Note: I spent months working on this review to brush up on my writing abilities, and it turned out to be a long, disjointed mess. It's so bad that I don't even want to post it as a user review on the Fallout 4 page. I decided to post it here on my personal blog anyway to serve as an example of how not to write a review.

Huh. The Wasteland sure is brighter and more saturated than I expected.

I like it, though, at least on the surface. Sure, the gritty, irradiated green tint of Fallout 3’s Capitol Wasteland made more sense for a post-apocalyptic milieu, but the colorful Commonwealth is more inviting and pleasant to look at. On the other hand, if you really want to read deeply into this palette choice, you could interpret it as one of several examples in which Fallout 4 acquiesces to more mainstream and accessible game design trends, and this extends beyond the visuals and into the gameplay. Where previous iterations of Fallout conveyed a dangerous, deadly setting in which wit and deep strategy were required for survival, the streamlined combat and simplified role-playing systems of Fallout 4 communicate a message more along the lines of “Hey, welcome to this fun, colorful shooting gallery!”

Does this make Fallout 4 a wholly bad game? I don’t think so, but I do think it has some glaring flaws that hold it far back from perfection.

Simply put, Fallout 4 is an action first-person shooter with some RPG elements. If you're willing to accept that, you’ll find that Bethesda has crafted an incredibly detailed open world experience with tons of locations and stories to discover. But I’m a little biased. I had already accepted Fallout 4’s fate as an action game long before buying it on a Steam sale for $30. If I had purchased it at full price expecting a deep, complex RPG in the spirit of previous Fallout games, I might be a little more disappointed.

In its pursuit for something more accessible and mainstream, Bethesda is quick to (attempt to) shed its previously clunky presentation and gameplay within the first couple hours of Fallout 4, and it’s at least initially successful. That fancy pre-war intro sequence shows off some nice graphical and presentational advancements, especially in terms of environmental detail and facial expressions. And hey, your character has a voice! Granted, this concept stops being novel shortly after this intro sequence (more on that later), but I appreciate that Bethesda ditched their silent protagonist schtick to try something new. It’s obviously a very short and controlled portion of the game, but it makes a decent first impression by showing that Bethesda is capable of working through their historically janky, robotic animations to produce a good-looking cinematic setpiece.

Then once you’ve gone through the series-signature vault escape and begun your family redemption story, the first couple things you encounter on the surface are a 10mm pistol and a molotov cocktail. After the first couple fights with these weapons, it becomes plainly clear that combat has become a focal point of Fallout 4’s design, and it’s the part of the game that I engaged with the most. Having a dedicated grenade/melee button and precise ironsights aiming is a much bigger deal than it sounds. These control and mechanical refinements finally put Fallout on par with other shooters on the market, and while these changes have probably come several years too late, they’re still very much welcome. If you’re good at aiming, these refinements almost completely invalidate the VATS system. You can still use VATS if you like, but its slow-motion function feels out of place with combat mechanics that are supposed to be fast and frantic.While this may be a natural progression considering the series’ lineage, the move from slow, methodical, menu-heavy gameplay to a more modernized twitch-shooter experience feels like quite a departure.

This increased emphasis on combat brings a decent variety to the setup and scale of enemy encounters. At the smallest you could be fighting one-on-one with a raider in tight corridors, and at the largest you could be defending a whole colonial fort with 30 or 40 active combatants. Likewise, the environments in which combat takes place are pretty diverse. Whether it be small interiors or large outdoor locales, the battlefields are well designed with plenty of verticality and flanking opportunities in mind. The game also allows for different approaches to combat scenarios, as stealth and long range sniping work just as well as ever if you don’t want to barge in guns blazing. There’s clearly an effort to make every moment of the gunplay feel different, and that effort is usually successful.

Sadly, a lot of that effort is also ruined due to the game’s lack of variety in difficulty. This is where Fallout 4’s uniquely inviting nature becomes a problem, as the game is generally too easy. Even on Hard (the 4th of 6 difficulty levels) I almost always had plenty of ammunition and stimpaks to survive through thick and thin. The rare times when the game does spike up in difficulty tend to be jarring and frustrating experiences: on numerous occasions, I was immediately killed by a deathclaw or a missile launcher-wielding raider that came out of nowhere, only to realize I hadn’t saved recently, meaning I just lost at least 10-20 minutes of progress. With all that in mind, I would suggest setting the difficulty as high as you can handle, but be prepared for a few random deaths and save often.

Given Fallout 4’s inviting and welcoming nature, however, it’s probably not supposed to be a consistently hard game anyway. Fallout 4 doesn’t just want you to find satisfaction in surviving a grueling battle. It wants you to find satisfaction in the simple RPG pleasure of making numbers and progress bars go up. Indeed, Fallout 4 doesn’t have a level cap, so if you’re patient enough, you can keep killing things and completing side quests to fill that level bar over and over again. This also means you can level up every SPECIAL attribute to 10 and unlock every perk in a single playthrough, which is kinda cool in theory, but it also means that you aren’t creating a character with your own unique specialties as much as you are creating a jack of all trades. It seems like it would make subsequent playthroughs feel less unique.

Furthermore, Fallout 4 ditches the stressful equipment maintenance and most of the survival-oriented parts of the combat in favor of a more loot-driven system that reminds me a lot of Diablo and Borderlands. Each type of enemy has their own variety of leveled ranks, and they all drop seemingly infinite permutations of modified weapons and armor. For example, instead of just finding a regular 10mm pistol, you might find a “Muzzled Advanced 10mm Pistol” with a green dot sight, or a “Suppressed Hardened 10mm Auto Pistol” with silent, rapid-fire capabilities. You can also obtain these modifications through a surprisingly in-depth crafting system that utilizes all the random junk in the wasteland to make each piece of gear feel fairly unique. Better yet, crafting is more fun than maintaining and repairing equipment. In my experience, however, finding enough resources to craft meaningful mods was usually a chore, and the game seems to encourage killing and looting enemies to get the best equipment anyway. Higher-level baddies will drop better, harder-to-obtain loot, and you can even find “legendary” enemies who possess gear with unique effects that you can’t get anywhere else, like incendiary shots and the ability to deal more damage when you’re health is low.

Fallout 4 focuses heavily on combat, but sometimes you’ll want to take a break from your murderous rampage through post-apocalyptic Boston to engage with the game’s other features. Indeed, the game is a multifaceted beast, but if you’ve read any other discourse on this game, you’ll know that its other facets, especially its overall narrative, have been fairly contentious. Fallout 4’s world and some of it's storytelling carries that cinematic, imaginative ethos from the aforementioned intro sequence, which is successful at some points and borderline disastrous at others.

Not surprisingly, Fallout 4 is resoundingly successful at offering a large, detailed, storied landmass that players can sink their teeth into for hours. The Commonwealth is certainly a well-realized world; Old radio signals and terminal entries tell an eerily vivid tale of what Boston was then, and all the settlements, shops, and cities across the wastes paint a dreary, humorous, and sometimes uplifting picture of what Boston is now. It feels much more densely packed with points of interest than, say, Skyrim or the Capitol Wasteland, and it’s very well suited to aimlessly wandering around and discovering little stories and sights. During my own travels, I found a horse race track with appropriately named robots perpetually running around the track, a locked-away protectron whose sole purpose is to serve beer and tell dumb jokes, and a quarry on the site of an ancient temple in which workers performed human sacrifices. Finding random, funny stuff like this is my favorite thing to do in any Bethesda RPG, and Fallout 4 is no different.

“Dungeon diving,” so to speak, is also better this time around because all the locations and interiors don’t feel quite as copy-and-paste as they did in Fallout 3. You may encounter some repeated assets here and there, but all the buildings and the puzzles, stories, and combat scenarios within feel much more uniquely hand crafted. The abandoned vaults scattered around the Commonwealth a particularly good example of this, hiding plenty of little side quests based on stories of corrupt overseers and nefarious research.

My favorite part of the dungeon diving is reading pre-war terminal entries and finding the post-war remains of the stories they tell. Here’s a simple, not-so-spoilery example: Within the offices of Shaw High School you can find the terminal of a disgruntled principal who has been tasked with raising his student’s standardized test scores. To accomplish this, he distributed a bunch of Mentats among the kids, then used the increased school funds from the improved test scores for his own frivolous means. Using a nearby key, you can then open the Principal’s office and find stacks of Mentats for your own use. You can also find one of the student’s personal terminals and see his writing skills in his logs improve as he starts taking the Mentats.

The random, organic events that can occur in your travels are also pretty entertaining. You could be strolling along the Cambridge area, and suddenly you’ll see a flurry of lasers flying by between a group of Super Mutants and a fleet of Brotherhood soldiers, and then a Vertibird will come crashing down in a fiery explosion… Okay, so they use the exploding Vertibird trick a little too often, but it’s still a cool organic setpiece moment. In less dangerous parts of the Commonwealth you might find a couple NPCs sharing words about recent events or gossiping about local rumors, which can lead to information on the greater narrative or just minor side quests. Whether it be peaceful conversations or violent combat, the ways in which the people and creatures in this world interact with each other make this otherwise barren wasteland feel surprisingly lively.

This liveliness shows that there’s a real effort among the inhabitants of the Commonwealth to rebuild Boston and restore the peace and prosperity they once had. The game lets you play a part in this rebuilding effort by letting you use the various junk you find in your travels to build your own settlements. The settlement building mechanics work similarly to the weapon and armor crafting, but obviously on a larger scale. Once you’ve established a settlement and a few residents, you can build a wide assortment of housing, furniture, bedding, stores, and food and water sources in an effort to keep your settlers happy and resource production high. Sadly, the few items you get from settlers aren’t any better than the stuff you would find out in the wasteland by yourself, which makes settlement building seem inconsequential, but it is still fun to toy around with the assets that the game gives you and test your architectural design abilities.

You’ll also have to build defenses and turrets to protect your settlements from incoming enemies, and this is where settlement building becomes much less appealing, especially because the game encourages you to maintain dozens of small settlements all across the Commonwealth. These random settlement attacks happen very rarely, so it’s not too annoying, but the game doesn’t give me much of a reason to go through the trouble of building up multiple settlements, which makes the whole thing seem even more pointless. I would much rather just focus my work on one big settlement, and thankfully, I was still able to do that. I claimed the first Sanctuary settlement as my main base of operations and put most of my building effort into that area.

It feels weird to spend so many words discussing all this largely superfluous side content before even touching on the main quest. That’s probably because the main path the game tries to lead you on happens to be the most underwhelming and disappointing path. Admittedly, the initial promise of the main storyline had me excited, with sentient androids (or “synths,” as they’re referred to in the Commonwealth) serving as a central part of the narrative. Bethesda explores some compelling themes with android rights and the idea of putting a human consciousness into a robotic body and vice versa, but that’s obviously not treading any new ground in the sci-fi genre.

The overarching faction interplay that makes up the main questline was also initially exciting. The Brotherhood of Steel, a jingoistic military order that seeks to regulate technology in the wasteland; the Minutemen, a grassroots organization dedicated to protecting the commonwealth; the Institute, a technologically advanced group of underground scientists that manufacture synths; and the Railroad, android sympathizers who work to save synths from the institute: They all have their conflicting pros and cons, their own motivations for protecting or rebuilding the wasteland. The ways you choose to fit into their interactions almost evokes the faction system of New Vegas, sometimes leading to tough decision-making and actual roleplaying. Completing a major quest for one faction can force you to fail a different quest and potentially affect relationships with companions.

