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

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

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critic or reviewer that has been paying attention over the last eight years would see this game for what it is: old, outdated, unnecessary.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the wait for Diablo III, Torchlight has been cause for celebration among those that wish for an effortless and predictable excursion into well-worn territory. But like Darkstone was to the deadspace between Diablo and Diablo II, Torchlight is being overvalued because of timing. I’ll certainly give Runic Games credit for creating a slick action role playing game that pays adequate homage to Blizzard’s seminal genre template, but Torchlight is in a genre holding pattern that is waiting for something else to take its place.

Indeed, Diablo is a name is guaranteed to be referenced when talking about any gear collecting, gold hoarding, point-click-kill marathon. And perhaps some developers think that this is something to aspire to, hoping to capture the players that don’t want to pay for an MMORPG by capitalizing on the success of a proven formula. But does the already diluted genre of role playing games need another Diablo clone?^[1] What is this really offering the platform of PC gaming, in a time when the industry is rightfully criticized for creating sequels and clones and sequels of clones?

That’s a pretty heavy topic for such an innocent genre retread to lead to – after all, Torchlight is instant and fleeting gratification at its most elemental. One would also be remiss in failing to point out that Torchlight is a front to fund Runic’s upcoming Free-to-Play/micropayment MMORPG^[2]. There’s not much more you can say about Torchlight’s intentions, even if like Neverwinter Nights the game and its toolset are being released to provide a product for the community with virtually endless replayability. Yet I was still compelled to spend many hours with Torchlight, because it closed the loop on something that was started almost five years ago.

I found the enthusiast press reaction to Torchlight a little disturbing. The critical reception seems to agree that there’s nothing to it; beyond the item hoarding and watching numbers go up, Torchlight offers no more than you would expect from an acolyte of Diablo, complete with a soundtrack that is essentially Matt Uelmen riffing on the themes from Diablo II. And for simply meeting these expectations, it has managed to receive generally positive reviews^[3], and has been included on many best of 2009 lists. Does Torchlight represent the triumph of the “indie” or “underdog” spirit? Are fans of the genre so desperate for a true successor to its figurehead that they are satisfied with design by association? This is another symptom indicative of the game industry’s ability to succeed by creating graphical updates of very old, overused game concepts. I don’t even buy refinement as an excuse, because it adds only a few minor flourishes to the design of Fate^[4], a game by WildTangent released in 2005. Travis Baldree, was the lead designer for Fate. He is also the lead designer for Torchlight.

The praise for Torchlight becomes highly suspect when there are no heavy references to Fate, because the similarities are obvious throughout the game’s proceedings. Runic’s development roster consists of a mixture of WildTangent, Blizzard North and Flagship Studios expatriates. Aside from some offhanded references to the pedigree of Torchlight’s team in some reviews, it’s apparent no one bothered to make the connection. In 2005, Fate was named on many year-end lists, too^[5]. It wasn’t a good year for role playing games.

The result is that Torchlight is presented by the enthusiast press as a minor revelation, and one can only conclude that these are the opinions of people who never played Fate. Indeed, the pet that brought unwanted gear back to town for gold was a fantastic idea, and seems to be one that many advocates of the game latch on to. The same goes for the shared Item Stash that can be accessed by all of the characters saved on the same computer. However, like many other concepts in Torchlight, these features were directly transplanted from Fate. And it’s a good thing; in many ways, Torchlight is the game I wished Fate had been. It unquestionably exhibits a more cohesive presentation, so I didn’t feel like my character was some paper doll wandering around in randomly drawn levels fighting randomly spawned creatures dropping randomly generated items. Torchlight has a common thread, and as tenuous as it may be, there is at least some goal to achieve in this game beyond nursing a sore index finger.

What arises from this scenario is a question of the acceptable level of ignorance for reviewing a game of a particular genre. The same could be said of a publication that gives a fighting game to someone who dislikes them, and expects a fair review to be produced. But if a reviewer knew or cared to point out it was simply a visual upgrade to something that had been done previously – by some of the same people, no less – would it have elicited the same response? I can’t help but get the sense that Torchlight is receiving the treatment of the typical independent or low-key release that does something noteworthy, so that critics can give it the requisite pat on the head and move on to the next high-profile release. Like my feelings towards Borderlands, I refuse to accept that Torchlight’s greatness is supported by its ability to be a faithful recreation of the mechanics of Diablo.

The three character classes offered by Torchlight are a welcome change to Fate’s non-template, where there were no classes and the system was so open you could create whatever you wanted^[6]. But what initially appeared as flexible is actually a poorly implemented system that makes you wonder what is in front of you after experimenting with all the skill point options and delving through fifty levels of random dungeon. Torchlight only allows the increase of the same basic attributes of any action RPG: Strength, Dexterity, Magic and Defense, and they all start off at the more or less the same value and provide the same benefits to each class (More strength means better armour and melee damage, more Magic means more Magic Damage, etc.). Playing an Alchemist felt very close to a fighter-mage, provided I was equipped with suitable armor and a staff with large damage output. In fact, there are very little trade-offs for system optimizers that want to create melee hybrid classes, making the starting class choice meaningless except for the Skills that accompany them.

The Skill selection for each class is uninteresting, but serviceable. The skills are entirely dependent on character level; there is no “tree” of prerequisites. Thus, there is no commitment from the player to a particular branch of special abilities; most can simply be ignored until more powerful ones become available and cherry-picked out of the set. In fact, the mid-level skills (such as Ember Lance and Ember Lighting, the case of the Alchemist) feel so overpowered that there isn’t much use in spending points on anything else. Saving up Skill points becomes a common strategy. It is also odd that spell scrolls were included as an alternate source of magic. This is more of a carryover from Diablo, where a Warrior class could actually learn a Fireball spell if the scroll was picked up as an item drop. There are only four slots to store these spells, and un-learning them destroys the scroll. This isn’t as much of a sacrifice as it seems – the amount of spell scrolls that are dropped by monsters or purchased through vendors provides an ample supply to draw from. This seems like an element of design that was kept in by mistake; once again, the line for a character’s class is blurred when a Destroyer is able to wield a Level III fireball spell if they are willing to spend the Magic attribute points or have equipment that grants them. A more complicated skill tree with dependencies to make character builds more of an investment for the player would have synchronized Torchlight with its contemporaries.

