megatropia

That Which We Call a Rose

2009-08-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie. I really need a new tag line: "Analogue Musings on the Digital" is pretty prententious.

The Holy Grail

2009-08-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally managed it, I've finally got my hands on a PS3, which makes me a multi-consolist or something.

I'll be honest, my 360 is going to remain my go-to system, but I'm enjoying the games on the PS3. What I'm not enjoying, is the PS3 itself. The XMB does have a certain minimalist charm, but it's all so po-faced that it takes a bit of the fun out of it.

Not only that, but the idea of installing demos still doesn't sit right with me. Take the Heavenly Sword demo. It's about a gig in size and is literally ten minutes long. What the hell am I installing? I could understand it if I was playing the game from a disc, but on a demo I've downloaded, and especially one that is so short? I am positively baffled.

It's all well and good Sony making a lot of noise about how you have to pay extra for a hard drive on the 360, but I would counter that argument with the idea that there are no games on the Xbox that you can't play without a hard drive. It's disingenuous to claim that it's a luxury when it's clearly a necessity.

Confused By Capcom

2009-08-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

I can't figure Capcom out sometimes, and for once this has nothing to do with Resident Evil 5. What's baffling me is their demos, and the disparities between them. One of the hallmarks of Capcom's third-person adventure titles is an excellent demo. Even when the product itself turns out to unimpressive, the demo is almost always amazing. I bought Devil May Cry 4 on the strength of the demo, obviously unaware that the set piece battle with Berial would be repeated three times.

When it comes to fighting games though, Capcom seem to lose the plot. I downloaded the demo for Marvel Vs Capcom 2 from Xbox Live, only to discover that the only gameplay on offer was local multiplayer. Perhaps I'm just a friendless hermit, but it strikes me as presumptuous on Capcom's part that I even have a second controller, let alone someone to hand it to on a Sunday night.

It would seem to me that the point of a demo is to provide gamers with the opportunity to see if they would enjoy a game. Beating up a completely stationary Captain America is hardly a compelling gameplay experience.

Black, White, Or A Whole Load Of Grey (Some Spoilers)

2009-04-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

A common complaint amongst games that offer so-called 'moral choices', is that the choices are not only too black and white, but often mawkishly so. It's often a binary decision, do you want to be the good guy or the bad guy?

Take Bioshock, possibly the most egregious example. I love the game, but the choice it offers exemplifies the polarised morals you find in modern gaming. Are you the type of person who kills little girls, or are you the type of person that spares them? Even more infuriating is that ultimately the choice is irrelevant, as you reap the same benefits either way, negating any idea of 'doing what is easy, or what is right'.

Obviously, there are some games that avoid this trap. The Witcher, for all it's flaws, has a system of moral choices that are about as grey as it gets. Do you sell arms the elves, knowing that those arms will be used against your (nominally) fellow humans, or do you send them away empty handed, knowing that you've just extended their oppression?

Fallout 3 largely falls into the Bioshock camp. Do you denotate the bomb, thus destroying Megaton, or do you disarm it, saving the town. Are you Megatron, or Optimus Prime? He-Man or Skeletor? Which is why the most recent DLC - The Pitt - came as something of a surprise. On the surface, it's another easy choice, steal the cure for a degenerative disease that infects the people of the Pitt from their cruel slavemasters.

It's not until you've infiltrated the slavers organisation that the easy choice starts to get a little muddy. The head of the slavers seems to have a vision of a a free zone and regrets the necessity of slaves, and the cure is a living child, a baby in fact, that you must steal from it's parents, probably killing them as you fight your way out.

Do you leave the child where she is, abandoning the slaves to their bondage but potentially allowing something greater to emerge or do you kidnap the child and give her to the slaves, continuing the instability for years to come? We're way past light side and dark side points here, and Fallout 3's karma system has nothing to say on the matter regardless of the choice you make.

This is the sort of thing I'd love to see in games in the future, not black and white, but something much more subtle and nuanced, where the 'right' choice isn't immediately obvious.

Pilgrimage Update

2009-04-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on this Pilgrimage thing that I mentioned a few months ago. I'm still going to do it, but it's taking a long time to generate enough enthusiasm to play any significant amount of Pong.

I hate Pong, so very, very much.

Demo Fever!

2009-04-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

I was feeling in an experimental mood tonight and so I grabbed the demo for Volition's Red Faction: Guerilla and Ubisoft's HAWX.

I've not really been following the new Red Faction, so I assumed it was another first person shooter. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was Saint's Row 2 on Mars.

