No Russian

WARNING: MODERN WARFARE 2 SINGLE-PLAYER CAMPAIGN SPOILERS AHEAD.

The screen is black.  All you hear is the unzipping of duffel bags, the clicks of weapons being loaded and cocked, and the ding of an elevator.  When the scene comes into focus, you find yourself in that elevator, surrounded by men dressed in suits, wearing body armor and carrying heavy machine guns.  One of them, a young man with black hair and pale skin, looks at you and says “Remember, no Russian.”  You only now realize that you are holding a gun.

The elevator dings again and the doors open.  The men calmly file out; you follow them.  The scene is easy to recognize: an airport.  Tired-looking travelers stand in line, waiting to get through security.  The familiar sounds of an airport are everywhere: chatter, the echo of an announcement over the PA system, the distant exhale of a jet engine.

One of the travelers notices you and the men you are with.  They get the attention of the person next to them, and soon everyone is looking at you.  They look confused and scared, but they don’t run; before they even have the chance, you are holding your trigger down, tearing them to shreds with machine gun fire.

It all gets worse from there.

Every serious gamer in the country has probably finished the single-player campaign in Modern Warfare 2 as of now, so it’s a good time to address the level “No Russian,” wherein the player-character–a United States soldier infiltrating a Russian terrorist organization–participates in a terrorist attack.  The character does so not out of any hatred, political agenda, or blind vengeance; they are working to gain the trust of their enemy so that they may learn of their actions and ultimately save more lives.  So no: the game does not have you “playing as a terrorist,” as some critics have decried: you’re playing as a loyal American pretending to be a terrorist for intelligence-gathering purposes.  There is a very specific narrative reason why this level exists.  Not for shock value, but to advance the plot of the game’s story–and to advance it in a meaningful way.

Sure, Infinity Ward could have told this narrative segment by way of a cutscene, telling the player about the atrocities they committed in the name of the greater good instead of having them commit them personally, but what kind of impact would have that had?  None, whatsoever.  Instead, you step behind the gun and see the carnage first-hand.  You hear the screams, you see the wounded desperately crawl for safety, you see the confused straggler fall to their knees and throw their hands into the air and beg for mercy–and then watch as one of your comrades deny them that mercy.  Or, knowing that you must do what must be done, pull the trigger yourself.

This level brings us closer to the actual carnage of a terrorist attack than anything else ever has, and it does so from the most terrifying point-of-view possible: that of the attacker.  It’s a brutally honest experience, and dares the gamer to confront a harsh reality often overlooked in fiction.

We love to talk about heroism, and we should love to talk about heroism.  But we often ignore the evils that inspire that heroism.  We’ll gladly talk about the tragedies of September 11th, 2001 but we like to keep the screams and the blood at a comfortable distance.   There is no shortage of talk about our noble causes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the closest we come to the carnage in the streets is an occasional update on our death toll or a picture of a bombed-out neighborhood from time-to-time.  Why this is, I don’t know.  Fear, more than likely.  We know there are monsters out there and we want to kill the monsters, but we don’t want to know all the dirty things those monsters do.

In Modern Warfare 2, you–for a brief time, and indirectly, but nevertheless–become the monster.  And afterward, you realize just how bad the bad guys are.

Of course, Infinity Ward gives you the option to skip this level–without penalty–altogether, before the game even begins no less.  And if you start playing it and find it too intense, skipping the mission on the fly is just a few button presses away: pause the game and choose “Skip Mission.”  That’s not to say the rest of the game isn’t populated with brutal combat that does not apologize, but at least it’s against people who shoot back.

It must be said, also, that for all the terror that this game depicts, there are true moments of hope and glory in there as well.  Late in the game, you (as a different player-character) and your squad of Army Rangers have to fight across Washington, DC after an atmospheric nuclear detonation renders all electronic systems dead.  Stripped of your most sophisticated equipment, you must battle through a destroyed office building against invading Russian forces, engaging in firefights in the dark.  You eventually push through to the White House lawn, where you soon learn that the Air Force is going to start bombing the city unless they see green flares on the roofs of buildings, signifying that Washington is still in friendly hands.  In a desperate race against time, you fight to take back the White House; you finally make it to the roof and pop your green flares as planes that were meant to bomb the city straight to Hell fly harmlessly overhead.  As you look around, you see green smoke on the roofs of several buildings, and you realize that America still holds the Capitol, that it has not fallen, even in the face of insurmountable odds.

I don’t know about you, but for me it was a pretty stirringly patriotic moment.

Halo is the New Star Wars

Halo Waypoint was released in the past week.  You’ll find it in the Game Marketplace on Xbox Live, but it’s not so much a game as it is a service.  From one place, you can track your progress on Halo series achievements, see how many of your friends are playing a Halo game, and view all kinds of interviews, including full episodes from the upcoming Halo Legends DVD.