In Fate, everything was randomly generated. Quests, items, the floors of the endless dungeon – even the “boss” monster to be faced at the end of the game was generated when a new character was started. By having a thread of quests based on an over-arching storyline, Torchlight avoids the same pitfalls of being inconsequential by providing a reason to keep going down into the dungeons. It’s the typical fledgling hero versus evil mage story, and the main characters in it don’t change every time you play the game. There is consistency in that, at least.

The dungeon levels in Torchlight are still randomly generated, but their layouts appear deliberate. And every seven levels, the surroundings change. It’s strange to see such a variation in environments going down through one set of catacombs, but Diablo did this too. There are new monsters to fight and they all seem to fit together with each level’s theme. It’s a welcome change from the obvious tileset and monster randomization of Fate. But once again Torchlight did not adopt what has become a genre convention: a surface world with more than one town, instead of stacking the differently themed levels.

Nevertheless, the structure and appearance of each dungeon level map are well-crafted and evoke an individual personality for Torchlight. There is a feeling of depth to each dungeon level, whether it’s through the layering of stairs or putting some inaccessible areas as background filler. This is one of the things I liked about the Barbarian Highlands in Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, and was further illustrated by the outdoor regions in Titan Quest. It gives the impression of scale and that there is some substance to these areas.

Indeed, Torchlight’s strongest attribute is its appearance. It looks light-hearted and fun, which is yet another element borrowed from Fate. But in Fate, the game suffered from overly cute character and monster design; there was nothing threatening about its adoption of a casual game’s aesthetic. Torchlight corrects this, so that the game bears enough of a resemblance to what’s expected of a fantasy setting in action role-playing games without drifting into the bland side of the spectrum like Darkstone or Dungeon Siege II. Clearly someone at Runic was paying attention to Blizzard’s philosophy behind the art direction of World of Warcraft.

Because Torchlight’s scope is limited to one town, it is considerably scaled down from its contemporaries. There are only four people in the town that give out quests, and they all have a type of quest repeated for the whole game with the exception of quests related to the main story thread. The monsters that must be slain are random, the items that must be retrieved are random, and the rewards are random and usually junk when they should have been level and class-based. You will always find better equipment through item drops or even at the vendors, as the game does a terrific job of randomizing their supply. The various non-player characters offer up these quests as if you want to do them, but it hardly seems worth it aside from the experience grind. Runic obviously spent more time on the game’s appearance. Because like Fate, if you play Torchlight for more than five hours you come to realize there is no end to the randomization of the entire affair. There is no incentive to do any of the quests other than there is nothing else to do.

What becomes immediately obvious to veterans of this genre is the lack of difficulty. The most lively parts of the game are the boss or special monster encounters, which often result in drawn out battles of health potion attrition. While the experience and looting grind may be enough incentive to spend hours in the catacombs below the town, even on Hard Torchlight quickly becomes an exercise in tedium when it poses minimal resistance. Money is easy to obtain through selling most of the items that get dropped. There is no money sink through something like equipment degradation, so there is nothing preventing players from stocking up on potions to guarantee survival though most of the tougher mob and level boss encounters. When you die, you “choose your Fate”: respawn at the exact point of death for a loss of experience and renown, at the beginning of the level for a loss of money, or in town for no penalty. And since town portals are persistent between sessions, getting sent back to town is always the best option.

There are also waypoints located at each of the transition areas between the main sections of dungeon, but using these just results in a longer walk. There are no monster respawns on the cleared dungeon levels – even between sessions – so there is no way to earn experience simply by travelling through previously cleared areas, or added risk in retrieving your corpse. If the levelling treadmill provides no opposition, is the purpose of this game to just get to the end? You can’t even show off your character’s gear to anyone. Is it the infinite randomness? Last time I checked, you could go down 2,000,000-plus levels in Fate. While I’m reluctant to label Torchlight as more genre pollution^[7], Torchlight commits a similar mistake to Borderlands in assuming that providing a new skin for the same well-worn formula is enough. Though at least Torchlight isn’t coy about it.

Everyone likes to compliment Runic on their work in creating Torchlight’s OGRE engine, and how the game had such a quick development cycle. I have no problems acknowledging this feat when presented with such a polished product. It’s evident that Runic wanted to create something familiar for fans of the genre, and for some people this is good enough. But I see Torchlight as a necessary step to something better. I think Runic did too.

Torchlight doesn’t have any multiplayer. That seems to be the biggest complaint I’ve seen in reviews of this game. And it’s a valid one, when multiplayer is typical among this game’s peers in the year 2009. I took the same exception to Fate, and now that the dungeon design resembles something with purpose, Torchlight would be the perfect pick-up game for a few friends. Given the pedigree of the design team, one would think that multiplayer would be a foregone conclusion. But I suspect it was omitted on purpose.

Torchlight was released mainly to test the OGRE engine and to gauge player response to the game and its setting. In general, the critical reception seems satisfied without multiplayer, so there’s no need to include it even as an add-on. Runic has already confirmed as much on the official forums. Instead, Runic continues to work towards their MMORPG based in the Torchlight universe. Torchlight was an experiment, and the players of the game are all willing test subjects. I’m willing to concede that Runic has my money because they are creating something bigger and better. And they might actually do it this time.

