Ten years ago, on November 17th, 2006, the PlayStation 3 was released in North America. After over a year of speculation and hype, the sleek console with a Spider-Man inspired logo was finally a physical thing that could be bought. Despite Microsoft’s year head start on HD gaming with the Xbox 360, many considered this to be Sony’s generation to lose. Succeeding the legendary PlayStation 2, the PS3 seemed poised to dominate yet again. After all, it had unprecedented processing power, Blu-Ray capability, and a wealth of upcoming exclusives from first, second, and third parties. However, after a successful launch and holiday season, the PS3 found itself losing ground to both the underdog 360 and the unconventional Nintendo Wii. Microsoft in particular proved adept in making the most of their underpowered (and cheaper) console, and it seemed that the HD generation would belong to the American software giant. But all was not lost for Sony, and their journey from console also-ran to marketplace leader remains one of the most fascinating stories in gaming history.

Looking back at the run-up to the PS3’s release, it seems obvious that Sony had seriously miscalculated the market. Riding high on two generations of gaming dominance with their previous PlayStation platforms, Sony’s management took for granted that their newest console would do the same. Despite this hubris, the PS3’s debut at E3 2005 was met with enthusiasm by consumers. With the infamous redesigned “boomerang” controller, Blu-Ray discs, and a cutting edge processor using Sony’s Cell chipset, the system looked like a significant step up from Microsoft’s recently revealed Xbox 360. Pre-recorded demos of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 2 reasserted Sony’s dominance in the domain of gaming technology. Indeed, at the time it looked like Sony had done it again.

However, unlike the PS3’s splashy debut, the next few months became marked with confused messaging and unflattering news. The highly touted Killzone 2 trailer was revealed to be an optimistic target render of the final product, the redesigned controller became the source of much derision, and there were growing concerns that the PS3’s premium hardware came with it a premium price point. Microsoft’s successful launch of the 360 in the fall of 2005 did not help matters, as many consumers preferred to make their next-gen upgrade immediately rather than wait a year. The misgivings about the PS3 came to a head at the disastrous E3 2006 press conference. In addition to the tone deaf references to “Giant Enemy Crabs” and “Riiiiidge Racer!”, what was on display proved underwhelming. Sony showed off a redesigned controller, the Sixaxis, which was essentially a wireless DualShock 2 with the rumble taken out, and immediately drew unfavorable comparisons against Microsoft’s excellent 360 controller. Games like Genji: Days of the Blade or Gran Turismo didn’t look all that impressive compared to already released 360 games like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Forza Motorsport 2. But the most egregious misstep came near the end, when the PS3 was revealed to be priced at $499 for the 20GB version and $599 for the 60GB version. With the Xbox 360 retailing for $399 in its most expensive configuration (with bundled games), Sony fans began to question their loyalty.

Luckily, the PlayStation brand helped to make the PS3’s launch a successful one. Early adopters showed up in droves, and media friendly supply shortages plagued the holiday season. Amidst an underwhelming library of launch games, a few titles did manage to stand out. Insomniac’s Resistance: Fall of Man in particular provided new PS3 owners with a tight shooter that showcased a creative arsenal inspired by the game’s World War II-meets-alien invasion setting. However, once 2007 rolled around, the honeymoon period was over, and PS3’s could be easily found on shelves. Software was still coming out for the system, as it saw ports of 360 hits such as F.E.A.R. and Rainbow Six: Vegas as well as exclusives like Virtua Fighter 5. However, very few of these titles were able to move the needle on the PS3 and it remained last in home console sales throughout much of the year.

It should be noted that the PS3 not only had to deal with competition from its traditional rivals, but also from its predecessor, the PS2. The venerable console proved to be surprisingly resilient through the generational change, and in addition to getting competent ports of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Madden NFL 07, it was still getting must-play exclusives like Bully and God of War II. As such, price conscious consumers opted to wait on upgrading as they had plenty of games to keep themselves busy.

The autumn of 2007 proved to be a turning point for the PS3’s lagging fortunes. Early adopters were vindicated with exclusives like Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and Heavenly Sword. In addition, multiplatform games began to come out in earnest, with the generation-defining Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare leading the charge. Modern Warfare especially played to Sony’s strengths, as the online heavy game could be played for free on the PS3 as opposed to paying for Xbox Live Gold on the 360. But alas, even this strong showing was not enough to overcome Microsoft and Nintendo’s sales. Both companies had banner years, with exclusives like Halo 3, Metroid Prime 3, Mass Effect, and Super Mario Galaxy enticing consumers to non-Sony platforms. Still, the PS3 had a strong showing and laid the groundwork for better days ahead.

