The Problem With Bioshock 2 (And Why I'm Cautious About Bioshock Infinite)

So this isn't going to be a proper review because I'll be honest: I haven't beaten Bioshock 2. I got what I think is about halfway through the game, and I just stopped playing. In fact, I only recently finished playing the original Bioshock.

Now, the original Bioshock is a great game. It had some issues, but is remembered for a fantastic, absolutely phenomenal ending that was really a deconstruction of the nature of games themselves, and then continuing for about three more hours of crap, because having an unhappy ending would be bad. Alternatively, if you're the kind of twitch-reflex Call of Duty fanboy who doesn't care about a fascinating deconstruction of the very nature of games themselves, it had Big Daddies.



The game took place on one of the best settings ever in video gaming, the city of Rapture, an underwater utopia turned underwater distopia. It contained a lot of interesting aspects, and entire discussions could be had about the first game alone, and have been. Is it a cautionary tale of the need for morals? Is it a warning that man should not play God? Is it just a haunting tale of an underwater city? Would the city have been doomed without the discovery of Adam, or was Adam itself what led to the downfall? Interesting conversations could be had about any of these.

In addition, the game had good, albeit perhaps not great, gameplay. Except the hacking, that sucked. But the introduction of Plasmids, which could essentially rewrite the human body to do anything led to some interesting mechanics. My favorite, although not the most useful, was the one that let you shoot bees at people.

So why would a sequel to this beloved game be bad? Well there's a few reasons. First of all, Rapture as a set piece was more effective as you explored and learned about the history of the city. It was a brilliant example of how games can be art, and how games can offer a different storytelling experience than a film can. Once you already know the history of the city, it loses a lot of effect. While the city is still beautiful and haunting, you've already experienced it, and it becomes a more familiar place. One of the greatest things about discovering Rapture is just how alien it is, just like the oceans below us can, at times, seem alien.

In addition to this, the story of Bioshock was rapped up beautifully in Bioshock. And then the game decided to keep going for about three hours- Ok, sorry, that's not what this is about and if I talk about why the game should have ended at the big "Would you kindly" scene, this post will be about something different. The point is, Bioshock had a great story. That story was told in Bioshock.

So a sequel to Bioshock was always going to be tricky, they ran the risk of shoving another tale into a setting that had already been explored. And in truth, that's exactly what they did. While the story in Bioshock 2 isn't bad, per say, nothing carries the same emotional, or philosophical weight. For one thing, this one paints the church in a negative light. Now, I could tolerate that, except it kind of goes against everything the first one was about. Now, I don't claim Bioshock had some sort of religious message, that would be foolish, but one possible interpretation, in fact something that's essentially said within the game, is that a society where every man fends only for himself and not for some form of greater good, is doomed to fail. Say what you will about religion, it's all about serving a higher power and doing the correct moral thing.

In addition to this, the characters introduced in Bioshock 2 (or what I've played of it) all seemed forced into the setting. Rapture had fallen, and almost everyone was dead by the beginning of Bioshock, and the survivors had turned the city into a warzone. With Bioshock 2 taking place ten years later, I find it hard to believe that the splicers would have survived another ten years fighting and killing each other constantly in a city that was falling apart. Plus, all the new characters seemed forgettable. I remember the characters from Bioshock one, even the minor ones. The deranged surgeon who likened himself to Picasso. The artist who had you hunt down and kill certain individuals on Rapture to use pictures of their corpses in his sickening art gallery. These characters are haunting, and sickening, and stay with you long after. I don't think any of the characters in Bioshock 2 had any of the same weight.

Now, the game isn't all bad. In fact, in pretty much every gameplay aspect, it's an improvement. The guns are all bigger and better and actually pretty fun to use, and the ability to have both a plasmid and a gun out at the same time is huge. But in a way, the guns are very telling of one of the games faults. Bigger and better syndrome. It just had to be bigger and better. Instead of a submachine gun, you get a machine gun. Instead of a pistol, you get a rivet gun. Instead of a wrench, you get a giant drill.

But none of these things are Bioshock 2's main problem. Bioshock 2's main problem is the protagonist, Alpha.

One of the most memorable aspects of Bioshock was the Big Daddies. The Big Daddies were giant monsters who usually wouldn't attack unless provoked, who guided the Little Sisters around Rapture as they collected Adam from the many dead bodies. They were scary. They felt big and heavy, with giant diving helmets, making loud noise and shaking the very ground as they walked near. You couldn't reason with one, you had no idea what they were thinking, they couldn't speak, only make bizarre grunts, and they didn't seem human. They felt more like an extension of the city itself. Not human, not even really beasts. You didn't have any idea what was going through their heads, if they could even think. They were one of the aspects that made Rapture seem the most alien.

Then Bioshock 2 made you one.

Suddenly, they lost all that effect. They felt human. If you were one of them, albeit a prototype one, then they were just as reasonable as you. Sure, for all intents and purpose they function the same as they do in the first game, but they feel different, knowing they can be reasonable. They aren't the same force of nature they were in the first game, they're just people. In a way, perhaps some may find that more disturbing, but they weren't really disturbing in the first game, just alien. The Little Sisters, now those were disturbing in the first game, but the Big Daddies? Not really.

Now, admittedly I haven't gotten far enough into the game to know what the Big Sisters are exactly (though I have my suspicions), but they aren't really scary either. Sure, they're deadly, but if the Big Daddies are just people they lose a lot of effect, and the Big Sisters probably are as well.

I mean, we knew from the first game Big Daddies were once humans, but I assumed they underwent some sort of brainwashing- In fact, I'm fairly sure there were audio logs confirming that they did.

Now then. I've said my piece on Bioshock 2, let's talk about Bioshock Infinite.

Ok, Bioshock Infinite, for those not in the know, is the new Bioshock game. It's a Gaiden Game in every sense. Now, let me start off here by saying I am cautiously optimistic about Bioshock Infinite. I'm not completely sold on the game yet, for reasons I'll go into in a moment, but it does have a really cool setting, art style, and it looks like it does some very cool things.

The game is going to take place on the floating city of Columbia. It's set about 30 years earlier than Bioshock, and it has nothing to do with Rapture, other than that apparently Rapture will someday be built in this universe. Columbia was built as a wonder of the world by the U.S.A., before it went rogue and started a war with China or Russia or something, at which point the U.S. denied any affiliation with it, saying it had gone rogue. Since then, Columbia has become a sort of bogeyman, floating around and attacking cities, hard to destroy with the technology of 1910, but very strong itself.

The setting is very steampunk, and the game looks cool aesthetically. It contains "Tonics" instead of "Plasmids" and features time manipulation as a main mechanic. The main character, as opposed to Bioshock or Bioshock 2, is not a silent protagonist, but a man fighting to survive on Columbia which seems to be experiencing a Rapture-style fall.

Now at first you might say, "Hey! Why wouldn't you love this to death? The game looks awesome and it addresses all the complaints you raised about the first game, even introducing new psuedo-cyborgs called Handymen instead of Big Daddies! The new setting will provide you a new interesting locale to explore, and a new story to enjoy featuring what seem like two great new characters named Booker DeWitt, a name that sounds like it came out of a 1940's detective serial, and Elizabeth, a name which is a name." To which I would, naturally, reply "Right you are theoretical yet very well informed person who is addressing my skepticism of the game. Now would you kindly tell me why the game is called Bioshock?"

It takes place years before Rapture was built, has nothing to do with any of the characters from Bioshock or Bioshock 2, takes place in the sky instead of in the ocean, features new villains, monsters, powers, characters, and gameplay mechanics, and according to some inside sources may even TAKE PLACE OUTSIDE THE BIOSHOCK TIMELINE ENTIRELY. WHY IS THIS NOT A NEW FRANCHISE CALLED COLUMBIA? I mean sure, I'd be calling it a Bioshock clone if it were a new franchise entirely, but there's nothing wrong with being a Bioshock clone! Some of my best friends are Bioshock clones, although admittedly they have the advantage of containing Batman. (Note: That's not quite fair, Arkham Asylum is more like Splinter Cell with a Bioshock skin pasted on, and then a Batman paint job.)

The idea of a Bioshock like game taking place in a steampunk city in the skies isn't a bad one at all. In fact, like I said, the game looks gorgeous. There's like a robot dragon on a giant floating city, for crying out loud, how can that not be cool? But it just doesn't seem like this game has anything to do with Bioshock itself.



