The Irrelevant Gamer

Oh yeah.

2009-09-19T14:49:00.000-04:00

Sinister

2009-07-23T04:18:00.003-04:00

I hated Resident Evil 4. It felt clunky, and featured far too many quick time events. Resident Evil controls have always been clunky, but I never felt it was to their detriment until that installment. I could list a hundred reasons why I didn't like it, but it just came down to feeling wrong.

I'm really enjoying Resident Evil 5, which is strange because it is very nearly the same game. Sure there are fewer quick time events, but the controls are the same. At first I thought this was because RE5 has cooperative play, and playing with a friend is a lot of fun, but RE5 doesn't feel wrong the way RE4 did, and I've enjoyed playing it alone as well.

Tonight it dawned on me. I started off playing the game in cooperative online mode, and I have been playing the secondary character Sheva while my friend controls Chris. Tonight when I switched over to Chris things felt clunky just like in RE4.

Sheva is left handed. I'm looking over her left shoulder in the game. Chris is right handed. Leon from RE4 was right handed. I'm left handed. When I play as Chris, and when I played as Leon I felt as if a major portion of the screen was being blocked. It was like driving with something obscuring my vision, and it drove me nuts. Hell I hated the demo for RE5, and in it I played the right handed Chris.

Weird.

At what point does game difficulty cross the line into bullshit?

2009-05-15T17:52:00.008-04:00

I've been playing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and up until last night I was really enjoying it. Then I came to a point where I died 32 times attempting the same jump.

Someone at Raven got 3D platforming in my brawler, and unless you work at Nintendo you're not any good at 3D platforming.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea for a fixed camera in a 3D platform game, but I know this person is a sadist.

In the old days of 2D platform games the camera was fixed at a 90 degree angle from the action, and it made it a simple thing to judge the placement of your character and where and when to jump. It worked in Super Mario Brothers, and it worked in Mega Man. Even when those games became fiendishly difficult the precision of the controls and simplicity of the view kept things from getting out of hand.

In Wolverine the camera is not at a 90 degree angle in the platforming sections. It is closer to 80 degrees, which makes judging distance, angle, and placement difficult. This problem is exacerbated by the game having depth. Caution must be thrown to the wind because this particular section of the game features a helicopter that shoots at regular intervals, and the platform on which I'm standing is rapidly collapsing beneath me. So there is a lot of trial and error that brings this particularly fast paced portion of the game grinding to a frustrating halt. A few times the jump didn't even register when I pressed the button, and Wolverine simply walked off the edge of the platform. And that is the point where the game crossed into bullshit territory.

Despite the fact I was really enjoying the game I might not pick it back up. There is a line between a difficult challenge I will rise to, and bullshit I will not endure. This is bullshit.

Seth from Street Fighter IV is also bullshit.

Holy monkey that was fast!

2009-03-30T11:53:00.004-04:00

Last Tuesday I shipped my broken Xbox 360 to Microsoft. The guy working at the UPS store immediately recognized what I was shipping after glancing at the box I had under my arm as I walked in the door. I thought that was pretty sad/funny.

Today I've been notified my 360 is repaired, and on its way back to me. It appears their turn around time has improved significantly. Now I just have to be around to sign for it when it arrives. I'm betting the first attempt will happen while I'm in class on Wednesday.

Victory!

2009-03-20T16:47:00.008-04:00

So I finally was able to initiate the repair process for my Xbox 360. At some point in the future I will return to Live. I have no idea when that will be, but the major hurdle has been cleared.

Oddly enough the first person I spoke to may have cleared up my problem, but I have no way of knowing. He told me to create a Windows Live account. At first after I did that it didn't help me at all, but today I logged in with my new hotmail address instead of the yahoo one tied to my gamertag, and voila! It let me in. Then I put in my serial number, and it successfully registered whereas before it told me the number was already being used. I still have to pay $100 for the privilege of getting my Xbox repaired, but c'est la vie.

I saw the hilarious misspelling of my email that led to this whole mess once I actually got in the system. It was a nice bit of closure. Now I just need to remember to back up all of my saved games. I doubt they will return to me intact.

Perspective and Prestige

2009-03-04T05:25:00.004-05:00

The recent kerplunk of my Xbox 360's disc drive at first filled me with incoherent rage. Just check out my last couple of posts for proof of that. My Saturday sucked. Oddly enough I woke up in a terrific mood on Sunday. In the hours after my anger subsided I gained perspective.

I put too much importance on gaming. It is a form of entertainment. So I was denied entertainment on Saturday. Big deal. I resolved to sell many of my games, and I may still do that, keeping only those I play online with my friends. That's the biggest disappointment. I can't get online, and shoot some face, or kill zombies while bullshitting with friends who don't live down the street anymore. Does it really matter that I couldn't continue running people over in Saint's Row 2? Of course not.

Before my 360 gave up the ghost I started prestige mode in Call of Duty 4. While I was making my way to level 55 I couldn't understand why anyone would start all over. Why would someone want to give up all their hard earned perks, and weapons? I said at one point that I would never go prestige. Then I got to level 55, and there was nowhere left to go. Oh sure I could unlock red tiger for every weapon, or try to get the gold weapons, but they're all ugly anyway. I discovered boredom sets in when you have nothing to strive toward. I had previously considered people with the gold cross next to their level 55 to be tiresome obsessives who just want a bigger e-penis than the next guy. Now I kinda feel bad for them. It's boring at the top. It will take me a while to go through prestige ten times, but it is entirely possible when I hit 55 again I'll start all over.