Torchlight is praised as a noteworthy re-imagining of Diablo’s well-worn formula. And in the wait for Diablo III, I suppose anything will do for obsessive fans of the genre. One only needs to remember the reaction to Darkstone – a painfully mediocre action RPG released during the wait for Diablo II that even I fell victim to. But this adoration is untempered by greater expectations. Torchlight is a competent entry into the action RPG genre, but fails to compete with the games that have already succeeded its greatest influence. Instead, Torchlight limits itself to improving Fate’s groundwork to make a game based on randomly generated content feel like a game, instead of the transient experience it actually is. Torchlight is not a revelation, but a game that provides enough genre touchstones under a slick appearance to disguise its reservation. Torchlight is the game Fate should have been: an endearing impersonator, but an impersonator nonetheless.

In Canabalt, you jump or you die. It’s that simple. When you think about it.

But Canabalt doesn’t give you much time to think. You have no control over your avatar’s movements in the game besides jumping. He is already running. Your responsibility as the player is to make sure he jumps. There is one button in this game. It can be picked up by anyone. The only difficulty curve is learning to overcome your own lack of patience to wait until that perfect second to execute the jump. There are no pretenses of depth that only end up disappointing.

The game starts in what appears to be an office building. Your avatar is wearing a suit. He starts to run. The window you jump through accents the beginning of what will most certainly be a daring escape.

The entire time you are playing Canabalt, you are gripped with fear of the unknown. Will you make the next jump? Will you escape destruction? And where is it you are escaping to? But there isn’t enough time to contemplate the incongruities of this game. You have to run. You have to jump. Freedom awaits. Or more buildings.

I could say I had visions of Out of this World (Another World) and Flashback while playing this game. The simple, yet effective artwork and smooth animations bear enough of a resemblance. But in truth I couldn’t stop thinking about F-Zero GX ^[1], and the billboards throughout the game that tell you to “GO FAST”. The obnoxious guitar-laced techno always thumping in the background, constantly pressing you forward.

Canabalt is the same. Like some other iPhone/iPod Touch games, it allows you to listen to your own music while playing. But to do that would be a mistake. Before the game starts, Semi-Secret advises players that headphones supply the best experience for their game. They’re right about that.

There is only one piece of music in this game^[2] . It starts off quiet, then develops into the same abrasive techno from F-Zero GX. You can’t help but feel prodded by the music, letting it affect your decisions. A high, long jump when it gets loud seems only fitting. Then it gets quiet again. But you don’t want to slow down; you can’t slow down.

The more you run, the more momentum builds up. The soundtrack complements everything that happens on screen. It is essential to the experience. Every single footstep can be heard. Stone, metal, and then glass breaking as you leap through a window across another gap between buildings.

Semi-Secret Software didn’t really have to do that, you know. There is no purpose to breaking through windows or the delectable tinkling sound of falling glass that results. It is the only thing in Canabalt that feels gratuitous; It’s embellishment for the urgency of your escape. Clearly you will stop at nothing – not even a full-story pane of glass – to get away.

Then there are other obtacles. Sometimes you have to hit them to slow down for a short jump before a long one. Sometimes undetonated bombs fall from the sky. You have to jump over them, or they explode when you hit them. Despite the urgency to keep moving at all costs, Canabalt makes you think ahead. You dread what’s coming. You don’t want to ruin a good run.

The buildings are random. Sometimes the gaps seem like they are getting bigger. You learn that holding on to a jump even for a split second more extends the airtime.

The whole time you are running, there is a war going on in the distance. More likely it’s an invasion. You never find out. It brings to mind the tripods from War of the Worlds and Half Life 2. These silhouettes are purposefully placed out of focus, so you can never pay full attention to what is happening. There is a more important task at hand: survival.

The most revealing feature of this game is the lack of a pause button^[3]. You are running for your life, away from some unknown force that will surely kill you if your death-defying stunts don’t. The only thing left is your life. This is an all-or-nothing gamble. There are no breaks. There is no stopping. You either make the next jump, or you die.

I’ve seen Canabalt labelled as one of 2009’s “indie darlings.” The criticism that naturally follows such attention has focused on its lack of producing an experience of any significance; it’s too short. Aside from the initial novelty, there is no reason a person needs to pick this game up more than once. They would be wrong. There is a reason.

Canabalt is a game of the simplest philosophy, hearkening back to the days where “High Score” actually meant something^[4]. Success is easily quantified. There is no secret there: to go farther, you must get better at the game. Anyone can grasp this concept. The failure condition is equally simple: you die. But even here the game has something to say, because you don’t just fall into a chasm. You hit the brick wall of your skill level. Canabalt wants you to do better.

With enough patience, Canabalt can last forever. And you want it to last forever. As long as that character is running across the screen, you are alive. You go on because you must.

Or you die.

With Borderlands, a game described as a “role-playing shooter”, developers Gearbox hope to capture the audience that spends many sleepless nights wandering through forgotten strongholds while pillaging corpses and undefended treasure chests. They want to make the grind of the modern Fantasy role-playing game appealing to those repulsed by the thought of more swords and sorcery and Siberian tiger mounts. Gearbox is going post-apocalyptic wasteland on this formula. They’re going to make this grind cool.

Borderlands is influenced by games that are second jobs thinly veiled as “entertainment.” There are enough trappings in most that the player does not immediately recognize it until they are separated from the system. Maybe the rewards are frequent enough; the increase in character abilities more steady and immediately gratifying. But Gearbox fails to dress up Borderlands to hide from the player the laborious byproduct of the genre. As a result, Borderlands merely resembles a mechanical facsimile of its influences.

If you watch the introduction of Borderlands, you can’t help but be absorbed into this new universe. Just like your favorite Guy Ritchie movie, the characters are introduced with so much flair, you can’t decide who you like more. The Hunter brandishes a sword with deadly confidence, his sniper rifle casually draped over his shoulder. The Soldier sits brooding and alone, ashamed of his past as a mercenary. The Siren seductively walks towards the camera, showing off her Phasewalk ability. Brick makes his presence known as the freight train that plows through entire mobs. All this to the tune of Cage the Elephant’s “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked”, where I imagine Gearbox screaming “WE ARE DOING THIS FOR YOU, PLEASE LOVE US” in the background. And you want to! You want to start playing immediately after the big white block letters of “Borderlands” stretch across the screen, your transport driving underneath them and kicking up clouds of dust behind it.

