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.

Batman: Arkham Asylum–My God, It’s Beautiful

There are some games that, when you play them, they instill in you a feeling of awe and wonder.  You know that you are playing a classic when you play them, and to experience them is to be  in the presence of something incredible, beautiful, maybe even sacred.

These kinds of games are few and far between.  Yes, there are many games that are incredibly well designed, are engaging in both mechanics and narrative, but only a few games accomplish what all of them attempt: fully immerse you in another world.  They do not make you forget reality so much as they, even when you are not playing them, replace reality with the game world, pulling you into a realm of imagination and discovery and giving you the tools to explore this place not as if you were visiting there, but as if you lived there and was only exploring an as-of-yet undiscovered niche of a greater expanse.

BioShock.  The original God of War.  Half-Life.  The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  Final Fantasy VII.  Goldeneye.  The true gaming classics that will never outlive their prime, that will never age, that will always seem fresh and new and exciting.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is the most recent of these kind of mythical, mystical classics.

I can’t say enough good things about the game.  Griffin McElroy from Joystiq said it best when he stopped just short of saying “it will birth you anew in its magnificence.” Every review from all the major outlets has been overwhelmingly positive, and deservedly so.  Put simply, Batman: Arkham Asylum is the best game this year thus far and will long be remembered as one of the best games of this console generation, perhaps ever.  It excels at taking an already existing fictional canon and making it the developers’ own while giving us a game that would be amazing even without the framing of said canon.  This is the game that Batman fans have been waiting for, and the game that people who couldn’t care less about Batman have been waiting for, without even knowing it.

Everything is top-notch.  The combat is brutal and quick, complex yet easy to control.  It keeps you on your toes without overwhelming you and empowers you without pandering to you.  The stealth game play is deep and satisfying, and somewhere along the way you find yourself thinking “I’m actually thinking like Batman,” and it’s exhilirating.  Boss battles are neither overly complex or dumbed down, with strategies befitting the situation and the opponent.  Level design has a logical flow and backtracking is kept interesting with a steady stream of new items with which you access previously unreachable secret areas.

The aesthetics of the game are everything that a game set in an old-style insane asylum should be, whether it is a Batman game set in Arkham Asylum or not.  At times beautiful, at times eerie, at times cold and unfeeling, at times downright terrifying: the asylum itself is a character, silently observing the events within it, completely neutral in the conflict this game represents.  The artistic staff on this game deserve delicious cake from every Batman fanboy in the world, because they brought Arkham Asylum to life the way Christopher Nolan brought Gotham City itself to life in his superb films.

The musical score and voice-acting have the integrity of a major motion picture, with Mark Hamill giving us a Joker that stands toe-to-toe with Heath Ledger and makes us forget entirely about Jack Nicholson.  Kevin Conroy has been the voice of Batman since the animated series from the ’90s, and he brings the same dignity and authority to the character that he always has.  The music is matched flawlessly with the on-screen game play; swelling crescendos highlight stealthy takedowns, pitched riffs frame cat-and-mouse sequences as Batman strikes from the dark, and shrilling string instruments underline moments of dread.

The story feels like a comic book story, with sensible turns and true-to-form dialogue.  Paul Dini really should look into adapting this into a graphic novel; it would be awesome, I’m sure.  Every cliffhanger, every moment of tension, every unnerving confrontation and race against the clock before the Joker or Harley Quinn do something really, really bad to innocent people feels like a love letter to the comics that inspired this game.

I usually don’t examine a game this fully.  I’m a stickler when it comes to game play and mechanics, but I consider narrative and environmental aesthetics icing on the cake.  I sometimes feel that designers spend too much time making their game look pretty or giving their game a solid story and not enough time making their game a solid play experience.

Batman: Arkhams Asylum, however, does everything right.  Rocksteady made an incredible game, and fleshed it out with artistic integrity rivaling what one would see in a movie theater, or a museum for that matter.  And it’s because they approached everything with equal zeal, because they refused to compromise on anything, because they didn’t sacrifice game play for fan service but managed to pump this game full of goodness all the way around, that Batman: Arkham Asylum is such a brilliant piece of work.