Some good news

2009-03-04T05:10:00.007-05:00

My 360 is still broken, but I discovered something else. Remember how I ranted about not being able to remove payment methods from Xbox Live a while back? It turns out Microsoft added that functionality to their Xbox website. I was astounded. I was also able to cancel my Live subscription fairly easily after providing the customer service rep with my DNA, and birth certificate.

I was also able to make a customer service rep understand I need to re-register my 360 before I can initiate the repair process. Of course this was through email, and he couldn't help me. I still have to call the tech support line back, which I'm dreading since I already tried that once, and was unhelpfully told to get a hotmail account.

Outsourcing customer service doesn't strike me as the most logical thing in the world. Sure it saves money, and I can't blame some guy in India, or wherever for not speaking English as a first language, but the entire process is based on communication, and it has been put in the hands of people who at best have very heavy accents. Par for the course for giant corporations though. Only small businesses need to have great customer service. Companies like Microsoft can kick you in the nuts over, and over, and still make money.

Of course if I sold all of my 360 games right now I would have enough money to buy a PS3. There is some appeal in crossing over to the dark side, and giving MS the finger, but it isn't like they will notice. Also I don't really want a PS3, seeing as all my friends are on Xbox Live, and I despise the Metal Gear Solid games.

Fuck you, Microsoft. No, really.

2009-02-28T16:33:00.007-05:00

So today my Xbox 360 stopped reading game discs, which is great timing because my warranty ran out last month. It costs $100 to get it repaired. I might be slightly more amenable to that if I hadn't just gone through a bunch of shit to find out I'm fucked.

You see the last time I called Microsoft's tech support I gave out an erroneous email address like an idiot. I admit it was my mistake. The problem is my 360's serial number is now already registered in their system under an email that doesn't exist. So I can't register my 360, which is necessary before I can get it repaired.

So I call Microsoft's tech support again. I'm informed by the person on the other end (who is apparently talking at me through a long copper tube and/or from Cybertron) that I need a Microsoft Live ID, or some such bollocks before I can proceed with having my 360 repaired. So I sign up for Hotmail with a sigh, and attempt to sign into Xbox.com with my shiny new username only to be forced to create a new gamertag, and unable to retrieve my old one because it is in use already. Sound familiar? This is after I changed my Xbox Live account to reflect having a Hotmail address rather than one at Yahoo. So in a different browser I proceed to sign in with my old email address (since Xbox.com automatically signs you in forever if you don't tell it not to that very first time) only to find out none of this has helped me in the least. My serial number is still assigned to God knows who, and I can't request a repair.

Okay, deep breath.

I decide to email Microsoft with my problem now so no mistakes about my admittedly cumbersome email address can be made due to me not speaking Hindi, and the other person having a very heavy accent. I type everything out, click send, and am then told my email may not exceed 500 characters. At this point I decide to find out just how much this repair is going to cost me if I ever get that far, and it turns out to be $100. You know what? Fuck it. Even if I had the extra money I wouldn't fork it over to the chumps who can't make a video game console that lasts more than a year so they can send me another one that will most likely brick in a few months.

Now I have to call customer support again to cancel my subscription to Xbox Live before I throw my 360 down a fucking well.

And now for something completely different!

2009-02-09T19:32:00.000-05:00

Since my last three posts were all complaining I thought I'd wrap things up with something a bit more positive. Over the weekend when I was playing Rock Band with a meager 55 songs the down strum on my guitar stopped working. Well past the warranty, and already in a less than great mood I was ready to discover I was proper fucked, but the Internet came to my rescue. It turns out the problem is fairly common, and I was able to fix it by removing the eight million screws that hold the plastic guitar together, and simply cleaning the components with a bit of rubbing alcohol. Apparently the plastic of the strum bar is softer than that of the housing holding it in place, and my guitar was filled with white plastic dust gumming up the works. I cleaned it out, and now it works like I just bought it.

Now I just wonder if the accelerometer problem in my Mad Catz Bass can be as easily fixed.

Microsoft hates people who don't have the Internet.

2009-02-09T19:18:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend I played Rock Band 2 with some friends. I had been looking forward to it for three weeks because the previous two weekends plans had to be canceled. When I play Rock Band I always bring my HDD over because I have something like 114 songs I've bought through Xbox Live. I also have the 55 songs from the first game on there, which makes things much more fun than sticking with the 55 songs on the game disc.

Unfortunately my friend Tom had just moved, and didn't have the Internet hooked up at his new house yet. I didn't think anything of it, but it turns out I can't use any of the music I bought if I'm not signed into Xbox Live. It's on my HDD, but completely inaccessible. This is the kind of completely unnecessary digital rights management malarkey I can't stand. I'm sure it is meant to prevent me from copying all of my songs to someone else's hard drive, but they wouldn't be able to use it unless logged in as me anyway, and I'm not sharing my Xbox Live account with someone else. Every time they logged in I would have to log out, and they could buy all kinds of crap through my account for themselves while I foot the bill because it would be on my credit card. Why would I do that? Obviously I wouldn't.

Sure if I bought all this content through the Internet it is going to be a rare occasion when my Xbox isn't hooked up to Live, but this isn't a case of them not thinking of something. They had to put forth effort to make DLC not work on offline consoles. So it is the person at Microsoft who thought it was a problem that their shit might actually work I would like say, "Fuck you, buddy."