The following year was much more favorable for the PS3, and a lot of that can be attributed to the behemoth release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Marketed as the finale to the Metal Gear Solid series, many fans of Solid Snake’s adventures (including myself) finally hopped aboard Sony’s platform to experience Hideo Kojima’s masterpiece. While being an excellent game in and of itself, it finally justified the PS3’s premium hardware as Kojima famously attributed the capacity of the Blu-Ray format and the processing power of the Cell architecture in bringing his vision to life. Furthermore, Sony’s release of a 40GB, $399 USD system also helped to make the system more palatable to the mass market. In addition, the year saw the release of some less touted but still excellent exclusives, including Valkyria Chronicles and LittleBigPlanet. Of course, multiplatform games continued to shine on the system, with titles like Grand Theft Auto IV, Burnout Paradise, Fallout 3, and Dead Space keeping up a drumbeat of activity for Sony.

2008 was also the year that the PlayStation Network finally came into its own. Marketed as a free alternative to Microsoft’s paid network service, PSN had been derided as being less user-friendly and slower than its competition. However, with Sony constantly updating the service with features like better party tools and more overall reliability, PSN began to win over consumers. Even funky experiments like Folding@home and PlayStation Home were met with enthusiasm among owners who were eager to try out the internet and processing capabilities of their machines. Furthermore, Sony began to position the PSN as a quirkier alternative for independent and small-scale games that were distinct from the Xbox Live Arcade. Games like flOw, Super Stardust HD, and Echochrome showed off unique and experimental gameplay with a distinctly Japanese sensibility. This groundwork allowed PSN to flourish in the ensuing years, releasing not only groundbreaking titles like The Unfinished Swan and Papo & Yo, but also releasing full retail games almost day and date of their physical release.

Coming off an excellent 2008, Sony looked ready to challenge Microsoft for HD console supremacy in 2009. The year started off strong with the release of Killzone 2. Despite the previous controversy surrounding the game, Killzone 2 was an excellent shooter that not only demonstrated the graphical prowess of the PS3, but also set new standards in online shooters with its innovative Warzone mode and large 64-player battles (a rarity on consoles at the time). The games kept on coming throughout the year, with MLB 09: The Show firmly establishing itself as the premiere baseball series, and Fat Princess demonstrating that online games can be lively and inviting. Despite the wealth of excellent titles, one game stood tall. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves proved to be a massive step up from not only its predecessor, but also from action games in general. With lush, highly detailed environments, characters that moved and emoted realistically, and set pieces that needed to be seen to be believed, Uncharted 2 vindicated the PS3 as a platform. Nathan Drake’s second adventure garnered near-universal acclaim and cleaned up most publications’ end of year awards. Compared to Microsoft’s increasing reluctance to put out exclusives, the PS3 started to become the more enticing platform for consumers.

Sony continued its momentum into 2010 with more fantastic games like God of War III and Gran Turismo 5. It also debuted the PlayStation Move, a motion controller set that aped the Wii’s input method. However, like the fortunes of the Wii, the new peripheral found little purchase amongst the PS3’s install base. But despite the steady stream of quality games and new accessories for the PS3, the system’s 2010 would be defined by a move that would not be appreciated until years later. Struggling to maintain the PSN without paying subscribers, Sony implemented an Xbox Live Gold-like service called PlayStation Plus. The service offered, among other things, cloud saves, background downloading of patches, and free trials of certain games. However, with Sony committed to allowing all PS3 users free access to online play, there needed to be another hook that enticed players to the service. To that end, Sony did something outrageous; it gave games away. PS Plus members were given games free of charge each month that they could keep for as long as they were subscribed to the service. At first the games on offer were years-old downloadable only titles like Wipeout HD, but eventually PS Plus members were getting full retail games that were only a few months old, and occasionally games debuting on the service by developers seeking exposure. The service, known as the Instant Game Collection, proved to be so popular that Microsoft eventually had to relent and offer free games through its own Games with Gold initiative. Both services have continued to this day, giving players hundreds of games on a variety of platforms.

While 2009 and 2010 saw the PS3 becoming the console of choice for many consumers, the system suffered a major setback in early 2011. Hackers had infiltrated PSN and forced Sony to shut down the online service for over three weeks. Worse still, the hackers had gained access to thousands of accounts and their attached credit cards. Despite Sony’s attempts to make amends by offering free games and other incentives, the damage had been done and trust amongst the PS3 fanbase had evaporated overnight. In a case of unfortunate timing, the year’s slate of console exclusives also proved to be underwhelming, with inFamous 2, Killzone 3, and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception all considered uninspired sequels to their groundbreaking predecessors. The PS3 was carried more by momentum than in previous years, as the established user base felt little need to jump ship five years into the console generation. Multiplatform titles such as Portal 2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution kept up a steady drip of activity on the system, and with the similarity of releases between the PS3 and 360, there was very little done by Microsoft to entice spurned PS3 owners.