Unfortunately, these gameplay implications aren’t really as impactful as they should be. Without spoiling too much, the story eventually devolves into a binary pro-Institute or anti-Institute pursuit, with some minor ending quests to resolve conflicts between the remaining factions. Aside from this, the aforementioned quest changes and maybe some new ambient dialogue, the Commonwealth never feels very different from the result of your actions. It’s concerning that this narrative falls so flat because it suffers from some of the same problems that Skyrim had. It’s plagued by shallow writing, limited player input, and a general lack of urgency. Fallout 4’s attempts at cinematic visuals and thematic exploration can’t save it from these problems.

The dialogue system is also a huge letdown, and this is where having a voiced protagonist becomes more a curse than a blessing. Perhaps as a measure to minimize work for the voice actors, your dialog choices are limited to four lines that can be boiled down to “positive,” “negative,” “neutral,” or “sarcastic,” whatever that means. That’s the problem: you don’t entirely know what you’re going to say until your character blurts it out (this can partially be fixed with a mod), and too often this can lead to inciting the wrong reaction from the person you’re talking to. The larger issue with the dialogue is that it’s so frustratingly prone to immersion-breaking quirks and bugs. Too often I’ve had random passersby push me off camera during conversations, multiple people talking over each other trying to give me different quests, and interactions ending in a solid 10 seconds of silence. Say what you will about the corny voice acting and stilted animations of previous Bethesda titles, but at least this weird stuff rarely, if ever, happened.

The rote quest design doesn’t help matters. While there are a few standout missions in the main story, the large majority of the quests, especially the radiant side quests, usually involve going to a specific location, clearing out all the enemies within, and maybe retrieving a specific item. Aligning with one of the factions will really start to pile on these side quests ad infinitum. And it’s not just the Minutemen and their infamous settlements that need help. Both the Railroad and Brotherhood of Steel frequently sent me to go help this researcher or go clear out that building. A lot of these radiant quests seem to be designed to make the player discover new locations on the map, which seems weird because I would gladly explore the map on my own. Variance in quest design is almost nonexistent here, which really drives home the “less RPG, more FPS” point that has garnered this game such a contentious reputation.

All of these problems are exacerbated by the long-form nature of Fallout 4. Bethesda obviously wants you to spend hundreds of hours in this game, but beyond the combat and some of the random map exploration, there doesn’t seem to be enough interesting stuff here to keep most players engaged for that long. It’s really unfortunate that so much of the experience feels padded out with tedious quest design. According to Steam, I’ve logged a little over 80 hours in Fallout 4, but it feels like so much less than that because the gameplay loop I’ve fallen into often feels too routine and repetitive to be memorable.

And yet I still keep coming back to it. It tickles the parts of my brain that are so easily satisfied by finding new loot and watching my level bar go up. I was constantly rewarded with better stats, more power, more currency, larger numbers. Much of this gameplay loop is a continuation of Fallout 3 and Skyrim, but Fallout 4’s emphasis on action more so evokes a comparison to Diablo and Borderlands. It’s a simple, yet very effective, satisfaction. All of those other immersive systems, like the stealth, the computer hacking, the settlement crafting, the faction and companion interactions, it's all a nice layer of icing on this big, dumb cake.

Of course, those systems should be so much more than icing. They should be the core of the cake. They should actually be immersive. Bethesda should have leaned into those role-playing elements that make Fallout special, but in Fallout 4 those elements often feel like decoration to make the game seem deeper and more nuanced than it really is. But like I said, I knew I wasn’t going to get a deep RPG before I played it, so the little bit of nuance that was there was a pleasant surprise. The simple mechanics and reward loop of Fallout 4 make it an experience that I can easily come back to every few weeks or months to knock out a couple quests or check a few new locations off the map.

I feel like I’m in the minority when I say that Fallout 4 is still a pretty good game, but I do believe that Bethesda can’t get away with using this formula again, and they certainly can’t get away with dumbing it down any further. If they intend to make more first person RPGs, they need to shake things up and return to some of the elements that made games like Daggerfall and Morrowind so special.

Bicycles, skateboards, and videogames were staples of my childhood, though the videogames took precedence over the others. Admittedly, I learned to ride my bike much later than my friends, thus I lagged behind them in terms of tricks. The other kids could pull higher bunnyhops and longer wheelies than I ever could. Fortunately, games like Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX gave me the satisfaction of doing crazy backflips and tailwhips at the press of a button. The same goes for skateboarding: my real life abilities amounted to nothing more than a measly pop shove-it, but in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater I was doing handstand primo slides and pulling out pizza boxes while getting tons of air in a half pipe. For me, extreme sports games were an amazing form of wish-fulfillment. They let me simulate flashy, creative stunts that I would never have the athleticism nor the courage to pull off in real life. I’ve lost interest in extreme sports themselves as I grow older, but I still have a great appreciation for the design of extreme sports games and the elements that make them so fun.

What makes these games fascinating to me is that they are based around sports, specifically those of the freestyle variety, that don’t have rules. Skateboarding and BMX and the like are all about style, danger, and, as pretentious as it may sound, self-expression; none of these things are held together by a strict set of rules (at least not outside of competition settings). With that in mind, the ways in which developers design rules and mechanics around these otherwise fast and loose activities is what makes the games based on them so interesting. Sure, there is some intrinsic gratification to be gained from landing flashy, gnarly tricks, but designers need to appeal to your extrinsic motivations with specific tasks and challenges to test your abilities and make a fully fledged videogame.The Tony Hawk games might not have held everyone’s attention if players weren't tasked with collecting S-K-A-T-E letters, competing for gold medals, and out-skating their friends in a plethora of silly multiplayer modes.

Sadly, games of this sort are few and far between these days. The mid-tier of developers that made most of those games are almost nonexistent now, and extreme sports culture in general seems to be much less pervasive. Perhaps these games were just a silly product of a bygone era, a cheesy and antiquated sort of pandering to a younger audience for whom words like “extreme” and “radical” really resonated. Look, I love extreme sports games, but I’ll admit that it can be hard to see the genre as more than just a niche fad at best and an out-of-touch marketing team’s idea of “cool stunts!” at worst. The late 90s and early 2000s in particular seemed to have spawned plenty of cheap, pandering Tony Hawk knock-offs that tried to cash in on the popularity of extreme sports, and these efforts were usually disingenuous. The general (although now less frequent) association with low-brow, juvenile, Jackass culture probably doesn’t help matters either. As a result, these games are rarely taken seriously.

Still, the genre has served as the basis for some highly regarded gems; For instance, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is sometimes discussed in the same breath as Ocarina of Time. Indeed, tons of great games are hidden under the goofy exterior and cheesy marketing of the genre, games that afford a tremendous degree of experimentation and self expression. It’s maybe the only genre where you can jump around and do tricks solely for the sake of jumping around and doing tricks, and when combined with some extrinsic goals, it actually feels rewarding. This unique design got me thinking a lot about the history of the genre and where the freestyle trick-heavy games we’re familiar with today gained their influence.

The pioneers

The 2D origins of the genre can be traced back to games like 720º (1986), California Games (1987), and the Skate or Die series (1988, 1990). Featuring smaller levels, a limited trick list, and a charming but corny punk atmosphere, these games are primitive in comparison to modern extreme sports games. They fall more in line with the racing, adventure, and platformer genres. However, these titles still show a pioneering effort to offer freestyle-based gameplay within the technical limitations of the time. 720º’s trick list is limited to only spin maneuvers, but the game makes up for this with its nonlinear open world, consisting of a neighborhood full of ramps and skate parks. On the other hand, Skate or Die’s freestyle modes are constrained to a half pipe, but it adds several grinds, stalls, and handplants to the mix. Yes, the design of these games was archaic, but these baby steps did set the foundation for level design and trick systems in other extreme sports games to come.

Extreme sports games would rise to prominence again during the mid to late 90s, during which a confluence of cultural events would serve as a major point of resurgence for the genre. The inaugural X Games in 1995 pushed extreme sports further into the mainstream, with its place being cemented by the anti-establishment counterculture of the 90s that was common across all media. On the videogame industry side, polygonal 3D graphics were starting to gain their footing, thanks in large part to games like Super Mario 64. Naturally, extreme sports and videogames would join forces, often with a Generation X bent, to make for one of the coolest genres of the late 90s. Early titles to be part of this craze include 1080 Snowboarding (1998), Thrasher: Skate and Destroy (1999), and the undisputed master of the genre, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (1999).

Designed for style and substance

The importance of these early 3D titles (primarily Tony Hawk) and the standard they set cannot be overstated. In particular, they brought two critical elements to the genre: large, open levels and combo-based trick systems. With tons of new tricks like flips, grabs, grind variations, and manuals being added to the genre, and with all of them being relatively easy to perform on their own, there needs to be a purpose to use all these tricks. The solution: challenge players to string multiple unique tricks together in a sequence to earn high scores. This combo design incentivises players to be creative and utilize the entire trick list. Follow up that benihana with a heel flip, or pull a 360 shove-it before boardsliding on that rail, or combine all of that and more in several 20-trick combos. Or, if we jump ahead a little in the Tony Hawk timeline, spend 20 minutes tricking away on an enormous 6 billion point combo.

Of course, the level design has to serve the combo system. Having expansive, nonlinear worlds is great, but again, there needs to be a purpose to the placement of objects therein. There has to be enough space to gain speed before hitting ramps and quarter pipes, and rails and ledges have to line up perfectly for grind sequences. The best levels in these games strike a balance between open nonlinearity and defined paths that facilitate the flow of the players’ combos. This sort of level design also shows its 3D platformer influence. The early Tony Hawk entries in particular take cues from games like Super Mario 64 with level design that encourages exploring every nook and cranny. There are plenty of secret paths that lead to collectibles and secret tapes.

When the trick system and level design come together properly, performing well in these games is the perfect example of style and substance, of creativity and flawless execution. There is no one right way to get a high score. Even when watching pros and speedrunners play these games, you may encounter wildly different playstyles.

Competition breeds innovation

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was the wildly popular standard-setter, but it wasn’t the only game in town. Around the early 2000s, Activision would briefly follow up that successful venture with a line of other Pro Skater-likes based on BMX, snowboarding, wakeboarding, and even surfing. However, the real innovation came from competing studios attempting to chomp a piece of the extreme sports pie.

Acclaim and Z-Axis ditched skateboards in favor of bikes and rollerblades, having developed Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX (2000), which features complex trick mechanics that treat the bike as an intertwined set of systems, and Aggressive Inline (2002), a more-than-competent Tony Hawk clone with massive destructible levels and tons of objectives in each. Snowboarding was also a popular subject of the genre: EA Canada brought crazy tricks, eccentric characters, and ridiculous race courses in the form of SSX (2000), while Indie Built’s Amped (2001) remained a little more grounded, touting real resorts and huge nonlinear mountains. A few developers, most prominently Rainbow Studios, would also put a freestyle twist on the offroad racing game formula with games like ATV Offroad Fury (2001) and MX Unleashed (2004).

Some developers also advanced the genre by putting an increased focus on narrative. Neversoft would expand upon the simple story of a local skate rat turned pro gold medalist starting with Tony Hawk’s Underground (2003), while other studios sought to tell more outlandish tales. Sega’s Jet Grind Radio (2000) and Criterion’s AirBlade (2001) are a couple early examples of this, and they take the anti-authority angle of the genre to its natural extreme. Jet Grind Radio is all about using your rollerblading acrobatics to fight a graffiti-based gang turf war while dodging Tokyo-to’s police forces, and in Airblade you ride around on a prototype hoverboard while the evil corporation that built it chases after you. Obviously, these narratives aren’t exactly Mass Effect-esque, but they are more elaborate than usual.