Capcom likes disappointing me.

2009-02-09T18:09:00.000-05:00

Dead Rising 2 has just been announced, and as an avid fan of zombie killing in all its forms I'm pretty happy about this, but I have to admit something. I didn't like the first one. This seems to shock the rest of Internet where the game is almost universally praised from what I've read. And I'm not saying I just hated Otis because he would call me on that damn radio every thirty seconds. I didn't like the game. At all.

First of all there is a time limit. People who decry the time limit on this game get a lot of flak. Everybody points out it is a survival game like that somehow justifies putting a limit on the time you're allowed to spend in Capcom's playground of zombie killing. Resident Evil games always had time limits, but they were optional. You tried for the speed run because it gave you a rocket launcher with infinite ammo. You weren't punished for not being fast enough.

Otis, and his endless updates about the people I should rescue only exacerbates the time limit problem. Having some jerk constantly nattering in my ear about how I need to hurry isn't my idea of a good time. Actually without this idiot it is entirely likely the time limit wouldn't have bothered me.

The minibosses. Oh how I hated the completely irrelevant miniboss fights. I came to this game to have a good time by slaughtering my way through hordes of zombies. What I got instead was Otis telling me to get over to the food court, and somehow a group of convicts had a jeep with a .50 cal machine gun in the indoor park area of the mall. At the time I was armed with a tire iron, and maybe a pistol. The fight wouldn't have bothered me nearly as much if I hadn't been asking myself the entire time, "What the fuck are these assholes doing here?" How did they even get that jeep in the mall? Why the hell do they respawn?

Once I get to the food court I get into a gun battle with a mariachi who has a P-90, and an infinite supply of grenades. I talked to this asshole shortly before entering the mall. Why has he suddenly gone homicidal? I thought this was a zombie game. Why am I constantly coming up against nonsensical minibosses that aren't zombies?

While I'm harping on Capcom's zombie franchises I might as well admit I also disliked Resident Evil 4. The old Resident Evil formula had been played out by the time I finished Code Veronica on the Dreamcast, and I never bothered to complete Resident Evil Zero, or the remake of the first game that were both on the Gamecube. By that time I had realize the game was more about inventory management than zombies, and had enough. So the change in gameplay with Resident Evil 4 seemed liked a good thing to me until I discovered I still couldn't move, and shoot at the same time.

In previous Resident Evil titles having to stand still to shoot was fine. It added tension to hope you gunned down the slow moving zombies before they got close enough to snack on you. There was also an auto-aim feature that simply meant you had to fire fast enough, and have enough bullets to survive. When RE4 went to an over the shoulder viewpoint, and nixed the auto-aiming not being able to move while firing felt like Leon Kennedy was made of stone. Just being able to slowly back up while firing would have made the game bearable, but once your gun comes up Leon is rooted to the spot.

I probably could have gotten used to that, but the game also had more quick time events than you could shake an angry zombie dog at. I loathe quick time events, especially the kind that require you to mash a single button repeatedly like you're the Flash with autism. The game had controls for running already, but when the Spanish peasants decide to roll a boulder my way I suddenly have to break my controller, or my thumb by madly pressing a button repeatedly. Why? During the totally badass knife fight the clunky controls of the game obviously weren't up to the task of controlling Leon's movements so hitting random buttons at the right prompt takes over, and if you miss once you're dead. Trial and error wasn't fun in Dragon's Lair, and it isn't fun now. Some games can do QTE's well. In God of War missing your cue doesn't mean instant death, and restarting from your last save. In Resident Evil you're aren't so lucky.

I hope Dead Rising 2 will improve upon the original, and eliminate some of the more annoying gameplay aspects, but since Resident Evil 5 is basically a reskin of Resident Evil 4 with cooperative play thrown in I'm not holding my breath.

If you use last stand in CoD 4, I hate you.

2009-02-09T17:56:00.000-05:00

Many players of Call of Duty 4 would vote for martyrdom as the most annoying perk. It is certainly annoying when some clueless berk on your own team has it, and keeps taking friendlies with him when he dies, but usually you can sprint past anyone you've just downed, and avoid being killed from the grave. The notable exceptions to this are closed rooms, and people who also have the sonic boom perk. Combining martyrdom, sonic boom, and the noob tube is what I like to call the ultimate dickhead build, but I digress. The point is martyrdom is usually more annoying on a death prone teammate than an enemy.

The perk I hate the most on an enemy is last stand. My annoyance reached epic levels last night on Pipeline when it seemed the entire enemy team had this perk. I had nine kills, and seven assists. Those seven assists were enemies I shot, but then they killed me with last stand only to be finished off by someone else. I have yet to train myself to shot the fallen corpse of everyone I kill, and sometimes even when I remember to do so they fall to the ground faster than I can adjust my aim, and get off the shots to kill me before I can finish the job. This is especially annoying against people who use modded controllers, and have rapid fire desert eagles.

So if you use last stand on CoD 4, I hate you. I hate you even more than the martyrdom idiots, or the jerks who use juggernaut in hardcore mode (the Robocop wannabe pricks).

Fallout 3: Not a Review

2009-01-05T18:05:00.003-05:00

I love and hate this game. I loved the first two games because they rewarded exploration.

