go on to kill Little Sisters for their ADAM, you will be painted as the antagonist for the rest of the game. Thus the choice is detached from a simple resource-collecting mechanic, and ADAM becomes just another item to collect from enemies like money and EVE to get through the game. And make no mistake, by default the Little Sisters are enemies in the context of the game, because at the point I am introduced to the dynamic between Tenenbaum, Ryan and Atlas, I have no idea who to trust. Plus, the Big Daddies are trying to flatten me.

Following the first few frustrating one-sided battles with Big Daddies it is a completely normal reaction to want to get the reward afterwards: lots and lots of ADAM. Any impact of a moral choice or negative reaction in the decision to kill is lost amongst the flying rivets and shattered glass. Kill Big Daddy, harvest ADAM, move on with the rest of the game.

The game is also inconsistent in the way it presents the act of collecting ADAM. The Little Sister will struggle in your grip, the screen goes dark, and the deed is done. The pangs of guilt are supposed to lie beneath the surface, as what you have just done has surely ended the life of the Little Sister, but you don’t know what happened. While I’m not expecting any ultra-violence, this separation of the player from the act that is supposed to make them feel remorse for his actions seems like a cop-out. And near the end of each level, the game itself reminds players that there are unharvested Little Sisters remaining, noting that ADAM is required to survive, or else the game will get difficult. This statement can be taken either way: kill Little Sister – get ADAM, or save Little Sister – get a little bit of ADAM, but it makes the completist in every gamer want to go back and grab the whole lot to maximize the number of Plasmids they can obtain.

After revealing that Ryan is your father, and Atlas is really the nefarious Fontaine trying to gain the final upper hand, you embark on what is little more than a revenge mission to unseat Fontaine. At this point, the game began to unravel. Dr. Tenenbaum gets involved at this point – the creator of Little Sisters and their repentant savior – who assists in your escape through a Little Sister. But why would they help me when I had spent most of the game up to that point harvesting ADAM from them with cold, calculating efficiency? Sure Tenenbaum was upset with me, but then she continues to help me escape Fontaine’s mind control – only so I can roam the streets of Rapture freely again and harvest more ADAM from the Little Sisters. It didn’t matter if I changed my ways after that encounter, as the game’s ending would prove. Between Fontaine’s big reveal and the game’s ending, there was ample opportunity for Jack’s redemption with regard to the Little Sisters, but the game didn’t capitalize on it. Instead, it forces you to dress up like a Big Daddy and pretend to be friend to the Little Sisters, a parody of the entire game’s depth.

The Little Sister escort mission that led me to Fontaine’s base of operations further cemented the game’s disregard for it’s own play on morality and consequence: I let each one of them die every time, and yet I was able to call more to help me without any penalty. It became a series of chaotic firefights where my only priority was saving myself from the waves of ADAM-thirsty Splicers, which became only annoying obstacles, their aura of creepiness long since depleted.

All this, only to be treated to an embarrassing endgame involving a battle with a purple Hulk juiced up on ADAM, where crossbow bolts are more effective than Plasmids. In this battle the Plasmid and Tonic system completely disintegrated, its superficiality thunderously confirmed. After defeating Fontaine, the offensively short ending basically took my character’s actions at face value and labeled me a cold-hearted bastard. From what I have read about the “good” ending, it isn’t much better. The prospect of Splicers on the surface world is surely terrifying, but it offers little closure to Jacks’ story, and like the disappointing ending of Half-Life 2 relies on fan speculation and sequels to answer these perfectly legitimate questions. And for a game that makes such an effort to convince players there are moral implications in the game, it does very little in offering the Player a reward for changing their outlook after Fontaine’s revelation at the middle of the adventure. If your actions prior to the encounter with Ryan predetermine the outcome of the game, the irrelevance of the morality behind harvesting ADAM from Little Sisters is all too apparent.

BioShock was fun to play for a while, and did its best to offer up a genuinely unique single-player experience. I wanted to call BioShock the most overrated game of 2007; the smug bastard inside of me thought that would be the only fitting tribute to this gaming spectacle. But I don’t think that’s very fair, because there is enough going on in this game to elicit the sorts of reactions where people actually have to explain themselves instead of allowing knee-jerk responses to its quality. BioShock approached the threshold of a memorable gaming experience for its story alone; if only it had taken a simpler approach to revealing its strongest attribute. What should have been a captivating adventure devolves into yet another shooter with only token responses to player actions, resulting in a game that is satisfied with only giving the impression that there is something more instead of actually following through on its promise.

First, let’s recap: sometime shortly after Kristen Salvatore came aboard as the new Editor-in-Chief, they published their original reviews policy:

It pledged that we would review only finished game code; that said game code would be from the gold master version the publisher uses to create the discs that end up in retail boxes or the equivalents; that MMO and multiplayer-only games would be reviewed in a setting that replicates the consumer experience; and that as such, we’d only review MMOs and MP-only games when we could play them against the general populace.