Thanks to these gameplay and storytelling innovations, extreme sports games had truly moved beyond the primitive design of Skate or Die and 720º, and had firmly entrenched themselves in the gaming landscape as part of a wholly unique genre.

The king is dethroned

While all these competing extreme sports titles brought their own unique twists to the established design, they didn’t hold a candle to Tony Hawk. The birdman’s signature game remained the frontrunner of the genre for years, garnering over $1 billion in sales across the entire series. In 2007, however, the long-running annual franchise had grown stagnant with the final traditional release of Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, after which Neversoft would focus all their resources on the Guitar Hero franchise. This gave publishing juggernaut Electronic Arts the perfect opportunity to dethrone the king and release a new skateboarding game on the unsuspecting masses.

Skate (2007), developed by EA Black Box, stood out from the crowd by taking a more realistic physics-based approach to its design. Instead of using fighting game-like button inputs to pull off crazy combos, Skate’s ingenious “Flick-It” trick system uses precise right analog stick gestures for most of the board control, while the triggers and buttons control the individual limbs of the skater. For first-time players, this control scheme will feel unwieldy, but it's probably supposed to feel that way. It’s supposed to emulate the difficulty of performing tricks on a skateboard by making you take into account nearly every facet of the trick: the height of your ollie, the speed at which you flip the board, the angle at which you approach a rail, etc. Once you’ve mastered these physics and control nuances, you’ll feel perfectly in tune with your skater, and something as simple as a kickflip to tailslide will feel unbelievably rewarding. Personally speaking, it’s one of the most tactile control schemes I’ve ever used in a game of this complexity. And I’m not the only one who loves it: Roll7 recreated this control scheme in a paired down 2D form with OlliOlli (2014), and many future indie projects (discussed later) are employing their own analog-heavy input systems.

Skate also sought to capture the artistic and expressive pursuits of skateboarding culture in a way that feels much more sincere than past efforts. This ridiculous intro video in particular is a nice summation of unhinged delinquency that defines the culture, taking inspiration from some of the goofier parts of popular skate videos like Flip’s “Sorry” and Girl’s “Yeah Right!,” just to name a couple. Of course, the skater’s desire to capture their skills on film extends into the gameplay, as most of the Career mode revolves around taking photos and recording video footage of specific tricks and lines. The inclusion of a photo/video editor and online sharing features helped establish a community that was less concerned with achieving high scores and more interested in pushing the boundaries, breaking the laws of physics, and being creative. Pretty much the same pursuits of real extreme sports athletes.

A fall from grace and a long hiatus

Sadly, Skate’s mostly uncontested reign at the top did not last long. Skate 2 (2009) and Skate 3 (2010) kept fans happy for a while with some much needed refinements to the Skate formula, and Skate 3, for better or worse, became a popular subject of many glitch-laden Let’s Play videos in the years after it’s release. This weird surge in popularity even led EA to reprint new copies of the game in 2014, thus feeding ravenous fans who have been flooding all of EA’s social media channels with “#skate4” comments. Despite all this, EA has remained silent on the future of the franchise (this tweet is the extent of their messaging on the matter), having not mentioned Skate at all during their recent E3 press conference.

In the meantime, Chicago-based developer Robomodo tried resurrecting the Tony Hawk franchise following their lackluster peripheral-based efforts, Ride (2009) and Shred (2010). Unfortunately, their attempts to return to the old school design were largely unsuccessful. Pro Skater HD (2012) and the disastrous Pro Skater 5 (2015) were panned by critics and fans alike, the latter of the two games likely serving as the death knell for the once beloved series. With THPS dead and Skate nowhere to be found, the future of the extreme sports genre is uncertain.

Perhaps this hiatus of the extreme sports genre has lasted so long because games like Grand Theft Auto V have filled the gap. Beyond the obvious Stunt Jump challenges, Rockstar’s sandbox opus offers the right sort of physics engine and open world freedom to allow for sick trick potential. YouTube has no shortage of GTA V stunt highlight videos showing off players’ physics-bending creativity with the game’s vehicles. GTA V seems to scratch that extreme sports itch specifically because it is not an extreme sports game. Even more so than Skate, the “extreme” parts of GTAV involve defying the laws of gravity and using the game’s vehicles in ways the developers probably never intended. That pursuit to constantly raise the insanity bar is what makes real extreme sports so awesome and unpredictable. In a weird way, it seems fitting that Grand Theft Auto would be the torchbearer of sorts for the genre in the absence of Tony Hawk and his contemporaries.

Tightening up the trucks again

Not willing to let the genre die just yet, independent teams the world over have been making exciting strides toward resurrecting extreme sports games, albeit currently in a limited capacity. For those looking to experience this resurrection in tangible, playable form, look no further than BMX The Game, from Barcelona-based Barspin Studios, and SNOW, a snowboarding/skiing game from Swedish developer Poppermost Productions. However, be prepared to deal with the quirks and glitches that come with early access projects. BMX The Game, currently in an early pre-alpha state, has some issues with wonky physics and input delay, but it has the potential to capture the same rewarding realism as Skate. SNOW is much more feature-complete in its open beta, and while it suffers from similarly weird physics, it boasts plenty of huge mountains to ride and a more accessible trick system.

BMX The Game and SNOW aren’t the only indie projects on the horizon. Project: Session garnered tons of attention last year with this flashy trailer, prompting plenty of excitement for a true return to skateboarding games. Developer creā-ture studios makes its inspirations very clear, promising an elaborate dual analog control scheme, a multiplayer-friendly open world, and an emphasis on self-expression. However, Project: Session aims to be even more pure than Skate, as it will not feature any scoring system whatsoever. Elsewhere in the indie scene, On A Roll is another Skate-like that looks to apply the analog/physics concept to inline rollerblading. Details on this one are sparse at the moment, but this early gameplay footage looks exciting, as the game appears to be adding some Tony Hawk-style combo craziness into the mix.

Speaking of, there are several dedicated fans working to keep the THPS dream alive with a comprehensive Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 mod. Known as THUG Pro, the mod aims to be the ultimate Tony Hawk experience, with developers working to add nearly every level across the entire series. The mod also uses a new online system to replace the now defunct Gamespy servers, making THUG Pro the most popular online space for long-time Tony Hawk fans to gather together and put their skills to the test. While THPS may no longer exist in any official capacity, it’s nice to know that diligent fans have taken the reins from Activision to preserve possibly the greatest series in the genre’s history.

And the extreme sports revival isn’t just happening in independent hobbyist circles. Ubisoft closed their E3 press conference this year with an impressive showing of Steep (2016), a snow-based freestyle game that will let players descent giant, perilous summits via snowboard, skis, parachute, or wingsuit. With an emphasis on larger-than-life jumps, dangerous crashes, nauseating first-person camera views, and the ability to share those experiences through free-roaming multiplayer and social media-enabled replays, Steep intends to capture the GoPro craze and the butt-clenchingly intense head-mounted videos it has spawned. Whether or not Steep lives up to its ambition remains to be seen, but from the outset it’s encouraging to see a big publisher dedicate a significant portion of their press event to showing off the game and to see it tackling the genre in a really unique and modern way, rather than just banking on nostalgia.

Modernization will likely be the key to keeping this weird, niche genre alive in the future. That initial extreme sports craze can’t be recreated, and it won’t work to simply rehash tired ideas and old tricks. If these future projects are any indication, developers have learned that they need to focus on a specific audience and take advantage of new technology and modern design philosophies to grab anyone’s attention. With advancements in physics engines, open world level design, seamless multiplayer, and maybe some VR experimentation (seriously, can you imagine playing Steep with a VR headset?), the next few years could be really exciting for extreme sports game fans. Personally, I just want to pull off 1080 spins and backside noseslides again without having to boot up 15 year old games to do so.

Special thanks to the people who posted in this old Reddit thread and helped me collect my thoughts on this topic.

Psychonauts aims to do a lot of things, and it gets a lot of those things right. That’s basically a miracle, given the game’s long, troubled development. It’s incredible to think that controversies over office location, level design disputes, and lacking publisher commitment, among myriad other issues, still led to one of the most beloved platformer adventures of recent memory. I first got Psychonauts through the Humble Double Fine Bundle a few years ago and recently played it again to attempt a Rank 101 run, and I was quickly reminded why I fell in love with this game. Specifically, the nostalgic, feel-good atmosphere and the humorous ways in which it tackles tough subject matter stand out to me. Psychonauts is a beautiful experience, a genuine labor of love, and i’m eager to see what Double Fine does with the sequel. Of course, that’s not coming for a while, so I wanted to write this (probably pointless) blog/love letter about the original Psychonauts and the things that set it apart from other platformers.

Psychonauts is proof that nostalgia works in weird ways. As I said before, I only first played the game within the last few years, but for me, it still manages to evoke a longing for the past. That nostalgia isn’t necessarily rooted in the game itself, but rather the elements of its design that remind me of parts of my childhood.

The first of these elements include the story and presentation, which remind me of old Cartoon Network shows. Aside from the obvious inclusion of voice actors like Richard Horvitz (Billy & Mandy) and Tara Strong (Powerpuff Girls), here’s a few more specific examples of what I’m talking about: The rural setting and often spooky aesthetic of Whispering Rock and the asylum bring back memories of Courage the Cowardly Dog, the goofy character proportions and surreal humor evoke episodes of Cow & Chicken, the sometimes ominous soundtrack reminds me of the music in Dexter’s Lab, and the varied cast of young characters is fairly similar to that of Ed, Edd ‘n’ Eddy. Likewise, Psychonauts may be appealing to a younger audience, but it has the nuanced humor and artistic flourish that also attracted adults to those old (and some new) Cartoon Network shows.

Second, Whispering Rock and its campers remind me of my own elementary/middle school education and all the friends, foes, and personalities I encountered therein. I remember the sports jock bullies like Bobby Zilch, the relationship-obsessed gossip girls like Elka, the aspiring musicians like Phoebe and Quentin, the (slightly delusional) ladies men like Nils, and the weird ones like Dogen. Being the unpopular weirdo I was, I retroactively see myself as a freakish mix of Dogen, Maloof, Elton, and Franke. Yeah, not exactly reflective of my best qualities, but the idea that anyone could see themselves in these kids in any capacity is a testament to how well-developed they are. Sure, they may be cliche archetypes and goofy exaggerations of the kids you might actually encounter in school, but they still felt familiar and oddly relatable. Maybe this is another case of that Cartoon Network nostalgia, seeing as those shows also frequently used these archetypes.

Third, and perhaps most obvious, the gameplay of Psychonauts reminds me of all the colorful 3D platformer collect-a-thons on which I wasted away hours of my childhood. The kinds of games that provide big, vibrant playgrounds full of acrobatic challenges, hidden paths, and tons of random floating objects that have fueled my collectible-based OCD for years. The genre definitely isn’t in vogue anymore due to an oversaturation during the 5th and 6th console generations, as well as shifting cultural tastes (although a couple kickstarter projects may be signaling a resurgence), but I still have a soft spot for games that just let me jump around and find stuff. Super Mario 64/Sunshine, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, Ratchet & Clank, Spyro; before gritty shooters took over the world (and, admittedly, my own Steam library), these were my go-to games.