The unrelenting grimness of the wasteland wears me down after a while. I trudge towards a new destination, encountering raiders and super mutants at every turn with a dwindling ammo supply, and the knowledge my weapon will eventually break. I'm running low on stimpacks, and my rad level is getting high from eating radiated food to restore my health. Bethesda nailed the atmosphere of the wasteland so well I don't enjoy spending time there.

RPGs and video games.

2008-12-14T20:03:00.000-05:00

Table top pen and paper role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons have complex stat based rule systems simply because die rolling, and math are the only fair way to work out what happens in an imaginary world. Without them these games would devolve into the I shot you/No you didn't debate most of us remember from from when we were children.

Enter the video game translation of RPGs. Oddly enough the numerical systems are usually very transparent, even including something as archaic as a to hit roll. In a virtual environment that can simulate the player, and his foe, their relative positions, and animate their actions a die roll to determine if an attack connects is superfluous. It is very strange to see the words "miss" pop up after I have shot an enemy, or struck them with a sword, and have no damage done.

RPGs are all about the character progression, but most video game RPGs go about this in the wrong way. Player skill should be taken into account. Instead of having a low combat statistic automatically determining that your character has missed a low combat statistic should be reflect in low damage, or a slower attack. Even if you connect you do less damage than someone whose character is more advanced, and it is harder to pull off with slower, more limited maneuvers.

Stat requirements also drive me crazy. I try to pick a lock in Fallout 3, but my skill isn't high enough. I should still be able to attempt picking the lock because it requires the successful completion of a minigame. It should just be harder. I may be warned how difficult it is relative to my skill, but automatically locking me out (no pun intended) is unnecessary.

The fact is RPGs in video games define their genre through stat based character progression, but go about it in a way that makes more sense with pen and paper rules. This has been gradually changing with locking picking becoming a minigame rather than a die roll, but vestiges of this old way of doing things are still there, holding the genre back.

I'm not suggesting stats be eliminated from video game RPGs. That would upset the fans, and remove progression, but they need to be integrated into the gameplay in a way that takes advantage of the particular strengths of video games rather than holding on to old ways of doing things.

Other genres have experimented with progression of sorts borrowed from the RPG genre. Even Call of Duty lets player earn experience to unlock new abilities these days. Crackdown is an action game, but has stat based progression in a simple form. RPGs seem unwilling to similarly experiment with lessons from other genres, and this is to their detriment. Western RPGs like Fallout 3 have made some steps in this regard, but JRPGs in particular are the crocodiles of video games. They have evolved very little over time.

The genre has yet to reach its potential.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

2008-12-13T23:59:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: My Xbox is working, and I'm an idiot. The back of the hard drive wasn't snapped into place properly so the connector just jiggled around, and freaked the system out. I discovered this while on the phone with tech support. I'll take feeling like a moron over having to replace my hard drive any day, especially at the beginning of vacation.

My Xbox died tonight. Not the infamous RROD, but the one flashing red light of death. Apparently my HDD is borked because I had the temerity to remove it, and take it over to a friend's house so we could use my Rock Band DLC on his Xbox. It gave me signs of trouble Wednesday night when I hooked it back up, but I managed to get it working, and thought maybe I hadn't plugged it back in completely. Then it gave me fits on Thursday, and I had to stand the Xbox on end like an obelisk to get things working. Now it has given up the ghost completely.

Just in time for vacation.

I'm worried about losing all my data since the HDD is the problem, and have no idea what my recourse is for that if I have to replace it, or indeed the entire console. I have a lot of DLC on there, and somehow I doubt Microsoft will give me a bunch of complementary points to re-purchases everything.

Anyway I'll be calling their tech support tomorrow to see what can be done. In the meantime I'm pissed because I kept holding out on buying a 360 exactly because of the hardware problems, and now they bite me in the ass as I begin my vacation from school. I also have a cold, and running Windows XP through Bootcamp has fucked up my Mac. I will call Apple's tech support Monday. If anything else breaks I'm going to go live in the woods for a while.

I know. Waah waah. I'll post something worthwhile later.

The Morality of Perspective: Point of View, and Connecting with Your Character

2008-12-07T21:28:00.000-05:00

I took my last blog post in as a rough draft personal essay for my Creative Non-Fiction class, and got some interesting feedback from a bunch of nongamers. During the course of the ensuing discussion I realized one of the factors that has an impact on my morality or lack thereof in games that I take for granted is the perspective.

Being horrible in Fable 2, and GTA IV is easy, and fun. Both of those games feature a third person perspective in which the camera floats behind the character you control, which disassociates the player from the avatar actually committing acts of violence on screen. Niko Bellic may be beating an old woman with a baseball bat, but to me he's just a puppet dancing on virtual strings. I don't really connect with the character. There are also times when cutscenes take over, and I don't have any control over what Niko is doing. I never have control over what he says, and sometimes the things Niko does in GTA IV are at odds with my desires. For instance in one mission that require you to kill a guy for a business associate Niko knocks on the guy's front door, and basically explains he is here to kill him. Of course the target jumps out the window, and high speed chase ensues. Since I'm a big fan of the Hitman franchise (another third person exercise in immorality) I would have done things differently if I was given the choice. The practical upshot of all this is that I do not identify strongly with the character I control, and through this proxy I can do terrible things without a feeling of remorse.