I really do think Bioshock Infinite looks like a lot of fun, and they are doing some interesting things with the mechanics, like having Elizabeth be with you the whole time, mind you if they mess that up at all this game will be awful, and we all know how easy it is to mess up escort missions since there hasn't been a good escort mission in the history of gaming. Ok, Half-Life 2's Episodes, but being put up next to a Valve game for comparison means you have some pretty big shoes to fill!

There's nothing wrong with Gaiden Games (games which, though set in the universe of one game, are their own stories with little interaction outside of reference to the main series), I mean fans of this blog will know how big a fan of Portal I am, and that's a Gaiden Game to Half-Life, but the best Gaiden Games feature new settings that fit in flawlessly to the main universe. I have no difficulty believing Aperture Labs exist within the world of Half-Life, nor that the Combine were kept out by GLaDOS. I have no problem accepting it when Cave Johnson rants about Black Mesa stealing Aperture's experiments. But part of the point of Bioshock was that it seemed like the world outside Rapture was just like our own, with the exception of, well, Rapture existing. If Columbia existed and these Tonics which rewrote your genome already existed, why was finding Adam and creating Plasmids a big deal in the first place? And if it's true that this doesn't even take place in the same universe as Bioshock, then I ask again, why is it called "Bioshock" Infinite? It seems like a cash in to me, that's all.

This would quite possibly be the game I'm look forward to the most if I didn't have a feeling of dread that Infinite is simply going to be either another game that retcons the original Bioshock in a way which quite simply makes it less good, or it's going to be something completely different that shoves in a cameo from the main Bioshock world using the time manipulation powers. Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised at all, since we already know that at certain points Booker and Elizabeth get pulled through portals to different time periods like the 1980's, if at one point you get pulled onto Rapture for five minutes, fight a Big Daddy, and then get flung back to Columbia and act like nothing happened.

I wouldn't be surprised, but that's not to say I wouldn't be angry.

Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2, And Now, So Do I

Let me tell you a story. The year is 1999. Buffy is still on TV, people are scared of Y2K, and the World Trade Center still stands tall. A game called Silent Hill has just been released.

Silent Hill is a horror game.

Now, I have never played Silent Hill, nor any of the games in the franchise, but I have the utmost respect for the series. Silent Hill, from what I understand, would likely be on my list of games that are art. It's very symbolic, it's very cerebral, and it's very very scary. Which is why I haven't played it.

I don't like horror games very much. They just aren't my thing. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Left 4 Dead... Heck, I got a copy of Penumbra: Overture in the Humble Indie Bundle ages ago and I've never installed it on my computer. I loved Ravenholm in Half-Life 2, but that's about as scary as I care for my games to be.

But I respect Silent Hill, and games like it. Horror games had existed before the franchise, but Silent Hill defined the horror genre. It knew when to be gory, it knew when to refrain. It understood that the unseen is far more frightening than what we can see. The enemies that were in it were all highly symbolic of the main characters inner psyche and emotion. (Again, from what I understand) The games were tense, emotional, and scary.

Which is why many Survival Horror games made since it have tried to copy it. Enter Dead Space.

Now, I don't hate Dead Space. Like I said, I've never played Dead Space. But, speaking as an outsider, here's what I understand the plot to be:

You're on a ship afloat in space. The power is failing, it's dark, it's tense, and it's-OHMYGODWHATISTHATTHINGITSEATINGMYHEADGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFOHTHEPAINOHITBURNSITHASACIDBLOODOHGODWHYWHATISTHISABOMINATIONOHGODTHEPAINIWANTTODIE

...Yeah. Also, puking. So there's that.

Like I said, I don't hate Dead Space, I haven't played Dead Space, I've heard it's a good game, and honestly I believe it. It looks like a good game. It got good reviews, it sold well, and it's getting a sequel. I've watched some trailers for the second game, specifically the E3 footage. It looked intense, gory, and as I said, I have no plans to play it.

And then EA decided Dead Space 2 needed just a little more publicity before launch. And of course, they decided to do it in the worst way possible. (Link contains a video with graphic violence. Beeeewaaaare.)

"Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2"

They took 300 middle aged mothers in "the heart of conservative America" and sat them down, completely unaware of what they were to see, and showed them the goriest, most disgusting scenes from the game.

The idea was simple, get the disapproval of mothers. As their new tagline says, "Dead Space 2: It's everything you love in a game, and your mom's going to hate it."



It's a brilliant marketing strategy really. The disapproval of mothers is, to many, a good indicator that something is in fact cool. And I have no doubt that my mom would cringe at many scenes in games I play, T rated, or M rated.

But here's the thing. I hate this ad campaign. I hate it. You see, there are a few reasons why I hate this ad campaign, and have lost any interest I may have had in this game before now.

1. It Makes Games Lose Creditability

You knew this was one of the reasons before you started reading this post. Don't even lie.

Let me explain something. Every time some stupid ad company pulls something like this, the whole games industry, AN ENTIRE MEDIUM, lose creditability as an art form.

Many of you probably heard about Schwarzenegger Vs. The Games Industry this past fall. In short, a bill was brought in front of the Supreme Court which was essentially saying that all violent video games were equivalent to porn, and should not be sold to children. If passed, it would show frightening precedent, and the bill itself was possibly one of the most frightening threats to our freedom to artistic expression which has ever faced the country. Do you know what games were used by the (complete scumbags) supporters of the bill? Postal, for one.

Postal is not a game which I have any sort of respect for. Postal is a game which revolves around violence and only violence. You can do all sorts of unspeakable acts in it, and YES, it's a horrible game. It is not art, and anyone who even CLAIMS that it is should seek mental help.

Let me give examples of games and game series which would be very easy to ban if the bill were passed, which were not mentioned.

Portal.
Half-Life.
Fallout.
Mass Effect.
Bioshock.

All of these games are, in their own right, art. In fact, if you want to see examples of how games can be art, any of those games are very good places to start. I could write full articles on the artistic merits of any one of these games, and those were just names I came up with off the top of my head.

All of these games could be banned from sale to minors, essentially making them on the same level as porn, and would likely be ejected from most major retailers, because Postal was made.

Every time a stunt like this is pulled, every time someone makes a game that is gory it needs to be able to take flak for being bloody. But when someone pulls a stunt like this, when someone TRIES to convince mothers that their games is "demonic" it's nothing but attempts to set the genre back. Because, sadly, for every Portal, Half-Life, or Fallout, there's a Postal.

Of course, for every "Citizen Kane", there hundreds of "Meet Dave"'s. But movies are already an accepted art form, and until games reach that status, where they no longer need defenders and white knights, stunts like this only set the medium back.

2. It Tries To Sell An M Rated Game To Teenagers

I am a teenager. I have played M rated games. Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Half-Life 2, all of these are M rated games, and are GREAT! So am I a hypocrite for saying that these should not be marketed towards teenagers? Absolutely not.

You see, the difference is between marketing them towards teenagers, and teenagers playing them.

Guys, I know this sounds cheesy, but the system works. The ESRB, while far from perfect, deserves some credit. IN GENERAL, it is a good indicator of the CONTENT of a game. And while I could write a whole article (and probably will at some point) about the absurd double standard between games and movies, M rated games are, generally speaking, worthy of their rating.

Now, that's not to say not all teenagers should be able to play any M rated titles. It depends on the person, plain and simple. But, those who do play M rated titles, LIKE ME, should absolutely have the permission of their parents first, and honestly, should know the content within the game and their own maturity level.

This campaign is quite clearly trying to sell teenagers an M rated game with disapproval of mothers. It's dumb. I hate it.

3. IT'S JUST STUPID!

Seriously. When did showing that a group of people DISLIKE your product become good marketing? I just... It boggles the mind. How dumb do you have to be to come up with this? I mean, I fully think this ad campaign will sell copies of the game, and because of that I suppose it's a success, but seriously. Can companies in general please stop talking about how other people hate their stuff, but YOU, if you're a COOL KID, will definitely love it? And how if you don't love it, you must be a POSER? And a LOSER?

Seriously. I hate this ad campaign. It's stupid, it's irritating, it's childish, it poorly reflects upon the industry and medium at large, and it absolutely should not be repeated.