Shadow Complex: Pure, Sweet Goodness

If you need something to pass the time until Arkham Asylum comes out on Tuesday, I highly recommend Shadow Complex, recently released to Xbox Live Arcade.  It’s the best game that Epic has ever made (yes, those would be the guys who gave us both Unreal and Gears of War), and does old-school revival better than anybody else.

Shadow Complex is a sprawling 2D adventure in the spirit of Metroid.  You follow a somewhat linear path through a sizable map, picking up new items and weapons and uncovering secrets along the way.  After picking up new items, it’s highly rewarding to go back to old areas and find new doorways, uncover new passages, and take on enemies that once gave you a run for your money with some high-end ordinance.

As if that wasn’t addictive enough, the dev team has somehow managed to make 2D combat as exciting and engaging as 3D firefights.  Each level is rendered in 3D, so the camera zooms out for dramatic melee attacks, intense turret-shooting segments, and even short cinematics.  Enemies attack from the background and your character returns fire from the foreground.  Explosions affect targets in a full 360 degree radius, so blowing up a barrel in the background can affect enemies in the foreground, if it’s a big enough boom.  *giddy gamer face* Once, I launched a grenade into the background, and while crap was going KA-PLOW-BOOEY I hit the melee attack button and busted out a brutal takedown on the guy that had just run up on me.  It looked as awesome as something out of a Michael Bay film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

It’s a very exciting game with plenty to offer.  Don’t go looking for a deep storyline though, as it goes something like this: wrong place, wrong time…blah, blah….secret terrorist base in the mountains…blah, blah…reluctant soldier forced to use violence…blah, blah….OMG THEY HAVE GIANT ROBOTS…blah, blah….and so on.  However, I do predict a huge twist ending (I’m not kidding: so far, a certain character’s questionable actions is the only alluring thing about the story).

So, yeah: don’t expect a National Book Award winner.  But the game play is solid, and that’s all that really matters.

Oh, one more thing.  There is talk on the Internet about gamers not wanting to buy this game because of the involvement of Orson Scott Card, renowned sci-fi writer and an avowed opponent of homosexual rights.  To each their own, and as a supporter of gay rights, I can certainly sympathize.  But think about this: not only was Card involved with this game about as much as Tom Clancy is involved with the games that bear his name (that is to “tangentially at best”), but by not supporting Card you are also not supporting a bunch of developers, artists, testers, and interns (somebody has to brew the coffee!) who put a lot of blood and love into this game.  If Card’s hand in the pot is the ONLY thing keeping you from buying this game, go ahead and buy the game.  Exercise the tolerance you want Orson Scott Card to have.

After a few hours with this game, you’ll be saying “Orson Scott Who-What?”

Chain Rxn: The video game you’ll want to cook in a spoon.

Facebook users have access to an awesome game that a hardcore/core/serious (whatever label you want to use so long as it is not “casual”) gamer likes way more than he should: Chain Rxn.

It’s a very simple concept executed with such beauty it might just make you cry: you are presented with a board across which several colored balls bounce.  You can place one “bomb” on the board, which blossoms into a circle.  Any ball touching the circle blossoms out likewise.  In order to advance to the next board, you must catch a minimum number of balls in the resulting chain reaction.  Blossoms/blast radii/circles, whatever you want to call them, disappear after a few seconds, so you need constant chain reactions to stay alive and move on.  You get a score multiplier when you catch enough balls in said chain reaction, resulting in some pretty massive scores.  There are universal leaderboards, and you can also see how you stack up against your friends.

I’m calling it right now: it’s better than Peggle.

While Peggle is like peanut-butter-coated meth, there is one advantage that Chain Rxn has: a not-so-lopsided skill-to-luck ratio.  There is still a high degree of chance in Chain Rxn, but it calls for more careful observation of the board and planned execution.  You have to time the placing of your bomb just right so as to catch as many balls in the resulting blast radius as possible, with chains blossoming all out around the initial bloom for maximum effect.

You can try a stage as many times as you need to, but there are only twelve stages.  I can see this game expanding, adding more elements to the game.  In short, I hope that the developer Zwigglers brings us a full-featured version of Chain Rxn for Nintendo DS (I don’t see it being much fun on XBLA, and it’s perfect for the short session gaming that I do on the run).