Psychonauts is a worthy entry into the pantheon of mascot 3D platformers, but it’s clear that Double Fine wanted it to stand out from the rest of those games. More than just a fleeting experience that reminds gamers of the good ol’ days of platformers, Psychonauts has a special identity and narrative beyond its nostalgic qualities. Tim Schafer and other Double Fine employees have a history at LucasArts, and they bring some of their adventure game design philosophies to give Psychonauts an extra storytelling and puzzle-solving emphasis. Make no mistake, Psychonauts is a platformer first and foremost, but the world exhibits an adventure game-like attention to detail, and the gameplay challenges can be more methodical than the typical platformer affair.

This peanut butter and chocolate-esque combo of the adventure and platformer genres creates an excellent example of game design and narrative working in tandem. Whispering Rock, the nearby insane asylum, and the people that inhabit these weird locales are so well developed out of necessity for the gameplay. Each level in the Collective Unconscious takes place in exaggerated versions of the main characters’ minds, so every facet of those characters is explored in great, sometimes unsettling, detail. The collectibles therein also play important and cleverly fitting roles beyond just being distractions or breadcrumbs to the next objective. The figments feature relevant iconography and may foreshadow future events, the vaults shed light on the characters’ flaws by exploring their past, and the cobwebs sometimes hide the most secret and revealing versions of the other collectibles. Simply put, every gameplay element serves a narrative purpose, and vice versa.

The themes communicated in each character’s story are also treated with a surprisingly prescient sincerity. Lungfishopolis, the Milkman Conspiracy, and Gloria’s Theater, just to name a few, all have a humorous twist to their writing and presentation, but hidden deep within are tragic stories and repressed memories brought on by depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other mental afflictions. Double Fine really tapped into subject matter that is still relevant today, as discussions of psychological disorders have become more prominent and been taken more seriously in recent years. It seems there’s been a greater effort to view, say, victims of bullying or perpetrators of public shootings through more of a psychiatric lens, and this could be attributed to increasingly sympathetic, realistic depictions of the mentally ill in literature and the media. It would be a little hyperbolic to claim Psychonauts had a major role in this phenomenon, but it’s at least neat to think that the game invoked a greater understanding of mental disorders for many players.

Indeed, Psychonauts effectively uses the videogame medium to deconstruct stereotypical tropes of the mental disorder motif and convey a positive message. The depictions of the characters and their mental illnesses are often comical, but you’re not supposed to stand by and watch them suffer. Your goal is to help them. As part of the gameplay hook, you have to “fight their demons and wrestle their nightmares.” Ideally, this encourages players to be more sympathetic, and it works against the stigma and stereotypical portrayals of the mentally ill by showing the characters as complex people who can be helped. As Schafer himself puts it, “No one in Psychonauts is irredeemable.”

In short, Psychonauts is so great because it strikes a great balance between being fun, funny, and sincere. I come back to this game every once in awhile because Whispering Rock is a world I want to exist in. It’s an incredibly well-realized world, and I know I’ll discover some new comedic/tragic element every time I play it. Not many other games have been able to have such a goofy cartoon atmosphere while still being emotional and thought-provoking, and I really hope Psychonauts 2 can maintain that balance.

The Far Cry series has gone through some significant changes in its history, but the defining characteristic that has remained consistent throughout every game is its ability to communicate danger and isolation in wide open, beautiful locales. Far Cry breaks away from the typical corridor shooter with its wildland settings: in terms of tension and storytelling, it makes players feel vulnerable to gun-toting baddies and hungry animals that could be hiding in bushes from any direction, and in terms of gameplay design, it forces the player to be resourceful and stealthy, to use the environment to one’s advantage in order to fight both enemies and the elements. Anything could kill you at anytime, and avoiding death involves more than just shooting at dudes.

The streamlining of the later entries in the series perhaps removes some of this tension, but the perilous-romp-through-the jungle/forest motif is still in full effect. This is especially true of Ubisoft’s latest title in the franchise, Far Cry: Primal, which ditches the modern firearms in favor of more prehistoric combat and environmental cleverness. That’s all well and good, but in the marketing and hype surrounding Primal, people seem to be comparing it only to Far Cry 3 and 4. The general gaming populus hasn’t given enough attention to the real highlight of the series, the one that really stood out from the established formula, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.

(Granted, I haven’t been following the Primal discussions too closely. Regardless, Blood Dragon warrants some attention.)

I understand that Blood Dragon’s position as a $15 standalone DLC expansion of sorts makes it the red-headed stepchild of the series. However, despite its spinoff status, it remains my favorite Far Cry game and one of the most badass shooters I played in the last generation. While it retains the jungle setting and open world resourcefulness that makes the series unique, it unabashedly removes most of that signature sense of vulnerability by turning your protagonist into a goddamn cyborg super soldier. And it totally works.

Seriously, you can run really fast endlessly, your sniper rifle doubles as a rocket launcher, and there’s no fall damage. I feel like I could just end the blog here, having succinctly made my point, but I’ll continue.

The nostalgic neon-infused, testosterone-laden atmosphere of the game serves as much more than just a glittery exterior. Ubisoft truly delivers on the “80s VHS vision of the future” concept with a staggering attention to detail and a genuinely fun experience. It combines all the best elements of Cobra, Robocop, Terminator, First Blood, and Commando, and then it gives you all the tools and weapons to make you feel like an unstoppable hero from these movies. It turns out the cheesy action film theme is well suited to the stealth-action gameplay hook of Far Cry 3 and 4. Waiting in the shadows, shooting arrows at the Daft Punk-wannabe enemies, and stabbing their necks from behind makes you feel like a futuristic Rambo. This retro catharsis is accentuated by Michael Biehn voicing Rex “Power” Colt (which is a great dumb name) and Power Glove’s thumping synth soundtrack punctuating every machismo murder you commit.

The blood dragons themselves are also a noteworthy feature that keep the balance from tipping too far in your favor. To say the blood dragons are just bigger, more powerful versions of any other hostile wildlife would be underselling them, as their specific mechanics employ every facet of Far Cry’s combat in unique ways. Their body color, indicating their alert level, and their poor eyesight makes them perfect targets for an initial stealth approach. You can even bait them toward other enemies if you want to start some infighting to soften them up. When the shit hits the fan and you actually have to start fighting them, you won’t have time to just run away and shoot backwards thanks to their deadly laser eyes and their one weak spot being hidden on their belly. Since the blood dragons pose both a close and long-range threat, they force you to constantly be bobbing and weaving, as opposed to just sitting behind cover, and they encourage experimentation with every weapon, including those land mines and remote charges that are otherwise useless. In short, the blood dragons add a fresh dynamic to the Far Cry gameplay.

One might argue that Blood Dragon’s homage-heavy story and ridiculous gameplay would not stand out on their own, that it only matters in the context of the rest of the Far Cry games. But I think that’s fine, and perhaps even to its benefit. What really makes it special is the ways in which it breaks away from, and even parodies, Far Cry 3 proper. The game wastes no time establishing its main character as the antithesis of Far Cry 3’s goober pretty-boy Jason Brody. Rex Colt is a murder machine, and he never hesitates to shoot first and ask questions later. Yes, his character is rather one-dimensional, but I think it fits well with Far Cry 3’s visceral, brutal gameplay.

It also Lampoons annoying tutorial sections by, ironically, making players sit through an annoying tutorial section, but it is actually amusing at points and doesn’t make players wait too long to start experimenting with the stealth and shooting on their own. Overall, the game just has a better sense of humor about the power fantasy it gives to its players, and it comes off as more charming and genuine as a result.

Really, the key strength of Blood Dragon’s design is that it’s a rare example of the much-loathed “Ubisoft formula” showing some restraint. A while ago I wrote about my fatigue with the open world genre, and one of my suggestions to revitalize the genre was to not be afraid to make the world smaller. Blood Dragon is a perfect example of just such a scaled-down, more manageable map. The unnamed island of Blood Dragon is a fraction of the size of Rook Island and it features 7 main story missions, 13 outposts, a few side quests and collectibles, and best of all, no towers to climb. The game doesn’t overwhelm you with a map full of icons, and that’s actually great. Some of the mechanics have also been distilled to put less emphasis on the extra RPG stuff; there’s no crafting, the arbitrary skill tree has been ditched in favor of a simple 30-level progression, and there’s a tighter selection of weapons and attachments. It’s a more focused and contained experience that, like the action movies it pays tribute to, doesn’t want to waste you time with extra fluff.

I know it’s easy to see Blood Dragon as nothing more than a re-skinned Far Cry 3, but all its little changes compound to make it so much more than that. It doesn’t try to communicate a deadly serious story about loyalty to friends or the definition of insanity. It just leans into the stupidity and goofiness of its gameplay more so than the series ever has. Ubisoft clearly had fun making Blood Dragon, and in my experience that joy was incredibly infectious.

Guys, I just really want a sequel to this game.

Warning: there’s some pretty big spoilers for Bioshock Infinite throughout this blog.

I finished System Shock 2 for the first time a while ago and found it to be an excellent first person shooter-role playing hybrid that still holds up. My decision to play it after all these years was mostly motivated by my growing interest in the Looking Glass Studios catalog, but I remembered that System Shock 2 was also co-developed by Irrational Games. I came across this sexy picture in the game’s credits…

... and thought to myself, “Hey, that guy went on to make some more pretty cool games, some of which are in a similar vein to System Shock! And one of those games is sitting on my shelf right now!”

Thus began my inquisitive return to Bioshock Infinite.

I was curious to see if Infinite’s linear, controlled design held up in a contemporary gaming climate, which, over the course of just two years, has dramatically shifted toward offering more open, choice-heavy experiences. The resounding success of games like The Witcher III, Metal Gear Solid V, and Fallout 4 is indicative of the open world direction in which the industry is headed. I’ve discussed my fatigue with the open world genre before, but I did really enjoy the complex, nonlinear parts of System Shock 2. That’s not an open world game, per se, but it does offer an expansive environment and a multitude of ways to go about completing objectives. Given my conflicting feelings about linear and nonlinear game design, I wanted to see if Irrational’s swan song is still fun.

More than anything, though, I wanted to see if Infinite would finally win me over, as someone who cares more about gameplay than story. I went in cautiously optimistic that Infinite’s more effective elements (discussed later in this blog) would finally outshine it’s jarring flaws.

I first played through Infinite a few months after it came out, and I remember thinking it was far less exciting than all the critical acclaim had me believe. Don’t get me wrong, I admire that Levine did indeed pursue a game that, at least thematically, is “free of the constraints of the small-minded.” Infinite is the only videogame story I know of that covers American exceptionalism and jingoism, racism emphasized by Occupy-inspired movements, political/religious corruption, and a complex exploration of free will that ties everything together in a sci-fi multiverse motif. It’s as mind-melting as it is provocative, and it’s all beautifully crafted with an impressive attention to detail.

On the contrary, nearly every aspect of the gameplay feels so average and compromised in order to make way for all its grandiose and sophisticated ideas. That’s my main problem with Bioshock Infinite; it constantly seems at odds with itself. The distinct, visually captivating narrative is strung together by mainstream, simplistic shooter mechanics. The deadly serious tone and challenging subject matter are offset by game-y goofiness, like eating random food to regain health and finding ammo in trash cans. The larger-than-life setting clashes with the aforementioned controlled and linear design, and I think this is a prominent source of my issues with the game. To me, Bioshock Infinite was linear to a fault. For all the game of the year awards and raving reviews it garnered, the game didn’t seem to take advantage of its medium enough to earn those honors. I always felt that the story of Infinite could have been told just as well in the form of a book or a movie.