My experience with Saint's Row 2 was not a good one. I found it shallow and packed to the gills with unlikeable sociopathic characters. I played it loing enough to take down one of the gangs - the heavily tattooed one lead by Lieutenant Worf (the Brotherhood?) - and knew it wasn't for me.

The Red Faction demo is much too short to reveal anything about the characters in the game, although the ever-so-slightly overwrought action movie trailer thing before the demo proper doesn't bode well.

All I can talk about is the gameplay, and I think this is a game that I'm just predisposed not to like. I don't like 'rampage games' and Red Faction: Guerilla seems like it's going to be a rampage game in a big way. The Geo-Mod 2 thing means that the building collapse in realistic ways, and if that doesn't start ringing alarm bells, I don't know what will. In the ten minute demo, there's shooting, gunplay, whacking people with sledgehammers, stealing cars, a battlemech section, and a turret on the back of a truck. It ticks all the boxes sure, but I want something more.

The only rampage games that I've ever liked is the Mercenaries games, and to be honest, they do everything that Red Faction seems to do, and does it better and funnier.

HAWX didn't really appeal to me either, but for a very different reason. It's a great looking game, but the controls are really, really fiddly. I bet there's a great game in there, but I'm not interested enough to struggle with weird camera angles to get some dog fighting done.

Further thoughts on Resident Evil 5

2009-02-13T12:55:00.000-08:00

I wrote up my feelings about the RE5 demo in an earlier post (scroll down, it'll still be there). The weird feeling that the demo gave me was enough to put me off buying the final version and so it wasn't a topic that I really thought I'd be revisiting, at least not about RE5 anyway. But then this turns up on the internet and the whole thing erupts again; for me at least, which means I may need to take a look at myself after this as well.

To summarise the blog post, posted by an educated white, male gamer, which is a more significant point than you might think, responded to this article, which in turn was a response to this article, and outlined why RE5 is not racist in any way shape or form, oddly contradicting a much more rational post he made on the subject last year. He essentially accuses RE5's detractors of making something out of nothing, going so far as to say that N'Gai Croal's comments on the trailer, which opened my eyes when I read it, were 'over the top'.

I have to ask Mr. Peckham, for 'twas he who wrote the offending blog post, what the fuck are you doing?

As an white, male gamer myself, I find discrimination hard to spot sometimes, unless it's really overt. Just like Mr. Peckham, I stand in what is probably the ultimate position of privelege, no one discriminates against me, unless I bring it on myself. This means that I can't necessarily trust my initial instincts when it comes to discrimination, and I have to take a step back and think about the situation. Recently I made an complete ass of myself commenting on a blog post that talked about the progressive nature of Portal and Mirror's Edge. My first reaction to the reply my comment received was one of anger. I got defensive, which is a pretty common reaction for a person of privilege to have, but then I realised what I'd done and apologised. Basically, I didn't know what I was talking about and got called up on it, which is how it should be.

The point hidden in that very long diversion is that dismissing accusations of discrimination from a position of privilige is a dangerous thing at best, and to do it in such a cavalier manner as Mr Peckham does is down right lunacy. I'm not saying I'm perfect, hell I'm clearly patting myself on the back for being man enough to apologise, but at least I'm aware that as a white person, I might not be best qualified to judge whether something is racist or not.

For the record, I don't think that Capcom are being intentionally racist and I never have, but I think that they were unaware of the effect the imagery in RE5 might have. As I said in my earlier post on the subject, setting a Resident Evil game in Africa makes perfect sense, but it has to be handled with immense care. All the arguments against the accusations of racism are either incredibly hollow, ("It's only a game!" Oh really? I suppose this is just a picture?) or miss the point entirely. ("What about RE4? It was ok when it was Spaniards!" or "All the zombies in the previous games were white, why isn't that racist?") I don't want to address these arguments here, although I may assault a few threads where I've seen them and try and inject some sense into the proceedings, besides, Kieron Gillen summed it up better than I ever could when he said:

"Gamers want games to be taken seriously until they're taken seriously, and then they don't want them taken seriously".

The Pilgrimage

2009-02-05T15:59:00.000-08:00

Having arrived late to the blogosphere, I've decided to keep my momentum going with a project. The Pilgrimage I plan to undertake is to play the best and worst games of each generation and document my experiences. A travel log of sorts, through a digital landscape. I want to see how gaming has been influenced by what has come before.

Overwrought descriptions aside, I need a little assistance. I want to try and be as thorough as possible, so I need people to suggest examples of truly excellent games, and equally as important, truly awful ones. These can be for any format, past or present, although PS3 games are going to cause me a little trouble if I'm honest.