Today I Die: A Video Game Full of Life

The indie video game scene continues to give us pleasant little surprises.  Today I Die, developed by Daniel Benmergui, is a quick game that is more akin to reading a poem than it is to playing a game, but is an experience that only a video game could deliver.

It’s not terribly complex (though the final segment does take some figuring out, or perhaps I’m just not as clever as I should be): manipulate the on-screen objects and text to advance to the next level.  Depending on your choices at the very end, you will get one of two endings.  One is satisfyingly direct and empowering, and the other is dark and ambiguous in both presentation and implication.

This is definitely a game that should be shared amongst friends, and while not as heartbreaking or elegantly designed as Jason Rohrer’s Gravitation (still the best indie game I’ve ever played, and on the short list of my favorite video games of all time) Today I Die stands firm as a demostration of how video games can be more than a collection of mechanics while still retaining their soul.

Street Fighter IV: A Wall of Awesome

As I said in my most previous post, I’m regressing back into my childhood lately (I’m already looking forward to Friday’s trip to the comic shop!) and re-connecting with the things that made me smile when I was a kid.

Have I been smiling tonight.

First things first: Street Fighter IV is practically review-proof.  It’s a fighting game with smooth, tight controls on even a stock Xbox 360 pad (something I thought impossible), complex and deep strategies that make each fight far more than a button masher, and the most balanced difficulty I’ve ever seen in a console fighting game (the computer still cheats, but it’s possible to catch the CPU in a mistake quite often).  The most skilled player will be able to throw down in epic battles straight out of kung-fu movies; noobs can enjoy fair and challenging competition.    Training mode allows you to customize a CPU dummy to your liking, so you can practice those tough moves and combos.  As for a tutorial, you won’t find it here.  What you will find is the Trials under Challenge mode: a sweat-inducing workout that has you executing progressively harder techniques.  Make it to the end, and you’ll be able to dish out sweet beat-downs with precision–and feel the better player for it.  In short, this game does everything right, including multiplayer (sorry: versus mode).

Not only can players go one-on-one in either ranked or casual matches through Xbox Live,  but get this: you can capture that old arcade feel in Arcade mode.  Turn Arcade Requests on and you might get a new challenger step up (through the magic of the Internet!) while you’re wailing away on the computer.  This happened to me as I was fighting through as Ken; it felt incredible and took me back to memories of the old arcade (that has long since closed down) here in my hometown mall.  The only thing missing was the taste of fountain sodas and the smell of stale popcorn, the buzzing and whistling of a dozen other arcade machines, and the trip to the toy store and pizza stand afterward.   The thrill of victory still felt sweet (I won two matches!) and the sting of defeat still smarted (I also lost two).  Connections in the matches I played were solid and free of lag.  Since where any fighting game truly shines is in competitive game play, this was make or break for Street Fighter IV.  I can soundly say that Capcom made it.

I only have one complaint: unlocking characters.  I never really understood why fighting games made you unlock any but the most powerful, game-breaking characters.  There is no reason I should have to play through Arcade mode to play as Cammy or Sakura (or, God help me, Dan).  Having to unlock Akuma and Gouken make perfect sense, but a Japanese schoolgirl and…Dan?  Seriously?  Thankfully, “Easiest” difficult is just that.  It’s a cake walk–and playing through the Arcade mode on this setting unlocks all the characters just fine.  As long as you can keep the computer from cheating (it does!) then you’re good.

There is so much in Street Fighter IV that makes me smile, I could go on and on and on.  I could talk about how good it feels to land that last crushing blow against Seth and hear the announcer calmly yet firmly announce “K.O.” as you watch the living weapon fall in slow-motion to the ground (sound familiar?  It’s what happens when you beat M. Bison in Street Fighter II).  I can talk about the tension of both you and your human opponent being down to *this* much life and exchanging a flurry of blocked blows until he sneaks one in past your defenses and your jaw drops in shock as you hear the wails of your character.  I could talk about the characters we’ve grown up with finally being represented in 3D in a way that is in line with the character design of previous games, and I could talk about the music being at once familiar and fresh.  I could talk about the opening cinematic, the closing credits, and everything in between, but I’d rather you go out and buy the game yourself and experience it first-hand.