So begins Borderlands, a game that proceeds to eliminate any sort of intelligence that’s left in a horribly fractured genre and give players what they presumably want: the ability to shoot stuff with impunity, travel through “open” maps and gather a shitload of randomized equipment.

At first, Borderlands delivers on its promise of unbridled gunplay. There’s a lot of shooting, gun collecting, and medkit using. It even resembles a decent first person shooter most of the time. However, Borderlands takes more of its cues from another genre: the action role-playing game. A bastardization of a once-proud genre, where the soulless pursuit of more gear, more experience points and some arbitrary final confrontation are good enough to sustain the experience. Like the games in the genre before it, Borderlands tries so hard to capture the essence of Blizzard’s flagship titles that it succeeds at duplicating the mechanics without infusing it with any purpose or consequence.

Blizzard learned a lot from Diablo II, and revised their formula until it stood tall and shining like a golden money-making obelisk. With World of Warcraft, they managed to capture everything we loved about the current definition of role-playing game. The environments may have consisted of stretched-out textures over low-polygonal objects, and the characters no more than cartoons – but the overall appearance of the game was so cohesive, so varied and captivating to look at, none of these technical issues mattered. World of Warcraft was a place we didn’t mind looting and grinding in. The simplest of tasks were kept entertaining. The entire experience had been calculated with precision, because Blizzard knows what they are doing.

Borderlands clearly understands the formula – it copies the basic tenets of it all too well. Kill, loot, equip. Repeat. Repeat until your bags are bulging with junk that has to be sold at vending machines, until you don’t need money any more because it is overflowing out of your backpack and lying around everywhere. Watch in horror as you feel compelled to search abandoned fire pits and the guts of wild animals for more.

Where Borderlands lost me is in its unflinching repetition. This isn’t pleasant repetition as in World of Warcraft. The game expects you to grind through these bland, desolate environments without question, but it is never made exciting or interesting. This is grueling work, in the hopes that a character can be built to survive the wilderness just to advance into a new area for more gear and more quests.

A first-person shooter is conducive to fast paced combat, and Borderlands ensures this pacing is established early on. Even in the first few missions I was doing more backpedalling than I had ever done in all the shooters I’ve ever played. And I’ll admit that the feeling of running away from overwhelming hordes of monsters in Diablo II was revisited during my first hours with Borderlands. But this defensive strategy creates a rather large problem in a first-person game: you can’t see where you’re going. So backpedaling with reckless abandon will occasionally put you off the edge of a cliff, or worse: back you into a corner that can’t be jumped out of as you are mauled to death.

The most notable aspect of the combat in Borderlands is the “Second Wind” ability, which is a nice way of the game giving you one last chance to escape. This becomes apparent when you find yourself drifting into areas that are clearly above your level and you start dying more often just to add some variety to the process. If your health is reduced to zero, instead of dying (respawning) you get a chance to keep fighting. It easily compares to being incapacitated in Left 4 Dead. You can keep shooting and switch weapons, but you can’t move and your health is depleted a lot faster. Instead of getting rescued by a teammate, you simply have to kill something – anything – to put you back on your feet. It’s actually the most fun I had with the game, because if there was a boss character or particularly tough monster I had to kill that I dropped to 10% health before being dropped myself, I could finish the job in a completely fitting act of revenge. As a break from the rest of the game’s monotony, these tense moments probably seemed more exciting than they should have been. But even they grow tiresome, as you have no choice but to plow on through areas more appropriate to your level to get better weapons, upgrade skills and then face more difficult encounters.

The environments only show brief flashes of colour and accents in its washed out, sun faded locales. Fallout 3 was rightfully depressing, but Borderlands feels like a parody in the way it mocks the first-person shooter genre with some entertaining one-liners from each of the Player avatars. Yet at every turn I had to search for some kind of personality to draw from the game. It was like Borderlands was telling me I should be happy with just firing my gun. I was not.

Borderlands prides itself on the variety of weapons in the game. And to its credit, I don’t think I ever picked up the same gun twice. There are thousands of variations of pistols, automatic rifles, sniper rifles and shotguns to be obtained, each with their own unique attributes and elemental enhancements. And anything worth carrying can only be picked up from item drops. Mass Effect had a similar variety in weapons, but the game also provided modifications that could be added to the weapons, so that players could create their own builds. And this was on top of everything else! Borderlands needs this kind of complexity; for a game that’s entire focus is on collecting new and more powerful guns, not including some kind of modding system for the weapons in Borderlands feels like an obvious oversight. Furthermore, there is no money sink apart from the cost of respawning – providing weapon durability ratings would at least encourage players to balance the use of their weapons with the cost of repairs.

One of the selling features for Borderlands – like many contemporary video games – is co-operative play. There are four characters and associated class types to choose from. However, there are no limits on what classes can be selected for each party. What Gearbox has created is a slightly more complex Left 4 Dead. Borderlands is a game meant to be played in co-op, with minimal character development and customization. The available classes clearly complement each other, so when attempting the campaign solo it’s harder than it should be. Challenge is good, but when you’re playing a first person shooter that should only require skill at aiming, the game experience begins to break down.

