Braid

Games of the Month posted,

Games of the Month - November 2009

	1. Dragon Age: Origins Xbox 360, PS3, PC - November 3rd, RPG
	2. LEGO Rock Band Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, DS - November 3rd, Rhythm
	3. Band Hero November 3rd, Rhythm
	4. Rabbids Go Home Wii, DS - November 6th, 3rd person Adventure
	5. Excitebike World Rally Wii - November 9th, Racing
	6. Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360, PS3, PC - November 10th, FPS
	7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized DS - November 10th,
	8. Dragon Ball: Raging Blast Xbox 360, PS3, Wii - November 10th, Beat em' up Action/Adventure
	9. Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 Xbox 360, PS3, Wii - November 10th, Soccer
	10. Shaun White Snowboarding: World Stage Wii - November 10th, Snowboarding
	11. Braid PSN - November 12th, Side Scrolling Platformer
	12. New Super Mario Bros. Wii Wii - November 15th, Platformer
	13. Assassin's Creed II Xbox 360, PS3 - November 17th (PC - Q1 2010), 3rd person Action/Adventure
	14. Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines PSP - November 17th, 3rd person Action/Adventure
	15. LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues Wii - November 17th, 3rd person Adventure
	16. Left 4 Dead 2 Xbox 360, PC - November 17th, FPS
	17. Assassin's Creed II: Discovery DS - November 17th, 3rd person Action/Adventure
	18. God of War Collection PS3 - November 17th, 3rd person Action/Adventure
	19. Tony Hawk: RIDE Xbox 360, PS3, Wii - November 17th, Skateboarding
	20. Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles Wii - November 17th, Rail Shooter
	21. LittleBigPlanet PSP PSP - November 17th, Platformer
	22. Stoked: Big Air Edition Xbox 360 - November 24th, Snowboarding

 

The video game industry is an ever-growing industry in this world. Probably no one in the past could've guessed that it would surpassed the movie industry in the amount of money each made. But there is a lot more underneath. Your average consumer will think that all that gaming consists of is big titles like “Halo” and “Call of Duty. But no, there is a lot more. In my mind, there are three categories that video games fall in: indie games that are free but you can donate to, indie games that you need to buy, and commercial games.

There are plenty of indie games that are available for free on the internet. But you also have the option to donate to the developer so you can help out the developer. A good example of an indie game you can donate to is Jason Rohrer's game “Passage”. “Passage” is a little 5 minute game. But in those 5 minutes, some amazing things happens. Basically, this game is about life. There are so many little symbols throughout the game that point towards a life-like situation. In this game, you control your character (and a wife, if you choose). If you choose to take along the wife, your points as you progress will double. But you won't be able to move in some areas. It is truly a risk and reward situation and shows how being married can be limiting. In the beginning, the right side of the screen is blurry, as in your future is not certain. But as you move through this maze of sorts, you progressively grow older. Once that happen, the right side clears up, but the left side gets blurry, as in you're forgetting your past. Towards the end, if you take the wife, she dies before you do. It is obvious that your old, decrepit, avatar has little time left. Even though the graphics are pixels, the player can tell that he is saddened by his loss.

Now a normal video game player might not think this is any special. But of course it is. There is no video game out in stores that are as moving as this game potentially is. Was I moved? Of course I was! Now here is the sad fact: Jason Rohrer has to work for Cambell's Soup to feed his family. And we pay $60 for a game at a store for the chance that it might be good... but we won't donate $5 to a developer that makes a product that deserves it.

This leads to the second category of games: indie games you have to pay for no matter what. With the growth in digital distribution services (such as Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and Playstation Store), there have been a bunch of indie developers making games for this platform. A good example of this is Jonathan Blow's game “Braid”. During the game's three year developmental period, Jonathan Blow put $200,000 of his own money to make this game happen. Most of the money went to hiring David Hellmen to do the artwork. Good thing that he did, because this game is basically art. Everything has a watercolor-esque look to it. But this game was the first indie game to appear on services such as this. “Braid” was immensely popular and many developers followed in their path. That is probably the most important part of “Braid” is that it proved that you don't need to be a big corporation with a big team to be a success.