I’m level250geek on Xbox Live.  As the back of the box says: let’s do this. 

Fallout 3: Game of the Year

Yes, I am speaking very soon.  I just got this game this past weekend.  I wasn’t going to pick it up until next year, but me going to a video game or book store is like an alcoholic going to bar, a sex addict going to a brothel, and a gambler going into a casino all wrapped up together and cooked in a spoon.  So, I bought it.

I have not even gotten close to chipping the surface of this game, and it’s already possibly the best single-player RPG I have played since Chrono Trigger on the SNES.  I love Oblivion for it’s vast fantasy world and limitless character customization options, but it stings that there are only a few “right” ways to play, that the game isn’t as open-ended as you want it to be.  Sure, you can be stealthy, or be a caster, or be a tank; but you can’t be all three, and the press around the game leads you to believe otherwise.

Fallout 3 gives you an easier time crafting the exact character you want.  Sure, early on in the game, certain skills and attributes come in handier than others (hint: tag Small Guns as an attribute during character creation), but leveling in the game allows you to distribute an equal number of points amongst all of your attributes, as opposed to the “exercise” method in Oblivion, where attributes that govern your most used skills are the ones that get big bonuses.  The perks system also allows a deeper level of customization, allowing you to craft either a highly-specialized character that can, for instance, deal out critical hits and slip into the shadows or one that uses charm and wit to get what he wants, or to be a more well-rounded character that levels quickly, is skilled with certain weapon types, and is an effective self-healer.

Combat is a huge part of game play, though all but the most hardcore will want to play on Easy (you can adjust difficulty on the fly if you find things to much or too little, but you earn more XP on higher difficulty levels).  This does annoy me because until somebody makes an RPG (or any sandbox game for that matter) that allows you to use diplomacy or deception when confronted with hostility, we will never see a truly open-ended game.  That was my other fault with Oblivion (and its predecessor Morrowind).  There is no reason why my Bard should be engaging in dungeon-diving combat; I want quests that fit the character, and when nearly all quests are “go here and kill this” or “plunge into the creepy dungeon filled to the brim with things that want to make you die and bring this back” then it’s hard to find any fulfillment in a silver-tongued devil that only pulls out his sword when an angry husband drops by.

At least in Fallout 3, the focus on combat is more logical; one gets the sense that everybody in post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. knows how to fight–and those that don’t know how to fight don’t live very long.  Also, combat is incredibly fun, with every fight being exciting.  Stealth game play really isn’t a viable option so far for me; I try to remain hidden, but by the time I have the enemy in my sights they have already spotted me.  That’s not such a big deal though, because I actually enjoy the firefights this game offers, especially with the inclusion of the V.A.T.S. system.  This method of combat–which allows you to freeze time and select which body part to target, with varying degrees of success and damage output–adds a layer of strategic depth that could be missing from “Oblivion with guns.”  Do you risk the head shot, hoping that you nail it and deal out big damage?  The torso is a guaranteed hit most of the time, but also more often than not it’s heavily armored–do you go for minimal damage on a sure target or big damage on a target you’ll probably miss?  With ammo at a premium and manual aiming being only good as a supplementary tool, these questions become genuineyl stressful in the thick of a fight.

As much time and money that was no doubt developing characterization and combat, it’s a shame Bethesda skimped on voice-acting, especially since the writing for this game is so great.  A few NPCs entertain (Moira, a character you meet early on who sends you on some of the most ridiculous and dangerous quests in the history of the genre, is my favorite so far), but most of them will induce tear-streaked flashbacks to Oblivion’s soulless automatons.  The dialogue options given to your character are varied and allow you to really craft for him/her a true personality, though it would be nice to end a conversation whenever I want (one of the few UI blunders in the game) instead of having to wade through countless options just to say “I have to go now.”

Thankfully, bad voice acting and clumsy dialogue selection is the only thing negative that I can say about the game.  The post-nuclear landscape is beautiful and ugly all at the same time, an impeccable attention to detail more than making up for the (understandable) drab color scheme.  Weapons and armor may steal a little from the Mad Max movies than most fans would care to admit, but fear-inducing giant insects, Feral Ghouls, inhumane Raiders, and hulking Super Mutants all combine to give this game an identity all of its own.  I never played Fallout or its sequel, but even if I did I’m sure the game world would still seem fresh and new to me.  In one of the most heated competitions for game of the year yet, I fully support Fallout 3 as this year’s winner.