People love to pick on the Halo franchise, and admittedly, for good reason.  The games come across as mindless bullet slingers, and with Halo merchandise available in all forms from action figures to WETA statues to Mega Blocks to men’s underwear, it can be easy to get sick of the franchise.  Unfortunately for those who don’t delve into the games and the fiction surrounding them, there is a wealth of complexity in the Halo universe.  The games have surprising complexity in their mechanics, the multiplayer is active and intense (it’s easy to see why so many gamers picked up Halo 3 just for multiplayer), and–in the novels and comic books–one finds deep examinations of the nature of heroism and a gut-checking view of warfare from a grunt’s point-of-view.  It’s deep stuff, really; you just have to give it a chance.

After all, Halo is not the first franchise to be everywhere at all times.  You might recall a huge entertainment franchise that was kind of a big deal for thirty years, until its creator all but destroyed it for some untold reason: Star Wars.  At the height of its popularity (meaning: before it became a kids franchise–not that that’s a bad thing, just saying), Star Wars was everywhere.  Toys, video games, approximately 1 bazillion books and comics, and oh yeah–the movies.  There were those as well; let’s not forget about those.  Nobody seemed to care though.  There were those who liked Star Wars and those who didn’t, but nobody really complained about the omnipresence of the franchise.  People who didn’t like Star Wars knew that it was popular and just kind of lived with it.

Yet, Halo having the same amount of exposure and influence seem to be a problem with people; enough that the overexposure of the franchise is a common topic on the blogs and forums I frequent.  It’s not an invalid complaint: Halo is everywhere nowadays, and there is a great deal of risk in that.  It could get watered down and stretched thin.  But is it really there yet?  Is it really worth complaining about it being milked?

After all, gamers should be excited about the popularity and fandom of Halo.  After all, it is quite an achivement.  Most of the major entertainment franchises out there were kicked off by a big, splashy movie or a long-running TV or comic book series.  Halo is only eight years old and has yet to see the silver screen.  Bungie and Microsoft gave birth to a consistent fictional universe that people love to explore, and they did it with a video game.  Halo is indeed the new Star Wars, in more ways than one.  It’s the big sci-fi franchise for the nerds who think they’re cool and it was launched with this great new media called video games.  It’s going to be here for a long, long time.  Big fan or not, if you’re a video gamer you should be happy about that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to welding my handmade replica of a BR55HB SR Battle Rifle to go with my Master Chief costume.

Left 4 Dead 2: It could have been one of 2010’s best games.

While I didn’t sign a petition trying to block its release, I was a bit disarmed by the announcement of Left 4 Dead 2.  The original is not even a year old, has a massive fan following, and even after you earn all the achievements it has infinite re-playability thanks to its always-changing difficulty dynamics and the mere fact that SHOOTING ZOMBIES IN THE FACE NEVER GETS OLD.

With that being said, it’s no surprise that there is a sequel.  This is how video games work, after all, and anybody that has played video games with any degree of passion in the last thirty years knows that.  Developers make a great game and publishers make a whole lot of money off of it.  Developers, being the artsy folks they are, see room for improvement in their art even after its sold a million copies.  Publishers, more than willing to capitalize on brand recognition, generously fund developers’ efforts to improve the original in the form of a sequel, so that the publisher can make even more money off of it than they did the original.

The thing that bothers me about Left 4 Dead 2 is not its existence, but its timing.  I never feared a Madden-esque franchise exploitation; Valve treats their fans better than that.  I didn’t think, however, that it was fair to push a sequel to such an excellent game so soon, simply because there wasn’t many improvements that could be made to the established material.  Valve could have sat on it for a year and spat it out next Christmas, when interest in Left 4 Dead may have started slipping.  As for implementing the new features introduced in the sequel via downloadable content–well, I’m not programmer, so I’m not sure how difficult that would have been for some of the deep-seeded changes to the core game engine (such as melee weapons, new items, and–especially–new Special Infected).   So again, a sequel was inevitable; just released too soon.

Of course it’s on my wish list at Amazon.com for this holiday season.

The demo is out now for Xbox Live Gold subscribers (and all Steam users), so we finally get to see if this sequel is worth being rushed out the gate.  I have to say it would have served better being released next year, when the new ideas would have seemed even more fresh and original–and Valve could have taken the time to better implement them.

There are many things I like about the sequel, namely the characters and setting.  Bill, Francis, Zoey, and Louis are now iconic characters that will forever be associated with the undead apocalypse, and I love them just as much as I did the very first time I booted up the game.  But Ellis (my personal favorite), Coach, Nick, and Rochelle feel better developed and more human; they seem weaker, more helpless, which in this kind of game is a good thing for the narrative.  Let’s be honest: Francis and Bill could have probably split up and handled the zombie apocalypse solo.  You get that sense from their personalities.  The four leads from L4D2 seem to really depend on each other; any one of them would die alone, but together they keep each other alive.

The zombies are also more complex.  The standard Infected are more varied in their design, with some of them being former police officers and thus wearing body armor.  Spitters present a real challenge; they function like Boomers, except they spew venomous bile on the ground that saps your health.  Jockeys are similar to Hunters, except they don’t pin your character; instead, they ride you, similar to their namesake, taking you all over the place.