Video Game Review - Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout: New Vegas is a game created by Obsidian Entertainment. It's not, as you may think, by Bethesda Softworks, creators of Fallout 3, as they licensed it to Obsidian, a company which makes sequels for other companies. It was made as a... Well, it's not exactly a sequel to Fallout 3... In fact, from what I understand it's more of a "real" continuation of the story of Fallout 1 and 2 than Fallout 3 was. You see the original two Fallout games were set in California. There was a deep universe set up, many creatures and characters were introduced, and then in Fallout 3... All of them were scrapped. Well, ok, most of them.

You see, Fallout and Fallout 2 were set in the Core Region, which was most of California, with bits of Nevada included. 3 took place in the Capital Wasteland, the decimated ruins of Washington D.C. While Fallout 3 is fantastic, it included a mostly separated storyline from the rest of the series. Even the Super Mutants, a staple of the Fallout series, are different from the ones you encounter in 1 and 2.

Now, I haven't actually played Fallout or Fallout 2. However, from what I've heard, New Vegas is much closer a sequel (story wise) to Fallout and Fallout 2 than Fallout 3 was. In any case, as one might expect, Fallout: New Vegas takes place in (surprise!) VEGAS! ...Well, in and around Vegas, that is. New Vegas itself is such a small portion of the Mojave Wasteland, that the rest kind of dwarfs it.

Now, I'm in a unique position to talk about this game, as I actually used to live in Vegas. And I can tell you, they did extraordinarily well. For example, they easily could have gotten away with merely recreating the Strip, and calling it New Vegas, however they did not. They recreated VEGAS, and it's surroundings.

The Strip itself is, of course, there, as well as Fremont Street, which has now become "Freeside", the slums of New Vegas, accessible to anyone, not just those with lots of caps. In fact, it takes around 2000 caps just to get INTO New Vegas proper.

Outside of New Vegas though there's still a LOT of faithfully recreated landmarks. Redrock is still in the game, as are landmarks like Mt. Charleston, Lake Mead, The Hoover Dam... Heck, they've even got that huge soda bottle right off of the Strip, now though, instead of being Coke, it's "Sunset Sasparilla". And each famous landmark has a "Snowglobe" related to it, which can be picked up and sold to a certain eccentric person.

But a faithful recreation of Vegas does not, on it's own, a good game make. So, while the game is certainly a good recreation of Vegas, how is the gameplay, one might ask. Well let me put it this way: Did you like Fallout 3? Because this is... Reeeeeeally similar.

Seriously, at first glance, you may not even be able to tell the difference. You see, it's a first person shooter, like Fallout 3, it has various types of guns, various varieties of enemies, and of course V.A.T.S., the auto targeting system, makes a return from Fallout 3.

However, there are a number of changes which have been made to the gameplay. Most are minor enough that you wouldn't notice them at first glance, but do alter gameplay quite a bit. The first, and likely what many will find to be the most major, is the complete disappearance of the Big Guns skill from Fallout 3. Any weapons which were considered Big Guns have been transferred to other archetypes, for example, Miniguns have been folded into the Guns skill, Missile Launchers and the Fat-Man into the Explosives skill, Flamers have (somewhat strangely) become Energy Weapons... And so on. In place of the Big Guns skill is "Survival", a new skill which has two uses. It increases the health you gain from food (something which will come in quite handy, especially in Hardcore mode, which I'll get into later.) and it allows you to cook more recipes out of various gathered plants, similar to the way Alchemy worked in Oblivion.

An absolutely massive change is the fact that you now only get perks every even numbered level, instead of every level. Personally, though I did a complete playthrough of the game with no mods installed, on my second playthrough I've chosen to install a mod to allow me to get perks on every level once again.

Another large change is that many new types and variations of ammo have been introduced, not only with tons of new varieties, but also with Armor Piercing and Anti Personnel versions of each type. Also, many things which were common in Fallout 3, have become much more scarce in New Vegas, such as Frag Grenades. While Frag Grenades are more uncommon than they used to be new types of explosives have been introduced, such as Dynamite, which works similarly to Grenades, and C4, which can be placed and later detonated at a time of your choosing with a detonator.



Other small changes are things like, for example, the way Speech checks (and Barter checks, and Intelligence checks, and Perception checks, and Luck checks...) work. In Fallout 3, your odds of success would get higher the higher your speech skill was. In this, you either have enough points, or don't. You either have a 100% chance to succeed, or a 0% chance to. It will tell you what your speech skill should be, and if it's that high, great, if not, better find a new way to get what you're looking for. (Perhaps violence. Violence usually works well.)

However, while the gameplay is very similar, the games couldn't feel more different.

You see, the settings are radically different. The best way I can think of to put it is this:

Fallout 3 is a tale of urban survival.
Fallout: New Vegas is a western.

You see, the Capital Wasteland was an area with no government. Complete and total chaos. Utter anarchy. It had been rocked by the nukes, and was still devastated, the air tinged green, and everything completely tainted by radiation.

The Mojave Wasteland, however, first of all, was not hit by the nukes directly. This shows as very few areas have radiation, and rads become pretty much a non-issue for most of the game, with a few exceptions. The Mojave Wasteland also has a government in the form of the New California Republic, but that "government" is very loose as you're at the complete border of their reach... Much like the 19th century American west. Thus, in many areas small settlements will rely completely on local law enforcement... Again, much like the setting of many classic western films. Almost every aspect of the game reflects this.



Heck, even the beginning of the game feels like the start of an old western movie, with your character, "The Courier" being shot in the head and left to die in a shallow grave.

The exceptions to the game having the feel of a western are mostly in the small area of The Strip and it's surroundings, which feel more like an old black and white mobster movie.

But make no mistake, New Vegas is a western. There are Cowboys (heck, there's a perk called "Cowboy"), tribes, vicious untamed wild creatures, outlaws and sheriffs. It's a western set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but a western nonetheless. This setting shines through, and works fantastically well.

Of course one of the most critically acclaimed features of Fallout 3 returns in the form of RADIO STATIONS! This time there are 3 radio stations which can be tuned into, one of which can only be tuned into if you're within a short distance of "Black Mountain".

The first, and the one you'll likely spend the most time listening to is "Radio New Vegas" hosted by Mr. New Vegas. This is the equivalent of GNR in Fallout 3. Mr. New Vegas himself is a smooth talking radio host, who though lacking the energy of "THREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE DOG!" is nonetheless a great host for the station. His smooth voice will announce many things, although in a sharp contrast to Three Dog, his news items rarely mention The Courier, although they will at time mention his accomplishments, if not directly.

The second station, accessible only when in close proximity to "Black Mountain" is "Black Mountain Radio". Playing across BMR is the talk show "Best Friend Tabitha" hosted by Rhonda, and Tabitha, an insane Nightkin. (Think crazier supermutants. Also, blue.) Best Friend Tabitha hosts various segments like "Know Your Mutant", which describes various mutants. It's pretty amusing, not gonna lie.

The third, a welcome addition, is "Mojave Music Radio" which is all music, all the time. No talk show at all.

The songs played on the station are, as with Fallout 3, 50's and 60's music, and great. Personally, I found the best two songs to be "Ain't That A Kick In the Head"...



And "Big Iron"...



... I told you it was a western. Personally, I usually don't like that kind of music, but here it really worked, fitting the theme really well, although the other country songs in this certainly took it overboard...



Ugh.

In any case, the radio stations are, again, a great addition.

The story of Fallout: New Vegas, I found to be absolutely amazing. I won't spoil too much of it for you, but it takes you all over the place, and I found it to be more compelling and interesting than that of Fallout 3, which I also really liked. The writing is superb, and even (especially, in fact) outside of the main storyline this game contains some of the GREATEST storytelling I've ever seen in a game. Heck, I could do a whole blog post on Vault 11 alone. (Foreshadowing!)

And in addition to the storyline itself, the various factions and companions you meet along the way also change the storyline, along with having storylines of their own, although the fact that you cannot continue after the ending (until the inevitable DLC to come in the future) is a weak point.

Speaking of companions, the companions have been VASTLY improved upon from Fallout 3. Now not only can you more easily command and heal them, you can change and improve their gear. And each of them, as I said, has their own storyline and quest you can do for them. There are various ones, you can have up to two (one humanoid, one non humanoid) at a time, and they vary from a sniper to a cyborg dog... And of course my personal favorite, Veronica, a Brotherhood of Steel scribe voiced by Felicia Day.



Oh yeah.

Their very powerful, and (unless in hardcore mode) they can't die, only fall unconscious.