As the PS3 entered its twilight years of 2012 and 2013, the system was deluged with excellent games made by developers who were intimately aware of the then 6 year old console’s capabilities. Games like Hitman: Absolution, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Grand Theft Auto V, and Bioshock Infinite showed that the aging PS3 had plenty of life in it. PSN came roaring back with a plethora of outstanding titles, including the timeless Journey. And of course, there were the steady stream of high budget exclusives, including Gran Turismo 6 and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. As a near perfect coda to an already incredible system, The Last of Us released in summer 2013. The Naughty Dog developed title presented a haunting tale set in a post-apocalypse which culminated in one of the most devastating endings in video game history. The game was roundly acclaimed by critics and garnered many end of year awards. Indeed, with the impending release of the PlayStation 4 in the fall of 2013, the PS3 looked ready to ride off into the sunset. Luckily for fans, that was far from the case.

Like the PS2, the PS3 continued to thrive even after its successor was released. In recent years the PS3 has seen the release of such landmark games as Destiny, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dark Souls II, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. While the future is beginning to dim for the PS3, it will have one last hurrah in 2017 with the release of the highly anticipated Persona 5, a game reported to be feature complete compared to its PS4 version. Additionally, the ongoing release of free games each month through PS Plus has given many consumers a reason to keep their last gen consoles plugged in. Despite being 10 years old, it seems that the PS3 will stick around for a little while longer.

Very few would have predicted that a console that stumbled so badly out of the gate would have the staying power to last a decade. Fewer still would have predicted it to be one of the best values in gaming history. The PS3 started out as an unwieldy, expensive manifestation of Sony’s hubris but slowly evolved into a flexible, economical, and reliable platform that could compete in the modern HD era. Given its long lifespan, its backwards compatibility, and immense PSN collection, the PS3 has easily one of the most impressive console libraries in gaming history. It was by no means perfect, but through relentless iteration and experimentation (and a few redesigns along the way), Sony made the PS3 an essential gaming device. So here’s to the PlayStation 3, a testament to how patience pays off, even in the fickle video games industry.

Spoiler warning: This post will discuss specific plot details regarding Titanfall 2’s campaign.

Shooter campaigns don’t matter. That’s been the common wisdom for some time now as droves of Call of Duty and Battlefield fans tab over to multiplayer with each new iteration, leaving the likes of Kevin Spacey and Keith David to emote for progressively smaller audiences. Sure, we occasionally get a great single player mode, like Wolfenstein: The New Order or DOOM, but when it comes to modern shooters with multiplayer appeal, campaigns are usually a generic afterthought. Even Respawn, made up of developers who created one of the last great modern shooter campaigns in Call of Duty 4, chose to jettison a proper single player mode in their 2014 debut, Titanfall. With its sublime blend of parkour inspired movement, hulking walking tanks, and a mix of inventive gametypes, it was easy to think that Titanfall didn’t need a single player campaign. Thankfully, Respawn thought better for their sequel, and the result is something that absolutely matters.

Titanfall 2’s story places you in the boots of Jack Cooper, a militia grunt who wishes to become a double-jumping, wall-running, titan-riding pilot. Lucky for him, he’s been taken under the wing of a veteran pilot, Captain Tai Lastimosa, who shows him the ropes in a VR simulation that doubles as the game’s tutorial. Shortly thereafter, Cooper and Lastimosa are dropped into combat against the evil IMC, at which point the pilot promptly croaks and transfers control of his titan, BT-7274, over to Cooper. The remainder of the narrative follows BT and Cooper as they attempt to complete Lastimosa’s mission and, in the process, discover a device that the IMC could use to brutally suppress the militia’s rebellion.

If it sounds like I glazed over the story, that's because I did. The narrative beats are pretty conventional all told, up to and including a macguffin that threatens to literally blow up a planet. But that’s ok, because the broad strokes of the story facilitate something more interesting; the bond between myself and BT.

While Cooper himself is a cypher of a protagonist, BT comes with personality to spare. Glenn Steinbaum injects the war machine with an unerring loyalty to Cooper (and, by extension, me) but tempers it with a bone-dry sense of humor. While BT is very much a product of his programming, you get the sense that there’s more going on under that alloy shell. BT displays tremendous creativity in solving problems, leading to sequences where I get chucked half a mile to a remote platform. The one downside is that BT sometimes falls into the trap of companions in shooter games by becoming too useful. There were several times in the campaign that I actively questioned Cooper’s role in the proceedings, and it didn’t help that many NPC’s would choose to engage BT in dialog instead of me. Admittedly, this issue feels small when compared to all the things Titanfall 2 gets right, of which there are plenty.