Which has us move on to my third category: commercial games. These are the games that you go to basically any store and buy from the counter. These are the games you see a twelve-year boy cry to his mommy to get. The absolute prime example for these types of games is Bungie's cash cow “Halo 3”. This is the pinnacle of commercial games. Not because it is any good (because in my opinion it is not). But because it made so much money. According to Giant Bomb's Halo 3 page, “Halo 3 was released on September 25, 2007, and quickly became one of the Xbox 360's first system-sellers, making an astounding $300 million during the first week of its release and going on to eventually sell over 8 million copies.” What confuses me is that this game has diminished in quality compared to the games before it in the series. In fact, you can say that about a lot of commercial games. I feel that a lot of games are basically the same. They are all basically a macho man's dream, full of guns and gore.

So this leads to my classification of these categories. If I were to rank them based on which will be more relevant in the future, indie games you can donate to would be on top, followed by indie games for pay and then commercial games. Why do I say this? I say this because, a long time from now, I will remember the artistically relevant games that cost a very minimal amount that the many power-fantasy that people buy for too high of a price. Games today (like Halo 3 and Gears of War) are just mindless entertainment and are completely juvenile. Games like Daisuke Amaya's game “Cave Story” have proved that games don't need to have big budgets or huge teams developing the game to be a stellar title. It had a low budget and one person doing the whole game!

In conclusion, I prefer indie games because they aren't mindless and boring. Commercial video games are all turning into the same thing. Imagine if all the big movies from here on out were romantic comedies. Would anyone seriously enjoy that? I'm pretty sure no one would. This is why indie developers deserved your cash more than the big corporations of the world do.

Epic

  It's a common word in videogame circles. Whether it's: "That was a fukkin epic boss battle", or "Bioware is looking to tell an epic story of good vs evil in Dragon Age: Origins", or any of the other myriad of uses, it's clearly a powerful term in the industry. Hell, there's even a company named after it. Unfortunately, it seems epic as a buzzword has gained a little too much cache nowadays, especially in regards to storytelling. Developers have no restraint to their ambitions-- whole franchises are created around a game before it even launches. Comic book tie-ins, animated movies, online ARGs, it goes on. All because the developer wants to whet your appetite for the "epic" story their game will allegedly tell (They also enjoy your cash monies). You have things as ludicrous as Bioware announcing the entire Mass Effect Trilogy at once. Developers feel obligated to tell a huge epic story, almost as a way of justifying themselves to gamers. Only problem?
 
They're not very good at it, and we have too many of them. Very few people can pull off a Star Wars or a Lord of the Rings. Those things are great when they're done right: fresh, grand, and entertaining. However, if it's not done just right, your story feels flat and boring.
 
There's nothing inherently wrong with an epic story, don't get me wrong. It's just not the only kind of story you can tell, something the videogame industry seems to have forgotten. Novels, movies, TV shows, plays, and all other forms of popular media vary wildly in theme, tone, scope, and focus. Games are a much narrower spectrum. Partially this is due to having to construct gameplay around your story-- the videogame equivalent of a romantic comedy is a long ways off, because no one has figured out how to make that fun to play. However, gameplay can't be entirely blamed for the death of unique and creative stories in games. There's plenty that can be done with the existing tools that simply isn't done.
 
One of my favorite games in recent memory, Hotel Dusk: Room 215, takes place entirely within a two-floor hotel, dealing with a very small cast of characters. The story isn't very epic, and it's told very conservatively- no sweeping orchestral score, there's no voice acting, and the character portraits are only lightly animated (they are nicely stylized though). Hotel Dusk succeeds because it went for a smaller, more contained story as opposed to what seems to be the status quo nowadays of epic, galaxy changing chronologies. It builds an interesting and layered cast of characters, puts a gameplay mechanic around them, and simply tells a small, personal story about this hotel in a satisfying way. It's fantastic. I wouldn't trade Hotel Dusk for twenty Halo's.
 
