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!

Often enough, you don’t measure how important something was until it’s not there anymore; case in point with the radio chatter in FEAR2 (as I have just started playing it, I won’t pass any judgment on the game itself at this point).

In the original FEAR, you could hear the enemies’ radio chatter. This had several uses:

• They provided information regarding the opposition you were facing: when a squad had been decimated, the comm chatter of the survivors would tell you just that: “No way!”, “I got 2 men down!”, “I need reinforcements!”
• They increased tension: “Flank him”, “I have him in my sights”

The last one I realized while playing to FEAR2:

• They signaled someone’s presence in the area: what keeps happening to me in FEAR 2 is, I’d kill everyone in a room, then start looking around for some ammo or intel… and I’d get shot at point-blank by an unsuspected enemy that was sitting right next door; as this would never happen in the real world - the noise of a heavily armed soldier moving around would be enough to reveal his presence -  I found it a bit frustrating.

And in my understanding, it really fit the philosophy of the first game: it’s not about straight up surprise, but about the anticipation build-up: paranormal activities were always “announced” through cracking static in the headset, and replica soldiers attacking where similarly “announced” through these audio cues.

Some other noises would go in the same section: an elevator beeping when stopping on your floor or a door slamming open would suggest an imminent assault, whereas most of the time in FEAR2, the player would be the first one to get shot if he had not seen the enemy (and they can see you very well).

So now that the last drop of 2008 has dried up, I think it’s time to separate the winners from the losers:

• And the Game of the Year goes to Dead Space!

Here you can find the quick review I did. After having played the game a second time around, I’m not taking anything back. I, however, want to look beyond the game itself:

For one, let’s have a look at the sales figures: according to Gamasutra’s NPD analysis, Dead Space sold 421 000 units across all platforms. As the commercial lifespan for this game seems to be over, can we - we, developers and fans of the game altogether - be satisfied with less than half million copies sold? I somewhat feel the game isn’t recognized to its true value. The timing might help, though: Dead Space being at the forefront of the “quality over quantity” motto EA seems to be abiding by nowadays, the franchise probably has enough inside support for the 421 000 copies to be good enough to keep it going. Indeed, a sequel has been more or less confirmed.

Moreover, let’s not let the global marketing approach go unnoticed: on top of the game, there’s a comic book, there’s an animated movie, and there’s an story-rich website. Only after you’ve read/watched/browsed all of these, can you really realize the coherent universe that’s been created, the team tapping each media to deliver different aspects of the story, keeping it all interesting and deep. Now I don’t have any kind of figures on the revenue these have generated, but surely one can admire what the developers have offered to their fans. And surely a fanboy I have become. When’s Dead Space 2 due?

• And the Shame of the Year goes to Left 4 Dead!

I already expressed my discontent after playing the demo. Now that I had the opportunity to play for a couple hours with some colleagues, I can confirm it: this game is just not fun. Spraying bullets like a madman is just not fun. Coerced teamwork is just NOT FUN.

I’ve already discussed gameplay and immersion, I’ll just add that the atmosphere a lot of reviewer seem to be raving about is absolutely not worth mentioning; the only effort I notied were the cries of the Witch that you can hear from afar. Wanna see an atmosphere? Try Dead Space, they know how to set one up (hint: it resides more in the audio than in the post-processing effects).

Edit: The 421 000 figure for Dead Space only took the PC plateform into account; EA has announced just over 1 million units sold across all plateforms. The point remains, though: it’s still too little for such a great game.

Long before Dead Space was available, my few encounters with news regarding the game left me with the impression that this one stole its gameplay from Resident Evil, its look from Doom III and its backstory from Event Horizon (this film).

I wasn’t utterly wrong, of course, but that’s where Dead Space surprised me: for every inspiration source the game takes from, it will be the source of inspiration for games to come; Dead Space leverages on what’s good in other games in the genre, and innovates on so many other levels.

So let’s focus on the high points:

• There is some actual depth in the core gameplay (furious dismemberment…). I realized how much when I showed the 1st chapter to my coworkers as a demo; they were actually turned down, for it looked repetitive. That’s how I realized the first hour or so only touched the surface of the game mechanics: the zero-g and vacuum moments break the monotony. Especially with the fact that vacuum can come down on you at anytime (hull breaches, etc).

The use of stasis and kinesis is also a game-changer, whether it’s during pure combat moments or during puzzle ones. The use of a recurrent unkillable enemy is also used to great effect, as you are forced to run away, which changes the rules of the game.

What’s great about these points is that they are seamlessly integrated into the setting; Isaac Clark is an engineer/mechanic, and his abilities don’t appear like some kind of magic trick that conveniently showed up to explain the game mechanics,

• All the work that’s been put into interfaces wasn’t a lost cause: coupled with the fact that inventory browsing and log exploration doesn’t pause the game, it weights a great deal when it comes to immersion. Nothing is more stressing than running away from a couple of baddies, fumbling into your inventory to take this damn medkit. Throw in the air that’s hissing away from your oxygen tank and appreciate how stressed you can be,

• Additional points for the whole inventory management/shop system, as well as the equipment upgrading thing: there are entire moments during the game where your main concern isn’t to find the fastest, most efficient way to dismember enemies, but to make the best use of your inventory space and money. This offers a well-deserved pause.

A few random points:

• The little pathfinder thingy. It’s both useful and well integrated: given the context, it would be weird to be lost in the USG Ishimura, and this is a very elegant way to solve it,
• The way levels are set up. On almost each map, there’s some sort of basecamp where the player can save its game, shop for equipment and upgrade its weapons; some people found this boring, as you’d often come back to the same spot. I personnaly found that it would be a very natural way to react in real life: clean an entranched area and fall back to it regularily.

Finally, I’ll go with my one complain - because there should always be one: the distribution of ammo and equipment.

The distribution of ammo is entirely dynamic. What it means is, when you sell a weapon, you stop finding ammo for it. I think it undermines the economy/inventory side of things, as you find yourself juggling with ammo for only the weapons you have.

As for the distribution of weapons, I thought it lacked context: for instance, when you’re on the bridge or in the crew’s living quarters, there’s no reason to find mining tools or equipment, but it would be appropriate to find ammunition for the assault rifle for instance.
Additionally, having weapons depending on context would make some things harder: the assault rifle is pretty inefficient if you want to cut out limbs, but if that’s the only thing that’s around, you’ll have to make do. This could have given different flavors (weapon-wise) to different chapters.

Finally, you can get any weapon as soon as the 4rth chapter, which means that you won’t discover anything new during the rest of the game.