The setting is much more rich than in the original.  It’s no longer “typical American city and the surrounding community;” this is the South we’re talking about.  Cheap lawn chairs and fences, lots of greenery, wide open streets, and the chirping of cicadas and the buzz of mosquitoes pervade the two chapters that comprise this demo.  Somehow, Valve even nailed the humidity of New Orleans; you get the sense that the air is thick and heavy (the daytime setting probably helps).  In hindsight, the backdrop of the original game was just a placeholder; this is a real place with real personality.

Even the music is better.  The bluegrass interpretation of the music that plays when you die is more sorrowful than in the first game, and the jazz riff that plays to herald the arrival of the Horde is–oddly–more menacing than the B-movie fanfare from the first game.

Unfortunately, where it matters the most–game play–the sequel is a bit more weak.  Yes, new Special Infected present new challenges, but they are blatant variations on the existing characters; they don’t really feel new.  Melee weapons are a huge disappointment.  Yes, they offer one hit kills and a valuable way to conserve ammo, and they are fun to use, but one has to be in melee range of a zombie to use them, meaning you’ll be charging towards them instead of hanging back and suppressing them–this leads to lots of deaths (believe me).  What’s more, the melee weapon replaces your pistol; better functionality would have it replacing your melee attack (you press the left trigger and, instead of a jab with the butt of your gun, you perform a swipe with your melee weapon, just like how melee attacks work in Modern Warfare).  This would have made much more sense and expanded combat options much more, giving you a fallback option when you are swarmed but not forcing you to take risks to use your new toys.  The new guns are a lot of fun to play with, but there’s not enough new ones–and not enough variation amongst them–to feel like a big change to game play.

There is also one glaring problem with the demo.  When I played single player, it ran flawlessly.  When a friend asked me to join him for multiplayer, it lagged like a three-legged dog.  We couldn’t enjoy the game because everything jerked and sputtered and chugged along.  We would empty whole clips into regular Infected and they would stand there wailing on us, and then all of a sudden there we are: on our backs with pistols in the air and a perfect circle of Infected all around us.  We finally decided to quit and hope for the best upon full release; there was no way we were going to enjoy playing like this.

So, judging from the demo, will Left 4 Dead 2 be fun to play?  Yes, it will be.  The new characters and setting add a few extra layers and some very delicious icing to an already delicious cake.  The action is just as fast and frantic as ever, and popping zombies upside the head with a frying pan feels as awesome as it sounds.  Is it worth the $60 price tag?  Yes, it is.  This is a full retail release; it is not an expansion.  It has a wealth of additional play modes not found in the original, a brand new campaign, and changes to how the core game is played.  Was it released too soon, so soon that it will feel like an expansion despite being a totally new entity, spawned from something already in exsitence but with an identity all of its own?  Yes, it was.

I Want One of These Things RIGHT NOW.

It’s the only way a grown man does not look ridiculous practicing his “Hadoken” stance.

Why GameStop will lose the Digital Download Wars

GameStop had a little Halloween special going on via their website.  You could download Ghostbusters for the PC for $9.99.  I had played this game on Xbox 360.  It was boring and repetitive, but it was vintage Ghostbusters; it’s the closest thing to a third movie that we’ll ever get.  For that alone, it’s worth ten bucks.

So I click on “Add to My Digital Cart.”  At the next screen, I get a big surprise: the option to add “Digital Insurance” to my purchase for $3.95.  Not familiar with this concept of digital insurance, I click on “More Info.”  It seems that if I want to recover this game should my computer crash, I’ll need to purchase said coverage; and the insurance is only good for 18 months.

Now, I’ve expressed my feelings about the digital marketplace before; I’m not a big fan of it as the main outlet for video games.  As a supplement to retail, it’s a great thing.  But far too often it’s used to rip off customers, with its pretend currency and charging gamers the same price for a data packet as one would pay for a box, a disc, a manual, and the right to resell said media should one grow tired of it.

But at least when I purchase something from Steam, I can download it again should I have computer problems that wipe my hard drive clean; I should know, because it’s already happened on my less-than-one-year old rig.  I can even get tired of a game, uninstall it from my computer, and months later download it again and reinstall with no problem at all–and at no additional cost.  So other than the whole pesky lack of physical media and wavering the First Sale Doctrine, buying a game from Steam is essentially the same thing as buying a game from retail.

So if GameStop is trying to move in on Steam, why are they not offering the same service?  True, you can’t buy a physical copy of Ghostbusters and get a replacement for free should your house burn down, but this is data we’re talking about; all the digital GameStop clerk has to do is click on an “allow” button.  Plus, consider that your competition–nay, the DUDES DOMINATING YOU IN THIS ARENA–are doing it.  If GameStop is trying to be compete–you know, be competitive–they’re doing a poor job of it.