Small stories are great. Often, I find them more enjoyable than the sweeping epics. Mad Men, a show I've been making my way through recently, is about 60's advertising executives. Sounds boring as hell at first glance, but it's actually really very interesting in terms of characters and as a period piece. There's nothing (or very, very little) equivalent in videogames. When people lament the lack of creativity in videogame stories, they want more diversity, not more scale. Developers become caught up in the idea of players only liking epic stories (because that's what sells, or that's what metacritic says, or whatever their rationale), and then they become convinced they have to make an epic story themselves. If their game succeeds, the cycle perpetuates.
 
The problem is that companies see story in games as a binary choice: little to no story, or a grand epic. "Epic or bust". Really, this is a losing deal for both us and them. As gamers we get very little diversity, and a ton of poorly-told epics. For developers, they have to put much more money and effort into their stories by hiring big-name writers and having to script cinematics, and then risk the game failing and not recouping investment. Smaller scale means more profit, as long as you can attract much of the same audience. It also allows for a tighter, more focused experience, and possibly a higher level of quality.
 
While epic or bust is indeed still the prevailing attitude in the industry, there is some hope. Bungie actually, who were on the forefront of this movement with the Halo trilogy, looks to be setting an interesting example with Halo 3: ODST. Built off of the existing Halo 3 engine by a small team, ODST looks to cut back on the grand space opera and focus instead on a more human experience. As The Rookie, your only objective is to find out what happened to your squadmates while you were knocked out. Bungie has described the game as a film-noirish tale with smaller stakes than previous games. That's fantastic to hear, a big studio doing a smaller story-- of course, Bungie is also doing Halo: Reach, which looks to be seven kinds of epic, so they're clearly hedging their bets. Still though, it's an encouraging example in a market filled with far too little of little stories.
 
If videogames ever want to be taken seriously as a method for storytelling, they will need to diversify. This obsession with "epic" is a juvenile phase that will need to pass. Obviously, there are hurdles associated with changing the status quo, but nothing good comes without effort. Braid last year was a great example of a successful story that felt no need to be epic, or even easily approachable. Unfortunately though, such games are few and far between. Chances are, if a game's had much effort at all put into story, the developer is shooting for an epic. And put quite simply: there's more to storytelling than being epic. And games need to understand that.

365 Games To Play Before You Die

A couple of newer games today which I consider to be future classics.

Previous 5 Games

#23: DOOM
#24: MDK
#25: The Operative: No One Lives Forever
#26: Far Cry
#27: Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

#28: Braid

Platform(s): XBLA, PC and PSN (eventually)
Release: 2008
Developer(s): Number None
Best Quote: 'Now we are all sons of Bitches'
GB Wiki Page

When Braid fist came out and everybody was giving it rave reviews and saying how it proves gaming is an art form I was bit skeptical. Even Ryan's 5 star review didn't have me fully convinced and I still thought that Braid looked too pretentious. A year later the game was released on PC and I thought it was time to see if people were overhyping something that actually wasn't that great. Now I'm ready to admit that I was wrong in doubting all those people. Mostly.

Braid is truly a special game. It doesn't force itself to be something it's not to appeal to a mass audience and it's a game which is telling the story, what the story actually is about is left to the interpretation of the player. What elevates Braid from other games with great stories is that the gameplay is intrinsically tied to the plot and that is something which isn't seen much.

People go on about Braid as the 'art' game (along with the two other most commonly refereed to 'art' games: Shadow of the Colossus and BioShock) but to me it doesn't really matter. That's because it's just an amazing experience which weaves story with gameplay so seamlessly and is still a great puzzle game.
 
 

#29: Left 4 Dead

Platform(s): PC and Xbox 360
Release: 2008
Developer(s): Valve
Best Quote: 'Pills here!'
GB Wiki Page

Controversial? Not really. Too soon? Not soon enough. Left 4 Dead may be less then a year old and getting a sequel in a few months but it has already become one of my all time favourite games. It's games based on zombies (infected if you want to be accurate), which everybody loves and it's in co-op, the most fun way to play a game.

L4D is just the perfect co-op game. Each character is instantly recognisable and so are all of the boss infected with there individual groans and screeches. The levels may not be very long but with AI director you get different experience. Even now I still get surprised at what's thrown at me as it never happened before.

I'm also excited for Left 4 Dead 2. It may be a year since the original's release but it looks like Valve are adding a substantial amount of new content and completely relocating the game, which sounds great to me.