Personally though, one of my favorite additions to the game is Hardcore Mode, and optional setting which makes the game harder. I spoke about it previously, and about what it does, but in short, it makes various changes to gameplay mechanics which make the game more difficult, and I'd argue more fun. You can find the specifics in the game or online, but since rads aren't much of an issue in this, I'd say turn it on just for the extra meters to watch alone.

Now, the big dark spot of this game, and honestly one of it's only flaws, is that it's absurdly buggy. I spoke of this previously too, and most of the MAJOR bugs have been fixed by now, but you may still want to wait a month or so from the time of writing to get it if you're debating still.

In short, Fallout: New Vegas is a fantastic game.

Buy this game if: You like westerns, Fallout 3, RPGs, or great storytelling.

Don't buy this game if: You're squeamish. Like Fallout 3, this game is ABSURDLY gory.

This review was based on my experiences after around 55 hours of play time. I completed one full playthrough of the game on hardcore mode where I capped at level 30 before finishing. I got the NCR ending, and was considered "Very Good" karma. My character specialized in sneak, guns (mainly pistols and revolvers), lockpicking, speech, and barter mainly. The companions I mainly used were Veronica (duh, Felicia Day, c'mon) and E-DE, occasionally switching out Veronica for Cass towards the end of my playthrough. I had achieved 29/50 Steam achievements upon completion.

Video Games as Tools - Machinima

I talk about video games as an art form ALL THE TIME. Practically every other post on this blog is about how video games need to be accepted as an art form, because they are art. But one thing I don't talk about nearly as often is how they can be used to create art.

Video Games can be great and powerful tools in the right hands. How so? Well, several ways. An example? Machinima.

What is Machinima you ask? Simple. Machinima is using the art assets in a video game, and manipulating them in a way to create a video. The most typical type of Machinima is music video parodies. These can vary to really really good. To... Less good. It just depends really. That said, while there are some out there that are straight up parodies of songs (which in many cases can be better than the original song.)...

*Caution crude content... But what do you expect, it's a Ke$ha parody. She has to freaking censor her own name, and that's not even a swear word.*


There are plenty that just take existing songs and create a music video for them. These are probably my favorite music video machinima.



I mean look at that. That's art right there. That was made using World of Warcraft animations, and essentially Photoshop. If you're familiar with the Warcraft Lore the story to the video even makes sense, as it shows a character rescuing Thrall (a major character) from an orcish internment camp.

Another great example is "Gilnean Like Me" a music video for the song "Wolf Like Me".

*Caution some mild language. But man this video is epic.*



This one is just gorgeous. Using the song, and the visuals from WoW, it tells the story of a man who becomes a Werewolf, as his homeland is attacked by an undead faction known as the Forsaken.

This is absolutely art. Absolutely.

But there are plenty of Machinima doing things other than music videos. Although music videos are probably the vast majority.

There are entire dramatic series done in Machinima form. For example, WoWcrendor's faux "How To" series.



Or the "Freeman's Mind" series, which while hysterically funny, is both too bloody and contains too much language for me to post here. Basically it's a guy narrating Half-Life, if the main character, instead of never speaking, wouldn't shut up about how much his job sucks. Also he kills guys. But don't worry it was "self defense with an automatic weapon".

There's plenty of dubs, too.



Basically anything you can imagine can be done via machinima. Including this. And I'm not even sure what this is.

Stereotypes Do, Stereotypically, Exist for a Reason Though

So, I really really want to see Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. I think it looks like an awesome movie, and I fully plan on seeing it while it is in theaters sometime in the coming weeks. Like many do, I pay attention to reviews for movies that I plan on seeing. For example, I really wanted to see the Percy Jackson movie, since that's based on a series of purely AWESOME books. Once I saw the reviews however, I noticed that they listed a lot of changes that were made in the movie that sounded atrocious to me. And they were. And that movie was awful. Eugh.

But while viewing an article about the disappointing opening weekend for Scott Pilgrim, I found the opening line of one newspaper's review of the movie.

"First of all, I'm not a video gamer. I have discovered more appealing ways to not have a life."

Cue the nerd rage.

Gamers are thought of in this way, far too often. I mean, this isn't by a long shot an isolated incident. Gamers, far more so than any other genre of hobby, are portrayed as anti-social angry haters of all things good and holy.

So, let's look at why this stereotype exists. I mean, why is it that gamers are portrayed in a manner like this,



in the first place? I mean, film lovers aren't portrayed as antisocial, although movie watching as a hobby isn't exactly the most social of experiences. I mean, the first result you get on google images when you search "gamer" is this:



Not exactly flattering. I mean, even comic book lovers aren't portrayed quite as anti-social as gamers, with TV shows often showing a comic book shop as having a tight-knit group that goes there regularly, and where absolutely everyone is on a first name basis.

What do we mean when we say that someone doesn't have a "life"? We aren't referring to a dead person. We're referring to someone who, plain and simple, doesn't get a lot of socialization. This, is probably why games are thought of as an anti-social experience. I mean, when you think of video games, you think of Mario. Zelda. Half-Life. All sorts of great... Single-player experiences.

But, Mario always had Luigi. Games are quite possibly the most social art form. Books aren't social. When you're reading a book, you're interacting with absolutely no one. Sure, you can talk about the book later, but really, you're not interacting with anyone WHILE READING THE BOOK. Movies are the same, you don't exactly interact with anyone while watching a film. Again, any social aspect comes afterward. I suppose you could argue music can be a social experience, but.. Even that's a bit of a stretch.

But games, games can truly be a social art form. The very existence of multiplayer shows this. The fact that with games like Team Fortress 2, you can actually interact with other real people, that makes it more interactive, and yes, social, than movies, literature, or music. The fact that there is more interaction than just discussing it, to actually be interacting within the medium, makes it more social than any other media.

Now, it's true, most of that interaction does involve watching the other players head explode as you get sweeping headshots on him and his buddies, but hey, anyone who doesn't understand the interaction that comes from that sort of interaction, can't truly have it explained to them. They must experience it for themselves.

Let me take an example from my own life. A couple of good friends of mine (who yes, I only know through the internet) and I used to play the free FPS Combat Arms quite often. Most of the time, however, we wouldn't play with anyone but the three of us, in a deathmatch mode. In voice chat. And you know what? There was trash talk. There were laughs. There was a sort of social experience gotten from that, that I don't think could ever quite be matched by watching a movie, or reading a book.

I have great memories of exploiting the terrain, and falling onto a small ledge and sniping one of them with a pistol, that certainly couldn't be matched by a movie, at least.

But there's way more interaction than that. There's a sort of teamwork gotten from gaming that can never be matched. With the advent of online gaming, there's great teams being formed to do impossible tasks, on a daily basis. Take the game Borderlands (review coming soon... probably.) which features 4 player co-op. There's levels of teamwork needed in that game, and there's truly social entertainment that can't be matched by a movie. A movie can't recreate the social experience that is Borderlands. Having one guy distract an enemy while the other shoots him/her/it in the butt, that's entertaining, and it's SOCIAL.



Beyond that, there's games that take that on a HUGE scale. Take World of Warcraft for example. World of Warcraft is infamous for having many "no-lifers". I mean, we're talking about the game people have literally died of, because they didn't want to stop playing to eat... Right?

Well yes, but those people are crazy. What most people don't notice is how social WoW is. I mean, there's very little you can do without the help of other players at endgame. Once you reach level 80, you pretty much need to group up with 4-24 other people in order to progress. There's different paths, PvP, 10-Man raiding, 25-man raiding, but still, they all take various levels of OTHER PLAYERS (real live people) to do.

Guilds (groups of people who form a kind of club in game) have a sort of community in them that's unmatched by many experiences outside of games. Good ones, at least.

The point is, gamers get plenty of socialization, and for a large part, do have lives. The thing people fail to understand is that gaming is part of their lives. A big part. And until people do understand, and accept that, the stereotype will stick. People fail to accept that killing bosses in WoW is as much socialization, as going to the movies with a group of friends is.

Ah, but the real question is, is it as valid a form of socialization? That, unfortunately, is a question for another day.

How Not to Write a Character, As Displayed by Altair

*Warning, the following will contain clips from the M rated games Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed 2, and Mass Effect 2. These scenes may contain language, violence, and blood. It will also feature heavy spoilers for Assassin's Creed, and Mass Effect 2, and minor spoilers for Assassin's Creed 2.*



I've spent the past week and a half or so playing the game Assassin's Creed. I finally beat it today, and while I will most likely review both the game and it's sequel, today I must comment on something specifically. That thing, is how Altair is exactly how NOT to write a character.