Sorry, GameStop.  Your days of getting my retail business are limited to when you offer outstanding, must-have pre-order bonuses on games I’ve been salivating over for months (re: not all that often) or when friends and family give me gift cards.  Now, you’ll never get my digital business.  Granted, there’s probably a GameStop exec sitting in his corner office, lighting a Cuban cigar with a hundred dollar bill and sipping on a single-malt Scotch that costs $200 an ounce as he digests his dinner of deep fried bald eagle thinking about how scared he is over the loss of one customer before enjoying a violent laugh; but just you wait until the day that most gamers feel the same way I do.  I don’t know how well GameStop’s digital branch is doing now, but it has nowhere to go but down.

A Double Dose of Zombie Goodness

There is probably some deep, complex, socio-psychological reason why zombies–and the killing of them–are such a popular motif for fiction, be it movies, books, or video games.  But you know what?  I don’t care.  It’s enough for me to know that zombies are the perfect enemy: we can all agree that they are bad, their presence creates an oppressive environment, and the only way to effectively deal with them is with a variety of guns, explosives, and heavy blunt objects.  Not sharp objects.  Sharp objects dull with use, and you might now always have time to spit on your honing stone and drag your machete across it a few times in the midst of fighting off a zombie horde.  No, no: for the zombie apocalypse, you want the cold, unfeeling steel of crowbar.

Not that I’ve put a great of thought into this or anything.

Speaking off the zombie apocalypse, there are two great games available on Xbox Live right now that will help you train for said apocalypse simulates it quite nicely.

Zombie Apocalypse is developed by Konami and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1 is developed by Jamezila, an indie developer.  They are both essentially the same game: they are both twin-stick shooters with multiple weapon pick-ups, they both have multiplayer (but only Zombie Apocalypse has online multiplayer), they are both panic-inducing in just how much the zombies swarm.  If you’re looking for the best interpretation of the Horde mode of Gears of War 2 (perhaps the most influential thing in video games in the past five years or so), you’ll find it in both of these games.

But which game is better?  Is it the slick, professionally-developed game with 2.5D graphics, multiple game play modes, unlockable  content, and some pretty fun achievements to unlock?  Or it is the somewhat simple game made by some guy with XNA and some spare time on his hands?

You would be surprised.  Zombie Apocalypse is a fun game, but only with multiple players.  The weapons don’t really feel all that different from each other, though the chainsaw weapon, which you always have on you, is great for when you get surrounded (and a welcome addition to the video-games-where-you-fight-zombies standard arsenal).  All in all, it’s a fun game with some decent humor, but nothing that makes you stand up and shout.

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1, however, is a true game play treat.  A surprisingly deep weapon system, some truly unique enemies, trippy level design, and one of the greatest theme songs ever.  “Welcome, to my game…I put zombies in it…for your pain…” and it just gets better from there.  Zombie Apocalypse is a fun game inspired by a multitude of zombie fictions, but it’s ultimately a party game and is best enjoyed as such.   I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES!!!1 is a truly unique, creative, and charming game that shouldn’t be as impressive as it is.

Zombie Apocalypse is 800 MS Points ($10) and I MAED A GAM3 WITH ZOMB1ES!!!1 costs 80 MS points ($1).  That’s right.  $1.  So  you have no excuse to not play it.

Tricks AND Treats with these Halloween Video Games

Halloween is awesome.  It’s one of the few genuinely fun holidays left, one that’s not obsessed with Olympic-level shopping for over-priced gifts, political correctness, or putting up with THOSE ANNOYING IN-LAWS.  No, Halloween is about partying with your friends, consuming massive amounts of candy, and letting your creativity stretch its legs with that best part of Halloween: the costume.  And even if you don’t go all out with your costume, you at least get to goof off a little bit; surely you can at least put on a black cape and pop in the trusty vampire teeth (yeah, that’s totally what I’m doing this year).

Video games play a pretty big part of Halloween as well.  Sure, when we think video games, we usually think of Christmas–namely because, for most gamers, video games comprise most of what is under the tree on Christmas morning (and it’s one of the few days our families are totally cool with us spending twelve hours in front of the TV, chiefly because of all the new shinies).

But think about it: how many video games scream “Christmas” to you when you consider their content?  How many video games are about warmth and sharing, about giving more than you receive?  How many video games depict Santa and his reindeer?  Sure, there are a few out there, but very few.  Contrast that to the number of spooky, scary, and weird games that are right at home during the month of October: games that make you think of Halloween, as opposed to Christmas making you think of video games.

Here are a few of my favorites–from the past and present–that I like to break out when the air goes chill, the leaves turn, and you get the odd suspicion that there is a vampire waiting outside your door.

Doom

It might not be the original horror video game, but with its demons, occult symbols, and intense violence, it is certainly one of the most viable entries in the genre out there.  Doom is one of the first video games I played that would, at times, instill into me a sense of panic and dread.  The disembodied snarls of some dark beast, the eerie silence of a newly-discovered room, the attacks from all around you, the confined spaces–John Carmack and company knew what they were doing.  Like so many old-school games, Doom didn’t want to empower the gamer; it wanted to make you feel helpless, and few games do a better job of  it.  Sure, Mega Man makes you feel helpless, but I don’t remember any goat-headed enemies in Mega Man; there is just something about that to make you feel extra-screwed.