#30: Mass Effect

Platform(s): Xbox 360 and PC
Release: 2007
Developer(s): BioWare
Best Quote: Asari Councillor: Commander, Is this some kind of game? Are you calling in a report just so you can cut us off again?
                      Commander Shepard: You know it.
                       [disconnects communication]
                      Joker: That never gets old, does it?
GB Wiki Page

BioWare know there RPGs and they know how to make a good story to, as seen in KOTOR. So it's no surprise that Mass Effect is one of, if not the, best RPGs fo this generation. It has all the BioWare staples from player choice to an engaging story and very fleshed out world (seriously, I gave up on the codex and reading all the planet descriptions but it's nice that it's there).

I'm always attracted to a game with a good story so ME was game that immediately drew me in so when I got my 360 it was one the first games I picked up. As in other BioWare game you get choices over your actions but this time they have a much more direct impact over your story and the character involved. That's my favourite part of ME, seeing how your actions effect the course of your adventure.

Another big reason that I picked up ME was the fact that your story would carry over to Mass Effect 2. I haven't seen many games do this so I really hope that this turns out to be something substantial and not just that my character model is the same. I'm currently on my second playthrough and the recent signs of new dlc is good for me as I'm trying to reach level 60 and a lot of side missions can get repetitive (I've got Bring Down the Sky and even that just feels like a longer version of an ordinary side mission) so this will help me on my way.

#31: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Platform(s): PC, Xbox 360, PS3, DS and soon on Wii
Release: 2007
Developer(s): Infinity Ward
Best Quote: 'Cost of a single B-2 Bomber: $2.2 Billion'
GB Wiki Page

What's there to say. You've all probably played this game already because it sold over 13 million copies and it's a brilliant FPS. While the other Call of Duties were fun COD4 took the series to bigger and better places by having a fast paced story and engaging multiplayer mode.

I only really played the single player part of the game because the multiplayer aspect was not the kind I like, not to say that it's bad because it's use of levelling up and perks are cool features. The single player itself was enough to satisfy me. It's so relentlessly fast paced and before you know it your in another country playing a different character but still have a hell of a lot of fun. The variation in levels is also perfect. While you have most of the normal run and gun section there's also the memorable guile suite level and the just as memorable bomber section.

While I still prefer FPSs like Half-Life to the COD series it's still an amazing game and I can't complain when other games are using it as a mold because I'd rather they copy COD4 then some other crappy game.

31 down 334 to go.

  A few notes.

• Third year of med school is amazing. Extremely busy, but amazing.
• Rock Band 2 (360) is still awesome and my friends are still obsessed with playing it every time they come over.
• Braid (XBLA) is a beautifully challenging game that has given me two moments of intense satisfaction: 1) Solving all 60 puzzle pieces on my own; 2) Beating the challenge time for the speed run.
• Ikaruga (XBLA) is tough.

 
`Nick

Why do we game? Why do we spend many hours of our precious time and money, to get better and be hip with newest equipment, when there so many other things to do in life, equally fulfilling and even cheaper? 
 
Personally I think it is because of something more. We are willing to spend the money and time, because we feel that we are getting better and better at what we do. Instead of always watching a movie, or listening to music, we actually get to do both, and we are essential to the momentum of the game. It progresses through our input, not anybody else's. It is like having a blank canvas, and get to smother it with paint. 
 
To illustrate my point, I would like to point my finger at Braid, a game I find so strangely attracted by. It seems odd, compared to so many other grand games that  have caught my eye and who seem a lot more able with their full 3D Unreal-Engine and all. But when I first laid my hands on that 2D-scrolling puzzle platformer, I felt nostalgia.  I thought back on all those nights when I worked hard on getting through Super Mario on GameBoy. Super Mario is a lost cause for me now, and no game with Mario would ever make me feel the same way. But the important thing is that Braid seemed like that game. The spiritual succesor to the Mario game from my childhood. 

The recent announcement of a new game from Jonathan Blow brings up something that I find rather bothersome.  He insists (as do many gamers) that his work is philosophical.  This claim, as is applied to games like Braid and Bioshock is horse-shit.
 