Here’s an example of lacking interactivity that still sticks with me. Shortly after my arrival in Columbia, I come across a woman on the street selling a bouquet of flowers. I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to walk up to her, ready to offer a few silver eagles in exchange. Then I hear DeWitt say something along the lines of “No, thanks.” Now feeling awkward and embarrassed, I guess I’m supposed to walk away. I get it, that encounter was pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and perhaps that scene was supposed to serve as a bit of character building for Booker to show that he’s not easily distracted. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, that encounter broke the immersion for me. It made me feel like I don’t have agency in this world, like the game just wants me to move forward so it can tell its story. My only input is to move and shoot so that the regular course of events can occur as designed.

To its credit, Infinite does have a few instances of binary left trigger/right trigger choices: whether to throw the ball at the interracial couple during the lottery scene, choosing between the bird or the cage necklace for Elizabeth, and whether to spare or execute Slate when you finally find him. These choices certainly feel consequential in terms of the narrative and subject matter, and the personal motivations that players impose on Booker during these scenes could lead to difficult and introspective moments. However, when viewed purely through a gameplay design lens, these choices only have cosmetic and dialog implications. These choices would’ve been more engaging if their consequences were better integrated into the gameplay. Maybe they could feed into how you upgrade your vigors and weapons in specific ways, or maybe they could affect your relationship with Elizabeth, which could in turn make her more or less likely to give items or open tears during combat.

Speaking of the combat, Bioshock Infinite always struck me as a mediocre shooter. I’ll concede that the guns feel alright, the vigors are varied and offer some creative ways to dispatch enemies, and Elizabeth’s tears, despite being very limited and context-sensitive, provide a little more strategic depth in some scenarios. Yet it all feels painfully ordinary in an otherwise unique story and setting. It just feels weird and a little constricting to ostensibly be playing as an average Call of Duty soldier (especially when using the “marksman” control scheme on consoles) in the distinctly un-average world of Columbia. The use of these standard FPS controls and mechanics as the conduit for the narrative might be the unfortunate result of risk-averse design hampering the game’s otherwise awesome potential.

The game’s attempts to add depth in the form of infusions, equippable gear with unique attributes, and weapon and vigor upgrades don’t quite make the combat feel more complex or intriguing. Rather, those things seems to only exist in service of getting you through the story beats more quickly and easily. In my first playthrough, I felt these upgrades were ancillary at best and pointless at worst, since death is of so little consequence. I never felt compelled to play again to see if, say, favoring vigor upgrades over weapon upgrades would make the game play any differently.

I don’t know why Infinite’s linearity and standard gunplay were initially so problematic for me, since I’ve played other games with similar characteristics that haven’t bothered me quite as much (Resident Evil 4, one of my favorite games of all time, comes to mind). Maybe playing System Shock 2 has spoiled my perception of how a “-Shock” game should play.

Speaking specifically on input and choice, the input I had in System Shock 2 at least felt more significant. The game gives players some pretty versatile abilities -- psi powers, computer and security terminal hacking, organic research, weapon upgrades, etc. -- and using those abilities cleverly made me feel like I was getting one over on the developer. It’s hard to explain how exactly this design works, but SS2 makes players feel smart and powerful. Bioshock Infinite’s ability to do this is limited because your input is limited.

I also think System Shock 2 does a slightly better job of integrating its combat-heavy gameplay into the narrative. You’re building and upgrading your character in important ways specifically because Shodan wants to make a super-soldier out of you so you can destroy her creations. In a way, your perilous fight for survival through the Von Braun in SS2 is the story. Granted, SS2 has perhaps a similar degree of linearity in that the story plays out the same way every single time, but it somehow does a better job of making your role in that story matter a lot more.

Curiously, Infinite tries to pay homage to SS2 and other old Looking Glass games with it’s inclusion of 1999 mode and the 0451 easter egg, but those references are misleading. 1999 mode is essentially a Very Hard mode with few significant changes to the gameplay, and the 0451 code only made me wish I was playing System Shock or Deus Ex instead. The references only reminded my of Infinite’s untapped gameplay potential.

Before this blog turns into a contrarian soapbox about how much I apparently hate Bioshock Infinite, I want to clarify there are parts of the game that I really like. During my recent second playthrough, its flaws did manifest once again, but I was able to look past most of them and gain a greater appreciation for how Infinite handles its linear structure.

Infinite is perhaps so linear out of necessity for its protagonist. Games sometimes tend to put players in the role of underdeveloped characters or entirely blank slates in order to make it easier for players to engross themselves in the narrative. Booker DeWitt has a detailed backstory, and you just happen to take control of him at a specific point, in a specific universe, in his story. The character and the world feel deliberately designed to ignore the old Carmack notion that story in games is akin to story in porn. Irrational put story first by developing a protagonist with a predetermined history of violence and depression, and a predetermined motive to erase his past. Given Booker’s circumstances, it makes some sense that his journey would play out as an aggressive first person shooter.

Booker’s inevitable demise also plays into Infinite’s exploration of free will and lack thereof in the gameplay. Booker is Comstock, so if players want some positive resolution from this arc, there’s really only one solution. Part of me wishes that the game didn’t end with Booker drowning and everything disappearing (at least in one universe), that there could’ve been more permutations based on a greater degree of choice in the gameplay. But considering the game’s linear nature, it was probably the best ending.

Infinite obviously has no shortage of narrative depth, but there are also some notably deep gameplay elements that make it less straight-line linear than other disposable FPS campaigns. There are actually several hub-like areas in Colombia that contain plenty of alternate paths to explore, resources to scavenge, and locks to pick. The entrance of Soldier’s Field comes to mind; a bustling little area with shops, cafes, and bars all around. You can move through peacefully, or you can steal weapons or money out of cash registers in broad daylight. The area(s) outside of Comstock house is another great example, featuring tons of locked buildings that can be opened to uncover hidden voxophones and other resources. If Infinite has anything in common with it’s System Shock ancestors, it’s that it rewards thorough exploration.

I should also give credit where credit is due in the combat department. Although the skyline sections of the game literally put you “on rails,” there are times when they afford some freedom and resourcefulness when fighting the baddies of Columbia. There’s a specific part during the Vox Populi revolt in which you have to ride several skylines to board an airship and destroy it from the inside. That part is worth highlighting because it worked on a much larger scale than the standard corridors and such you encountered up until that point, and it also tested all your combat skills in an awesome way. I just wish these pseudo-nonlinear scenarios would show up more often.

I understand, however, that maybe asking a bit much, given the game’s focus and themes. Perhaps Infinite’s story couldn’t seriously be told with too much player input. As Vinny Caravella put it in an episode of the Giant Beastcast, “When you give the user control is when it all falls apart.” Curious and creative players do have a tendency to break a game’s systems and find unintended quirks, and in Infinite’s case that poking-and-prodding playstyle may detract from the themes and messages the game is trying to communicate. While I was initially irked by this controlled design, I was willing to put up with it on my second playthrough. Given my recent boredom with most open world and nonlinear tropes, I suppose I was more willing to give up the reins and just let the game tell me a story.

Bioshock Infinite probably didn’t need to let me interact with it to tell its story, but I’m glad it did. I’m glad it took me along for its wild ride, even though it gave me little agency in the destiny of that ride. While Infinite is often a victim of the safe triple-A trend toward mass market appeal with its fair share of concessions, it still manages to tackle heavy themes in ways that don’t always treat the player like an idiot.

TL;DR: Wrestling games have been great in the past, but recent titles in the genre, namely from the WWE 2K series, have been less than stellar. Some critics have posited that wrestling games should break kayfabe and reflect the more realistic aspects of the business, but I think depicting wrestling as “a real struggle for victory” can still be done well in a videogame. It’s still real to me, damn it!

The upcoming release of WWE 2K16 has got me thinking a lot about the state of the WWE 2K series and the general quality and design of wrestling video games as a whole. Promising a larger roster and tons of improvements to the base mechanics, 2K16 aims to be a much better product than last year’s disastrous, stripped down iteration. But is it enough to make an exceptional wrestling game? 2K15 left a bad taste in many player’s mouths, and I have to imagine that the annualized release schedule of wrestling games for at least the past decade and a half has led to some fatigue among fans.

Out of the backlash against 2K15 in particular, it seems there was an influx of opinions stating that wrestling games should stop trying to be awkward, grapple-based fighting games and just “break kayfabe.” This Vice article posits that WWE 2K16 should focus more on the performance art and business management aspects of “sports entertainment” that lurk behind the kayfabe veil, and Giant Bomb’s own Jeff Gerstmann has suggested in Quick Looks that the mechanics of wrestling games should instead involve working together with your opponent to put on a show. We’re in the Reality Era after all, so maybe developers should stop perpetuating the traditional in-ring feud and create a more realistic depiction of wrestling.

Despite what the title of this blog may have you believe, I think breaking kayfabe in wrestling games could be a great idea. I would love to see a developer take a stab at designing wrestling mechanics as a pseudo-cooperative dance. Considering most wrestling moves are really a 50/50 effort between both performers for the purpose of captivating an audience, I think there’s a lot of potential in a wrestling game that puts the challenge in harmonious performance and telling a good in-ring story, rather than just defeating your opponent. I’d also like to see a wrestling game that focuses on the management and drama side of things, forcing players to deal with monetary issues, questionable booking decisions from writers, relationships with other talent and higher-ups in the company, and maybe even drug problems.

With all that said, I still believe there’s some steam left in the traditional wrestling game machine. I still really like the idea of depicting wrestling as a fight for honor and glory through a complex, intricate style of combat, even if recent attempts at this have been unsuccessful.

This sentiment mostly comes from my nostalgia for the good ol’ days of wrestling. I discovered WWF around late 99 or early 2000 and absolutely fell in love with it over the next couple of years. I was so infatuated with the chaos unfolding on the screen because, as stupid as it sounds, I believed it was all real. I really thought The Rock and Stone Cold hated each other with a passion, I really thought Kane’s mask hid a scarified face that was burned by The Undertaker, and I really thought the Dudley Boys had a freaky fetish for tables. Likewise, I loved reenacting all these storylines and rivalries in old wrestling games like WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy. I could take control of my favorite wrestlers and get involved in their theatrical struggles, and it was fun because I didn’t realize it was just theatrics.

I started gaining an interest in the WWE again last year, but my affection for the show is nowhere near as massive as it was almost 15 years ago, and I would partially attribute this to my awareness of the predetermined nature of wrestling and the other business realities behind the scenes. Don’t get me wrong, I still have a ton of respect for the performance art of wrestling, but I loved it more when I was a stupid kid and I didn’t know “kayfabe” was even a thing. That’s where wrestling games come into play. They can still fulfill those childhood fantasies and let players act out heated rivalries and goofy storylines. I want a wrestling game in which I win a match by being the better wrestler; I don’t want my victory to be determined by a booker or higher-ups in the company who want to give me a push.

I would argue that the problem with wrestling games isn’t their stubborn commitment to maintaining kayfabe. Rather, the problem lies in the basic mechanics, which, in my opinion, have never perfectly nailed the feel and tension of wrestling. Maybe the problem with most wrestling games (at least the ones I’ve played) is that they’re built on the foundations of traditional fighting games, which doesn’t translate well to a wrestling setting. This is particularly evident when complex moves and submissions can be performed by relatively simple button combinations. As a result, much of the combat seems to involve watching lengthy canned animations of suplexes and powerbombs take place, and it never feels like you have direct 1-to-1 control over your wrestler and his/her moves.