This lack of depth is clearly at odds with the marketing of Borderlands, as it was heavily advertised as a “role-playing shooter.” Taking the game at face value, its definition of “role-playing” is the stat-bumping, item collecting and quest gathering from non-player characters who amount to nothing more than vending machines. As a shooter, it depends on a number of elements from the stat-bumping part: accuracy ratings, critical hit ratings, and proficiency with weapons. But as long as you can click a mouse button or pull the trigger on a gamepad, only the critical hit rating seems to make a difference. And yet aim-assist is available in the game’s options. It’s a feature that isn’t new to consoles, but for a game that’s reason for being is shooting a gun, this feels like direct sabotage of the game’s purpose. And without NPCs that serve to contribute to the game’s atmosphere, the Player is left with very little actual “role playing”, and the descriptor only serves to further dilute its meaning in yet another video game.

Borderlands has borrowed the fast paced first-person combat from a genre that’s made a comfortable home on the console, and the statistics and obsessive-compulsive need to collect loot from superficial role-playing games like World of Warcraft. With these influences Gearbox has created a morass of design elements that only serve to pollute both genres it borrows from. It ultimately offers nothing of value, because all it has done is combine these elements to create some vile video game Frankenstein that surely only appeals to those that like watching numbers fly around on the screen.^[1]

What becomes readily apparent after playing Borderlands only for a short while is its lack of a driving force behind the proceedings. A typical feature of both modern role playing games and the first-person shooter is some narrative to keep the player moving forward, and Borderlands has nothing worth mentioning. I was simply going where the job board in each zone told me. I was playing because the entirety of what the game offered was dropped in front of me at the start. There was nothing in the back of my mind that made me want to press on. And after eight hours of play, I should have a firm grasp of an overarching objective to make me keep playing.

There is also too much space in Borderlands: traveling between quest objectives, I was constantly staring at wide open areas with nothing to shoot but skag and midgets in masks. Even though the enemies may change from area to area, Gearbox didn’t bother to develop the small things: the reason people enjoy spending so much time doing basically nothing in places like Azeroth. Players will find things to do – and the simplest of tasks are made interesting by the game’s environment. Borderlands may riff on the post-apocalyptic theme, but with so much wasted opportunity for characterization between the players and the environment it amounts to nothing but an insipid interpretation of a setting that was ripe for exploitation. Borderlands‘ capacity for style is limited to the opening video.

Borderlands was a game I looked forward to this year, and I find it insulting that Gearbox was cynical enough to design a game that people would play to collect more junk and experience points to max out a meager skill tree. Its moderate success^[2] in the game review circuit all but guarantees that there will be imitators and sequels trying to improve on the formula only half-realized by Borderlands.

In this manner, the video game industry creates new genres instead of refining existing ones. Instead of perfecting existing control schemes, the industry insists on developing and promoting motion control to access previously untapped demographics. Video games as a medium barely have a chance to keep up, let alone the language to describe them. Instead of preserving history through genre refinements, the industry’s drive for revolution constantly overwrites the past, to the detriment of video games and support for their serious consideration.

Borderlands is genre blending for the sake of box copy. It is a classic example of cynical game design that hopes the players won’t notice, while they kill things over and over for more loot and more money that gets put towards outfitting a character that ultimately doesn’t matter. In fact, the same could be said of the game itself, as over the course of a few hours it becomes increasingly difficult to determine what this game will be remembered for. Falling apart on even a cursory examination, it prompts the debilitating question: why am I playing this? It will make you hate video games for being so unambitious. The offense of Borderlands is one far greater than simply being a bad game: it is genre pollution.

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

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

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

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

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

Yet there is something strangely fascinating about Prototype’s ability to exaggerate everything. Whether it’s jumping 30 feet into the air from a standstill and landing in a crater, running from sidewalks up the sides of the world’s tallest buildings, or bringing down helicopters with a giant tendril, Radical Entertainment are constantly referencing the superhero as interpreted by an adolescent male. He’s full of angst, he has limitless power, and he is here to fuck shit up. The driver behind the whole story – discovering who was responsible for Alex’s condition – constantly asserts his hatred of authoritative figures and the selfish desires to find out what happened, no matter what the cost in human lives. Even Alex’s appearance – a fashionable leather racing jacket with hoodie that’s always up over his head – just externalizes the immaturity of the character^[1].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the second part of a two-part review of Prince of Persia (2008) and the “Epilogue” (2009) downloadable content. There are spoilers, but you already knew that. This review examines the “Epilogue” adventure and its relationship with the original game. The review of the original game can be read in Part 1.

Whether fans of Prince of Persia (2008) want to accept it or not, Epilogue (2009) is canon. At its core, it is a meandering journey through the corrupted Underground Palace that adds neither depth to the original story, nor game mechanics of any real consequence to the original game^[1]. So what was the purpose of this new content? The cynical answer to this question would be “to get stupid people to pay for the intended ending to the original game.” And while I can agree with that statement, there are parts of Epilogue that skirt the edges of something great – something that should have formed the basis for the original game. Epilogue implores us to keep the candle burning for this series, in a last-ditch attempt to convince us that UbiSoft hasn’t lost their touch with the franchise they resurrected so successfully six years ago. Prince of Persia (2008) was just the beginning; we can expect more from the obviously planned sequels. Except Epilogue fails to convince us that there is anything worth waiting for.

How a company like UbiSoft could fall so shamefully and completely to the allure of downloadable content, when it has been pressing boundaries in areas of game design that we could only hope for in big budget titles, is colossally disappointing. The Epilogue feels tacked on; the lingering strands of the story left behind by the heartbreaking ending to the original game are left feeling just as undeveloped.

Instead, Epilogue adds a new area to explore and perform more of those one-button maneuvers that had grown so tedious in their limitations by the end of the original game. To satisfy the player obsessed with collecting things, in place of Light Seeds there are a meager ten Frescos of Light scattered throughout the Underground Palace – but they aren’t much of a challenge to obtain if you’re paying attention.

As the new chapter progresses, it is expected that the relationship between the Prince and Elika would take a darker turn. Elika, a woman who had been selfless for the duration of the original game, is brought back to life by her friend that should know she would disapprove. And yet beyond the slap in the face at the beginning of Epilogue, their relationship is no worse for wear.