The problem, they say, is that they can’t wait for Gold Masters of the product that they are reviewing, so that the “general populace” (as Ms. Salvatore so coldly puts it) has a fair opportunity to gauge the quality of what they should be spending their money on.

Waiting for master discs and the opportunity to play an MMO against the rest of the world is making it almost impossible for us to get you reviews you can actually use to make decisions about what games to buy—the time it takes a publisher to replicate the discs and ship them to stores is so short, there’s not enough time for us to see the code in between. As a result, we feel like the quality of PC Gamer is suffering. Our job isn’t to just info-dump details onto you, but also to show you a good time. Doing that well means taking the time to craft our stories, and we can’t do that when we’re making eleventh-hour adjustments because a disc didn’t show up. In most cases, the difference between “finished code” and “gold master” is just Games for Windows certification, anyway.

So what, you’re worried about people that are buying games on release day not having enough information? That’s a bit arrogant in the age of Game Rankings and Metacritic, isn’t it? Anyone that can’t wait until the dust settles before throwing their money at the latest games doesn’t need to think about what they’re buying. They can figure it out for themselves (or not, and continue to waste their money on shitty games). The discerning gamer shoudn’t mind waiting a while for the reviews to start trickling in to make a more informed decision. Based on the last few issues I’ve read, there hasn’t been much “crafting”, anyway. Besides, this “new” policy isn’t – PC Gamer is basically confirming what every major gaming media outlet including themselves was doing anyway. I just have to point to their recent review of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway for an example.

And now, the affirmation of journalistic integrity:

Developers have no incentive to give us unfinished code and call it finished—after all, we’ll continue to harsh on any problems we find, and we do not re-review games.

No, they don’t. But you as a magazine have an incentive to produce quality reviews so people will continue to buy your magazine. I’m probably wrong, of course – people seem to buy your magazine no matter how bad it gets. Furthermore, in your reviews you also have the obligation to do your best to describe the product as it appears on store shelves, so the consumer knows exactly what they are getting into. This includes any DRM – something PC Gamer has gone out of their way to mention – but as far as I can tell this cannot be implemented in what the developer might call “finished code”. You aren’t reviewing the final version of the game anymore; you are reviewing a product that the consumer will never see.

I’ve always adhered to the philosophy that there is no expiry date on good reviews. Computer Games Magazine did it (perhaps the reason why so many felt it was overlooked on the magazine rack), and I do it here. I don’t care if the discussion is out of date: if it’s good writing or analysis, or a clear representation of what the game has to offer, people will read it and appreciate it and maybe even use it to base their next purchase on. Any print publication associated with the games industry is automatically out of date. We know this. Why not take advantage of the format, and stop trying to compete with internet-based media that are so desparate for advertisement clickthroughs that they live by the rule of “publish first, ask questions later”? Gaming magazines should abandon the whole concept of previews and news entirely, and leave that up to the glorified rumor mills so prevalent on the internet. Don’t shy away from publishing 2,000 word reviews that are thought provoking, or at the very least thorough. That kind of writing won’t just make your magazine better, it will help the industry itself gain a bit of respectability. Is it really so much to ask?

Instead, PC Gamer will continue to fool themselves into believing their publication is relevant in this increasingly competitive gaming media landscape by printing early or incomplete reviews in a bid to save what little credibility they may have with PC Gamers. The expectations for what constitutes a good review will continue to wane, and the “general populace” will wonder why their gaming magazine doesn’t represent what they’re buying anymore.

However, when I see headlines like “Why Adventure Has a Future” I take notice, because there’s nothing more entertaining than reading someone’s take on why they think an entire genre is safe from a fate that never seems to happen. It’s just too bad the article did nothing to usher in this new golden age of adventure games; instead, it just made me incredibly angry after being duped by an advertisement disguised as revelation.

Here’s an idea: let’s give the representative of a game publisher/distributor (ENCORE) a column at a very prominent gaming news website (EDGE online) where they can attach a sensational headline to something that amounts to no more than a press release to advertise upcoming games in their new product line (Mystery Adventure Games). It will be sure to get attention, and will actually do more to convince readers the exact opposite. It will contain insightful phrases like:

Adventure Games rely heavily on stories from literature, film, and historical events and people.

The games in question are Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon and Nostradamus: The Lost Prophecy, which obviously form the inspiration for such a statement.