I already stated Bioshock was different for me from a moral standpoint, and it is worth noting the entire game is shown in the first person. The camera is your character's eyes the entire time. Many first person games have cutscenes that show the character from a third person, removing the player from control, and from the character, but Bioshock never does this. All you ever see of your character are his hands, and it is these hands the player must use to either murder, or save little girls. This perspective makes things more immediate, and the silence of the main character also deepens this immersion into the character. For the most part the main character never says, or does anything the player does not intend, which makes (for me at least) being a child murdering bastard all the harder even in the face of a support character who serves as your guide throughout the game dribbling justifications for killing the little sisters in your ear.

All three of these games also feature NPCs that are not hostile. In many games nearly ever other character you meet is hostile. Killing everything in sight is a matter of survival. Fable 2, and GTA Iv are filled with civilians that have no bearing on the story. They are in effect just scenery. This status of being nonentities is another factor that makes their mass murder nothing to mourn, or hesitate over. The worlds in these two games are playgrounds, and the natural tendency is for a player to explore the limits of what can be done, and to see what consequences there are.

Bioshock is a much more linear game, and is mostly filled with enemies you have no choice but to kill. The little sisters, and their big daddy guardians are exceptions to this rule in that they are not hostile unless provoked. It would be very difficult if not impossible to complete the game without attacking some of them to gain adam, but doing so is not a matter of immediate survival as with other enemies who are hostile.

All of these things are taken for granted by gamers, but I had to actually think a little bit about these issues when explaining to nongamers why in some games I chose to gleefully murder entire towns, and in others I couldn't.

I get the feeling these blog posts are eventually going to be edited together in one massive essay on morality, choice, perspective, and immersion in gaming.

Choices in the Virtual World Part 3: Morality, Romance, and Emotional Investment

2008-11-30T19:37:00.000-05:00

When most developers talk about choices in their games these days they are talking about moral choices. Morality isn't new to video games, but it does seem to be gaining popularity. Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Fable 2, Bioshock, and The Witcher are all relatively recent games that have included moral choices with varying degrees of effectiveness. How well it works relies on many things, but one of the most important is the player's emotional investment in the game.

First up is Fable 2, which offers little to no emotional investment for the player. The moral choices in this game revolve around either protecting or murdering various other characters, and the characters in Fable 2 are either trite cliches, or complete nonentities. All of the main characters are in the cliche group, but you can't murder them in any case, which leaves all of the people you can interact with relegated to the status of an extra in a movie. You can slaughter townsfolk literally for hours once you're strong enough to fend off the guards, and it makes your appearance skew towards devilish, and everyone hates you, but it has no impact on the player. None of these people mean anything. I would have felt more regret stomping on ants. So there is no hesitation to kill whomever you like in Fable 2. In short being evil doesn't feel evil, and this is a game in which you can marry someone, and then sacrifice them at an evil temple. Fable 2 remained lighthearted to me even when I pushed my spouse off a cliff, which I did mainly for giggles. So really it fails in two categories; morality and romance. Neither has any impact on the player.

Now before anyone starts calling me a sociopath let me illustrate some times when I did have emotional investment.

Bioshock asks the player if they are willing to murder little girls to gain power. The genetically modified little sisters were once innocent children, but not harvest a substance called adam from corpses. Adam allows you to increase your ability to shoot bees from your fist among other things, and if you suck all of it out of a little sister she dies. First you have to kill the big daddy, which is a behemoth that protects the little sister at all costs, and once they are dead the manipulation o the players emotions begins as the little sister sobs, and urges Mr. Bubbles to get up. The first littler sister you encounter actually backs away from you and whimpers as you approach after having killed her protector. Instead of outright murdering the little sister you can restore her humanity, and gain a smaller amount of adam. I could never bring myself to harvest the full amount, killing the little sister. It is a consequence free decision that even offers a substantial reward, but I didn't want to be that person; even virtually.

In the masterpiece that is Half Life 2 the player is often accompanied by Alyx Vance, and throughout the game there is a subtext of romance between her, and the protagonist Gordon Freeman despite the fact Freeman never utters a single word. There is a point in one of the episodic expansions in which she seems to be killed, and it has at least the same impact of seeing your favorite character in a book, or movie die. Possibly it has more impact because through the mute avatar of Freeman you are more immersed in the experience. The point is Alyx from HL2 is likable. She has personality that the NPCs of Fable 2 lack. That is why her affection, and her death mean more. Later in the game someone else actually does die, and it means more than the hundreds of screaming victims of my killing spree in Fable 2 ever could.

Grand Theft Auto 4 suffers from a similar problem to Fable 2 in regards to morality. The story asks the player to make moral choices in between running over old ladies with a garbage truck. The characters in GTA 4 are more fleshed out than the ones in Fable 2, but the game world is still filled with completely anonymous NPCs that mean less than ants. One of the main draws of the Grand Theft Auto series has always been the mayhem the player can unleash on an unsuspecting city. In this context morality is marginalized. In the missions when you are asked to choose who lives, and who dies it invariably comes down to killing the biggest jerk. The one good person in the entire game who also happens to be a love interest dies at the end depending on the choices the player makes, and though your character is enraged at this it fails to translate to the player. Basically in GTA 4 morality, and romance take a backseat to cutting a bloody swath through people who piss you off despite the story's intentions.