Witty robot companion aside, the campaign truly shines in its moment-to-moment gameplay and set pieces. Thanks to the movement options afforded to the player, levels are frequently large with long platforming segments throughout. In fact, there’s so much parkour-style platforming in the game that to simply call it a shooter would be a disservice. Further, the traversal segments are so creatively implemented that wallrunning through a gauntlet never got old. One standout segment had me going through a massive factory’s assembly line. While at first it seems like the facility is producing large sheets of metal, I soon realized that the machines I was dodging were in fact fabricating buildings. With the platforms being turned every which way to position new structural pieces, I had to keep reorienting myself with what felt like shifting gravity and an environment that was constantly being altered. As soon as I got my bearings with that craziness, I realized that the various buildings were being assembled into a training ground for pilots not unlike the game’s multiplayer maps. Cue pitched battle on said training ground to cap off the level. The absolute scale and intricacy of this level was absolutely mind-boggling, and that was only a prelude of what was to come.

It seems that the Respawn team had a backlog of insane ideas for set pieces since their days at Infinity Ward, and the sci-fi setting of Titanfall gave them plenty of narrative space to experiment. Nowhere is this most apparent than in the mission titled “Effect and Cause”. The level, which takes place in an abandoned IMC research facility, had me in search of a fellow militia pilot for a rendezvous. As I explored the facility I was beset with unexplained visions, ostensibly from the past. Soon enough, I found the pilot, dead and somehow stuck inside the ceiling. Needing a device located on the lower half of his body, I went upstairs to retrieve it. What happened next turned my understanding of Titanfall on its head. The game prompted me to "Press LB to Time Travel".

As advertised on the tin, pressing LB did in fact make me time travel, 3 years in the past in fact. Pressing LB again instantly brought me back to the present, and with that the point of the level quickly became apparent. I barreled through the facility, changing time periods on the fly when some wreckage or a security door got in the way. I engaged with enemies in the past, quickly switched over to the present, moved to where they were, time traveled yet again, and snapped their necks. Panicked shouts filled the air as IMC troops could not understand how I was able to slaughter them with ruthless abandon.

They could not comprehend me. They could not fight me. They feared me.

The rest of the campaign follows the example set by “Effect and Cause” by becoming the ultimate manifestation of power fantasy. While the game conveniently destroys the time travel device by the mission’s end, Respawn has a few more tricks up its sleeve. First was the Ronin titan loadout, which turns BT in a giant samurai capable of slicing up foes with its massive blade. Then came the arc tool that allowed me to move platforms and other equipment on the fly for some of the most challenging platforming in the game. Finally, the endgame began with an all-out assault on an IMC base with dozens of titans duking it out on an enormous battlefield.

After the militia assault of the IMC base followed by an airborne pursuit, the story’s macguffin was in reach. Unfortunately, Cooper and BT are taken captive before their mission could be completed. But thanks to some quick thinking, BT is able to provide a sufficient distraction and Cooper’s life is saved. Unfortunately, BT’s chassis was severely damaged, and it seemed like I would have to say goodbye to my companion. BT, ever the mission steward, asked that I finish the mission, and gave me a final gift; BT’s AI core and a SERE kit containing a knife and Smart Pistol.

What follows is a fantastic callback to the first Titanfall as I went on a rampage with a while escaping my captors. Though the Smart Pistol was a tad powerful in the previous game’s multiplayer only context, here it was intoxicating. It was a seamless blend of Titanfall’s responsive parkour and its satisfying gunplay, and felt especially cathartic as I was mowing down the faction that destroyed my closest companion. As my bullets homed in on the squishy noggins of my enemies, I got in contact with militia personnel who informed me that an extra titan was available should I need it. As I stepped outside of my captors’ facility, the arc words were finally said:

“Stand by for titanfall.”

As the hulking frame touched down, I felt pumped. Ready to take on the world. But first, I placed BT’s core into the titan. And for a moment, all that adrenaline and machismo fell away. BT was back, and I was elated. It wouldn’t have felt right to finish the mission without my big buddy, and besides, the new frame came with a pretty badass chaingun. Sure, the emotional impact was lessened somewhat as it hadn’t been 5 minutes since BT was destroyed, but given the pacing of a typical shooter campaign, it showed admirable restraint. Emotional beat achieved.