Let me give you an example.



That monotone voice, that cold, calculating attitude... These are things that, at first glance, you might think perfect for the character of an Assassin. It's not though. I know exactly what they were trying to get at here, they wanted to make Altair a, shall we say, bad"butt" (keeping it PG rated here.). They failed miserably. He doesn't seem like that because of that, in fact he seems like he's trying really really hard to SEEM like one. To borrow a quote from Mass Effect 2, "In my experience, the most dangerous people are the ones who don't act like it."

Let me now introduce Ezio, the main character of Assassin's Creed 2. Ezio is a young man (at the start at least, I'm not very far into AC2) who actually has a personality. Now, he's not going to win any awards for best character any time soon, but he's likable! He's your typical troublemaker. But you know what? He actually shows some sign of emotion. Including, obviously, when his family is hanged. He actually feels it. Unlike Altair, who shows absolutely no emotion at the end of the game upon learning that his master has betrayed the Assassins and been using him all along. He's just like, "Ok. Killing time."

But, surely, I hear you saying, I can't be complaining that the character of an Assassin is cold and calculating? Yes. I can. There's cold and calculating, and then there's robot. Let me give you an example of an Assassin who's a much better character, a much more human character, interesting since he's not a human at all.



Thane Krios. What a character. I suppose that's to be expected since it's a character from a Bioware game, and Bioware games writing is to normal games writing what the complete works of Shakespeare are to Twilight. Thane is an Assassin. A cold hearted (cold blooded, HEY-O!) killer. But he's also a complex individual. For one thing, he considers himself wicked, as you saw in that video. He considers himself a necessary evil, of course, but an evil nonetheless. He justifies what he does as that he's just a tool, a weapon, and that you don't blame a gun for shooting someone, you blame the person who uses it, and yet you have to wonder from his attitude whether he really believes that himself. He kills and he knows that what he does is wrong, but he's a very religious person as well.



Plus he's just plain cooler than Altair too.

Not to mention his relationship with his son. That's just... Well... Just watch.



Ok, c'mon, Captain Bailey is in this game for like 8 minutes, and he has more interesting of a character than Altair.

Thane is a complex multi-leveled character. He's not what you expect, and he surprises you time and time again. Thane is a good character. Heck, Thane is a great character.

Also, since I'm talking about ME2, I have to post this even though it's completely unrelated to anything.



In short, a good character is interesting. You can make almost anything a good character, and there's no excuse for not doing so. An Assassin can be cold and calculating, and still feel very human, and very sincere. Altair, however, feels like a robot. A robot with an American accent. In the 12th century holy lands. But that's a different rant altogether.

The Case Against Realism

Realism. It's a bit of a buzzword in the games industry right now. Realism means that a game is going to try to be as realistic as possible. There are two main ways that realism comes into effect. Graphics, and gameplay. Well you know what? I don't necessarily think that realism is what games need right now. We've finally reached a point where we can successfully make "Realistic" games, and what do we get? An endless wave of generic brown shooters.

Well you know what? Realism isn't needed. In fact, in my opinion, the importance we place on "realism" is one of the biggest hindrances in the genre right now on the way to crossing the threshold into art.

Graphics

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker was released in December of 2002 in Japan. It featured a highly stylized cel-shaded artistic style. The game was extremely dividing among critics and fans alike, many people hating it and calling the graphics "kiddy" and "cartoony" while others, such as myself, found it to be a gorgeous way of bypassing the limited technology available at the time.



The bright colors and smooth animations were well done, and the ocean looked excellent being a beautiful shade of blue.

Now let me compare that to a game released the next year with a more "realistic" art style. Knights of the Old Republic.

This game, released by Bioware, while completely BRILLIANT and featuring writing on par or superior to the original Star Wars trilogy, was more limited by technology.



Now, I love KOTOR. I love Wind Waker. Both are fantastic games. But looking at the two of them, one of them looks superior. Because of the style of Wind Waker, years later it's still a very good looking game, whereas KOTOR, while one of my all-time favorite games, hasn't held up nearly as well, even though it's a year younger.

The reason for this is a principle called "The Uncanny Valley".



The uncanny valley is a term that originated in robotics, and has since been applied to CGI images, be it movies, or video games. The idea is that there's a certain point where something looks real enough that it looks human, but because we know how humans are supposed to look instinctively from seeing them so much, we can tell it's not real. The result is something unsettling. The deeper into the uncanny valley you go, the more unsettling it is, until finally it's broken, and you can no longer tell it's not real. That's something that hasn't happened yet, I might add. Technology is getting close with movies like Avatar, and games like Heavy Rain, but it's not quite there yet. Some people actually theorize that the uncanny valley can NEVER be broken because of how the human mind perceives things. I personally think that uncanny valley will be broken within the next five to ten years, but it's very difficult to say for sure.

Which brings me to the way to avoid this. Stylization. If something, like Wind Waker, looks stylized enough that we automatically know it's not human, and isn't supposed to look human, we subconsciously get over the fact that it's trying to trick us, and can accept what the characters look like more easily.

Tl;dr, stylized things look better because they aren't supposed to look real, and realism is trying to. A failing.

Gameplay

Let me take two big name First Person Shooters, both of which I've mentioned before. Team Fortress 2, and Modern Warfare 2.

Modern Warfare 2, released last year, and sold well. In fact, if you're a mammal living in North America as of right now, you statistically own 2.3 copies of the game. The game features extremely realistic and brutal combat set in Iraq, among other places. Bobby Kotick made a billion dollars.



You know that swimming pool filled with money Scrooge McDuck has? Yeah, Bobby Kotick put one into his house last January.

But I digress.

The point, is that this game featured more "realistic" gameplay. It has real guns as weapons, and you're fighting the real people we're fighting in a war right now. It's very gritty, bloody, and serious.

Team Fortress 2, on the other hand, made by Valve, is one of my all time favorite games, and the only FPS I actually play. It's zany. Let me list some of the weapons this game has.

A Sandvich.

An automated turret gun.

A jar of pee.

A sniper rifle that shoots rockets.

A sword that can decapitate people, earning you more health.

A magic wrench that turns people to gold.

A gun that heals people.

Flamethrowers.

A baseball bat. And a baseball.

A can of soda.

In other words, it's anything but realistic. It features a graphical style that looks like old WWII propaganda posters, the game has a wicked sense of humor and doesn't take itself too seriously. The "story" of the game is only very loosely there, and in fact has only really been revealed via the hysterical TF2 Blog. Here goes.

Zephaniah Mann had two suns, Redmond and Blutarch who fought over everything. When he died, he left his company, Mann Co. to Barnabas Hale, a good friend, and told his sons to work out the land he owned between themselves. They ended up just hiring mercanaries to fight over the things though. After a hundred or so years of that though, they were both almost dead, so they hired a guy to build them both "Not Dyin' Machines" which would keep them alive until they could get the property they both felt they rightfully deserved.

We play the mercenaries. If you are red, you kill blus. If you are blu, you kill reds. You want to gain territory/company intelligence, depending on the game.

But the really great aspect, are the characters, who they've introduced through their "Meet the Class" series of videos.

*Warning some violence and blood in video. Highly stylized and exaggerated though.*


The game is anything but realistic, but it is incredibly fun.

The point is, realism does not equal good.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not against realism in games. But it's certainly not needed. There is a lot to be done before "realism" is perfected. And once it is... What's the point? I don't understand why realism should be so important. You know what's realistic? Real life. When I play games, I don't want realism all the time. Sometimes I just want to have fun.

Video Game Review - Mass Effect

Mass Effect is an action RPG released in 2007 by Bioware.

Mass Effect is a Sci-Fi epic that puts you into the shoes of Commander [Insert Name Here] Shepard, a sort of space commando. A hundred odd years from now, humanity finds ruins on mars that give us advanced technology to use relays left behind by an ancient race known as the Protheans, to explore the galaxy. What? No, it's not like Stargate at all!

I kid, I kid. A few years later than that Humanity meets another race of species known as Turians, and after a short war of misunderstanding, we find out that many races of the universe are piggybacking off an ancient Prothean space station known as the Citadel, and have built an interplanetary government.

30 years later...