The Witcher takes a different approach to morality. The choices you make have consequences, but it is often hard to tell what is the right thing to do. Early in the game you are sen to protect a shipment of weapons from some monsters, and once you do a group of nonhumans fighting to establish some power in a human run world shows up, looking to collect the shipment. These people are basically terrorists, and you have no way of knowing if they are actually the buyers. On the other hand they are genuinely oppressed by the humans. You can either let them have the weapons, or fight them. You have to make a choice, but I've tried it both ways, and didn't feel good about either of them. This game will have you doubting your actions.

Later in The Witcher you are hunting a cockatrice in a sewer, and run into a human knight from the order largely responsible for oppressing non humans. You can team up with him, or go it alone, but he seems genuinely heroic, and is one of the few humans who treats you with respect. Still later in the game he requests your help in fighting off the nonhuman group you encountered earlier if you helped him in the sewers. He seems interested in saving lives, but his orders seems intent on wiping out nonhumans. The nonhumans are trying to stand up for themselves, but also murder innocent people. It isn't clear cut, and you never have all the information you would want when you have to choose. It is effective, but it can also be incredibly frustrating when your actions you weren't sure about have unforeseen consequences.

While the morality in The Witcher is effective the romance fails. You play Geralt, whose inability to breed, and immunity to disease has apparently made him into a manwhore. You have the option to sleep with a variety of women throughout the game, and even get collectible cards of them after doing so. Hilarious yes, but it undermines any possible importance of the two women who are supposed to be your main love interests, and between whom you must eventually choose. At one point Geralt even gets drunk with his buddies while agonizing over the choice. Not only does it not affect the player it also seems out of character given his propensity for James Bond style promiscuity.

The beginning of Fallout 3 is brilliant. You actually play through your childhood in short segments while selecting your character traits in a way that endears your father to you, which makes a great setup for instilling the desire to find him once he disappears. That desire takes a backseat once you enter the vast playground that is the Wasteland, but the attempt is at least made to make the player feel the desires of the character rather than just taking them for granted.

It is clear games are advancing as an art form. I doubt anyone had emotional investment in Pong, Asteroids, or Pac-Man. Right now they are borrowing heavily from film to achieve this investment. They mostly show you things to manipulate your emotions, and they usually give you an easy out for doing the right thing. Most of the time doing the right thing morally gives a greater reward in the game as well.

A classic example of doing the right thing resulting in a greater reward occurs in Baldur's Gate. You enter a town, and are mistaken for a bounty hunter named Greywolf. The man who pays bounties offers you the latest reward Greywolf has earned, and you can make some easy money. If you do this, however, the mistake is eventually realized, and you can't capitalize on the further bounty jobs offered, which result in still greater rewards. In this way it feels like a morality tale. There is nothing wrong with doing the right thing, but the lure of evil is that it is the easier path to greater rewards, but in video games this is often not the case. In anything made by Black Isle, or Bioware being evil is just a matter of wanting to be a jerk, and often times in a storyline where you have to accomplish something good regardless of your inclination.

Very few games will make the player hesitate before pulling the trigger. Even fewer will grant greater power to those willing to sacrifice others. Even the ones that do allow an evil ending alter the status quo in a similar fashion to the good ending. The current evil power is overthrown even if only to be replaced by the corrupt protagonist.

Mass Effect has at least one moment of brilliance in regard to morality. A member of the player's party, Wrex, is a Krogan; a species that is going extinct. Seren, the antagonist of the game has found a way to cure the process that keeps Krogan from breeding so he can build a personal army. The facility that allows this to happen has to be destroyed for the greater good, which makes Wrex understandably upset, and he pulls a gun on the player. The player can shoot Wrex, have someone else shoot Wrex, or talk him down. I was able to talk him down, and would have been upset with myself if I had been forced to kill him because not only did I sympathize with Wrex's plight, but also he was my favorite character. The easy path was to pull the trigger, but I didn't want to, and not because Wrex was a valuable ally in combat.

Video games are just like movies, and books in that to have an emotional impact they must develop interesting and/or likable characters, and put them in harm's way. The strength of the game is that the player can decide who lives, and dies. The player also decides who the protagonist falls for. For these decisions to mean anything the characters have to mean something as well.

Choices in the Virtual World Part 2: Or The Lack Thereof

2008-11-30T18:39:00.000-05:00

In my last post I talked about how changing the way I played a game completely altered the experience. If Far Cry 2 hadn't been designed to offer a stealthy option it is very likely I would have given up on it, and sold it promptly. As it is I have actually stopped playing Fallout 3 for the time being. Speaking of Fallout 3, I prefer the stealthy approach in that game as well, but as an action RPG it is required to give the player some choice in how it is played. The option for stealth in Far Cry 2 surprised me. It gave me a choice I didn't expect to be there. Since Fallout 3 is an RPG of sorts I fully expect it to offer me choices.

World of Warcraft is also an RPG. I expect it to offer choices, and on the surface it seems to. There are two factions, several races, and at least a dozen classes. I admit to not knowing the exact numbers because I left the game before any of the expansions released, and looking them up is worth it as the exact numbers are irrelevant to my point.

My first character in World of Warcraft was a human warrior. I always opt for the most straightforward class in any new RPG until I figure out the intricacies of the game. I played that class for about twenty levels before I decided to try something new. Basically it involved targeting a monster, activating my powers, waiting for the cooldown period, rinse and repeat.