Compared to 2D fighting games, which mainly focus on rapid punches and kicks, the scope of professional wrestling should be much larger, with tons of crazy moves, submission holds, and match types that can happen. However, most wrestling games have had to make some compromises in an attempt to account for all those possibilities. Since it's pretty difficult to map the versatility of an entire wrestling moveset on even a modern controller, wrestling games have heavily relied on context-sensitive timing and positioning, and they've done this to varying degrees of success.

I’ll admit that it’s not entirely fair to make blanket statements about the quality of all wrestling games. Maybe it would be more productive to look at a few highly regarded games in the genre and pinpoint their specific strengths and weaknesses.

WWF No Mercy

If any online discussion about this game is to be believed, it’s the greatest wrestling game ever made. That, or it simply evokes the most nostalgia. Either way, it’s my personal favorite, and I believe its reverence has been well earned. AKI Corporation has consistently knocked it out of the park with their N64 wrestling games, and No Mercy is the peak of their signature design. The game boasts plenty of new features including an expanded character creator, a broader set of irish whip and double-team moves, and a bunch of backstage areas to hold Hardcore matches, but No Mercy also sticks to tradition with its intuitive grapple controls and minimalist “Spirit meter” mechanic. Those basic design elements, which have served as the foundations of AKI’s wrestling titles, are nearly perfect for setting a pace and momentum that is rarely ever matched by other wrestling games. Despite No Mercy’s technical limitations, its matches are tense and move at just the right tempo, eliciting an energy similar to a “real” wrestling bout, a “real” struggle for victory.

However, No Mercy does have its fair share of issues. For instance, the aforementioned grapple-based controls represent an unfortunate example of compromises in wrestling games. It is indeed a simple and intuitive control system, but it’s relied on too heavily, leading to unnatural transitions to other moves. It feels particularly weird performing a Sweet Chin Music or a Stone Cold Stunner directly from a grapple.

Those minor control issues are just nitpicks in comparison to No Mercy’s presentation problems. I’ll admit the game does achieve a decent amount of authenticity within the N64’s limited horsepower, and Vince McMahon’s version of the People’s Elbow is eerily accurate, but that example is just a diamond in the rough full of stilted animations and entrances with terrible visual/audio quality. A large part of wrestling, especially in the WWE, is the presentation and the pageantry, and the AKI games often miss the mark in this regard.

Also, this game appears to have some serious balance issues. According to this No Mercy tier list on the Shoryuken forums, X-Pac is considered god tier. What.

WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain

What No Mercy lacks in production value, Here Comes the Pain makes up for it and then some. Yuke’s made the most content-packed wrestling game of recent memory and went above and beyond to make it true to the WWE product with an incredible attention to detail: Most of the wrestlers have unique animations accurate to their on-screen personas; tag teams have their own special entrances and poses; interactions with the referee (especially in tag matches) can have an impact on the match; Cage, Hell in a Cell, and Elimination Chamber matches are present and accounted for (among myriad other match types); pretty much any imaginable combination of wrestlers can participate in these match types, including regular and tornado tag teams; and the list goes on. All these little things, combined with numerous create-a-modes that let you make whatever the hell you want, add up to make an incredible value package for WWE fans.

The gameplay isn’t bad either. HCTP makes some substantial improvements over its predecessors, all of which make for a deep and varied wrestling experience. Players have at their disposal a two-step grapple system to perform a variety of standing moves, a ton of other positions (tree of woe, teetering on the edge of the Cell, etc.) in which unique moves can be dished out, and a body indicator on the HUD that shows players how close they are to breaking an opponent’s limbs. In short, this game’s complexity makes it one of the few in the wrestling genre that avoids making too many compromises.

However, the complexity of HCTP may not sit well with newer players. Once again, the grapple system is the culprit of the issue, this time because of its confusing button-mapping. In my experience, it was not immediately clear which d-pad/circle button combination performed, for instance, a weak grapple versus a strong grapple. To add to the confusion, the d-pad controls for moves and strikes don’t change according to which way you’re facing your opponent, and I imagine this would be particularly weird for players who are used to traditional fighting games. A simpler No Mercy-esque system (in which you tap the button for weak attack, hold the button for strong attack, and d-pad combinations perform more intuitive move variations) would be preferred.

The AI opponents don't really give you much time to learn the ropes either. Oftentimes I find myself getting pummeled by my opponent with no way of escaping. And this is on the easiest difficulty and fairly early in the match. I realize this sort of momentary one-sided combat regularly happens in real matches, and this might just be me sucking at the game, but it’s not fun being on the receiving end of that beating. I feel like I should have more control in those scenarios.

Quite simply, HCTP’s complexity isn’t always conducive to fluid wrestling. Many of my matches involve downright sloppy moments chock full of nonsense button-mashing (a tactic that seems to be encouraged, as that’s how you’re supposed to escape pinfalls and submissions).

Fire Pro Wrestling

Another big favorite among wrestling game fans. I'll admit I actually have no prior experience with the FPW series, so I briefly played Fire Pro Wrestling Returns as part of my research for this blog and I was immediately overwhelmed with the smorgasbord of options available on every menu in the game. The game features plenty of traditional, hardcore, and MMA match types, tons of variations and settings within those match types, and plenty Create-a-Modes that let you create custom wrestlers, referees, rings, and title belts, among other things. There’s enough here to make for a robust booking simulator.

As for the gameplay, the controls are simple while still providing versatile moveset that really allows skilled players to dictate the pace of a match. I know I've used the word "intuitive" a lot in this blog, but I think FPW really nails this concept. Basically, the game has separate buttons dedicated to weak, medium, and strong strikes/moves, and you initiate a grapple by simply walking into an opponent. Can’t get much simpler than that. On the other hand, the specific timing required to perform grapple moves and avoid reversals adds a surprising amount of depth to the combat. I was also intrigued to find that FPW Returns has a “breathe” button, which you will want to use at appropriate times to catch your breath and avoid fatigue. Both the grapple system and breath mechanic add a layer of strategy and timing I’ve never seen in a wrestling game. FPW manages to do a whole lot more within its sprite-based 2.5D graphics than I expected.

However, the main thing that is hindering my enjoyment of this strategic depth is the simple fact that I suck at this game. I know, that’s not a legitimate criticism, as I understand this game has a steep learning curve. I have been reading some guides and other online resources to get a better grasp of FPW’s tougher mechanics, but I wish I didn’t have to go through that trouble to start kicking some virtual ass.

Some ideas about the genre

One of the common threads among all these games is that they use some sort of grapple system to perform most of the actual wrestling moves. To varying degrees, these grapple systems also suffer the aforementioned problem of a lack of tactility; you’re pressing a couple buttons and just watching animations take place. With this notion lingering in my mind, I recently played through Skate 3 and came up with a weird idea: The things EA’s Skate did for the skateboarding genre could also be applied to the wrestling genre. That same analog-heavy, limb-based control scheme could be used in a grapple system to make players feel like they’re actually performing moves. I imagine a system where you would press both triggers to lock up with your opponent, then you would move and rotate both analog sticks in specific ways to lift and then slam your opponent. Intricate movement of the sticks could lead to strange and complex moves like this.

As I’m typing these ideas, I realize this control scheme is not even the slightest bit intuitive. This is where the idea of designing a more tactile and complex wrestling game gets tricky: it still has to be intuitive. It has to be playable to a wide audience. Especially if we’re talking about WWE, the casual Raw viewer probably doesn’t care about the mechanical nuances of the in-ring action. They probably just want to play as Brock Lesnar and deliver a billion more german suplexes to John Cena, and they want to do so with as little bullshit as possible.

I’ve rambled on long enough, so I want to hear your ideas, fellow marks. What can wrestling games do to innovate on the conventions of the genre while still remaining simple and fun? Or should we just give up on this pursuit and try breaking kayfabe?

While everyone is expressing their disappointment with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, a strange and profoundly divisive game. For me, it evokes a mixed bag of emotions, ranging from disappointment to frustration to pure bliss. It continues the series’ tradition of fast-paced, combo-based skating which I love so dearly, while adding a healthy amount of new features and mechanics that test the player’s abilities in surprising new ways. Some of these new features work exceptionally well, while others hold it back from greatness. Whether Proving Ground deserves any reverence is debatable, considering it is probably the worst entry in the main Tony Hawk games (until THPS5 came along), but I still play it to this day because there’s potential for an amazing product here that is almost met.

For the uninitiated, Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, released in 2007, is the 9th game in the Tony Hawk series. It’s also the last one to be developed by Neversoft, the series’ creators. From what I can tell, Proving Ground was supposed to pick up the slack of American Wasteland and Project 8 by being the first true next-gen Tony Hawk game, sporting a relatively large open world, a greatly expanded character/level creation suite (but not really), a photo/video editor tool, and a host of online features. While some of that ambition shines through, the game is more often than not a glitchy mess full of clunky controls and inconsistent design. This is likely the result of Neversoft growing tired of this increasingly stale annual franchise, as well as having to develop Guitar Hero III at the same time. Also, EA came on to the scene with Skate that same year and pretty much kicked Tony Hawk’s ass into obscurity for the next several years.

To avoid sounding too pessimistic here, I want to clarify that I love the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, and, like I said before, I’m still crazy enough to play and enjoy Proving Ground.

I love/hate this game so much that I recently decided to take on the idiotic task of attempting to almost S-rank it without cheats (I say “almost” because the game has three online achievements and I don’t have a gold XBL account to get them. Also, I’m probably the only person on earth still playing this game). This is no easy task, as Proving Ground is, without a shadow of a doubt, the hardest Tony Hawk game ever. Proving Ground lives up to its title, testing players’ abilities to perform tons of lengthy and awkward combos that are sure to throw off your balance meters. According to TrueAchievements.com, a site that adjusts the score of Xbox achievements based on how many registered users have obtained them, this is one of the very few Xbox 360 games to have a TrueAchievements score of over 5,000 points.

The experience has simultaneously been a frustrating nightmare and the most fun I’ve had with a Tony Hawk game in a long time. Taking on Proving Ground’s most grueling missions reveals this game’s severe lack of polish, but it’s also opened my eyes to some of its more genius and ambitious elements, especially with regard to the design of its challenges and the variety of solutions players can use to beat said challenges.

Using the word “genius” to describe this game feels strange because none of those genius design elements can be seen at first, second, or even third glance. On it’s surface, Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground is a boring entry in a once groundbreaking series that rehashes the pseudo-realistic story from Tony Hawk’s Underground, the mechanics from Tony Hawk’s Project 8, and makes little to no effort to move the series forward in any meaningful ways. In fact, it even takes a few steps backwards.

Perhaps the most prominent of these backwards design choices is the limited customization options. Customization is one of the cornerstones throughout the THPS series, but for some odd reason it’s severely lacking here. The whacky character creation of past games is ditched in order to serve Proving Ground’s more realistic storytelling, meaning you can only create generic hipster-looking dudes (seriously, no lady skaters here) and skate them around generic representations of Philly, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. The create-a-park feature is also limited to a single “Skate Lounge” where you can only place a few simple ramps and rails throughout with almost no control over the basic geometry of the level. The game tries to make up for this by letting you place custom pieces throughout the actual game world via a “rigger” menu, but even this is limited to only 30 pieces. Sure, the game world itself is already pretty well crafted, albeit a little bland in the graphics department, but it would be nice to have more creative options.