At the start of the game you're on a simple mission to check in on a colony known as Eden Prime. Nothing out of the ordinary. You go there, check in on it, and the game ends. One star.


Only kidding! No, of course things on this mission aren't what they seem. In fact, a Turian who was assigned to your ship tells you he's part of a secret government organization (a really poorly kept secret, I might add) called the Spectres. Think of them as alien spy-commandos. He's seeing if you have what it takes to be the first Human Spectre, which would be a big step forward towards Humanity being accepted among the stars. An ancient Prothean beacon was found on the planet, and naturally you've been sent to pick up this extremely valuable object of near-unlimited knowledge from a completely undefended farming colony.

You can probably see where this is going.



Yeah.

Well, Evil McBadguy in this game is a rogue Spectre known as Saren who's brought an army of robots to DESTROY ZE UNIVERESE. He betrays the guy testing you, tries to blow up the planet, and before you know it through crazy antics you've ended up having a cache of Prothean knowledge transmitted into your head and then explode. The beacon I mean, not your head.

Although I tease, the story is nothing short of jaw-droppingly awesome. Of course, this is expected from the people who made a Star Wars game that has a storyline as good or better than the original trilogy.

Let me start off by saying that this is choice done right in games. You have two types of "points" given for your actions in the game, which you choose through dialogue wheels. "Paragon", or "Renegade". Paragon is the kind of person who has highest morals, and will not compromise those morals for anything. Ever. Renegade is the kind of guy who will get the job done no matter what. Whether that means mowing down civilians, or even worse, he will make sure nothing stands between him and the mission.

Now, notice that, unlike KOTOR, neither of these options are "Good" or "Bad". There's much more gray area. Let me give you an example. You're working for the police on the Citadel, and there's a guy who's selling illegal weapon mods to people. He's using a ton of grunts to make sure he's harder to track. You're told to go buy the mods from one of the grunts, to investigate them. Don't arrest him. Don't tip him off.

What do you do? Do you let the criminal you have now go free to get his boss later? Do you arrest this guy, thus tipping off his boss? Even further than that, should you take the law into your own hands and kill this criminal so he can't hurt anyone else? Which is the right answer? Which is the good answer? Is it ok to let a thief walk free to catch a murderer? How can you decide that? That's the kind of question that Mass Effect makes you think about. That's the kind of thing that makes games art.

Another key component is your companions. In your adventures through space, you meet a lot of interesting characters who'll join you on your quest to save the universe. They all have unique personalities, and unlike KOTOR (I'm looking at you Canderous.) there aren't any of them that I actually hate. You can talk to them and build relationships with them depending on what you do and say. You can even make googly eyes at some of the characters of the opposite gender, if you catch my drift. (An option I opted out from, my Commander Shepard being more of the guy who would punch you, than kiss you.)

All of the aliens are both cool looking, and have interesting history behind them, whether it be the Warrior race of Krogan, who are afflicted with a sterility plague, causing the race to slowly die out due to the fact that they can't reproduce, or the single-gendered Asari, who live for thousands of years, or even the nerdy yet awesome Salarians, they all look awesome, sound awesome, and are just generally awesome.

The combat is the best out of the Bioware games I've played, but then, Neverwinter Knights 2 and KOTOR's combat sucked, so that's not really saying much. It's your standard Third-Person Shooter over the shoulder style shoot-em-up. One interesting thing is the lack of an ammo meter, instead opting to give you an "accuracy meter" that decreases as you fire, and an indicator of how hot your weapon is. Should it get too hot, you have to let it cool down, which can be life-or-death during a gun fight. The combat is good, but not remarkable. Also, you can use forc- I mean, "biotic" powers.

Ok, now this is the part where I get nitpicky. First of all, while it's true the aliens look utterly breathtaking, the humans are deep in the uncanny valley. I promise you'll be spending a lot of time staring at their teeth and wondering why they are quite so far apart, or staring at their hair and wishing they would go get a haircut.

Also, while you're given the ability to create Commander Shepard however you want him/her to look, it's pretty much impossible to make him/her look like anything that could be called even remotely good. You're given about 7 hairstyles to pick from, and all of them are almost exactly the same. You can mess with sliders to change how his/her face is shaped, but it you can't rotate the camera until after you leave character creation, so basically you're guessing there. For example, I spent about 20 minutes tweaking every last detail of my Shepard, only to get him into the game and see that his eyebrows stuck out about two inches from the rest of his face, at which point I promptly went back to the main menu and started over.

The galaxy is massive, and you can explore dozens of planets, but most of them are empty and bare, and have nothing to do besides a few repetitive side missions which take you through tedious vehicle segments. The vehicle controls are easy to use, in the same sense that it's "easy" to stop a moving train with your face. And most the time that you're in the vehicles you'll be wishing you were trying to stop a train with your face because it might be less painful than driving slowly up a vertical cliff face, only to get two inches from the top, fall, and have to do it all over again.

It's almost as tedious as the elevators. OH THE ELEVATORS.



Ok. This is an open message to all game developers out there. I don't care if it's Nintendo, with your Metroid Prime doors that don't open, Bioware with these elevators, or any other number of other developers out there. Let me be plain.


STOP DISGUISING YOUR LOAD SCREENS. THE ELEVATORS ARE PAINFULLY BORING, YOU AREN'T FOOLING ANYONE, AND IT ACTUALLY INCREASES LOAD TIMES BECAUSE IT HAS TO RENDER THE FREAKING ELEVATOR AT THE SAME TIME IT LOAD WHATEVER ELSE IT'S DOING. LOAD SCREENS MAY BE INCONVENIENT, BUT AT LEAST THEY ARE HONEST, INSTEAD OF A SLOW MOVING ELEVATOR THAT I HAVE TO GO UP AND DOWN 80 BILLION TIMES THROUGH THE COURSE OF THE GAME.

Hmm. I feel better now.

Also, a slight note is that because the slider you have in the game doesn't say the full thing Shepard is going to say, it can sometimes be confusing exactly what will happen if you click something. For example, if a guy tells me to come with him, and I say no, maybe I didn't mean I should tell him to go to a certain place of extreme heat that is frequented by demons. Maybe I didn't mean to draw my gun and tell him I'd send him there myself. Maybe I just meant, no, but thank you for the offer, now can we all hold hand, pick flowers, and sing about friendship together?

Which brings me to the voice acting. Now, while 99.9% of the voice actors were pretty darn good, including the generic people on the street, and there were some awesome people listed in the cast, there was one big oversight in my opinion.

Shepard himself. The guy has no emotional range, He's either grumpy (neutral), less grumpy (paragon), or I'm going to shoot your face off and wear it like a mask psychopathic (renegade). I just didn't like the voice.

For all my nitpicking thought, I still LOVED the game. It wasn't perfect, but it still gave me a good ~20 hours of enjoyment, and the last 3 or so of those were sheer game storytelling nirvana. Nerdvana, if you will.

Speaking of the last 3 hours, the twist at the marker for when you have 3 hours left was one of the best I've ever seen. No, I didn't forget to add in a game there, we're talking Rosebud was the name of the sled, Bruce Willis a ghost the whole time, Snape kills Dumbledore megatwist awesomeness here. And around that same time, let me just say that there was a choice you had to make that was amazing. It wasn't a question of right and wrong. There was no right answer. But there were consequences. Major consequences.

So overall, it's a great game. Definately worth picking up, and definately worth playing through, because the good far outweighs the bad.

Buy this game if: You love epic storytelling on a grand scale, a unique universe, great characters, and some funny moments, and are willing to cope with a few annoying pieces to a great game.

Don't buy this game if: You have an irrational fear of elevators. You'll be spending a lot of time in them.

I Have Something Positive to Say, Shock and Awe Across the Room

I get a bit passionate about things sometimes. Anyone who's read any of my posts tagged "Stupid People Doing Stupid Things" probably knows this. And when it comes to gaming, I rant and rave a lot. A LOT. I don't lie about this.

Here's the thing though, I love gaming. For all of its faults, I really love gaming. Understand what I mean when I say that, I don't think gaming is a fun distraction, I'm really and truly passionate about gaming as an art form. I believe it's a great way for artists to express themselves, and place upon emotions unto others.

There's a line in Ratatouille, actually, that applies to this. Linguini (the garbage boy Remy teams up with) starts says to the food critic "You're awfully thin for a guy who likes food." and he replies, "I don't like food, I love food. If I don't love food, I won't swallow it."