Then I tried a paladin. Not much different from a warrior, but a little more versatile. Combat involved targeting a monster, activating my powers, waiting for the cooldown, rinse and repeat. It ended up being really similar in fact so I figured I would try a rogue. I'm a fan of stealth after all. Combat involved activating a power, targeting a monster, activating my other powers, waiting for the cooldown, rinse and repeat. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

I played every class in pre-expansion World of Warcraft, and all of them were incredibly similar. Playing a sword wielding human warrior didn't feel any different from playing an arcane missile throwing wizard. Playing a rogue didn't feel stealthy. It all boiled down to the same thing.

The problem is there are actually very few ways to interact with the environment in World of Warcraft. Once you pull aggro in a fight the monster either lobs ranged attacks, or immediately charges right at you. You can stun them, or get them to attack someone else in various ways depending on your class, but the enemy AI has a single track mind.

Let me compare this situation with Far Cry 2. In that game sniping someone from distance will have some enemies take cover while others attempt to flank where the shot came from. Setting things on fire will cause enemies to run from the flames. Blowing something up will cause those nearby to scatter, and far away enemies to investigate the explosion. You can hide in cover to lose pursuers. You can cause distractions by setting off a bomb on the other side of camp. You can do all of these things in a game that features no class or skill systems.

You may say I'm just picking on the combat, but combat is the crux of the game. How many quests in World of Warcraft can be completed without any fighting? If combat wasn't the main focus of WoW the rogue would have interesting things to do, but as it is the rogue is one of the main damage dealing classes.

I loved the Thief series. In those games you played a thief doing what thieves do. You stole things, and generally avoided combat (at least in the good missions) unless you could end it one blow while the other guy wasn't looking. Hiding in the shadows in those games actually meant hiding in the shadows. In WoW you active your power, and hope your stealth skill is high enough to make you transparent. Somehow it is less enthralling. Once you are transparent you generally just stab things in the back that are beating on your group's tank.

Speaking of beating on things, the warrior in WoW mostly just sits there yelling at enemies to keep them from stomping the other members of the group into the ground. Your job as a fearless front line combatant is not so much to mix it up with various baddies, but to serve as a meat shield. Keeping the squishier members of a party from being torn to ribbons has always been the tank's job, but would it kill an MMO developer to give them something more interesting to do? In WoW in particular your character is always so out of breath from hurling invective at a group of gnolls he rarely has enough energy to go on the offensive. Why bother even giving him a weapon? Maybe he should have a shield in both hands.

Imagine if Soul Calibur was simply a game of the dozens between two well armored fighters. Not much fun, right? Hitting things with other things is a fighter's job, but it doesn't work that way in MMOs because the AI attacks whatever hits them for the biggest damage, and a wizard's fireball of doom is going to hurt more than any sword. So the warrior has to distract the enemy from that pesky glass artillery with some choice comments about their breeding.

I'm a big enough geek to have played Dungeons and Dragons with dice. The great thing about that is the endless freedom you have. That kind of freedom can never be replicated by a video game because the way the game world is constructed already puts limits on the players, but what I'm trying to illustrate is various classes in MMOs interact with their world in the same ways despite their supposed differences, and this does not play to the strengths of of a role playing game.

Imagine an MMO in which the rogue played like Garret from Thief, the warrior felt like a character from Soul Calibur, and the wizard used something similar to the celestial brush from Okami. These are very different mechanics well suited to very different roles, and would actually allow for gameplay difference between classes. All of the MMOs I've played offer what I call the illusion of choice, giving the player many different races, and classes that play essentially the same way. The genre is capable of so much more.

If you don't like the game; change the rules

2008-11-30T17:23:00.000-05:00

Recently I've been playing a lot of Far Cry 2 on the 360.

At first I couldn't tell if I liked, or hated it.

The game is an open world first person shooter set in 50 square kilometers of Africa that includes desert, savanna, and jungle terrain. While I doubt any part of Africa has all of those elements packed into such a small size relative to the continent it works wonderfully in the game by providing an interesting, and varied world in which to kill people, and blow shit up. The missions are admittedly repetitive. All of them boil down to being assassination, sabotage, or retrieval jobs, but the way you go about them is entirely up to you, and you are given the tools to facilitate different approaches.

There are checkpoints spread throughout the map on all of the major roads, and I don't mean checkpoints in the traditional game sense. I mean guard posts. The guards at these posts respawn almost as soon as you turn your back, and early in the game driving through these became tedious as I just wanted to get to my next mission. It didn't help that many missions required reporting back to whomever you were working for. You can try to just blaze through these guard posts in a vehicle, but when your vehicle gets shot up it slows down as the condition degrades to the point black smoke is billowing out of the engine compartment, and the guards almost always give chase in a vehicle that is faster than your own. So I usually rolled into the middle of a post, hopped on the .50 caliber machine gun mounted to my truck, and mowed people down. This was amusing the first few times, but as I said it became tedious quickly, and was seriously detracting from my enjoyment of the game. So what to do?

I found a bit of wisdom on GameFAQs of all places. In a forum no less. Anyone familiar with GameFAQS forums knows why this might be surprising. For every thoughtful contributor who has written up a dozen walkthroughs there are a hundred histrionic fanboys screaming at each other, but I digress. Someone started a thread about walking from mission to mission instead of driving. At first I was skeptical. After all this was a huge game world to navigate, and my main frustration was not being able to get to my missions quickly enough, but I gave it a try, and it changed the entire experience.