Quickly reviewing the history of the genre, some of the best adventure games have come from brand new IP such as the Monkey Island series, the aforementioned Post Mortem/Still Life series, The Dig, and everyone’s favorite Grim Fandago. A bit of cursory research past writing the introductory paragraph in this article would have shown the author that there’s more to adventure games than full motion video and “interactive storylines”. Throwing a historical figure into your game doesn’t immediately make it more appealing (even if it’s the “first game ever” to do it).

Now for some focus-grouping:

Story-based game play lends itself towards non-teen; women based audiences, who have an appreciation for the genre and the story. Women tend to appreciate the character development, and interaction along with gripping storylines.

I think any gamer that’s been following the hobby for the last 20 years can appreciate those aspects of a game. And adventure games are not the only genre to adopt these tenets, either.

In closing, a relentless assault on my intelligence:

Well crafted Adventure Games will sell and what developers and publishers must keep in mind is that the key to making great Adventure Game [sic] is to deliver good graphics, game play and gripping story line. A good Adventure Game is as addicting as a good book but with the added bonus of story line interaction and eye catching graphics it is more than a book it is an Adventure Game.

The least ENCORE could do is hire someone who can string together a readable sentence to promote their games. Based on the aggregate scores at Gamerankings, it seems to me that neither game this article was designed to sell is doing very well in reviews. So why should any consumer consider these products? Because they are the unappreciated future of adventure games?

Like any PC gamer, I grew up playing mostly adventure games. Over the years the genre has been cast aside by the majority of game reviewers as niche, as the title that usually gets thrown to the interns. Adventure games need better advocacy, and not just by specialist sites like the excellent Adventure Gamers. Shameless promotional articles like these only serve to damage the reputation of the genre, by embellishing games that are obviously ill-equipped to represent it. Not to mention what it says about the editors at EDGE online.

I picked up the Holiday 2008 issue for the reviews of Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Dead Space and Warhammer Online, which were predictably full of the facetious praise you’d expect for these blockbuster releases. The review of Dead Space was especially puzzling, as it told me next to nothing about what it was like to play the game, except perhaps its aborted attempt at a closing paragraph with some comments on the controls. But hey, I can agree with Dan Stapleton’s sentiments – they sure do suck.

Though what I found most interesting was the rather optimistic retrospective from the new editor-in-chief Kristen Salvatore, on the magazine’s upcoming 15-year anniversary:

I love that we’re old. I love working for a publication that’s established…that has worked to grow and change along with its readers, and that’s shown its commitment, standards and professionalism far surpass [sic] so many of the fly-by-night outlets that the internet has given birth to…We do a better job than many bloggers. We are better respected among publishers and developers…we take well-written, well-crafted writing very seriously. We use fart jokes sparingly.

It sure makes a fine summary of PC Gamer’s current position on journalistic integrity and takes a dig at game webloggers too! I’d almost take offense, except for Tim Edwards’ review of Far Cry 2:

[Your buddy] gives you a weapon and informs you that the United Front for Liberation and Labor (UFLL) are holding another foreign mercenary hostage to the South. You go and rescue the mercenary: Nasreen Davar, a hottie.

Obviously not the same commentary that can only be developed with age and experience. And I’m not even going to touch the closing paragraph, that’s full of so many adjectives I can’t figure out if he is recommending the game or trying to beat me over the head with a thesaurus.

Granted this is one review, but in the face of Salvatore’s editorial I can’t help but think her comments are trying to prop up the magazine against the overwhelming tide of professional and amateur games writing that is now so prevalent on the Internet. And some of it is actually worth reading. I read the magazine for six years (1998 – 2004), quitting shortly before editor Rob Smith left when the magazine had taken a serious nosedive in quality. At one point during my years reading the magazine I had convinced myself it was one of the pillars of modern game journalism. I even wanted to work there. But things have changed in the print game journalism landscape. Computer Games Magazine, a place where quailty writing was never in short supply, died far too young. Massive, a magazine dedicated to the fast paced world of MMOGs printed three issues. Computer Gaming World was rebranded Games for Windows and halted publication after only a year of operation, its success likely hindered by the poor support of retailers who fail to highlight the Games for Windows “platform”. I’d like to think that there is still a need for a print publication dedicated to PC gaming, but perhaps I’m just being nostalgic. PC Gamer is the last one standing, and has the opportunity to become that bastion of solid games journalism we like to talk about but never seems to materialize. The magazine has certainly changed over the years, but not for the better and certainly not to adapt to the needs of the audience that helped establish the magazine in the first place. This can easily be corrected with their financial resources and standing in the industry – and I hope that Ms. Salvatore is finally the one to take on that responsibility.

In this same issue, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway received its delayed final score of 93%.

I was going to play it anyway.

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.

I confess that I’m something of a literature snob, so it isn’t easy for me to admit I enjoyed a mainstream book like The Da Vinci Code – I love that it’s rooted in factual historical mysteries unlocked with factual historical information.