Resident Evil

I kind of stopped liking the Resident Evil series after the first one.  Oh sure, Resident Evil 2-4 are all well-designed games, and RE5 looks great (I haven’t played it, other than the demo, but I hear it’s a pretty awesome co-op experience).  But most Resident Evil games are action games with horror elements; the original Resident Evil was pure B-grade horror goodness, and for a high school boy who was just starting to dabble in scary stuff, it was the Greatest Thing Ever.  I often credit this game with introducing me to the horror genre, with getting me into zombies and vampires and werewolves and heavy metal music.  I feel confident that I am not unique in this.  It’s also the first game to introduce me to setting and atmosphere as a game play mechanic: the mansion was just as much of a character as the giant snake, those terrifying dogs that crashed through the windows, and the last big boss Tyrant.  And that character was so, so scary: I would even say deliciously scary (and I really hate saying that).

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

If Resident Evil launched a thousand horror fans, then Castlevania: Symphony of the Night launched a thousand goth kids–or at least it should have.  This game was a bit of a sales flop when it first released, but as with most critical successes/commercial failures, it earned the respect of a classic and has been re-released on both XBLA and PSN, allowing it to earn the love and respect from the masses it truly deserves.  As for its Halloween appropriateness, it doesn’t get much better than this: Dracula’s good-natured son rises from an eternal slumber to traverse his father’s haunted castle on a quest to end the Dark Lord’s reign of terror forever.  It’s not really a scary game, but it is certainly a dark one.  The sprawling, seemingly endless castle is populated with a myriad of fantastical creatures, and every gothic flourish you can think of can be found–from ruined turrets to an eerie cathedral to a whole lot of artfully applied blood.  Other than the original, this is the best Castlevania game, and it’s one of the best video games ever made, period.

Left 4 Dead

I could write at length why this is a great game to play for Halloween, but really: do I have to?  You and three other friends have to make it from point A to B in a zombie-infested world.  You’ll creep through deserted hospitals, traverse dank sewers, and make a desperate run across a cornfield in your travels–and that’s just a few of the utterly terrifying places you will go.  At the end of each chapter, you’ll have to get onto a rescue vehicle of some sort, while EVERY ZOMBIE IN THE UNIVERSE is bearing down on you.  In short: this game is concerned with zombies and the killing of them.  Enough said.  With about one hour needed for each chapter, a full play-through is a great way to spend Halloween.

Dead Space

Do you like Alien?  Have you played Dead Space?  If not, you should.  There are all kinds of things that make it scary: constant feelings of dread and loneliness, doubts about the main character’s mental stability, and the old sci-fi standby of an imposing monolith older than time (which, in this case, really does look like something Satan made).  But the blood-red cherry on this horror sundae are the Necromorphs: an alien race that re-animates human corpses.  Zombies?  Well, sure: but horribly deformed zombies that–going along with the whole Satan theme–look far more demonic and grotesque than your typical undead human.  The Necromorphs are the most nightmare-inducing creatures I have ever seen in a video game or movie, and on top of dealing with them, there are moments when you will enter the unforgiving void of space with only a limited supply of air.  As your air gauge dials down far more quickly than you need it to, your pulse quickens and your palms sweat.  This game doesn’t let up for one instance, and it all culminates in one of the most tense final boss battles ever.  A great game to play in the days leading up to Halloween, when the last big battle reserved for Halloween night.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Not really a horror game, but as any Batman fan will tell you: Arkham Asylum is the scariest place on Earth.  With every major villain he has ever faced actively working to break his mind, Batman faces a challenge no less terrifying than anything in any other game on this list.  Chief among the scares is the encounters with Scarecrow: mind-bending battles of will that build up slowly and grow in intensity as they progress.  With bonus material that probes the psyche of Arkhman’s most terrifying alumni (some of it would make Hannibal Lecter feel…uncomfortable), it’s hard not to consider this game a great play for those chilly autumn days where twilight lasts a little bit longer than it should.

So there you go: spooky gaming that is perfect for Halloween time.   Grab a bag of Reese’s Pumpkins and settle in for a long night of gaming–a long night because, you probably won’t be able to go to sleep.

Halo 3: ODST–The game is good, the commercial is better.

I typed this up about a week ago or so, with the intent of editing it and publishing it soon after.  However, I had a presentation on gaming and libraries at the North Carolina Library Association Conference last Wednesday, and them immediately fell ill afterwards.  So, this review is no longer timely, but I hope you still value my opinion on the game.

I was going to wait until I gave Firefight mode a good try before I wrote about Halo 3: ODST, but you know what: the one thing that Bungie has always been spot-on with in the Halo series is multiplayer.  There is no real need to review Firefight mode, as far as I’m concerned.  You know it’s great, I know it’s great, we all know it’s great.  Multiplayer is always fun in Haloland.