In Far Cry 2 you can carry three weapons at a time. I had been rolling with an assault rifle, RPG, and side arm. This was good for charging into places, and shooting everything that moved, but even with this high profile loadout I never charged the front once I reached my mission objective. So I invested in some weapons that offered a more subtle approach; a sniper rifle, a silenced pistol, and remote explosives.

By walking I could now sneak past enemy guard posts, and carry on towards my mission, but I also discovered each post could be scouted. All of them had supplies, and once scouted my map would show me which posts had ammo, health, or explosives I could loot. I now sniped guards from distance, left remote explosives in my old position, and took up a new one where I could watch the search party come looking for me so I could blow them up when they found the spot I had just left. Not only did negotiating guard posts become easier, but also it became more fun. By varying my tactics, and weapons I changed the game from a standard action FPS to something of a stealth game. I now wanted to scout each guard post rather than bypass them.

I didn't like the game until I changed the rules.

Microsoft and their lack of user friendliness.

2008-11-27T12:07:00.000-05:00

Did you know there is absolutely no way to remove credit card information from Xbox Live? You can add a new card, but if you are like me, and have an old card all your transactions default to that is no longer valid, there is no recourse for removing it.

What the hell? Imagine if Amazon, or eBay didn't let you remove old payment information. What if Paypal had a list of all your bank accounts since you started the service, and you've moved across the country? It's patently ridiculous.

You can add new cards until your eyes bleed, but removing one is impossible. You can't do it from the Xbox, and you can't do it from Microsoft's website for the Xbox.

Xbox Live is a subscription service, and one that automatically recurs. I'm willing to bet when my time comes to pay more money it will default to my old card, but since I can't remove that information there is little I can do. I can't even set one of the cards to my default payment method.

For bonus points there is also no option to cancel your subscription. At least not on the interface that allows you to give Microsoft money, and apparently not on their website either. Oh no. You have to call somebody directly for that.

I did a Google search, and some poor bastard in the U.K not only had to contact customer support to remove his credit card information from Xbox Live, but his problem was passed on to a "special team," and it took them three and a half months to resolve it.

I understand from a business point of view that Microsoft doesn't want the cancel button to be the first thing you see when you log onto Live, but this is bullshit. It pisses me off, and I don't even want to cancel my account.

Choices in the virtual world.

2008-11-25T21:04:00.000-05:00

Dr. Richard Bartle is upset that a quest in Wrath of the Lich King requires the player to torture a prisoner.

I'm not going to become morally outraged over virtual torture no matter how blithely it is implemented. After all WoW has virtual genocide too. How many quests require exterminating entire populations of intelligent beings? If you think I'm nuts ask yourself how many mines full of kobolds, and settlements of murlocs you've killed. Anyway I'm pretty sure the Geneva convention doesn't apply to Azeroth.

I'm not trying to mock Dr. Bartle. I think he makes a good point, and I don't think he is morally outraged about the inclusion of torture. He doesn't like the fact it is required. The quest offers no option to refuse, which exposes a fundamental flaw in the gameplay of World of Warcraft, and MMOs in general; lack of choices.

Back in the 90s during the golden age of PC gaming I played a lot of Diablo, and after that I went on to Baldur's Gate. What impressed me the most about Baldur's Gate when I made this transition was the size of the world, and the possibilities it offered. Diablo was a straightforward hack and slash (or click and click) affair. It had a linear story, and one multilevel dungeon under a single town. Baldur's Gate seemed like an entire continent to explore in comparison. There were a lot of other difference as well, but this expansion of possibilities was the key factor for me. So when I discovered Ultima Online, and the new genre called MMORPGs I became even more excited at the possibilities that would open up in such an expanded world.

To this day UO remains my favorite MMO of all time simply because there were so many things to do in between running for your life from player killers. There was a world filled with people to explore, and tons of skills to figure out how to use effectively. There weren't any scripted moral choices that are so popular in games today, but there was a ton of perceived freedom.

For a lot of people, however, Everquest kick started the MMO genre, and it set forth a lot of rules that are obeyed to this day. When I think of Everquest I think of grinding. The eternal pursuit of the next level. The freedom vanished. Pick your class, and start killing things.

Fast forward to World of Warcraft. For all of the open world possibilities I hoped MMOs would bring to video games the most successful one is like Diablo; a straightforward hack and slash affair. All of your choices are made at character creation except for choosing which abilities to improve. Your quests are laid out before you in an orderly fashion, and you simply climb the ladder, moving on to another area when you are finished with the current one. If Ultima Online was like making your way through a pathless jungle WoW is the guided tour conducted from a tram.

Don't get me wrong. Linearity isn't inherently a bad thing. Half Life 2 is completely linear, but it sucks you in, and doesn't let go. MMO marketing usually bangs on about how immersive the game world is. Really? I can't think of a less immersive genre. It all comes down to the numbers. Exploration is gone. Freedom is gone. What is the point of this gigantic world if everyone walks exactly the same path through it?

In Ultima Online I explored dungeons to see what was in there. In WoW I explored them because at the bottom was something I had to kill to get a reward from some guy who always stood in the same place in town.

So back to this whole torture bit. Dr. Bartle wants the choice to refuse something he finds morally objectionable. I say the player could use a choice in every quest, or at least some latitude in how to go about them. Linearity is fine, but it isn't what I wanted from MMOs.

My second favorite MMO? Star Wars Galaxies. Yeah. I'm weird like that, but for all of its glaring flaws it offered a hell of a lot of freedom.