Since Ahriman’s corruption is back, it’s time for the Prince and Elika to set things right in the world again. This time, they’re just going after her father. The scope of this postscript was obviously scaled back to provide an adversary for the sequels.

On the way to Epilogue’s conclusion, the agreement between Player and Game set out by Prince of Persia is redefined. The challenges are not as forgiving as the original; there is a lot more trial and error. There are far too many areas where it requires the Player to perform a long string of moves without the platform break points that were so prevalent in Prince of Persia. Furthermore, the ooze-dodging sequences that were spread so far out to be unnoticed are now everywhere, as if to artificially extend this chapter through an increase in difficulty. This is a glaring contradiction when Prince of Persia had clearly established lower expectations of the player in the original game. As much distaste as I had for the lack of control in Prince of Persia’s mechanics, this sudden lack of flexibility cheapens the experience. This is Prince of Persia, not Frogger.

Yet despite its shameless repetition and mildly challenging lever-throwing puzzles there is a glimpse of The Sands of Time, where the jumping and wall-scaling puzzles come closer to approximating that experience than the original game. The Tomb, which is a series of walls that must be moved and adjusted to be accessible, was my favorite part of Epilogue. In one room, the walls must be rotated and angled so that by the end of the puzzle, you have wall runned, climbed and swung over every inch of them. It wasn’t terribly challenging, but it felt like it was the Prince versus the room itself. It’s an approach that the original game would have benefited from, considering how little exploration and combat was involved to offset its lack of difficulty.

The first boss encounter is with Elika’s father, who is entirely consumed by Ahriman’s dark influence. Naturally, you don’t defeat him right away – you will come to face him a few more times before Epilogue’s conclusion. To add some variety, boss characters from the original game were brought back as well. These encounters serve no purpose except to provide speed bumps in the progression through the game.

This was an incredibly lazy design decision, and even more insulting after the Player had spent the course of the original game trying to kill them (and succeeding). To get around this obvious disregard for the Player’s intelligence, UbiSoft Montreal created the Shapeshifter, who can take the form of the Hunter or Warrior bosses from the original game. Their role in the fall of Elika’s kingdom is unknown. Epilogue hopes you don’t care.

But that’s not the point of the Epilogue; it’s made pretty clear that this chapter in the new Prince of Persia story is merely a stage to set up the final confrontation between the Prince and Elika’s father, the Fallen King. When the King fell into the pit at the end of the original game, there was the sense that he would be seen again. After all, he is the reason that Ahriman was released into the kingdom in the first place! The dream-like sequences that are revealed through the course of the original game show the events surrounding Elika’s death, her father’s choice, and her resentment towards him for sacrificing peace in the Kingdom for her life. No matter how well-intentioned his actions were, he is ultimately responsible for the state of the kingdom.

But was it truly necessary to kill him? Is there no place for redemption? The Prince himself illustrated over the course of the original adventure that it’s possible, and it’s a key theme of the game’s story. Killing is such an extreme reaction when there are examples throughout the original game that the corruption itself can be removed. You don’t go around destroying the land; with Elika’s assistance, you heal it. When the Prince is corrupted by falling into the ooze, he is saved by Elika. When the Prince’s corruption is an actual plot point, he is healed by Elika. The Fallen King is not a character in this story; he is simply grouped with all the other boss characters you’ve had to face to that point.

As a result, Elika’s relationship with her father is never truly resolved; instead, you simply fight him over and over in his Ahriman-possessed form until he is killed in a very anti-climactic encounter. The Prince isn’t even directly responsible for his death, just for pushing him onto a spiked throne. This isn’t closure – this is a video game exposing itself.

Even as the Fallen King is slain, even as Elika sullenly departs to be with her people and rebuild a lost civilization, you want to turn the next page. You want to find out how this all ends. For an instant there is the glorious thought of promise and possibility with the sequel that is surely on its way. And then, in a massive, crushing realization via some tortuous form of refrigerator logic^[2], you realize what has just taken place. You resent Epilogue for its unfulfilled promise of closure, and are sickened at how a game publisher has so unceremoniously left the player twisting in the wind after offering nothing more than a footnote to the text of the original game.

This is the first part of a two-part review of Prince of Persia (2008) and the “Epilogue” (2009) downloadable content. There are spoilers, but you already knew that. Taking UbiSoft Montreal’s intentions at face value one should be able to review both as a complete game, but I don’t think it would be fair to the intent of the original…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

When I finished Prince of Persia (2008), I was left feeling incredibly disheartened. The game’s ending made me question what I had been spending the last seven hours trying to achieve; it basically undoes everything you have been setting out to do for the entire game. But I did not feel frustrated; rather, I felt the ending was necessary – and the game brilliantly makes you a willing participant in this sequence of events. It does not give you a choice because it is something that you know, deep down, needs to be done. Prince of Persia is not an action game. It is barely an adventure game. It is a roleplaying game without the choice and the number crunching and the inventory management. You are given the role of the reluctant hero, thrust into a situation that clearly requires significant physical and emotional investment, and ultimately tasked with making a decision that has but a single response.

As a storytelling device, Prince of Persia excels. In fact, if this was a review for an interactive storybook, Prince of Persia would be the best and most beautiful interactive storybook of 2008, The End. But it is not. It is a video game.

As a video game, Prince of Persia leaves me wondering whether this is yet another milestone on the road towards the future of video games that I have come to dread. It leaves far too much out of the hands of the player, and instead relies on a few button presses to initiate the marvelous acrobatic moves that take place on screen in the march towards an inevitable conclusion. Prince of Persia manifests every video game enthusiast’s complaint about linearity and player freedom. And because it is so overt, it is identified as the greatest fault committed by this game.