NXE: Thoughts

I sat down with the NXE last night and played around with it in full.  All in all, it’s pretty cool.  Completely ripped from Apple’s Cover Flow, but pretty cool.  The Avatars (no, I’m not going to ironically call them Miis, because they aren’t Miis) are incredibly awesome.  They have much more personality than the Miis, even with limited customization options (which are, might I add, nowhere near as limited as the customization options that Nintendo offers up).  I have an affinity for my Avatar that I never felt for my Mii.

Speaking of which, here’s the little guy.

It would be nice to have more clothing options, I will admit, and Microsoft promises bi-weekly updates for the next six months.  Hopefully, they are free or at least ridiculously cost efficent (30 new shoes for 40 points?  72 color choices for 40 points?  Not bad.  One pair of NIKE’s for 80 points=EXTORTION).

The new Dashboard is much more aesthetically pleasing, even if it is lifted right from Apple’s Cover Flow style used in iTunes.  It’s quicker, more streamlined, and more visual; a welcome break from the text-heavy Blades system.  While menus are still organized in multiple layers, the transition from one to another is much smoother.

I can’t speak on the Netflix streaming movies, because I suspended my Netflix account.  I may restart it just to use this feature though, as it does seem promising, especially considering I’m a more impulsive movie watcher.  Once in a while, it strikes me that I may want to see movie, and if I’m not in a mood for movies then that’s that–which is why I suspended my account in the first place.

The socialization options offered in the NXE are pure win.  Chat Parties are great if you and a bunch of buddies are all playing different games, but you want to talk to each other (and as one guy who in my Left 4 Dead game last night, it will allow dead players in Gears 2 to remain at least somewhat active).  It’s also great if you and some friends want to arrange your multiplayer sessions then and there, and the new Avatars give the friends list much more personality.

I have read of some problems with the NXE, with Red Rings a-plenty and Microsoft not exactly winning customer service awards, but hopefully the kinks will be worked out soon.  Even Gabe from Penny Arcade is having problems, it seems; hopefully his celebrity will be enough to motivate the engineers into overdrive hot-fix mania.  Maybe Microsoft rushed the release, wanting to beat out Sony’s Home.  Since we all know that Home is never coming out anyway, that was a mistake on their part: or it could just be Microsoft being reliable in their tendency to be less-than-efficient.

If you are one of the lucky ones though, then the NXE is a refreshing take on the soulless Dashboard of old, with more options to game with your friends and a more streamlined interface all around.

Fable 2: Tell Yourself a Story

I started as a simple woodsman, doing the odd job here and there, hunting down bandits and the like with my trusty rifle and longsword.  People started recognizing me as tales of my deeds spread, and when a sculptor asked if they could set my image into stone, I humbly accepted–more so to support her artistic endeavor than to show off my likeness.

Eventually, I took a wife.  She was a simple farm girl, but she was charmed by my heroic deeds and she was just playful enough to make our lives in the bedroom interesting.  With a wife at home, I thought it best to have steady stream of income and not rely on whatever blacksmithing or woodcutting job came along in between fulfilling my duties to the woman whom had saved my life as a child–a woman who saw great things for my destiny, things of which I am not even sure.

Anyway, where was I?  Yes, the money.  I bought a few cheap stalls and another home; I rented the second home out.  I did not tell my wife that I had bought this home as it was much more emaculate and comfortable, but because of that I could charge a higher rent; so, we lived in my humble abode in Oakfield while I gathered the profits from my businesses and property.

Then, something happened.  I started loving the money.  I loved hearing the jingle of gold in my pocket.  I raised the prices on all of my merchandise and the rent on all my properties.  I was bringing in over a thousand gold a day!  Since making money was so easy, I lazed about all day.  I bought clothes befitting a noble gent and paraded around town.  Women loved me, and I loved them in return; and my wife was never the wiser.