Except that it isn’t. I guess it was wrong to assume that Brown’s detractors had actively slagged both the book and the film enough over the past three months to get people to start thinking clearly, pointing out that the basis for most of his novel was either entirely fiction or a pseudo-historical text that had been written simply to support some religious crackpot theory. But factual? Come on, a literature snob would have at least done a little casual research before making a statement like that.

The film’s focus is on a high-profile bank robbery where a number of hostages are taken, including a preteen African-American boy who was with his father at the bank. In one scene, the captives are asked to hand over all phones and electronic devices by the leader of the group robbing the bank (played by Clive Owen). The boy happened to be playing a Sony Playstation Portable®, and is ready to give it up. In what is supposed to be an act of kindness, showing our antagonist may be human after all, Owen tells the boy to “Keep it”. I wouldn’t have been so hasty if I was him – those PSP®s can watch movies and play music, too! But that was just the set-up for what follows.

Later on, the boy is seen playing his Sony Playstation Portable® in the bank’s vault. Owen’s character sits down to talk with him, and asks to try out what the kid is playing. We are then shown a scene that is clearly modelled after Rockstar’s own Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The player is shown as a gangsta dressed in West coast garb cruising in his convertible, who proceeds to blast someone at the side of the road in typical gangland fashion. The player gets out of the car to pump a few more bullets into his victim, blood spattering the wall and pavement. The words “Kill Dat Nigga!” flash on the screen, and the player places an armed hand grenade in the mouth of the other character, showering the scene with gore in some kind of finishing move. The entire scene lasted 30 seconds. I have to admit I was a bit shocked.

The obvious criticism about this situation is that Owen’s character immediately knows how to play, yet is asking about the game. It hints at how forced this commentary feels in the context of the film. Some dialogue loosely paraphrased from the scene:

Robber: “What’s the point of this game?”
Boy: “Rob people. Kill people.”
Robber: “And you like this?”
Boy: “Sure. Just like my man Fitty says, ‘Get rich, or die tryin’. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

Clever kid. In another startling display of social conscience at the end of this exchange, Owen’s character confiscates the game and says that he wants to talk to his father about allowing the boy to play it. This scene can be interpreted in a few ways. First, the commentary on video game violence. Yes it was a gratuitous display, but with mainstream film you are dealing with the uneducated. You have to be hyperbolic when making a point like this, because people still do not get it. The majority of parents do not understand that video game violence exists or is that accessible, or feel that it is “harmless” to impressionable young kids. I still see parents buying San Andreas for kids clearly too young to play it. It’s easier to give them what they want rather than explain why they can’t have it (yet).

Secondly, a complete stranger has taken it upon himself to determine what is appropriate for the boy, and to talk to his father about it. This is reflective of what the vocal minority of parents against violent video games are asking of the U.S. government in their creation of legislation to regulate video games.

Lastly, Lee is commenting on the “Black-on-Black” gang violence that is so prevalent in major urban centres, and how it has been glamorized in games, films and movies. I’m sure the reference to 50 Cent was intentional – his own game Bulletproof was released late last year. In the aftermath of the robbery, the boy and his father are questioned by Denzel Washington’s character, the detective leading the case. The boy boasts that he was never scared during the whole ordeal, even after being exposed to extreme violence first-hand, hinting at the desensitization of youth exposed to this kind of lifestyle.

An article in the Hollywood Reporter is a good summary of how the game sequence was created for the film, though it incorrectly labels it as “machinima”. The way I understand it, Machinima are movies created using existing games and working within the confines of their control schemes; otherwise, it’s just computer generated animation. Spike Lee apparently wanted this “game” to be as graphically violent as possible – in fact, the “Kill Dat Nigga!” screen wasn’t added until the game had been inserted into the film, as he wanted to add some additional “weight” to the sequence. I think the most important part of this exercise is the delivery: he used the medium itself to send the message. This isn’t the first time Lee has used to convey his opinions about video games and gangsta culture, either: Clockers showed a young boy enamored with the drug dealing scene in his housing project playing the ficticious 3D action game “Gangsta”, which allowed him to shoot people while on a bike.

Nevertheless, there is a time and a place for this kind of activism. How about contacting the ESRB next time, Spike? I’m sure you could dream up some killer commercials about the rating system that governs games that are inappropriate for minors. In the framework of this film it was an unnecessary product placement. And when I say product placement, I mean the PSP® (who really wants a PSP these days, anyway?) and the agenda of anti-video game activists. While it didn’t take away from the rest of the film, the method of relaying the message was far too overwrought to be taken seriously.

The real surprise in all this is the lack of any snide commentary from Matt Gallant, who usually goes out of his way to slag off the gaming website community when they parrot frivolous rumours like this.