Titanfall 2’s campaign succeeds by alternatively embracing the tropes of a modern shooter campaign and subverting them. While it gives the player plenty of faceless enemies to shoot, it also provides extended sections of platforming with no combat. While it serves up a generic and predictable story, it surprises the player with innovative sequences and mechanics. And while it serves as an extended tutorial for the multiplayer, it also has fun with multiplayer conventions. Above all, the campaign is masterclass demonstration of incredibly well executed shooter gameplay that pushes the genre forward significantly. Titanfall 2 does not disprove the notion that modern shooter campaigns are big, dumb, and bombastic, but it does prove is that they can at least be memorable.

Vincent Brooks is a cowardly, deceitful, selfish manchild. This was the only conclusion I could come to as I completed Catherine, the 2011 Atlus published title. During the course of the game, Vincent cheats on his longtime girlfriend, Katherine, lies about it to her, and drinks like a fish in order to avoid his problems. He refuses to take responsibility for his actions or acknowledge the needs of those around him. However, for all of Vincent’s failings, he clings strongly to his agency, and in the process demonstrates the narrative possibilities of a character whose actions directly conflict with the player’s intentions.

What I found most fascinating about Vincent is how atypical he is as a gaming protagonist. He possesses few admirable qualities and the entire premise of the game rests on his poor judgement. One evening, he’s approached by a comely young woman, named Catherine, who flirts aggressively with him. Cut to a nightmare sequence that seems to be taking cues from his current relationship woes, and in the morning he wakes up to realize that he cheated on his girlfriend. Rather than own up to his mistake, Vincent attempts to hide the situation from both women, and what results is a very complicated and draining week for our idiotic protagonist. As the days march on, we begin to get a clearer picture of what’s happening. There appears to be a plague of bad dreams affecting many in Vincent’s town, and young men are being found dead in their beds from unknown causes. Vincent himself has settled into a routine of emotionally and physically avoiding Katherine, drinking away his evenings, experiencing progressively more hellish nightmares, and finally waking up to realize he’s spent yet another night with Catherine.

While a linear narrative and player character agency aren’t necessarily new things in games, rarely do I so vehemently disagree with their decisions of said characters. Normally, my objectives and those of the protagonist are one and the same, or at least somewhat aligned. But with Vincent, I find myself struggling against his immaturity to an extreme degree. Part of this stems from the fact that Catherine’s central conflict is a lot more relatable than something like saving the planet from the Locust horde, but another part stems from the game teasing me with ways to change the story. The game gives me some leeway to affect things, including conversing with patrons at the local bar, responding to relationship questions, and texting (or not texting) Vincent’s lovers, and many of these actions feed into a meter that is purposefully left unexplained. But despite these opportunities to alter Vincent’s behavior at the margins, the big decisions remain painfully his own. One can forgive him waking up each morning with Catherine next to him, owing to his supernaturally induced blackouts, but his continued lack of transparency with Katherine vexed me to no end.

This idea of experiencing an unlikeable character’s journey in a video game is such a compelling concept to me. Unlike other media, there’s very little distance between us and the protagonist in a game, and the line between our desires and those of the character often blur. To create the character in such a way as to conflict with the player’s wants is risky, but as Catherine proves, it can be incredibly rewarding. I remained enraptured by the story from beginning to end, and a big reason why is because I found Vincent’s poor decisions and their effect on those around him to be endlessly fascinating.

Catherine is such an odd game. Made by the Persona developers, it reflects their famed series in terms of brash presentation and fully realized characters. That it was able to come out as a boxed game despite its subject matter and narrow scope speaks to a much different games industry in 2011 than we have now. A game like Catherine released in 2016 would almost assuredly be an indie title made on a shoestring budget, and that would be a shame. The story and themes would not have made nearly the same impression on me without its gorgeous art style and emotive characters. Who knows when or if we’ll see such weird one-off games make a comeback, but for now I’m glad I got to experience Vincent’s frustrating journey.

A few months ago I reviewed the Ratchet & Clank reboot, which was the first one I had ever played in the series. The combination of platforming, crazy weaponry, and unique sci-fi premise hit all the right notes and got me itching to play more of the duo’s adventures. Luckily, a friend sympathized with my plight and lent me her copies of the PlayStation 3 Ratchet & Clank games (Future: Tools of Destruction, Future: A Crack in Time, and Into the Nexus), and I ended up plowing through all three in just over a week. Unsurprisingly, I found them to be well-designed, funny, and engaging experiences that I would recommend to just about anyone. However, there remained one nagging flaw in all of the games that kept dragging down the pacing; one that felt unnecessary and contrary to the action-platformer ethos of the series. I am, of course, talking about the Clank segments.