Should Prince of Persia be held to a different standard because it simply illustrates what we all know is true about video games that rely on narrative? The way it showcases the story as the main driver behind the action is no different than the most linear of first person shooters, but there is a degree of skill involved in running whatever gauntlet a FPS would present. Prince of Persia is flexible in its controls, easily forgives failure, and yet when it tries to offer complexity in the form of Player-initiated exploration and a structured combo system for combat, they are in such sharp contrast as to be superfluous to the game’s design. Prince of Persia is in constant struggle with what is expected of it, and what it wants to achieve. And the game ultimately suffers for it.

It’s obvious from the beginning of Prince of Persia that Assassin’s Creed (2007) was a big influence on the Prince’s movements. Taking what they learned from the previous Prince of Persia Trilogy, they created movement animations in Assassin’s Creed that make traversing the dusty streets of Jersualem an acrobatic yet completely natural exercise.

It’s strange, then, that movement in Prince of Persia feels so inhibited, as if the freedom of movement was scaled back to suit the game’s unwavering linear progression. The fluidity of movement is still there, but jumping and running through Prince of Persia feels like bouncing off the walls inside a glass box.

At first, the game captures some of the appeal of the previous Trilogy, in the way that it slowly teaches you how the Prince can wall run, swing from bars and columns and scurry along ceilings. But the variation in movements are revealed in the first map, so that all future obstacles bear an uncanny resemblance to what has been seen before. And the Powers obtained after collecting lightseeds – abilities that feel like they should open up the game – are just extensions of the Prince’s isolation from the environment.

Under analysis, Prince of Persia reads like a continuous Quick Time Event ^[1]. There are on screen instructions if you want them, but survival is just a few timed button presses away. There aren’t many combinations to remember, and there is evidence in plain sight as to how each obstacle should be approached. There is no pressure for perfect execution of these maneuvers because you can’t actually die. Elika, the Prince’s companion throughout the game, is there to save him.

I didn’t hate the game for this, because it allowed me to enjoy the artistry poured into dressing up this game, and the free-flowing banter and backstory that takes place between the Prince and Elika. But none of it is required to proceed. It’s just there. You’re walking the garden path right along with them.

With such a limited range of movement, one would expect that exploration is permitted to make use of these environments. And despite the obvious care and detail that went in to constructing them, the environments impose the same constraints.

The dark god Ahriman is on the loose, and the land is plagued by Corruption. Setting off on their adventure, the primary objective of the Prince and Elika is to relieve this corruption by cleansing four different areas in the unnamed kingdom that provides the setting. But you don’t have to heal these lands in order: UbiSoft Montreal has given the Player a choice as to how they complete this objective. Which was a mistake.

UbiSoft Montreal took control from one area (the core mechanics of the game), and placed it into another (the game’s flow of narrative) unnecessarily. The game is trying to tell a story, and by allowing the Player to control the narrative it makes the design of key plot points and encounters impossible. It simply confirms that the game’s designers were not even confident in their own philosophy for the mechanics: freedom, but not really. The Player may feel like they have a choice in the matter, but the ultimate destination will always be the same, so why even allow this choice if it’s going to make telling a continuous story impractical? It’s the same reasoning that the designers of Medal of Honor: Airborne used to make it seem like their FPS was “open” by allowing a free drop at the beginning of each mission. And yet passing the first few checkpoints you find yourself still inside the corridors of a first-person shooter. What’s the purpose, except to hijack all meaning from the words “freedom” and “choice” in game design?

It’s frustrating, then, to be presented with such beautifully crafted environments that cannot be fully experienced. This is distressingly evident once the Boss characters from each map are defeated, which removes the corruption and creates light seeds that must be collected. At every wall vertex and unscalable cliff, the words “How do I get up there?” always found their way into the reaction to these intentional obstacles. Dejected, there remains only one choice: go where you’re told.

On each wall or cliff face, there are obvious wear marks showing you where to proceed. When they aren’t leading to the Boss characters, they lead to light seeds. These paths inscribed in stone leave nothing to the imagination. Even as the Powers of Ormazd are granted over the course of the game, the Seals related to each power are the only way they can be used. Flying through the air like a button on a string, you’re still a tourist in this world.

And yet there is nothing to hold the player back, or to slow progression. Each level is only moderately challenging to get through, with the biggest task overtaking the Boss characters at the end of them as they increase in power and ability. What few puzzles lie in wait are of the turnstile- or lever-pulling variety, and provide little more than a break in what is already a leisurely stroll throughout the game’s world.

You can’t die, so even in the limited exploration that is necessary to collect light seeds there is no risk. Elika saving the Prince from death is a mechanic that gives purpose to the Prince and Elika’s relationship, but like Ninja Blade ^[2] comes across as the ability for the Player to correct his mistakes instantly, and not be forced to learn from them. This extends to the combat system, which can be elaborate if the Player decides to learn the combinations and time them correctly. But there is no incentive to do it, as simply bashing enemies with the sword when the buttons flash on screen and rolling to avoid corruption is sufficient.

Nevertheless, the constant direction by Prince of Persia feels like a respite from the typical overstimulating action of its contemporaries. It presents a form of play that allows the player to take in their surroundings, with a series of forgiving button combinations that do not require their full attention. They are just constantly admiring the surroundings from a distance.

So are we merely bearing witness to Prince of Persia’s world, and the two fearless companions as they leap and fly and careen through it?

Prince of Persia’s primary function is to tell a story. It had me in its grasp for the game’s duration, and made me think there is still hope for real storytelling in video games. It is a story of friendship and sacrifice, but told in a meaningful and completely natural way. The fact that I could see all this from the limited conversations I was subjected to – I rarely pressed the button that initiated more dialogue – is an accomplishment for UbiSoft Montreal. It’s a welcome change for someone who grew up with the disposable commentary between shooting galleries or the text riddled with spelling mistakes printed in some grubby instruction manual.