A bit corny I suppose for me to liken my love of gaming to, but it's true. I only rant and rave so much, because for all of it's faults (*coughbobbykotickcough*) I think gaming is an amazing meld of art and technology.

It's hard sometimes too, when you see things like TRH or the Activision Vs. IW case, not to mention things like video games being accused of being made by Satan and also Voldemort, or some guy blaming games for all his problems.

Gaming has issues, and sometimes they overwhelm me to the point where I almost forget why I love gaming so much. But then there are moments like I had last night.

I've mentioned how much I love Portal many many times before. If you're reading this, you probably know I consider that short 3-6 hour game to be at least one of (maybe even the) best games ever created. I've got nothing but love for Portal. In fact, if you look at my time played on it in my Steam list, I have 51 hours played. It's a 3-6 hour game. So yeah, I've played it a bit. I've played it with the commentary (a feature more games should include.) I've played the challenge maps, I played through to find all the radios after the patch, all sorts of things.

Last night, a good friend of mine took advantage of the Portal giveaway (It's free until the 24th!) and I listened to him play through it over vent. I listened to someone just having a really great time, playing a really great game. It took me back to the first time I played through it, in one sitting, with a friend and I taking turns playing, and giving suggestions on what to do.

Consider this a micro-review of Portal. What I'm trying to say here is, the reason I love Portal so much, is that it's a bright shining gem of a game, in the dark swampland that is gaming today. Portal is what makes it worth it for me. I trudge through the waste that is Modern Warfare 2, and My Little Pony The Movie The Game, to get to games like Portal. They make it all worth it. That's why Portal is on my list of greatest games of all time, alongside games such as Warcraft 3, KOTOR, and Psychonauts. It makes up for the idiocy in the industry, and surrounding the industry. Because after I finally make my way through the wasteland of the games industry, I find beautiful oasis such as Portal, and I have a lot of fun. And that makes me love gaming.

It's Probably Better That He Takes A Shower And Gets Dressed Before He Goes Downstairs Anyways

*Spoilers for 3 games you should have played by now, Psychonauts, Knights of the Old Republic, and InFamous follow.*

I know I already covered what an idiotic statement Ebert made, but there is one quote that's still bugging me I didn't cover.

"One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them."

Now, normally, I wouldn't be bothered by that quote. I would dismiss it as an old guy's misunderstanding of how games work, or just not understanding how a work of art could have an objective. But it does bother me, because he's not the only person I've heard say that. In fact, a friend of mine said to me (I'm quoting from memory, because it was quite awhile ago) something very similar when I first suggested that games could be art.

"I find it hard to accept games as an art form, because the story is driven by the player, and in film, or literature, the story is driven by the author, or filmmakers."

I've heard that many times over. How can games be a valid medium of storytelling, when the player progresses the plot? It troubles me that people think that way, because in most cases that's simply not true.

The first problem, is that people don't understand the difference between problems and choices. I'll let Daniel Floyd cover that, since I would really just end up spouting his opinion again, paraphrased.



See, the thing is, most games stories aren't progressed by the player. The player just goes through a set of problems to see more bits of a story. Let me give you an example in the form of one of my personal favorite games to bring up, Psychonauts.

Psychonauts is a great game, easily one of my favorite games of all time. It's not without it's faults, but it has an excellent story. But the thing is, no matter what you do, the story is the same.

At the beginning of the game, you are introduced to your character, Raz, a young psychic who ran away from the circus to go to a secret government run summer camp for psychics. After an opening cutscene, you are told to go to the Coach to go through "basic braining". So what happens if you choose not to? What happens if you choose to run over to explore the camp? You can't. You're blocked. You cannot progress until you finish basic braining.

After that, you have to get power X in order to overcome obstacle Y, and power X is only found in level Z. Or, later on, you find yourself at an abandoned mental hospital, and you can't progress until you help all the left behind inmates, and get something from each of them.

This happens over and over again in pretty much every game. Even games that claim to give you high degrees of choice use this method to control the story. Here's an example: The game "Heavy Rain" for the PS3 kept talking about how much choice it gave you. Throughout the game, it would give you so much choice that you could in fact screw up, and one of the four main characters might die and disappear for the rest of the game. Of course, as soon as you start the game, this happens.



Right there, a choice is denied. The story says you take a shower and get dressed before you go downstairs, so you do. You have no choice in the matter. You can keep attempting to go downstairs all day, you won't manage to do it. You character will keep stopping himself.

Let me give you another example, this one a little more free. The game InFamous. While the plot is really awful in that particular game, being saved only by the sheer ridiculousness of it all (Trash robots. What.), it does give me a good example of another type of limit given in more free roaming, sandbox games.

In this game, you're given all your missions by people on the phone. At any time, you can stop doing missions and just go mess around for awhile. Blow up cars, terrorize civilians, whatever you like. It's darn good fun too. But of course, you won't get further in the story until you do the mission you were already given. The power won't return to more parts of the city until you get to the point in the story where it is. You can go to the sewer grates where you need to go to restore power, but you can't go in unless you're at that point in the story.

Of course this game gives me another good example of how storytelling is actually quite linear in these games. "Choice" in games. In InFamous you get choices that affect your powers, and to a point the plot. The thing is, these choices are pretty simple. An example comes early in the game, when supplies have just been dropped into the quarentined city the game takes place in. You have to the choice to A. Zap the pedestrians who are swarming the crates, and take all the food for yourself, or B. Let them eat the food, and get almost none for yourself. As you can see, these choices are pretty simple "Am I Hitler, or Mother Theresa" choices. You're either evil, or good. No middle ground.

Throughout the whole game you get these choices, but none of them really matter in the end. Let me give you an example, toward the end, Kessler, the villain of the game has your girlfriend, Trish, kidnapped. He has her suspended on top of a skyscraper, and she'll be released in a moment, killing her. On the tower next to that skyscraper are 7 doctors, on the same mechanism, with the same timer. You can only save one. So you have the choice of good (Save the doctors) or evil (save your girlfriend).

At first it might look like a real choice. You can either keep you girlfriend in the plot, or let her die, right? Well no. If you choose to save the doctors, she falls and dies, that's true. If choose to save her though, you find that the woman on the tower was another girl in a wig, and Trish was actually one of the 7 doctors, and she falls and dies. Either way you end the same way, Trish is dead, and Cole hates Kessler even more, leading up to the climactic battle with him at the end of the game.

*FINAL CINEMATIC. DO NOT WATCH THE VIDEO IF YOU PLAN ON PLAYING INFAMOUS.*



No, the ending doesn't make any more sense in context. But that's beside the point, the point is that either way you play ends the same way. You still find out who Kessler actually is. You still end up friendless and alone. Basically the only thing different is your attitude about the whole thing.

Of course, games that have choices that really matter within the story do exist. A prime example is Bioware's Star Wars epic, Knights of the Old Republic. Knights of the Old Republic gives you many choices in your search for what's called the Star Forge. You make choices to either be good or evil, and while for the most part they're still about as subtle as "Do I save this kitten from a tree or eat its soul?", they actually do make a difference toward the end of the game. At the very end many things will happen depending on dozens of choices, even ones past the simple "Good vs. Evil" choices you made. Did you convince the Jedi Bastila to give in to her passion and fall in love with you? Then you can convince her to leave the dark side and help you in your battle with Malak. Or maybe you just told her she can be your queen of the sith once Malak is dead? Either way, the ending does change quite drastically.

*Spoilers. Duh.*

Dark Side Ending

Light Side Ending

Either way, you're getting a story. It's just a different story than you might have gotten had you made other choices. I just don't understand why people don't think anything where you drive the story can't be art, when it most certainly can.

Video Games CAN Be Art, Mr. Ebert.

Roger Ebert. This is probably a name you know fairly well. He's a film critic, very well known and respected. And rightly so. He's a good critic. Few would contest this. But recently he wrote a post I disagree with wholeheartedly.

Video games can never be art.

Now, I'm sure no one reading this is surprised that I'm not exactly in agreement with this statement. Video games are my passion. I love playing them, I love the community surrounding them, and I love the heated debate surrounding whether or not they can be art. And anyone who's read this blog, or knows me in real life, knows that I could not lean further toward the side of games being art.

Ebert actually first made that statement several years ago if I recall correctly. But this is the first time he's really cared to elaborate on it. This post was written as a response to a lecture given at TED. The video is about 15 minutes long, and if you have time I recommend watching it.




