Eurogamer has a retrospective on DX: Invisible War.

I very much agree that the poor Invisible War has been unjustly ripped to shred. Some of the gameplay choices I’m not too fond of, but moving away from the incoherent patchwork of conspiracy theories definitely was for the best.

As far as I am concerned, the setting, the character and the stories in DXIW were fresh and significantly better than in the original. Should receive my copy of DXHR soon, but I’ve heard great things about the writing in this one…

It’s been a while since I’ve had a game I kept going back to as much as Splinter Cell : Conviction. In fact, I think the last one was GTA Vice City. It puzzles me that a lot of people keep saying that this installment is “more about action than infiltration.”

To me it’s the best by far, thanks to the The Mark & Execute system.

In the original recipe, the stealth gameplay was strictly enforced, to the point of absurdity: It was impossibly hard to shoot someone, and being discovered with your hand in the metaphorical cookie jar almost invariably resulted in Fisher bleeding out on the concrete – even when facing a single, isolated enemy.

I suppose the contrived difficulty was how the developers chose to force the players down a purely stealth path. In the end, it feels unnatural in terms of narrative (Fisher is a super-duper agent who… doesn’t seem to be able to dispatch a single enemy?), but also gameplay (the player feels incredibly potent in some situations, but utterly powerless in others). Also, I’ve never been a fan of stealth games where you can pick out guards one by one without their friends noticing anything. In my world, shit is bound to happen.

Now, fast-forward to SC: Conviction. Detractors have complained that the Mark & Execute ruins the spirit of the game. I can only agree to that if it’s used extensively. When used by a player willing to “play the game,” it makes perfect sense and fixes the aforementioned gameplay/narrative disconnect.

Specifically, I use it as a contingency plan: Say I intend to take down this one guard, but notice two others chatting not far from there. I mark both of them just in case, then perform a silent take-down of some kind on my primary target. If the pair doesn’t see me, then it’s onto the next one and I’m playing the way I would have in SC1. If I get spotted, I don’t die in an utterly absurd way. This strategic approach is (to me) just as important when playing a stealth game than say, creeping in the shadows.

In the end, I think designers always try to create a focused experience – and they should. But sometimes, giving the players some leeway instead of building strict constraints right into the game mechanics can add to the mix. A lot of players are willing to “work” to step into their character’s shoes, which results in a greater involvement.

Which is why I’ve always thought the whole our-protagonist-doesn’t-talk-so-the-player-can-relate-better was bullshit.

So Dead Space 2 outsells the original game 2-to-1.

And I remember a time when EA executives weren’t too sure they’d bother with a Dead Space 2. Or a Mirror’s Edge 2, for that matter, displeased that they were with the sales.

And yet, what’s happening with Dead Space 2 is nothing to be puzzled over. Think about it:

1. Both Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge were surprises, fresh franchises that no one was expecting or too sure of. I’m quite sure they were both downloaded widely.
2. Because the quality was definitely there, however, each games created a solid following of gamers wanting more.
3. Then EA opted to not move forward with a Mirror’s Edge sequel, and hesitated on a Dead Space sequel.

Why? It sure as hell wasn’t the right time to hesitate, with fans out there wanting more. If a sequel had tanked, then sure, it would have been time to call it a day.

Throwing in the towel after wetting people’s appetite can’t be a good strategy.

Found on Gamasutra:

Conscience Is But A Word: Why videogames need better villains, by Xander Markham.

Great article. Plenty of valid points are also made in the comment, but I’ll specifically second Jeffrey Wilson’s opinion: bad guys who do evil stuff just for the sake of being bad guys are flat out uninteresting  (and I’ll add, those who do it simply for their own good can get boring pretty quickly).

The audience needs to know enough in order to connect with them: understand what they want and why they want it, and then reject it.

Now let me be clear, this isn’t a request for more violent games. I’m fine with violent games – something ignorant people all over the globe think will be the downfall of mankind, but that’s not what this is about.

I was initially taken aback a bit when it became clear that the largest DLC for Mass Effect 2 (Overlord) was about Geth. I wasn’t sure why, but now that I’m going through it, it becomes clear that it isn’t the fiction bit that I have a problem with – the Geth are quite fascinating, but the combats themselves:

I feel nothing.