So friends, I implore you all, help my on my pilgrimage!

My Thoughts On The Resident Evil 5 Demo

2009-01-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

Ah RE5, weighed down by racist allegations and connotations, and not just from over-zealous sensationalist media outlets, but also by sensible and rational journalists.

The demo was released on Xbox Live in the UK today, so brimming with curiousity, I downloaded it and gave it a try.

Now, don't worry, the first-person narration will be kept to a minimum, I'm not entertaining some delusion that I'm the next Hunter S Thompson or anything, I just wanted to set the scene.

First impressions were good. Given the tiny file size, not even 500 Mb, the game looks great and there are two levels on offer, but this is Capcom and they seem to do demos pretty well. Right from the offset though, I got a sense that we were covering very familiar ground. The opening cutscene instantly made me think of RE4 and the gameplay is virtually copy/pasted in. I wasn't expecting much different, but I was surprised at how deep the similarities ran.

Once you delve further into the game, the whole thing starts to fall apart. My biggest complaint is that RE5 is a very clumsy game to control. Just like Resident Evil 4, you can't shoot or use your curiously ineffective machete unless you are stood completely still, which admittedly does increase the tension, but only by being immensely frustrating. There's a part of me that wonders if this is a ham-fisted effort on Capcom's part to evoke fear while playing, but I think that might be giving them too much credit. The camera colludes with the controls as, following behind you just a little too closely and making it hard to see when you're being surrounded. Games like Silent Hill could get away with ropey combat controls, because they enhance the atmosphere and the sense that you are a just a regular person against unspeakable horror, but the characters in RE5 are trained marksmen so you can't make that excuse, and to make an action game with bad combat controls is almost unforgivable.

There's a load of ancillary things, nitpicks really, that are causes for irritation as well. Your sidekick, while at least able to shoot this time, seems reluctant to use any weapon other than her pistol, despite being equipped with a rifle in one level and a sub-machine gun in the other. The levels themselves are nigh-labyrinthine warrens that leave you constantly open to being surrounded, which, when combined with the camera and control issues I mentioned before, means that you'll be restarting a lot. Even little things, like the bright sunlight making your laser sight difficult to see contribute to the overall feeling of frustration.

I couldn't comment on the game though, without at least touching on the accusations of racism. On paper, setting a Resident Evil game in Africa makes total sense, and while I don't think that the game is intentionally racist, as N'gai Croal rightly pointed out, the imagery has a history. A strapping white man goes into to the 'primitive' African village and starts killing? I'd be amazed how anyone could play and not feel a little uneasy about it. I think Capcom have tried to assuage people by varying how black your foes actually are, but if anything that makes it worse, turning the game into some weird ethnic shooting gallery.

Or course, some overly sensitive people(read: Capcom fanboys) will point out that the aforementioned strapping white man has an black, African sidekick, which is true, but if the demo is anything to go by, she's more of a liability than a help. I don't mean in terms of gameplay, where she's quite useful but in the 'Resident Evil 5 isn't racist' discussion, she's not much help. Firstly, she's about as white as you can be and still be considered black, as if the developers couldn't quite bring themselves to make her 'properly' black, she's only missing a red, yellow and green Africa-shaped necklace to complete her collection of sub-Saharan jewelry, and she has the most appalling psuedo-South African accent I've ever heard, which might have something to do with the fact she is voiced by a burlesque dancer from Brooklyn.

*sigh*

It's like Capcom knew that there were possible issues with racism, but in trying to fix them, hit all the wrong notes.

I Like Bethesda Even More Now

2009-01-27T03:42:00.000-08:00

Criticism: #1: “Fallout 3″ is just mediocre when judged as a first person shooter

Howard: Agreed.

Patrick Klepek to Fallout 3 Executive Producer Todd Howard

I liked Bethesda before of course, I've never quite understood how poor voice acting made all the good points about Oblivion evaporate, but after they responded to fan criticism in such a candid fashion they've risen in my estimation significantly.

Perhaps it's a quintessentially British thing, that attitude of 'doesn't matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game', but either way, it's so rare for a developer to hold their hands up and admit that their product has flaws that it's very refreshing

Bonus points to you Bethesda!

Some People Are Never Happy

2009-01-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Blow, creator of indie darling Braid, is complaining that Microsoft are forcing him to charge people for the Braid theme. I remember when Epic did the same thing with the map pack for the original Gears of War, and my reaction was exactly the same then, just another cynical developer trying to drum up publicity for himself.