Now, let me start off by saying you're right. All three of the games she hit upon do not seem like art (for the reasons she listed, at least.) to me. Admittedly, the only one I've played is Braid, but Waco Resurrection is rather disturbing to be honest, and as I said, I haven't played Flower, so I don't feel qualified to comment on it. That would be like reviewing a movie after watching the trailer.

But what I think she was getting at (and take this with a grain of salt, since I haven't actually played the game) is that Waco Resurrection actually puts you into the shoes of someone else (Not someone whose shoes I'd especially like to be in, but still.), actually forcing you to say "I am David Koresh" in order to start the game. And while movies or books can make you relate to someone, sympathizing with them, or even cause you to hate them, the interactivity of Games can actually make you them. This hasn't really been demonstrated well by most games yet, but at this point games really are a new medium, a new artistic form in it's infancy. It needs time to grow.

And I'm not saying I think that Waco Resurrection did it especially well either. From the looks of things, it seemed as if it was trying to hard to pass itself off as art, without actually being art.

Now, as I said, the only one of the games I actually have played is Braid. And I wouldn't especially call that art, at least for the reasons she listed, either. To be honest, you're completely correct. Braid had about as good of storytelling as a fortune cookie. Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of Zero Punctuation game reviews (As notorious for it's harsh criticism as it is for it's harsh language.) had this to say on the story:

"There is a story, although there might as well not be. I've always said the best stories are the ones that merge seamlessly with the gameplay, and in Braid they're kept in separate rooms, with you in the gameplay room looking into the story room through a tiny hole in a wall. Most of it is about some guy looking for a princess, or maybe she's his estranged wife, or his dead daughter, or the atomic bomb. Who knows?"

To be honest, I didn't find Braid as brilliant as most people did. I found it to be a fun puzzle game, with absolutely no penalty for death. It was fun to try and figure the puzzles out, but the story was horrible, and it felt like it was trying way too hard to be a game that would be considered art. I enjoyed the game, but didn't feel it was the flagship for the "Games are art" navy as most gamers seemed to.

So now I sound like I'm saying games can't be art. But that's not what I'm getting at, I just don't think her choices as to games that ARE art are good choices. What games are art? What games are, as you put it, able to be mentioned in the same breath as Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, and countless other brilliant authors? Well, to be honest, there isn't a game that's quite able to live up to that standard yet.

But there are a few games I've played that I felt broke the barrier. Just barely crossing over into the realm of games being art, but nonetheless, have. And the main one, is Portal.

I've spoken about Portal before. Portal was a FPP (First Person Puzzler) made in 2007 by Valve, and I consider it one of, if not the, greatest games of all time. Portal did so many things right, that other games have not managed. The gameplay was amazing of course, but that's not what made it art. What made it art was the relationship between you and GLaDOS.

When the game begins you wake up in a small room, listening to a computerized voice introducing itself to you and explaining that you are a test subject for a company named Aperture Science, and it's new invention the Portal gun. The Portal gun can alter reality to make a small wormhole linking two portals together, letting you walk through one and exit out the other.

The first thing about this game is that it succeeded where many other games have failed by really making you feel as though YOU are the test subject. Not Nathan Drake, not Mario, not Master Chief, YOU. In fact, it's very possible to go through the entire game without seeing your character, Chell.



In fact, nothing is known about Chell. The only reason we know her name is because she was listed in the credits. GLaDOS never says anything about "Hello Chell". No, she is talking to you. You are Chell.

As you progress through the test chambers, you notice the tests are getting more and more strange, and dangerous, and GLaDOS (Short for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), the omnipotent computer voice guiding you is become more and more odd. It becomes more and more eccentric, and begins to expose you to more and more danger. Some of her quotes are quite funny, but dark.

"Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death. "

She becomes more and more hostile, and causes you to do more strange thing.

Then they introduce the Weighted Companion Cube. A small box. That's all it is, is a box with hearts painted to it. And yet, millions of gamers have fallen in love with that box. It saved you. It helped you. GLaDOS made it your friend.



And then you reach the end of the chamber. So of course GLaDOS makes you incinerate it at the end of the chamber.

"While it has been a faithful companion, your Companion Cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it, because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you. "

You can't progress until you do. You can stay there as long as you want, but you have to make the conscious choice to murder the companion cube, the only friend you have in the chambers, in order to continue. GLaDOS comforts you, "Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture Science engineers believe that the companion cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain."

When you finally do burn it up, yes, you feel a little guilty that you murdered your only friend in this whole place. GLaDOS commends you though, "You euthanised your faithful companion cube more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations."

When you finally do reach the final test, surprise surprise, GLaDOS tries to murder you. She sends you on a moving platform into a fire pit. You escape, just barely with your Portals, and from that point on the game changes. No longer are you in clean, pristine test chambers, now you are running for your life through dirty corridors, and machinery. And yet you still always have GLaDOS there, taunting you.

"You are not a good person. You know that, right? Good people don't end up here."

Perhaps she's right, why would you end up in a place like that if you were a good person? This part of the game always manages to tell you why you're doing what you're doing without the World of Warcraft or Braid style of cookie fortune storytelling. No text boxes pop open saying "This is why you are doing this.", but you always know what you're looking for. Freedom. She's trying to kill you, and these level inspire a feeling of nervousness, fear, anger, and maybe other emotions inside of you. I imagine it's different for different people, but nonetheless, it's quite good storytelling.

Eventually you end up finding GLaDOS.



What ensues is probably one of the most memorable moments in any Video Games ever.

"Well, you found me. Congratulations. Was it worth it? Because despite your violent behavior, the only thing you've managed to break so far is my heart. Maybe you could settle for that, and we'll just call it a day. I guess we both know that isn't going to happen."

And so you fight GLaDOS. The boss fight itself isn't all that interesting, it's fun to be sure, but not that interesting. You are given a time limit to redirect rockets at her and burn up different pieces of her like you burned up the Companion Cube. Poetic justice, I suppose.

And then there's this little ditty, as the end credits roll:



At first this just sounds like a humorous song setting up a sequel. (She's Still Alive!) But I really think there's deeper meaning in it. Other bloggers have disassembled the song before, but the most interesting lyrics in the song are the last line: "When you're dying I'll be still alive, when you're dead I will be still alive, still alive, still alive."

Now this is where I get into speculation.

Some people take that as a threat to Chell, a sort of "I'm coming for you.". But I disagree. I think the real meaning is a sort of acceptance. I think that the entire game was GLaDOS's way of trying to die. She was suicidal, in a big abandoned facility, all alone. She wanted to die. She wanted to be free. But she couldn't kill herself, likely because of a self preservation program. So she cloned you, Chell (Chell being a reference, obviously, to the sheep.), to try and kill her. Even the player's death in the game is explained by this. GLaDOS would just keep reviving you until you got it right and killed her. If this is true, then that line would not be a threat, but instead acceptance. She can't die. She understands that now.

That same blog I linked to earlier did a whole series on GLaDOS, and drew something interesting on his interpretation of GLaDOS. When he sees GLaDOS, this is what he sees:



I think I can agree with that. She's trapped.

Mr. Ebert, I don't care what you say, GLaDOS is one of the most interesting villains of all time. No, I didn't say video game villains, I said villains. She is fascinating, so much that people like me, or the guy who's blog I linked to have broken her down many times before. And if a game can have a character that interesting, I think games can be art. Portal is proof. Portal is art. It may not be comparable to Shakespeare or Dickens, but it has broken the barrier from being just entertainment, into being art. It's paving the way.

So sir you're right. The three games she pointed out in her lecture as proof of games as art are rather pathetic attempts. In fact, while she raised some good points, her lecture did fall flat. In fact, I felt like she was patting herself on the back for Flower, considering she was from the company that made Flower.

Allow me to explain something to you though. You asked

"Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never said they thought their games were an art form. Nor did Shi Hua Chen, winner of the $500,000 World Series of Mah Jong in 2009. Why aren't gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves? They have my blessing, not that they care.

Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, 'I'm studying a great form of art?' Then let them say it, if it makes them happy."

No. That isn't why. I did a three part series called "Why I Care" that answers that exact question. It's the same reason why I suspect you would defend film as an art form.

So Mr. Ebert, although I have no illusion that you'll ever actually read this, I'm not nearly that important, the ball is in your court.