The relationship between the Prince and Elika is not romantic. Rather, it is a platonic bond that is strengthened by their need to see to each other’s safety. They also have a mutual respect for each other’s abilities: the Prince is valued for his plucky optimism and ability to surmount the obstacles they are faced with, and providing the brawn to defeat each Boss character. Elika, on the other hand, is respected for her otherworldly powers and choice to only use them when necessary, and her dedication to the preservation and restoration of her people. The relationship unfolds as best it can as the game progresses, given the Player’s ability to explore each map in any order.

The bond that develops makes the ending of the game completely acceptable: over the course of their adventures it’s made exceedingly obvious how much is owed to Elika by the Prince; she ensures his safety without question. It is only natural that he wants to do his part to save her, despite the consequences. That I was able to accept this plot conceit, means that the game has succeeded on that level.

So where does the “game” part of the experience emerge? The endgame is a foregone conclusion; it’s obvious how this story will resolve itself, and yet the player keeps going, thinking in the back of their mind that perhaps there is another way to resolve the conflict. The Prince himself says many times how they should just abandon their mission and start a new life away from the corrupted lands they are trying to save, since it keeps proving to be too big for the two of them to handle. And yet they continue, because the very least they can do is try.

It’s that same attitude that is reflected in the entire game: the constant desire to do more, to do something different, to make use of the environment that is on display. Maybe there is another way to scale that wall, or get across the chasm. But, like the story of Prince and Elika, there is a prescribed path that must be followed.

Prince of Persia is never sure about the level of interaction it wants from the Player. Providing freedom to explore the maps in any order, yet providing only meager means to move through them. Revealing a compelling narrative, yet permitting the Player to assemble it in any sequence. There never seems to be a comfortable compromise between telling a story and engaging game design, without resorting to hotbuttons and only moderate changes in difficulty to ensure the pacing of the story is maintained.

Prince of Persia struggles with the Boss encounters that close off each map. Each of them has a history, explained through dialogue as the Prince and Elika visit the different areas they are guarding. However, because each area can be played in any order, this back story cannot be told in succession to give a more representative picture of how each of these adversaries fits in the history of the world, and their role in the fall of Elika’s people. Therefore, there is no building towards a climax; instead, we are constantly reminded that Ahriman is our main objective^[3]. The evil presence is just there, permeating every facet of the corrupted world, and yet the encounter with him is probably the most uninteresting aspect of the entire game.

Since there are only a few enemies scattered at random in each map, it raises the importance of these Boss encounters. And because you’re fighting the same four bosses in each of the main areas, the game arbitrarily assigns a few new wrinkles to their attacks and defenses, but no real increase in difficulty. These encounters become less and less enjoyable as you make your way to the end of each of the main areas – the repetition makes the Boss characters merely obstacles that must be overcome, like a chasm full of pillars or hard to reach handhold in a cliff face. This repetition does nothing more than underline the predictable – and safe – essence of the experiences in the game.

To compensate, Prince of Persia creates a fairly complex combo system that involves timing and positioning. This context-sensitive combat becomes even more pronounced when the hotbutton events flash on the screen. In this manner, combat in Prince of Persia is completely detached from the movement system. The movement system should be more complicated – much deeper than the combat system. Prince of Persia’s environments are meant for exploration, yet the limitations in movement reduce any complexity in that regard. And combat is based on an unsatisfying system that degrades into button mashing on prompt simply because it works instead of thinking ahead and stringing together combos.

The inadequacy of the combat system culminates in the final confrontation with Ahriman, where you don’t even use it. You are simply charged with dodging giant fists and the black tide of corruption crawling up a wall you must run across. This is in stark contrast to every other boss that was faced in direct combat. There is no satisfying finish, there is nothing in the encounter that hadn’t been done in the rest of the game many times over – as simply navigating the terrain! The encounter could have been a closing movie and would have still produced the same effect.

Which is why I’m disheartened. I don’t think Prince of Persia is a good game. It was the vehicle for a story I had to see through to completion. A video game should not get a free pass because of its story. It is a game, first and foremost.

By removing the relative complexity of the typical third-person action game and Prince of Persia’s progenitors, it is essentially creating one massive Quick Time Event. No real control is ever held by the player, and yet the game tries so very hard to make this interesting. And while this philosophy isn’t such an egregious transgression as Ninja Blade, this new Prince is setting a very dangerous precedent.

Challenge and complexity should never be completely sacrificed. What better way for a Player to appreciate the story than if they must earn it? The Story can effectively be used as a reward. I don’t want to watch my video games; I want to interact with them. I want to explore the world that has been so meticulously crafted; not allow it to be limited to a backdrop. I want to ask the question “how do I get up there?” and be allowed to answer it. I want to control the resolution of events, or at least be presented with the convincing illusion I can do something about it. I want to play.

So when the Prince does what we all expect of him at the end of Prince of Persia, there is a presiding feeling of accomplishment: the Prince’s destiny was fulfilled, as he repaid the debt to Elika the only way he knew how. But there is also regret: this achievement is predetermined, and like every other person who will play this game receives the same outcome to these events. You turn the page, and it reads like it does for any other.

Prince of Persia does not hide the fact that the Player has left no mark on this world. Like the indelible scratch marks on the walls of the many canyons and structures that have been traversed, Prince of Persia remains untouched by the actions that have led to its completion. And as the world falls into ruin once more, they are left wondering with foolish hope if the next Prince will have better luck in averting these circumstances.

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 better^[1]. 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 Gamestop^[2] 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 happens^[3]. 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 Takedown^[4]. The demo for Ninja Gaiden II gave the player all the weapons^[5] 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 have^[1].

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

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

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (2002)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rise of Nations (2003)

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

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

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

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

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

Metroid Prime (2002, played in 2003)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (2004)

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is, until he read my review.

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

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

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

Gears of War (2006, played in 2008)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 off^[1].

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 them^[2]. 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 life^[3]. 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 time^[4]. 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”