Before any Ratchet & Clank fans get out their pitchforks, let me say that I like Clank as a character. He’s adorable, has his fair share of funny one-liners, and his relationship with Ratchet is fantastic. The warbot and lombax work well together, both mechanically and narratively. Rather, my problem with Clank is whenever he is on his own trying to solve one problem or another. In Tools of Destruction, Clank must command the enigmatic Zoni to manipulate objects in order to progress. In Into the Nexus, he must enter an alternate 2D dimension and awkwardly control gravity to get past platforming obstacles. And in A Crack in Time, he must solve tedious time-oriented puzzles for what feels like nearly half the game. I found all of these sequences to be a real drag on each game’s pacing, and reading reviews, they seem to be a constant source of frustration for many. Considering all this, why does Insomniac insist of having Clank go solo?

The obvious answer to this is because Clank is one of the main heroes in Ratchet & Clank and he needs more to do than hang on his partner’s back like a metallic Kazooie. Indeed, when the duo are kept together, Clank’s only consistent gameplay function amounts to slowing Ratchet’s descent when he jumps. As such, from a story perspective, it makes sense that Clank be given his own sections to advance the plot and to give him agency. But no matter how much the developers try, they can’t seem to make the segments as interesting as when you’re controlling Ratchet.

One of the best things in modern gaming is how willing designers are to reconsider aspects that don’t work in their games. People complained to BioWare about the planetary exploration in the first Mass Effect, so they streamlined that aspect in the sequels. Fans lamented the lack of a campaign in Titanfall, so Respawn made what looks like a really cool single player mode in Titanfall 2. The list goes on and on, but suffice it to say that game makers are less precious about their games than they were in the past. We’re no longer seeing annoying gameplay elements persist in franchises because of precedent, and for the most part that’s a good thing. By comparison, Insomniac’s insistence on Clank only sections through three console generations is an anomaly.

Of course, there’s merit to the notion that the games would get a little repetitive if they only consisted of Ratchet shooting bad guys. To that I counter with Ratchet’s hoverboots and jetpack sequences. Or the introduction of crazier and crazier guns that change up combat. Or the space combat. Or the hoverboard racing. The core gameplay of the series is strong enough to stand on its own, and the designers at Insomniac have demonstrated incredible creativity to make each new entry feel fresh. So why hobble their creations with sequences that bring down the rest of the experience? Rather than sending Clank on his own, why not make him a more integral part of the core gameplay? Additional Clank focused abilities, like his time grenades in A Crack in Time, would help to raise Clank’s utility in addition to expanding the player’s options in combat. Even if there is a narrative reason for Clank to stake out on his own, why not make his sequences more combat oriented? There’s no real reason to make Clank only focused on puzzles and platforming, so maybe just giving him a wacky gun would be enough to liven things up. Going further down that path, maybe make Clank a Tails-like player 2 character to help Ratchet shoot baddies. The possibilities are wide open, and many of them sound far more appealing than the status quo.

To be clear, the Ratchet & Clank games are for the most part excellent and I’m glad that I finally got to play them. The reason I chose to highlight the Clank sections is because of how incongruous they are with the rest of the experience. They seem to be a throwback to the PlayStation 2 days when otherwise great games would be hobbled by elements or sections that were tossed in for variety’s sake. We suffered through them because that was what we expected from games back then. But game design has evolved since then, and we should expect better design in the games we play. Hopefully Insomniac sees the Clank-only sections as the relics they are and discards them for the duo’s next adventure. In the meantime, I’ve got a few battle arena challenges to finish.

After months of waiting, it finally happened. Nintendo at long last drew the curtain back on their latest console, dubbed the Switch, with a three and a half minute video. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Ok, so what exactly is the Switch? From the video, it appears to be a modular console with detachable controllers that can be played on a television through a docking station or on its own as a portable device. There appears to be a wide variety of accessories for the system, including a redesigned standalone controller, a stand, a mounting bracket, and a shell that the detachable controllers can attach to in order to mimic a standard gamepad. Flexibility seems to be the main design philosophy, as evidenced by a player in the video being able to transfer his Legend of Zelda play session from his TV to mobile with no need to pause. Cool stuff.

Certainly, there remains plenty of questions regarding the Switch. First, we don’t know how powerful it will be, although the video suggests that it will at least be as capable as the Wii U. Second, we don’t know how much the console will cost, but with HD processing capability, (presumably) on-board storage, and a decent screen, the system probably won’t be cheap, even without the (likely) optional accessories. Finally, we still don’t have much of an idea of what the system’s launch line-up, online strategy, or system interface will look like. There will be plenty to reveal about the Switch between now and March, so the standard disclaimers on video game hype hold true. But despite all that we don’t know, I can’t help but be excited about the Switch, and I say that as someone who hasn’t owned a Nintendo console since the Wii. The reason that I’m excited is because the Switch is less a successor to the Wii U and 3DS than it is to the Playstation Vita.