The game somehow redeems itself despite this, because what the rigger menu lacks in customizability it makes up for in clever experimentation. The real genius behind the rigging mechanic is the many ways it can be used to help you complete almost all the goals throughout the game. You can build an assortment of ramps if you want to cover a great height or distance, you can put down a few rails to help build some momentum up to those ramps, or you can build a makeshift funbox or half pipe that you can use to help build up a combo for score-based challenges. Even in the game’s Classic Mode goals you can place custom pieces wherever you want on the fly: build a boost-powered kicker ramp to reach the secret disk or a series of rails to get through the SKATE letters a little faster.

Experimentation is also emphasized in the massive repertoire of tricks players have at their disposal. THPG is the culmination of almost all the functionality you’ve had in previous games: reverts, spine transfers, off-board walking and climbing, grind stalls, Nail-The-Trick, etc., while adding a few new tricks to the book. Some of these additions, particularly the Aggro Kick/Push and the extended Nail-The-Trick suite, will prove invaluable throughout your skateboarding journey. There are plenty of times where you’ll have to trigger Nail-The Trick to cover a little extra distance or push off a wall during a manual to get a little extra speed.

Of course, having such a large arsenal of tricks has its share of problems. There are cases where multiple tricks/abilities are bound to a single button, so you might end up doing an acid drop when you meant to stall on a rail, for instance. It’s hard to describe specific examples if you haven’t played the game, so just imagine it’s like old school Castlevania when you try to use your sub-weapon when you’re near a flight of stairs.

Proving Ground really gives you too many tools and tricks, but despite the control issues that come with such an abundance, the game’s challenges actually encourage you to utilize a large majority of those tools in exciting and convoluted ways. Completing goals at Sick level requires you to figure out where to use specific mechanics and where to place certain rigger pieces, and then you have to combine that ingenuity with the button-mashing combo skills from the series’ past. It’s also worth noting that none of this weird use of level editing and trick mechanics feels like cheating or exploitation. As has been established already, the challenges are all really hard, so it’s likely that Neversoft left some leeway for players and allowed for multiple solutions for the game’s challenges. This design is so rewarding because it encourages players to think outside the box. Dare I say this is the thinking man’s Tony Hawk game.

Like Project 8 before it, Proving Ground’s gameplay structure also makes an admirable attempt to meet the ambition set forth by Aggressive Inline, another criminally underappreciated extreme sports game. Like Aggressive Inline, Proving Ground has a bunch of ambient challenges that you can trigger by just skating around. Trick off a specific marker and you can start a mission that has you grinding on a sequence of highlighted objects in a protracted combo, or that tests your ability to balance a manual from one end of a building to another, among other tasks. Admittedly, these little diversions are pretty insubstantial in the grand scheme of the main story mode, but they really highlight the satisfaction of stringing a bunch of tricks together in a combo.

Proving Ground also borrows Aggressive Inline’s stat progression system: you improve your stats simply by practicing them. For instance, the more time you spend in the air, the more your Air stat will increase. These Aggressive Inline-inspired mechanics minimizes the use of menus and timers so that fewer annoyances will interrupt the flow of your skating. I can’t stress enough the importance of flow in games like this that emphasize exploration and trial-and-error tasks, and both Proving Ground and Aggressive Inline get it right.

Proving Ground doesn’t fully commit to the Aggressive Inline design, however. In the vein of Pro Skater 4 onward, you initiate most challenges by talking to a person and performing a specific objective in a confined space. Of course, there’s still plenty of freedom in figuring out how to achieve that objective, thanks to the aforementioned rigger mechanic and all the unique tricks at your disposal. It’s similar to the brief park creation goals in Aggressive Inline which also rely on an efficient placement of ramps and rails. Again, both games nail the freedom and experimentation aspects of the extreme sports genre.

I could ramble on about this game forever (and I already have for 1500+ words), although I know my ramblings will mostly fall on deaf ears. I understand this is one of the most forgotten entries in the series, but I truly believe it deserves more attention for the innovations it tried to pull off. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 may have left a sour taste in your mouth, but if you’re still looking for a new-ish Tony Hawk game that isn’t just banking on nostalgia, consider giving Proving Ground a shot--if you have the patience to look past its most egregious faults, that is.

Note: I should mention that I wrote this blog without taking Metal Gear Solid V into consideration. I have not played MGS V yet, but if Brad’s review is to be trusted, it sounds like it does some good things for the open-world genre. I only hope that doesn’t invalidate everything I’ve said in this blog.

I recently decided to start a new game of Saints Row IV on a whim and I quickly came to a conclusion I never thought I’d come to: I’m getting tired of open world games. This is strange because I’m usually a sucker for this genre. Traversing a sprawling landscape is still a novel concept to me, and I can usually tolerate the grind of playing through tons of ancillary content. Heck, on my first playthrough of Saints Row IV over a year ago, I remember thinking to myself, “Man, there’s so much fun stuff to do in this game!” Now, after looking at all the activity icons and collectibles scattered throughout Steelport, that thought has changed to “Man, there’s way too much stuff to do in this game.”

Don’t get me wrong, most of those side activities are actually pretty enjoyable, but it all just feels like filler that’s getting in the way of the ridiculous main story beats, which is what I really want from a Saints Row experience. The game itself even refers to this extra stuff as “diversions.” I just wish those diversions weren’t so prominent and integral to progressing through the game.

Maybe Saints Row isn’t the best example with which to express fatigue for the open world genre, considering how the open world itself is probably the least exciting aspect of those games (especially the last two). But this is definitely not just Saints Row fatigue: I’ve also thought about playing through Far Cry 4, The Witcher III, one of the Batman Arkham games, or Shadow of Mordor, or possibly starting a new character in Skyrim, but I never follow through, as the chore of sifting through all the additional quests and whatnot to get to the real meat and potatoes is a major deterrent.

It seems I’m not alone in this sentiment. With Mad Max having garnered tons of middling reviews, it looks like many others are also feeling that open world fatigue. This isn’t just a trend among professional critics either. This recent thread on the forums asked users what features they would like to see from a Grand Theft Auto 6, and several people expressed an interest in seeing Rockstar ditch the open world formula in favor of a more straightforward, story-driven experience.

What a strange phenomenon. Grand Theft Auto was one of the major players in popularizing the open world gimmick with GTA III in 2001, having spawned countless copycats over the next decade and a half. Now, the house that Rockstar helped build (among many other developers) is starting to crumble due to oversaturation, and it’s reaching a point where players want to see traditionally open world games shed their free roaming foundations. Developers have too often stuck with the tried-and-true formula of filling a big map with tons of quests and busywork to create the illusion of progress. Players are starting to see through that illusion, and the novelty of that formula is wearing thin.

Despite my own waning interest in the open world genre, I still think it has potential to serve as the basis for a compelling game. We really just need to retire the grindy formula(s) that have been so frequently used by Ubisoft, EA, 2K, Bethesda, and Warner Bros. among others. Here are a few suggestions...

First: Open world games should focus less on character progression and lite RPG elements and more on the progression of the world itself. The aforementioned “illusion of progress” issue is exacerbated by needless upgrade systems that usually don’t offer any significant changes to the gameplay beyond just making the game easier or removing arbitrary annoyances. Perhaps a system that focuses on changing the world around you would be more convincing. Red Faction Guerilla at least comes close to achieving this concept. Beyond the obvious destruction physics, Guerilla also featured an interesting control and morale system to represent changes in the world: as you completed missions and “guerilla actions” in each sector of mars, the EDF’s control on that sector would decrease and the morale of the Mars civilians would increase. Granted, this system mostly just amounted to progress bars going up/down and not much else, but I think it was an ambitious system whose illusion felt more compelling and satisfying than others.

Second: If neither upgrade systems nor world progression play a significant role in the game, make side content completely optional and just focus on the main story. I think Rockstar had success with this in Grand Theft Auto V. Sure, the three characters each have their own attributes that can be improved with practice, and there are plenty of sporting, property management, and stock market activities that you can partake in for extra money, but you can safely ignore that extra RPG stuff and play through all the main missions at your own pace. The only necessary deviation from the main quest (that I can think of at least) is a trip to Ammu-nation every once in awhile, and that’s maybe even a little overkill because you end up with so much ammo throughout the missions anyway. This works because the story, the dialogue, and the character interactions are the real incentive, and Rockstar clearly doesn’t want any needless filler interrupting their storytelling.

Third: Just make the open world a little smaller. Perhaps developers should stop touting the massive square footage of their sandboxes and be less afraid to bring the size down a bit. Grand Theft Auto V is arguably less successful in this regard. I appreciate the large size of Los Santos and the unparalleled attention to detail therein, but I’m never going to see everything that world has to offer, nor do I care to. The first examples of smaller worlds that come to mind are the early Legend of Zelda games. I recently started playing A Link to the Past (I know, I’m REALLY late to that party) and I’ve found the game’s relatively small representation of Hyrule to be more manageable and motivating than most larger open worlds. I know using a Zelda game as an example of a sandbox game is a bit of a stretch, but I think it’s still applicable because of its open, non-linear nature. I just think the series serves as a good example of smaller worlds that are more densely packed with meaningful quests and challenges that serve the gameplay well.

My suggestions and examples probably need a little work, but maybe YOU have some better ideas. What sort of things would you like to see open world games do to mix up the formula? Or do you think the industry should give the whole genre a break?

That funny-looking, Canadian-sounding Lotus lady sent me on another mission. My task is to travel to Venus and infiltrate a few data vaults to retrieve confidential files. The Corpus faction are guarding the data, and while they have their fair share of arms and defenses, they’re no match for my level 30 Mag Warframe. I start off this mission as I usually do by stealthily backstabbing a couple enemies with my sword, but one of their friends catches me and triggers the alarm. I’m soon surrounded by Corpus crewmen and MOAs spouting robotic gibberish as they attack me. I manage to eliminate most of them with my magnetic Pull ability and pick off the rest with my dual Dex Furis pistols.

Onto my objective. I manage to get in and out of the first two data vaults without a hitch, but the last one is full of security cameras and laser traps. I knock out the cameras and dodge through the initial laser grids by sliding and crawling through hidden air ducts. Just like a good spy movie. As I’m about to drop into the room with the goods, I trip a laser and the alarms start blaring. I rush to get the data while it’s still in tact and get the hell out of there. It now seems like hundreds of Corpus stand between me and the extraction point. I slide, somersault, and parkour my way through hordes of enemies, leaving gibs and robo-debris in my path. It’s a great opportunity to use my newly-acquired Paris bow to cause a little collateral damage: On more than one occasion I fire an arrow through one crewman’s head and into another’s chest, pinning them both to the nearby wall. Eventually I reach the extraction point and leave the planet with one last elegant slide-jump.

“Good job, Tenno.” Yeah, in fact it was a pretty goddamn awesome job.

I return to my ship, and as I watch the Mission Complete screen, I realize all that awesome stuff I just did was of painfully little consequence. I don’t really feel like I stopped the Corpus from carrying out any nefarious plans. It was all just a grind session to level up my gear and gather resources to craft new gear that will eventually lead to more grind sessions. Any immersion I felt is broken.

I first tried playing Warframe about a year ago, during my senior year of college. I really enjoyed the action and tight controls, but I wasn’t willing to invest in the game’s grindy and often confusing systems, so I stopped after logging about 6 hours. With the recent release of the new Parkour 2.0 system, and a little extra time afforded by unemployment, I felt I should give Warframe another shot. I’m loving it a ton, and the new features that have been added since my first attempt may keep me interested for the long haul. Seriously, it was enough to pull me away from my addiction to Rocket League. However, those grindy free-to-play systems are obviously still in place, and in my opinion they’re holding this game back from true greatness.