I hate this kind of stuff, because it's so transparent. Blow even twists the knife by saying,

"But if you do buy it, you can be secure in the knowledge that you own one of the few Premium Themes that is not an advertisement, there is no text in the Braid theme anywhere."

Oh Jonathan, you're so indie, it's painful.

EDIT: This is deeply immature, but I also think Jonathan Blow looks like a vampire.

Watch Me Backpedal Like A Pro!

2009-01-08T22:38:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post (scroll down, there aren't that many posts yet) I criticised Suda51 and No More Heroes for being a failed attempt at satire.

I realise now that I was wrong.

Yesterday, I did what I should have done in the first place and read some articles written by people much better at this sort of thing than me about the symbolism of NMH and realised that I was way off the mark with my comments.

So I hereby officially change my opinion of No More Heroes. It is a very successful satire, I just missed what it was Suda51 was trying to do.

With that said, I still don't like the game. As successful as the jabs the game makes at gamers and games in general are, I still think the game fails. I came across this article by Cruise Elroy in my search and he raised an interesting question while referencing Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw's Zero Punctuation review.

"I’ve been wrestling with that last claim ever since I watched Yahtzee’s video. Do video games need to be fun?"

It's something that I've pondered myself; after all, we try and assert that games are art, albeit commercial art, so should 'fun' really be the pinnacle of achievement for the medium? After all, movies don't have to be 'fun' to be art, and in fact, fun movies are very rarely considered art. The same stigma applies to most media, that fun and art are somehow mutually exclusive.

So, do video games need to be fun?

I would say no, they don't, in fact, as the medium matures, I think we'll see an increase of games that explore new areas, especially as ratings system relax as they inevitably will. I think in many ways we are hampered by the word 'game', although a replacement term does not immediately spring to mind.

What I would say is that a game does need to be engaging in some way. The incredibly irritating to type S.T.A.L.K.E.R is not really a fun experience, but it is engaging and from that you can derive enjoyment. The same applies to survival horror games, especially the more restrained ones like the early Silent Hills or Project Zero where your arsenal consists of a camera and nothing else.

This, for me, is where No More Heroes fails. There are a couple of reasons I can think of for this lack of engagement. The first and most likely, is that because I simply didn't get the satire, I misinterpreted the story as being nonsensical rubbish. The other likely candidate is that the repetitive gameplay was simply too off putting, although I have forgiven games in the past for poor gameplay if they interested me in other ways. I also wonder if the fact I'm in the UK had something to do with it. In the UK, the massive amounts of blood were edited out in favour of enemies simply turning to ash when dispatched. I think that a lot of the potency of the game relied on it being hyper-violent, and let's face it, ash does not compare to copious amounts of arterial spray.

I'm half tempted to try and find a pre-owned copy of the game and give it another go, maybe, armed with all this new information, I'll be able to appreciate it better.

Sho-Ryu-No! Don't Jump, Damnit!

2008-12-30T13:44:00.000-08:00

In a burst of nostalgia, I spent some of the money I got for Christmas on some Microsoft points and bought myself Street Fighter II HD Remix, or SF2HDR. I'm currently trying to decide if I was always so bad at the game, or if I can get away with blaming the 360 controller for a little bit longer.

It's really, and some might say paradoxically, refreshing to play a 2D beat-em-up. I've always found that 3D fighters are a little bit too easy and I end up rattling through the game much too quickly. Street Fighter 2 has also always had a really nice balance between the fighters, which I didn't really appreciate back in 1992. I know Capcom have done a lot of tweaking for this edition, but that's really more for the hardcore tournament players.

I need to get some of my mates round.

To Japan!

2008-12-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

This is a bit of an old one, but it's stuck in my mind. Way back in October, a talented gamer doctored a picture of Faith from Mirrors Edge to appeal to Japanese tastes (It's the one on the right, in case you weren't sure). A couple of months later, Tom Farrer, the game's producer, was shown the image and had this to say:

“We wanted her to be attractive, but we didn’t want her to be a supermodel. We wanted her to be approachable and far more real. It was just kind of depressing that someone thinks it would be better if Faith was a 12-year-old with a boob job. That was kind of what that image looked to me.”

Now, aside from the fact that Farrer has massively missed the point, it raises an interesting question about the vast cultural differences between 'the West' and Japan. I moderate on the Escapist and often people will comment that the Japanese are 'weird'.

It's clear from the two images that Japanese standards of beauty are significantly different than those in the West, but it belies a difference in attitudes and outlook that means we in the West rarely get to see some of Japan's more interesting games, outside of importing them.