So this review will only address the campaign.

Much has been said about the drastic new directions in which this new Halo campaign goes.  Instead of the all-powerful, nearly bulletproof SPARTAN-II Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, you are the Rookie: an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper.  The ODST are the elite of the UNSC armed forces.  They are specially trained for the most hostile combat situations, dropping in from orbit at breakneck speeds, right into the thick of the Hell that is combat or, sometimes, deep behind enemy lines for covert operations.

So why did Bungie decide to have you play junior detective in this game?  Sure, we all knew that this game was going to be a mystery story at heart, but in practice it just doesn’t work as well as the developers would have us believe.  Yes, New Mombasa at night is very cool.  Yes, there is real tension as you duck and dodge Covenant troops.  Yes, there is that really dreadful sense of being alone.  This doesn’t let up throughout the entire game; there are some moments that I felt really, really helpless.  Unlike playing as Master Chief, this time around I actually panicked when I ran out of ammo during a fight with Brute Chieftain, and I actually felt myself scrambling for a new weapon instead of just kind of casually walking over to pick up a new one.

And the way the storyline is delivered, through flashbacks uncovered by objects in the environment, which can be discovered in any order, as opposed to linear delivery, does offer up a few surprises.  You will likely not discover the items in order, so you piece details together as you go along, giving the whole narrative a feel not unlike a really good mystery novel; the whole thing unfolds in a very organic way, not rushing any major reveals.  The flashback missions, which allow you to play as other characters (all of them ODST), are exciting and appropriately epic; it’s like a greatest hits compilation of what made the great moments from the original Halo trilogy great.

So what makes the game not work?  Granted, this is something different from the traditional Halo experience, and there are plenty of incredible, dramatic moments to play through.  Everything should make this a great game, but there is just something missing.  There’s too much exploring between the breakneck action sequences; the final long stretch feels more like a test of patience than a test of skill; the whole thing just feels too short; I WANT TO PLAY THE LIVE ACTION ODST COMMERCIAL!

Bungie did a bit of wasting some potential here.  There are brief glimpses of  what this game could have been: a view of the Covenant War from the grunt’s eye-view.  In the original Halo trilogy, you were the guy who came in when the good guys needed a Big Damn Hero.  You took down big vehicles and went toe-to-toe with the most gruesome foes.  You punched enemy leaders in the face and made last-minute escapes.  You were an action hero.  But as an ODST, you’re just a normal guy.  You’re not a super soldier.  You’re maybe a little braver, a little more hardass than the other grunts, but you don’t have a reinforced skeleton or an energy shield or the ability to jump a quarter-mile in the air.  This could have showed the kind of high-tension, quick-burst kind of combat that we Halo fans are led to believe comprised most of the war with the Covenant–as opposed to the epic space opera of the original games.  Halo 3: ODST is indeed that, but it’s also too far in the other direction: it’s too different.  It’s too, dare I say, laid back.  Sure, the flashback levels are truly intense and chock-full of those in-the-thick moments I was hoping for, but most of the game is spent as one giant fetch quest.

So is this a good game?  Certainly.  It’s a great deal of fun and demands a bit more brain activity than the original Halo trilogy.  But is this truly an ODST game?  Does it convey that sense of intensity, loss, and drama that the awesome short film does?  Only at times.

Top 6 Reasons Why Video Games Are Better Than Tabletop Games

As promised, and better late than never.

1.  Two words: the Internet. The Internet is the pinnacle of mankind’s technological achievements.  Whatever species comes after us to reign as the dominant creatures on Earth, the Internet is the legacy that we will leave behind for them.  I really don’t see how we’re going to outdo it (short of curing AIDS or cancer).  It has changed the way we communicate, do business, experience art and literature, shop, and yes–play together.  If you want to get a Dungeons and Dragons group together, you need to find like-minded individuals who are willing to commit to a regular schedule.  World of Warcraft?  All you need is a decent computer and an Internet connection.  There is never more than a few minutes wait to play Halo 3, and even if you’re playing a game that is offline or meant only for one person, you can still use the power of the Internet to converse with your friends.  To this day, it still blows my mind when I play against somebody from France, Spain, Mexico, or the UK (true stories all around).  It’s awesome in a way that words can’t do justice.

2.  Legendary difficulty…changes a man. Video gamers are like the hardcore jocks of the world, and tabletop gamers are akin to the smarty-pants nerds (which is odd, considering that just about every dedicated gamer in existence belongs to the latter class in real life).  They live for competition; for the thrill of sweet victory, be it over the AI or another human.  Game designers know this, which is why so many games are geared to be less like relaxing fun and more like boot camp.  Sure, it hurts.  Yeah, your fingers are sore and knuckles are white.  But after a while, you start to like the pain.  It’s tthat point that you start to see your video game trials as a mark of honor, a well-earned achievement.  If you want to see what I mean, talk to a WoW gamer that is at level 80, or a Guitar Hero player who can play “Through The Fire and the Flames” on Expert.  This kind of dedication isn’t from a lack of character; it’s born from a sense of purpose, a drill-sergeant-intensity that board games just seem to lack.