And yet I remember enjoying the ME2 combat system very much during parts of the campaign. As I recall those moments, however, I can only points out to combats against Organics. Because that’s what’s happening here: I don’t care that I’m mowing down dozens of Geth, because they’re only Geth to me; the times it felt like I was truly going to combat were those times I had to go through squads of screaming, cursing and oozing Organics.

And I guess this comes from what Mass Effect is about to me: an epic story about sacrifice – except it’s not always mine. As I’m playing as a 100% renegade, the fiction in my mind is as follows: I have a mission of supreme importance to accomplish, and the loyalty and secondary missions (those with mercenaries) were simply delaying my oh-so-important mission. So I slaughtered them.

And it was a great feeling to buy into this larger fiction, this tale of horrors done for the greater good. But dismantling 22nd Century tin cans is taking that away from me.

So please BioWare, make the next DLC a bit more fresh, will you?

Still waiting for my Splinter Cell: Conviction copy to arrive, so what do you think I should be doing? Well, I think I definitely should be playing the shit out of the demo. First time I went through it, I was a bit pissed it lasted only 20 minutes. Now that I’ve finished it 50 times over, I just don’t care: who would have thought it’d be so much fun killing the same 6 guys 50 times over?

One thing I noticed though, is that Sam Fisher seems to randomly comment on your actions “Not bad”, “I see the training paid off”, etc. If I simply grab a guy and pull him over a ledge (an action that only requires me to press a single button), Sam just might comment on that.

I think it would be better if Sam only spoke out when the player’s actions deserve it: say, if the player takes down 3 enemies in less than 3 seconds and without anyone noticing, for instance. These comments could also be modulated by the level of difficulty, and possibly on how well the player has been doing so far.

The tools needed to estimate how well the player is doing aren’t that complicated: a timer, and simple frustum, alert and kill checks. And in return, players would have the satisfaction of having a skilled assassin commenting on their actions; a formidable form of reward that seems underutilized in SC: Conviction.

That said, I’m itching for my copy to arrive: switching from pure gameplay to cinematic moves and back with variable granularity simply feels so great; the re-playability of this game must be insane.

Oh, and while I’m at it, I just witnessed the freakiest thing I ever thought I would in a game: after I finished cleaning up a room, I noticed movement on my latest victim. “Wow, they even added the nervous twitch of a guy who took a bullet in the head”, I thought, impressed. But as I got close, I watched in horror the dead guy – bloody bullet hole in the forehead, dead eyes to the ceiling – move his lips in a silent and never-ending litany. Pretty please, fix those facial animations: it’s just too spooky for a Splinter Cell game.

A lot of people have been asking about why they’d put the boring stuff in Heavy Rain. I think the goal is simply to lower the Emotional Baseline: most games are all about the shooting (or the action of some kind). Now there might be some more subtlety in the storyline, but it’s usually told through cinematics or non-interactive means, so every time the player does have the controller in hand, he’s always right there in the middle of the action, killing dozens, business as usual. By resetting the Emotional Baseline to a lower (mundane) level, the developers made it so that when something out of the ordinary happens, it does feel like something out of the ordinary to the player.

Or at least I think. Can somebody get me a PS3 over here ?!

It’s actually done only every single time in movies: rare are the ones that start with action right off the bat; it always begins with the hero living his ordinary, everyday life, right before the terrorists/aliens/bad guys show up.

Wow, long time since I posted here! It’s also been a long time since I’ve talked about video games. Now is as good a time as ever to comment on FEAR 2. After all, I won’t finish the game anyway, so, let’s see.

I feel robbed. Last time it happened was when I bought Deus Ex 2. In the end, the story sort of made up to the dumbed up gameplay, and I manage to enjoy the game (like, 3 times). No such luck this time.

Hardcore fan of the first FEAR installment – that I wouldn’t hesitate to dub the best FPS I’ve ever played – I was expecting the same brutal gunfights, ruthless opponents and nerve-screeching downtimes from the sequel. If I was to only buy one game this year, then FEAR 2 it would be. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the FEAR formula had fell into the same grinder the Deus Ex franchise had. If by ‘fell’, I mean ‘intentionally dumped’.

From the horrible controls, I can only take away that maybe connecting a mouse where there was a gamepad is not enough to make it a PC game. You end up walking too slow, turning around too fast, disoriented and bumping into objects (including a mural tableau that prevented me  from moving along its supporting wall). Who needs virtual reality when FEAR 2 feels so close to the real deal (being drunk)?