I probably lost a bunch of you with that last statement, but stick with me. The Vita, by all accounts, was an attempt by Sony to bring home console gaming to the portable space. The system reflected this goal by being able to output near-Playstation 3 visuals, a robust online implementation complete with must-have apps like YouTube and Netflix, and a control layout that almost completely resembled that of the established DualShock. The launch lineup brought this point home with gorgeous and fully featured games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Of course, we all know where the Vita went from there. Burdened with a high price point, marketplace indifference, and Sony ignoring the system in favor of the Playstation 3 (and later, the Playstation 4), the Vita became a niche indie and Japanese games machine that only crazy people like myself still enjoy. But what if we consider an alternate universe? One where instead of the Vita being a successor to the Playstation Portable, it was the successor to the Playstation 3. What if Sony had put their considerable resources entirely into making the Vita success? Maybe we’d have seen Sony fast-track the Playstation TV to give players the option to play at home. Maybe we’d have seen first party titles like Uncharted 4, Until Dawn, and Bloodborne released on the Vita, giving it the library needed to push sales. Maybe because of all this, the $250 USD launch price wouldn’t have stung so bad.

For many reasons, this alternate universe would have never come to pass. Sony is too entrenched in their home console business and the hardware war with Microsoft to make such a radical move, nor should it. But Nintendo is another story. The House of Mario long ago bowed out from the hardware arms race, and due to the middling sales performance of the Wii U, they clearly have no business interest tying them to an entirely home console. For them, perhaps a Vita-like solution is exactly what they need.

For those of us still on Vita island, we see the brilliance of the handheld peeking through the corners constantly. We see it when we play well designed home console-like games such as Gravity Rush. We see it when we look at our home screen splashed with dozens of quirky indie titles that look and play so wonderfully on the hardware. We see it when we run Destiny raids in bed thanks to Remote Play. And watching the above video, we see it with the Nintendo Switch.

I’ve already started to see skepticism in the reaction to the video, and I can see where it’s coming from. If you’re someone who exclusively games at home, the Switch’s ability to go mobile may seem pointless to you. If you were hoping for a console that could match the Playstation 4 and Xbox One in terms of power, the Switch’s capabilities look dated. If you were wishing that this was the console that finally regains a foothold into third-party multiplatform development, the Switch will likely disappoint. But when we consider the system holistically, those concerns become minimized. Sure, the Switch likely won’t be able to run Cyberpunk 2077 or Mass Effect: Andromeda, but have you seen how gorgeous even Wii U games look with Nintendo’s art direction? Sure, we likely won’t see the latest Call of Duty or Madden on the Switch, but with the entire output of Nintendo’s legendary development teams coming to the console, are you really going to miss them? And sure, the online system will likely be trash, but how cool will it be to play multiplayer Mario Kart wherever you go?

I wrote a little while ago about how I just want Nintendo to deliver a back-to-basics sort of console that puts its fantastic games front and center. The Switch, at least on first impression, seems to be doing just that. Granted, there are plenty of details not known about the console, and there very well could be a dealbreaker yet to be revealed. But as a dyed in the wool Nintendo kid who still gets a warm feeling whenever he sees Mario, I can’t help but feel good about what’s been announced. For me, March can’t come fast enough.

For a very long time I was an avowed hater of simulation racing games. Though I respected them for what they were, games like Sega GT and Gran Turismo were far too dry to capture my interest. They were too focused on the car magazine crowd, getting into the nitty gritty of automotive engineering in order to drive a repetitive hour-long race. But then came Forza Motorsport, a series that dared to acknowledge that driving could be an exciting and fun experience. I mean, the point of these games is to give you a stable of real-world cars that you could never afford and let you mess around with them. It doesn’t take much to make this premise appealing, and Forza understands this. I still remember the opening to Forza Motorsport 3 where it let you cut loose with an Audi R8 and asks that you simply enjoy the act of driving such a precisely designed machine. It was a perfect reflection of Forza’s ethos: driving should be equal parts accessible and exhilarating, and nothing else should get in the way.

Needless to say, I’ve been a longtime fan of the Forza Motorsport series. So when Microsoft began pumping out an open-world spinoff series it should have been a no-brainer for me to play it. But I dithered, reasoning that I didn’t want to exhaust myself of the franchise, and besides, they weren’t "real" Forza games anyway. It wasn’t until last month when the first Forza Horizon was featured on Games with Gold that I decided to give it a shot, and I could not have been happier to be wrong. I do not say this lightly; Forza Horizon may be the best racing game I’ve played since Burnout Paradise.