What was the philosophy in Braid?  Pretentiously ambiguous drivel?  Convolution for its own sake?  Ham-fisted, self-ascribed significance?  Do people who use this description even have a rudimentary understanding of what it means?  It seems to me that gamers use the "philosophical" label anytime something arises with more depth than Peggle in hopes that it will be taken more seriously.
 
In spite of Blow's self-aggrandizing take on his work, and the monumental pretension that surrounds it, Braid was a great game.  It had a solid atmosphere and an interesting approach to storytelling (hackneyed, but certainly interesting).  But does this amount to philosophy?  
 
Another game that regularly gets praised through the misapplication of this label is Bioshock.  The collective hard-on of gamers over the story is, at least to me, rather embarassing for our culture.  It was a fun game and little more.  The story was crap.  Granted, the storytelling was spot-on, but is there really anything impressive about a standard and predictable dystopia?  Is our culture so bankrupt that something this lacking in any originality qualifies as brilliance?  Defenders often cite the Randian influence throughout the game.  Aside from the fact that Rand was a poor excuse for a philosopher and never said anything remotely original, I've yet to find someone who makes this claim and is able to support it.  What ideas and tennets of a philosophy does Bioshock's cliched dystopia convey?  What aspect of the game is evocative of objectivism?  Is it the hand bees?
 
Gamers, it seems, are so desperate for their hobby to be taken seriously that they will fumble to ascribe characteristics they do not understand.  "Philosophical" is not a synonym for "meaningful," and the insistance of gamers on ignoring this fact makes them look just as silly as the twats who made a fuss over The Matrix (which at least related to a philosophical construct while containing no genuine philosophy).  
 
While I found the stories in these games to be vacuous crap, that is just a matter of taste (in that I have some).  There are certainly games out there with stories that are meaningful and thought-provoking.  There are well-handled relationship dynamics, social commentaries, and intellectually engaging premises.  None of that means a game is philosophical.  We can enjoy these games and tout the games-as-art line as much as we like without invoking a pretentious label just to sound sophisticated. 

Why do I let this happen?

It always seems that when I get to the point of finishing games and saying 'alright, ill get back to mopping up some achievements now', I get bored and throw down some money for another game or two.

Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition was always a given for me, so I just had to pick that up. I added 2k points to my XBLA account and downloaded away. You can read my thoughts in my review, but in shorthand, it's basically exactly the same game that looks and sounds better. It's also my first S rank on Giant Bomb achievements (when the site synchs them properly)! I know, it's an arcade game and the achievements are piss easy, but hey, at least it's getting me closer to the 10k milestone.

With 1400pts burning a hole in my marketplace account, I purchased Braid after alot of um'ing and ah'ing. Turned out to be worth it. The puzzles are really creative and satisfying, even though a couple (Fickle Companion, grrrr) feel a little buggy sometimes. I didn't get around to collecting all those secret stars, but completing the game was good enough for me. I'll add it to the ever-growing list of games I 'need to get back and finish off'.

In a move somewhat out of character, I was considering purchase of Battlefield 1943. I've never really been too into FPS over the years, but the demo sorta reeled me in. I wanted to play more when my 30 mins of trial time ran out, so I bunged on another 1k points and unlocked the full game. It's actually my first ever squad-based shooter, and it's quickly growing on me. After watching the Quicklook, I'm a bit surprised at how chummy the community actually is sometimes. Sure, there are dudes that steal all the planes only to pop up having suicided about a minute later, but for every one of those there are randoms that will reverse their jeeps so you can hop in. I don't know if there's a problem with the voicechat in that game, but I hardly hear anyone talking... Maybe that's a good thing.

All my friends are trying out Aion, and even though I have a beta key and got a toon to level 20 last preview weekend, I haven't played it much at all this time around. Aion is a Korean game, no question. the grind in the 1.0 version of the game they're using for beta is terrible, and it's made worse by the fact that it takes ten years to actually kill anything. I used to be able to play MMO's til I fell asleep in my chair, but I get the feeling that in the scant 5 months that I've had an XBOX360 that my gaming habits are taking a bit of a turn. I've become somewhat of an achievement whore and I downloaded a multiplayer only FPS...

Why do I let this happen?