My wife!  Ha!  The needy heffer!  I grew tired of her neediness, her living off of my dime.  Did she really expect that simply always being home, ready to give me gifts and to sleep with me were enough?  Inviting her on a walk one day, I took her to a cemetery, knowing that it would frighten her so, and I told her all of the things that had bottled up inside of me.  It was not long before we divorced.

I enjoyed spending my own income for a long time, but one day I awoke feeling empty.  I was corrupted by my love of riches.  Flies seemed to swarm around my body, fat from too much wine and pie.  My eyes were yellowed, my skin pot-marked.  My cutlass and pistol, which had seen only enough action to claim the title of Lionheart in the Crucible–not a hard feat, as my combat skills had not dulled, but an ufulfilling one knowing the state of my soul–seemed just decoration, much like my clothes.  I was still a good man–I did not kill or steal, and I was benefactor of the Temple of Light–but my intentions were impure.  I was driven by greed, and I was ashamed of it.

I started over, effectively.  I sold all of my businesses and homes, keeping only one to sleep in, the one that breathed goodness and life.  I sold my clothes and weapons and replaced them with functional tools and garb, nothing pretentious and showy.  With my earnings, I bought healthy, natural food.  I ate it to help lose weight and cleanse my spirit, and then I started climbing my way back to the top.  This time, I bought businesses and slashed the prices by over-half, putting more goods into the hands of customers.  I bought homes and let tenants stay there for free, hoping to atone for my phase as landlord when I was likely to expel a renter if I decided I wanted to sleep in the home.

Now I am ready to carry on, with a more noble spirit and kinder demeanor.  I started cutting wood again, smelling the fresh pine and hearing the satisfying sound of an axe-head cleaving through a log.  I freed the Temple of Light from an attack by the Shadow Temple; and to think, just recently I was entertaining the idea of sacrificing an innocent to the Shadow Temple, just to receive the reward they promised their faithful!

I was fat, and rich, and ashamed.  Now, I am thin, a little less rich, and satisfied.  And through it all, Bowser, my faithful dog, has been by my side, my truest friend…

I’m not a fan of narrative saving a game.  Game play comes first, always.  However, I am fascinated by how game play can advance narrative–how the story itself can be a game play mechanic.  By enhancing game mechanics and drawing gamers deeper into the fictional world of the game, it’s possible for gamers to tell their own stories through games; and that’s how narrative in games should work, as an open-ended device tied directly to game play, not just a framework for the game play itself.

Fable 2 hits the nail on the head when it comes to narrative and game play.  Yes, technically, it has its problems–numerous ones.  There is not enough difference between the various in-game weapons to necessitate one purchase over the other, especially with firearms.  The game stalls and has to load frequently, the menu system is clean but multi-layered and time consuming, and the main story is cookie cutter fantasy type stuff.  Not to mention multiplayer is anti-climatic in its execution.  It’s a fun game and it’s worth the money, but don’t expect a strong contender for game of the year based on game mechanics alone.

Now, narrative game of the year, the game that told the best story, that’s where we’re talking.  While the written narrative of Fable 2 suffers a bit, the story shines when it comes to merging narrative and player action.  By tying the player emotionally to every action their avatar makes (from the job they find most satisfying versus the most lucrative, to the tolerance level they have for watching children run away from them scared, to whether they can really bring themself to slap their wife or kick their dog), a natural progression of character development becomes apparent and the gamer sees him/herself actually telling a story, much like the one I introduced this piece with.  Nothing in this game feels artificial; it’s all part of you answering the question that serves as the game’s central theme: who will you become?

That is what makes Fable 2 so great to play.  Not the story or game play alone, but the interaction between the two.  Oblivion may have had limitless variety and moral choices, but there still only seemed like a few “right” ways to play the game, as if it was non-linear in name only; with Fable 2, there is no wrong way to play.

Fable 2 does have faults yes, but the options presented to the gamer are so diverse and so natural that they are easy to overlook.  This is a fine game, and shows the right way for the story to save the game play.

Dead Space: The Horror and the Beauty

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep tonight.  I don’t know if I have it in me to turn out the light and close my eyes, not without some kind of weapon nearby.  I’ve spent too many hours these past five days hearing voices where there should be none, hearing sounds in the dark and frantically trying to find their source, praying that I reach the make it to safety before I take my last breath.