The interface is also exactly what you’d expect on a console game: the gigantic icons reminding you what key/button to press to perform an action, just in case all players have Alzheimer’s. The savegame system is identical to the one in Gears of War, and I remember making a mental note of how appropriate it was in Gears, so that must be a good point, right? Nope. Because you and me don’t don’t play on console the same way we play on PC. When we play Gears, we just blast through levels, while FPS PC gamers tend to want to be ‘stylish’ when playing: I personally want to look like a ballet dancer with an assault rifle. True story. I want my moves and kills to be efficient. Oh, and flashing a huge text in my face to tell me a door is locked before I even tried to open it isn’t helping me out, it’s just pulling me out of immersion.

Of course, all of this could have been prevented by Monolith pretty quickly/easily. To add insult to injury, this wasn’t even fixed in the first patch. Nor the second. Or the third. Historical fan bases don’t take to kindly to being ignored.

The final blow was delivered to me somewhere mid-campaign (I think): as I was quickly going through the game, fairly annoyed, but trying to find out more about the story, I got stuck at the I’m-a-console-game-so-here’s-a-mandatory-quicktime-event face-off. I went back and forth a couple of times during a hand-to-hand combat session that made me want to pull out my teeth. And gave up. Because it’s just NOT what I had payed for.

I feel relief, however, to have uncovered the truth about Alma’s screaming, crying and general tearing people in half: it is my understanding that in events smacked in between both installments, Alma discovered that she’s been adopted and that, not only was her adoptive father a bastard sick enough to induce his 8-year old daughter into labor for simple means of experimentation, but that her real progenitors were of an even worst kind: the kind that would steal her soul and trap it into a console Hell, where her distress will be mocked over and over again through eternity. Everyone will agree that it’s a pretty sucky way to start in life. Nothing short of burning the flesh off of such people’s bones would be considered a fair retribution.

Are you scared of cinematics? I know I have been for years.

I’m not talking here about whether or not cinematics are a valid narrative medium in video games (although it’s a fascinating topic), but about the convenience of cinematics for gamers; when you need to pause a movie, you simply press pause, no second thoughts.

What if you’re playing a game?

Most cinematics are used to relay information, whether it’s mission-critical (briefings) or simply interesting. If an interruption occurs, you have to ask yourself:

• Am I in a cinematic or any kind of scripted event?

• If I press escape, what will happen on this particular game? Skip the sequence, or send me to the menu?

• What if it escapes it, can I restart it in any way? Or is the same information available in-game?

Which doesn’t exactly register as a “reflex action”.

Most games don’t offer the possibility to pause or rewind a cinematic, which violates a general user interface rule in software design: the software is supposed  to be forgiving to the user, especially when the response to a particular command (such as pressing ‘escape’ in a jiffy) doesn’t have the same effect everywhere.

So far, sticking a large “Interrupt me at your own risk” sign on my back has worked for me, but this can’t go on – close ones find it aggressive.

Game developer Infinity Ward has got to be running out of storage space for all the awards Call of Duty 4 has brought home! More than a year after its release, the game has just been awarded in  3 different categories at the UK-based BAFTA video-game ceremony, including Story and Character. Even though some might find surprising to reward a FPS with this distinction, I think it is some well-deserved recognition: writing in video games is still at its infancy and people are debating back and forth on what influence storytelling should have on the development of a game.

And in comes COD4, first and foremost a competitive shooter targeted at hardcore gamers; 10 years from now, most people will remember it for the dozens (or hundreds) of hours they spent playing online, and all those war stories they used to tell their buddies.

And yet , the solo campaign was a note-taking exercise for me, as it is a reference of what storytelling should be in shooters: it strikes a perfect balance between gameplay and story. Indeed, the later is remarkably non-intrusive: most of the story is unveiled either through briefings during load times or with in-game dialogs during combat downtimes; at no time is the player pulled out of the action to be briefed on something he might not care about – the Holy Grail of videogame storytelling.

When it comes to characters, a lot of work has been done on each member of the ensemble cast (5+ recurring characters): each of them has a tone, a personality and some quality voice acting to support them; with their destiny tied to the larger events at play, tension and drama remains very present until the end. I’ll take for example the chopper pilot that gets shot down at some point: I barely know her (in game space), but the urgency in her voice urges me to haul ass to the crash site.

Congratulation to writer Jesse Stern, as well as to the Infinity Ward team!