I want to focus for a moment on my claim about the lack of consequence in Warframe’s missions. Yes, I know this mission did, in fact, have some consequences, but none of them accomplish the desired effect for me as a player.

First, the leveling of equipment. At the end of every level I get to see progress bars for all my stuff fill up, which is nice… I guess. I certainly appreciate having more power and mod capacity for my weapons, but after a while this leveling system fails to trigger the pleasure centers in my brain that it’s supposed to. As someone who loves to watch numbers and progress bars go up, especially in games like Borderlands, Warframe’s leveling system should totally work for me. But it doesn’t.

Second, the narrative impact. That anecdote above described just one “Spy” mission among many others in the solar system, and the exposition and ending of each of these missions consists of almost identical lines of dialogue from Lotus (unless it’s tied to a specific quest). Worse yet, I don’t see any tangible effect from accomplishing my mission: I simply unlock another new mission on Venus. So what was the significance of those particular pieces of data I just retrieved? What effect will this have on the infinitely large hordes of Corpus drones? Am I actually making a dent in this crazy faction war? As someone who usually doesn’t care about narrative and logic in games, this shouldn’t irk me so much. But it does.

All of these quirks are, of course, the result of Warframe being a free-to-play game, and before I launch into a tirade about the disappointing aspects of the game, I want to be clear in stating that Warframe is a damn good free-to-play game. Digital Extremes deserve some credit for designing a movement system and control scheme that makes players feel like true badasses, whether they be newcomers or masters. Warframe has some of the tightest and most tactile controls I’ve ever used in a third-person action shooter. The game seamlessly weaves gunplay, melee combat, and parkour acrobatics in a way that it all feels purposeful and fun. Furthermore, all these controls and gameplay design principles are placed in a well realized sci-fi world with superb level design and audio/visual presentation. The level design, beyond its visually imaginative atmosphere and architecture, consists of interesting stealth and hacking mechanics that evoke memories of Deus Ex. And I love Deus Ex. Of course, Warframe isn’t just paying homage to it’s inspirations: It’s presenting a truly unique product, and that fact is worthy of at least some praise.

This is precisely why all the free-to-play trappings of Warframe are so disheartening. While Digital Extremes have indeed created some of the most satisfying combat, stealth, and puzzle mechanics in recent memory, extended time with the game will make you realize that they’ve also made being a space ninja seem like the most redundant thing ever.

The problems start with the lack of variety in equipment at your disposal and continue with the chore of obtaining new equipment. Warframe forces you to spend tons of time with the same starter frame and the same starter assault rifle and pistol. You have two options of obtaining new gear, but neither are ideal. The first and easiest option is to simply buy gear with real money, which translates to “platinum” in the Warframe universe. However, even if you do purchase new frames and weapons right away, you still have to spend time leveling up all that gear so you can increase its mod capacity, which usually means playing through old levels again. The second option is to purchase blueprints for gear, which can be purchased with “credits,” Warframe’s second currency which can be freely obtained in numerous ways throughout the game. Blueprints contain a list of resource requirements in order to craft the gear, and these resources are scattered throughout different planets in the solar system. Some of these resources are quite rare, and this, unfortunately, leads to farming. When I encounter any online discussion about this game and see people talk about “farming” new weapons and frames, I can’t help but audibly groan. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels wrong to be farming any amount of resources in a fast-paced space ninja game.

As a result of these paywalls and “grindwalls” impeding my progress, my first 20 hours of Warframe were spent with the same Mag frame and the same Braton rifle, and that got old fast (I will admit that I did eventually discover that you can purchase a shotgun and a bow with credits instead of real money, but I might still chalk that up as a failing of the game’s confusing and unintuitive menu systems). When I got to try out some new weapons later on, everything still felt like a chore, as the arduous level-up process repeats itself with every new item. It feels like the game is testing the player’s tolerance for repetition. It almost seems like it’s designed to swamp you with monotony until you reach your breaking point and finally spend money on it. I’m constantly battling the game’s solicitations to buy platinum. That’s not to say Digital Extremes doesn’t deserve some monetary compensation for their product; I’m just not too fond of how they try to squeeze that money out of me.

The player’s seemingly inconsequential role in the lore and storyline of Warframe certainly doesn’t help matters. I don’t necessarily care about the lore or the quality of it. Frankly, the fact that a free-to-play game even has a lore of this depth at all is impressive. What I care about is my lack of any real impact on that lore. It all just seems like an illusion to encourage more playtime and investment in platinum. I will admit that the somewhat-new quest system offers some stories that players can feel more invested in, but I would still argue that many of these quests don’t feel different enough from the regular missions.

I know many Warframe players suggest playing the game in Multiplayer mode, as all the missions are, of course, designed to be a collaborative effort. However, playing with others hasn’t really alleviated the aforementioned problems in my experience. My fellow Tenno often rush through objectives too quickly for me to keep up, so I never feel like I’m contributing to the team, especially as someone who likes to go through the missions at a slower pace.

Besides, Warframe has the foundations in place for a solid single-player experience. With that in mind, I think it’d be better if it just focused on the action, parkour, hacking, and stealth mechanics and ditched all the grindy RPG free-to-play elements. Based on other games I’ve been playing recently, I envision something like a fast-paced Deus Ex that puts emphasis on action and shooting, while still providing options for a sneaky approach to each level. For unlocking new weapons and frames, the game could use an interplanetary version of the Metroid/Castlevania style in which tools and upgrades are locked behind bosses or hidden in less travelled nooks and crannies of the universe. Heck, Warframe already has the Metroid Prime: Hunters navigation system and some of Richter’s acrobatic moves from Symphony of the Night.

I can daydream all I want about what Warframe could be, but I’m hooked on what it already is, for better or worse. Logging in for the login bonus has become a daily habit for me, and once I’m in the game I always feel the need to play at least one mission to level up my stuff. Warframe serves its purpose well as a persistent, constantly-evolving product, but I wish all of its elements came together in a more traditional game experience.

What a strange E3 it’s been. This year’s showing seems to have been a particularly massive spectacle motivated by the “go big or go home” mantra. Publishers used their press conferences as a means to invite excited gamers aboard a very packed hype-train with announcements of remakes and sequels to fan-favorite franchises. Fallout 4, Doom 4, the Rare Replay collection, Gears of War 4, Star Fox Zero, Just Cause 3, and of course Sony’s three big announcements all made for an E3 that was very heavy on fan service. Needless to say, this tactic has worked so far in generating excitement. Go to any forum or discussion board on the web that is even tangentially related to videogames and you’ll find everyone is all atwitter with nostalgia about the Final Fantasy VII remake, and the Shenmue 3 hype has already achieved tangible monetary progress through a Kickstarter that met it’s funding goal literally overnight. Plenty of gaming news outlets and journalists have even been quite explicit about their enthusiasm (look no further than the Game Trailers reactions to the Sony conference).

Some game critics, on the other hand, have occupied the opposite end of the hype spectrum. The Giant Bomb crew and George of the Super Bunnyhop YouTube channel, to name a couple I’m aware of, have remained level headed and oftentimes cynical about this year’s big announcements and the show as a whole. Super Bunnyhop’s recent E3 video features an interesting analysis that distills the show down to lies and marketing fluff, and the reactions of the Giant Bomb folks throughout the beloved Sony conference ranged from apathetic to angry (Jeff’s reaction to the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter is pretty hilarious). None of that is really new, but what’s interesting is that some of the fan reaction to this less-than-enthusiastic coverage has created a contentious relationship between the cynicism of game critics and the hype of game fans. The chat during Giant Bomb’s Sony conference stream and some of the top rated comments in the Super Bunnyhop video (and a little bit in this Reddit thread discussing the video as well) are all evidence of this, with commenters telling critics to “lighten up” and that “Your lack of hype is bad & you should feel bad.” You can also compare the comments in the Giant Bomb video to the comments in the GameTrailers video for further evidence. It’s like gamers really don’t want any bad vibes interfering with their nostalgia and elation.

I just felt the urge to write about this phenomenon because it’s the first time I’ve encountered it in this particular way and I feel conflicted about it. I think (or at least hope) everyone understands that E3 is all about hype, and I don’t think gamers care too much about getting lost in the hype and spectacle of the show because, honestly, it’s kinda fun. Also, I feel like I’ve been exposed to so much cynicism and disappointment from both game critics and fans that to see gamers so happy about something also makes me happy. However, I can’t help but think that this happiness is a little premature, and the general unwillingness to hear opposing views on this excitement is concerning.

For me, it raises some questions about the kind of games people really want to see at E3 and whether or not there’s an understanding about why those games are shown off. I don’t want to waste time here banging the “there are too many sequels and remakes” drum because that would be pointless and, in my case, dishonest. Hey, I got pretty excited and about being able to see some Fallout 4 gameplay, and if Dave Lang came up during one of those conferences and announced Windjammers 2, I would soil myself. It’s also worth noting that there were actually a decent number of original IPs shown off this year: Cuphead, Horizon, No Man’s Sky, and Sea of Thieves immediately come to mind. Regardless of whether the upcoming games are new or old, though, we need to remember the business and marketing motivations behind their announcements. Publishers want to give the fans what they want and make them happy, but they want to do so in order to start selling a product and eventually make money. To those currently aboard the hype-train: keep in mind that, even though you may be aware of these business-oriented tactics, you are getting excited about the idea of a game without actually having played it. Sure, your past experiences with, say, Final Fantasy and Shenmue confirms you’ll almost certainly enjoy their upcoming sequels, but past experiences in the industry at large have shown that games surrounded by buildup and promotion, particularly long-awaited sequels, are often met with disappointment upon release. With that in mind, is such unyielding excitement really warranted? Shouldn’t we be willing to listen to some degree of skepticism?

More importantly, this phenomenon raises questions about the kind of coverage people want from videogame journalism, especially in a time when instances of “corruption” and “bias” are running rampant in the industry. There’s a general suspicion and doubt among particularly savvy gamers toward news coverage and reviews of games that have an overly positive tone, as it often reeks of dishonest and shady practices behind the scenes. Now, however, it seems many of those same gamers are complaining about a lack of positivity from some outlets. Again, I direct this question to hype-train passengers: do you want videogame coverage and journalism to constantly echo your jubilation and generate even more (probably needless) hype around games, or do you want candid, impartial analysis that provides a counterbalance to the hype and could potentially save you from spending money on a disappointing product? Several commenters in the Super Bunnyhop video expressed that they would stop watching George’s content because they were tired of his negative attitude, and I recall at least a couple people in the chat of Giant Bomb’s stream of the Sony conference say they were leaving the stream in favor of outlets that were providing more positive coverage. So, if some significant number of gamers share these sentiments and would rather choose the first option in the above question, I think that’s cause for concern.

I should acknowledge that my favor of the cynical critic side of this debate is probably due to the fact that I’m not a huge Ico/Final Fantasy/Shenmue fan.Maybe if I cared more about those and other announcements, the tone of this blog would be very different, but I don’t know. And maybe this won’t be an issue in a week or two. Maybe all the hype will dissipate and we’ll go back to being more savvy and skeptical about the media and products we consume. What do you all think? Is this issue even worth discussing?

Also, apologies if this blog reads like a jumbled mess. I usually like to take my time when I write, but I wanted to get this one done in time for the end of E3. Hopefully it’s still relevant!