3.  Video games are true convergence media (is that a term that’s been coined already, and if not, can I get credit for it?). Bibliophiles, like myself, prefer books to movies because they allow you to spend time with the narrative, to get to know it, to absorb imagery and dialogue.  Movies are shot by you at a relentless 24 frame a second–blink, and you’ll miss something.  However, movies have one advantage over books.  Writing, visual presentation, music, acting; it’s all in a movie.  Every artistic pursuit is part of a film.  Now, what does all this have to do with video games?  They also draw on every imaginable artistic practice to see the light of day.  On top of that, it’s all interactive.  Video games are like movies enhanced with the intimacy and deliberate pace of books.  Tabletop games are personal and engaging, but are also flat and limited.

4.  Video games are for doers who like to think; board games are for thinkers who like to do. Both video games and tabletop games take place, essentially, in a virtual space.  With video games, however, there is a greater sense of the real–in much the same way that looking at a Van Gogh painting is more awe-inspiring than looking at a reprint of a Van Gogh painting.  Tabletop games rely heavily on the imagination, which is what makes them so great, but what if you’re not particularly imaginative?  What if your skills are more motor-oriented, and you have deft reflexes, but you have a hard time visualizing what’s going on when you read text or listen to somebody else read?  Do you realize how many people this describes?  Video games are for you; tabletop games may be boring and hard-to-learn, but video games will always present with all the visuals you will ever need and rule implementation you will ever need, letting you dedicate yourself to on-the-fly strategizing and execution of action.

5.  Speaking of hard to learn, video games are not really hard to learn. Sure, memorizing the move set to Street Fighter IV is not an easy task.  The first time one plays a first-person-shooter, there is a whole bunch of stuff to digest; a good number of input commands, the usage properties of weapons and items, and reading on-screen information outputs.  This is nothing compared to learning a board game, where one may play for years and never fully grasp the rules.  My D&D group has been playing for three months, and we still crack open the core rulebooks several times a session.  Sure, there are easy-to-learn board games out there, but the really good ones take time and care to learn.  Plus, the teaching methods for video games are largely learn-by-doing, which sticks with the learner much better than learn-by-studying (the teaching method of board games–you read the rule and then follow them, as opposed to being taught them as you play).  Which would you rather do: read a book on how to kill zombies, and then go kill some zombies, or just go out and kill zombies?  That’s what I thought.

6.  If you don’t have any friends, you can still have a whole lot of fun. Other than solitaire, there is not a single tabletop game which you can play by yourself.  Every tabletop game in existence requires at least two players, and the best games require at least four.  What if your only friend doesn’t like games, or what if they like very simple games?  If that’s so, then you are missing out on a wealth of great entertainment and enrichment–unless you play video games.  Most video games, even in the age of the Internet, are primarily designed as single-player experiences.  You may even find your solo experience better than a social one, wherein the socializing may distract you from the game.  I can attest to this fact, because as a child I didn’t have a whole lot of friends and my family was not largely into board games.  So while I had a sterling collection of tabletop games, I largely played video games.  This may sound depressing, but it’s not.  I had rich, personal experiences that helped build my critical thinking and analytical skills.  I indulged in the narrative of the games I played, being inspired to create my own stories (I wrote fan-fic before it was fan-fic!).  In my teenage years, Resident Evil was all the more scarier because I played it all alone, and more recently I had no one around to distract me when I broke out in a cold sweat while playing Dead Space, or shed tears at the end of Fable 2.  My experiences with video games are enriched when I play alone, much like when one watches a movie alone they find it all the more engaging.  Plus, it’s nice to know that I don’t always need friends around when I want to play-pretend for a while.

Top 6 Reasons Why Tabletop Games Are Better Than Video Games

I’ll be doing a companion piece flipping things around in the next couple of days.

1.  You will never need to upgrade that Monopoly board you bought back in 1985. Oh sure, manufacturers release new editions of board games all the time.  They may even go to the trouble of revising the rules or adding new mechanics to keep the game fresh and exciting.  But if you really, really like the Stratego set or the old-school Clue you have–and you’ve kept it free from water, fire, mold, and the grubby hands of a toddler–then guess what: you can still pull that bad boy out today and play it.  You don’t need to worry about having the right console or OS, you don’t need to worry that the disc has been scratched up, you don’t have to worry about it simply not working because the internal parts are oh so delicate.  And you what’s really cool?  No matter how complex or expensive board games get, you will never have to upgrade your graphics card to play them.