I have played through Dead Space–the scariest, most intense survival horror game that I have played since the original Resident Evil.

By now, I’m sure that anybody reading this knows the premise of the game: you are Isaac Clarke, an engineer that is part of a crew sent to repair the USG Ishimura, a massive mining ship that is not responding to any communications sent it (if you’ve read the comics, you know why the crew is not responding).  Once aboard the Ishimura, something goes horribly wrong and all of a sudden you find yourself in the dark, alone, surrounded by aliens that are stricken with the most perverse form of reproduction: they plant their seed into human corpses, using the dead body as a host for their wicked bladed limbs and disgusting tentacled faces.

What follows is a constant fight for survival, with only the most rudimentary tools at your disposal.  There are no rocket launchers and sniper rifles for Isaac; the most traditional weapon you will pick up in the game is a military-issue pulse rifle, and it’s sloppy and inaccurate and bad ammo economy all around.  Most of the game you will be improvising with tools that were once used for mining, but are now used for disabling the vile creatures before putting in the final blow; and don’t even think about using the tried-and-true headshot, because these creatures will keep on fighting even after they lose their head (and the sight of a headless alien still crawling after you is not something you will soon forget).

As if the vicious necromorphs were not terrifying enough, there are times when you will walk into the deep vacuum of space and have to rely on a limited air supply, and as your air grows weak your breathing becomes labored.  Your enemies, of course, do not need air, so they can walk the void unhindered.

There is no rest in this game.  Safe spots are few and far between, and even then a hideous creature could pop out of one the many vents connected to the pipes they use for transportation and pounce on you; no, not pounce.  Kittens pounce.  These things make every effort to tear you limb from limb.  They do not know fear.  They do not know pain.  They do not know mercy.

And you are trapped, all alone in the dark with them, trying desperately to find a way to escape, armed with tools that were meant for digging and exploring.  This is not a journey you will partake without some mental scars to show at the end.

Everything about the game–even its flaws–contribute to the feeling of panic and confusion that makes this title a challenge.  Even the easiest difficulty level will leave all but the most hardened gamers feeling overwhelmed at times–and that’s not always a good thing.  This game does have one serious flaw, and it’s that sometimes the developers are just throwing stuff at you for the sake of it: some puzzles require you to fight off constant, seemingly unending waves of necromorphs while you are trying to manipulate the environment around you; some puzzles (one in particular) do not readily present a solution even upon close inspection; some enemies are tests of patience instead of skill (you will learn to hate one enemy type, simply because it brings the, ahm, joy, of MMO grinding to a single-player console game).  Simply put, sometimes the game is just unfair, forcing players into situtations where the only choice is to accept your death and try again.  Again, everything is part of the theme of this game–total and complete horror and the dreadful feeling of helplessness–but pleasantly terrified can turn into frustratingly bored quickly.

With that being said, I never felt like giving up on the game.  The narrative drew me in and when I was in that sweet spot of gaming bliss (often, mind you) the rest of the world melted away.  Despite his lack of spoken dialogue, Isaac manages to have a personality all of his own, a personality that shines through your actions.  Stomping on an easily recognizable human corpse because you don’t want it to turn into a hideous beast?  You get a feeling that Isaac is losing his humanity.  Hitting the run button simply because the lights just went out?  You can bet that Isaac just wet his engineering suit (which, by the way, looks awesome–but splurge on the Scorpion suit DLC and thank me later).  Few games that don’t involve you creating your own character tie you to the player-character so tightly.

The presentation is flawless, from the detail-oriented interior of the Ishimura to the silent nothing of space, and the radical new UI for the game shatters the fourth wall.  Of course, the UI works because of the setting, so don’t expect other games to copy it; this is a unique experience that only gamers that play Dead Space can have.

Dead Space is my early pick for game of the year.  Everything, from the sobering opening moments to the nail-biting final boss fight, is a memorable moment in this game.  Story is blended seamlessly with game play, neither sacrificing for the sake of the other, and it sticks with you long after you make your final save.

Whether you are glad it sticks with you or not remains to be seen; you’ll have to close your eyes eventually, after all.