Games like Katamari Damacy, shows us what Japan is up to when they aren't making games specifically for Western audiences. I think there is a tendency amongst Western developers to think of games as being analogous to movies, which limits their thinking.

Japanese developers, by contrast, seem to be drawing on a much different well of inspiration, often creating games that baffle us gaijin with their quirkiness.

I can't help but feel that we are missing out by not getting to experience these games. We're getting to a stage in the West where only sequels to proven franchises can make any real money, and a shot of weirdness (and apparently, a lot of boobs), might just be what we need to inspire us to make more interesting games.

Who knows, perhaps it's time to start learning Japanese?

Suda 51 - Image Conscious As Ever.

2008-12-27T11:39:00.000-08:00

Suda 51 has been talking about a follow up to No More Heroes. Now, the Wii may have sold millions of units but its library of titles is minuscule if you want something more than family-orientated shovelware. NMH was one of the few titles of 2008 that offered something to hardcore gamers.

While I applaud Suda51's dedication to the Wii, I can't help but feel that he's doing it for the wrong reasons. It seems to me like he's more concerned with maintaining his image as an oddball outsider, not wanting to make a great game for the console.

For example:

"One of the main reasons why we're back on Wii is because of the controller. When we released the first one on Wii, you had this feeling just finished with moving the controller; it was really good.
So, if we released it on Xbox 360, for example, we'd have to rethink this feeling. I wanted to keep the game's controller gimmick, so that's why the fighting was more fitting on Wii, rather than on other platforms."

Gimmick huh? No More Heroes makes such bad use of the Wii-Mote that to claim that it's one of the reasons that you're staying with the console is ludicrous. I don't want to rant about Suda51, but I'm not sure that he's the sort of developer that the Wii needs.

Update: It occurs to me that making poor use of the Wii controller isn't exactly compelling evidence for damning Suda51.

My problem with Suda51 is that he seems to be selling games based on his reputation and unlike people like Warren Spector, Will Wright or Gabe Newell, he doesn't a long list of amazing games to his name. There is absolutely no reason that he couldn't develop games for the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but by sticking with the Wii, he maintains a mystique that he is outside the normal sphere of game development and that his games are somehow much closer to 'art' than anyone elses.

As an example, NMH is repetitive and badly designed, with a plot that makes no sense whatsoever and a thoroughly loathsome main character; but of course, the game is satirical.

I'm sorry Mr. 51, but no, it isn't.

Actually, that's not exactly fair. It certainly tries to be satirical, but rather than making digs at the hubris of modern games, it indulges in them, and then expects us to be impressed at how perceptive it is. I'm sorry, but you don't get any points for that. If you want to make games that take the piss out of other games, you have to be able to make better games than the competition.

On reflection, it's not just the Wii that can do without Suda51, I think that gaming in general would be better off without him.

On Innovation

2008-12-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

While I was browsing my RSS feeds, I came across this little gem. It appears that the producer of the new Prince of Persia wanted a few 'virtual pats-on-the-back' for the innovation in his game.

Alas Mr Producer, I have some news for you.

Innovation alone, isn't enough.

Ignoring for a moment that the latest Prince of Persia is hardly what I would call innovative, it simply isn't enough to just have a new idea. As counter-intuative as that sounds, the implementation is easily just as important, if not more important, than the idea itself. The typical consumer cares very little for advances in AI or physics, except for how it directly influences gameplay. Getting excited about that sort of thing remains the purview of the hardcore gamer.

If you want your innovation to be well received by the general public and gaming media, you need to make sure that it's being used in a good game. Prince of Persia suffered because the addition of Elika as a roving checkpoint (thanks to Susan Arendt for that one), removed any challenge from an already easy game and the open world makes the whole thing feel unfocused. Add the repetitive platformer/scavenger hunt gameplay into the mix, and it's not hard to see why his 'innovative' game was not heralded as a masterpiece.

As a counterpoint to Prince of Persia, Portal is a innovative game that is every bit the media darling, and much beloved by gamers. The reason for this though, is not just the novel concept at the core of the game, but the brilliantly dark comedy of the writing. Would Portal have been so successful without the humour? We'll never know for sure, but my money is on 'no'. The point is that by making the innovation part of a compelling gaming experience, the innovation is well received.

In an increasingly stagnant industry, publishers and developers should be lauded for taking risks and trying new things, but if you're going to try and convince people to buy your game based on the strength of your idea, you better make sure it's a bloody good one.