2.  Your D&D Core Rulebook won’t get fried in a power surge.  Your mobo will.  Your dungeon tiles won’t mysteriously vanish into thin air.  Your OS will crash. It’s a known fact: computers hate their users.  They lure you in with a false sense of security, and them BAM! they die.  The OS won’t boot, you get the Blue Screen, or a game locks up on you every time you try to run.  You try every fix, and you eventually end up making things worse.  Time for a trip to Reformat Row.  Or even better: you open up the case to figure out if it’s a hardware problem, and you see a broken fan.  This of course explains the video card spot-welded to its port, the RAM that’s shaped like the letter U, and the black spots on the motherboard.  Game consoles aren’t much better.  In fact, they’re worse.  You can repair a computer without fixing EVERYTHING (most of the time), but the only way to fix a console is to buy a new one.  In D&D–or any other tabletop game–the only thing that hates you is the dice, and they don’t hate you so much as have a cold sense of randomness.  You don’t have to worry about stuff shorting out or burning up, and it’s cool that electrical surges, dust, heat, and general shenanigans won’t make your tabletop gear stop working.

3.  Absolutely no limit on narrative elements, ever. In tabletop games, your head is the canvas, your imagination the brush strokes.  Who doesn’t play a game of Monopoly and imagine city streets, bustling with tourists and workers, beneath glistening towers of steel and glass, those towers housing the corporate pit fighters that the players are meant to represent?  In Warhammer 40K or Magic: the Gathering, I can fight with honor and dignity, using no more force than is necessary to vanquish my foes, or I can grind my enemies into dust–and develop a real personality for myself and my army around my approach.  The low-tech presentation of board games and pen/paper RPGs demands that players use their imagination to spice up narrative and appeal to the senses.  Video games?  Not so much.  If I don’t think that post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. looks the way it does in Fallout 3, too bad.  That’s the way it looks.  Questions of morality and ethics are determined by black/white, yes/no decisions with no common ground, and all too often once I choose a path I’m bound to it.  Back story for characters is even more limited, often dictated to you or made out of a glorified mathematical formula.  If you want richness of character or setting in video games, you need to write fan-fic.  If you want richness of character or setting in tabletop games, just play.

4.  “It’s never the same game twice” is more than just a tag line on back of the box. Chance is the defining element of every tabletop game: the roll of dice, the draw of the card, the position of a piece.  Board games test adaptability and careful, strategic thought.  Video games test those things, but primarily they test twitch reflexes and have a heavy emphasis on pattern memorization/recognition.  They are linear and overly structured, and eventually lose their replay value.  That is why tabletop gaming will never get old, while one of the trending topics in video game culture is the lack of variety in the works offered up.

5.  A truly customizable experience, while video games create the illusion of custom personalization. Try to house-rule Fallout 3.  Go ahead.  Try and say “You know, I’m just not good at this game, no matter how much I lower the difficulty.  I’m just no good at it.  But I want to explore the game world and enjoy the story and get some victories under my belt, so that I can eventually get better.  I want to learn the mechanics of the game at my own pace.  So I’m going to give myself unlimited action points until I get a feel for the flow of combat.  Yeah, unlimited action points so that I can fight any enemy at any time using V.A.T.S. and not have to rely on pure skill.”  That is, in no way, ever going to happen.  You can, however, ask your friends if they can alter the rules of the new board game you’re all playing together to give you a bit of a fair shake until you’ve got a grasp on the concept.  Or say you want to mix things up a little, make things a little wild and crazy.  Say you want to play a game of Trouble where you can split up your dice roll amongst all four of your pieces.  Well, go right ahead!  What’s stopping you?  You can tailor even the most strict of board games to your particular game play tastes, so long as your friends are cool with it.  Case in point:  how many of you have played a game of Monopoly where you put all of the money collected from taxes in the middle of the board, and should anybody land on the Free Parking space, they get it?  Yeah, that’s not in the rules.  How many of you have played an online game of Halo 3 wherein the object of the game was to see how long one could go without shooting another player, as opposed to racking up as many kills as possible?  Didn’t think so.

6.  Until they really invent HAL, there is no AI that can compete with human intelligence. Contrary to popular belief (and mountains of evidence), humans really are smarter than computers.  A CPU can make thousands–millions–of calculations in the time it takes for you to blink.  It can read and translate lines upon lines of code.  It can examine concrete parameters and make a judgment as to how to act in a given situation.  But it cannot think on its own.  A computer–be it a desktop PC, an Xbox 360, or the doomsday machine that is attached to the little red button in the President’s office–can only work with the intelligence given to it, and there is no room for expansion.  The human brain is constantly evolving, constantly growing, and constantly processing not just cold, hard numbers but all kinds of things we cannot make tangible or graph on a coordinate plane: things like emotions, outcomes, relationships.  The Covenant is dictated by algorithms; my Dungeon Master is dictated by the actions of every member of my party, the result she wants for the outcome she is running, the result the party wishes for, her mood, our mood, the weather outside–you name it.  It all combines to make a singular game experience that never gets stale and never feels repetitive.  That is why tabletop gaming is exciting and expansive.  That is why tabletop gaming will always leave you on the edge of your seat, while video games will sometimes leave you bored.