Now, I should qualify this by saying that Forza Horizon is a different game than Burnout Paradise. While both games are about driving cars in an open world environment, the similarities pretty much end there. Horizon is a much more grounded take on driving, lacking in stunt jumps, nitrous boosts, or sexy crashes. But for all that it lacks when compared to Criterion’s masterpiece, it makes it up by being unabashedly Forza.

The premise of Forza Horizon is centered around the titular Horizon festival, a regularly occurring celebration of all things vehicular. This particular Horizon festival takes place in Colorado, and is not lacking in the picturesque vistas of the Rocky Mountains. Hundreds of racers have congregated to the festival in hopes of showing off their skills and becoming famous. The player starts off as the last person admitted to compete in the festival. You start as a complete unknown and you will need to work their way up a ladder of 250 other racers to become Horizon’s champion. To that end, you will need to compete in events littered around the world. While the game does have activities not seen in Forza Motorsport, such as stunt events and races against aircraft, the majority of events will be either circuit or point-to-point races against other cars.

The one aspect that Forza Horizon fails may be in its portrayal of the people at the festival. For instance, there are named racers throughout the game that are more well known than the standard competitor and will develop a rivalry with you as you make a name for yourself. The game even rewards you for beating them in races, culminating in a one-on-one race with pink slips on the line. While these rivals exist as a way to give you something to work towards as you’re grinding through races, they come off as one dimensional and they don’t change their taunts all that much from race to race. I mean, I beat Zaki Malik four consecutive times, does he really need to call me a scrub on the fifth race? Also, the portrayal of women comes off as weirdly dated, with females mostly relegated to standing around in tight outfits prior to the start of races. Even the voice in your earpiece, Holly Cruz, is oddly flirty and way too impressed with even your most basic of accomplishments. It all feels like pandering to the pubescent boy marketing demographic. I’m not saying that the portrayal of women in Forza Horizon is out-and-out terrible, but it just serves to make the game’s setting feel more contrived than it needs to be.

Regardless, Forza Horizon is all about racing cars, and it’s in the races that the game feels most like its parent series. Most events take place on closed courses that strictly limit the types of cars allowed, which encourages players to experiment with cars from various styles, companies, and eras. To facilitate this, the game showers you with enough credits to buy pretty much any car you have your eyes on, and by the time the credits roll you should have several dozen vehicles sitting in your virtual garage. Like vanilla Forza, the game celebrates all cars and doesn’t push premium performance machines over standard production vehicles. It’s just as much fun to wrestle with an Abarth Esseesse on dirt tracks as it is to blast through mountain roadways in a Dodge Charger. Credit must be given to the driving engine that gives the player leeway with drifting and turning while still feeling distinctly Forza-like. Of course, the game includes such indispensable franchise staples like the driving line and rewind to make for a smooth, player-friendly experience.

One of the biggest departures from series orthodoxy is the stunt system. In Forza Horizon, you will be awarded stunt points for doing just about anything that isn’t standard driving. Once enough points are accumulated your popularity increases, unlocking Showcase events that give you the opportunity to access exclusive cars. You get points for smashing roadside signs, for narrowly missing other vehicles, for passing opponents, and for a variety of other dangerous actions. By doing these stunts in quick succession you will build up your points total with a multiplier, but if you crash you lose the points accumulated from that stunt chain. It’s a delightfully tense risk-reward system that makes even the simple act of driving around the world exciting. There are even PR Stunt activities that require you to hit a points target in a set period of time with a specific car, and while they provide a stiff challenge, I found myself happily restarting over and over again in order to nail the perfect stunt run.

I can’t understate how much I enjoyed my time with Forza Horizon. Even after completing all the events and becoming the number one racer at the festival, I am still itching to do more. It’s gotten to the point that I’m seriously considering tediously searching for the last 11 discount signs to smash just to stay in Colorado a while longer. It’s even got me to consider a purchase of Forza Horizon 2 to get more open-world racing action before I dive into the latest entry. If you’re the slightest bit interested in racing games, then you owe it to yourself to check out Forza Horizon. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to figure out a way to trigger that last barn find.

Toronto is in many ways a city unsure of itself. On one hand, thanks to its emergence on the world’s stage as an arts and culture hub, many Torontonians feel immensely proud of their city. Indeed, the omnipresence of artists like The Weeknd, the critical accolades heaped upon game studios like DrinkBox, and the success of hit shows like Orphan Black have all raised Toronto’s international profile from dorky New York-wannabe to a vibrant and cool metropolis. But this higher visibility has left the city in transition. Toronto’s cultural and economic cachet has compelled many from Canada and the rest of the world to make the city their home, and in the process have strained the city’s infrastructure and raised the cost of living sharply. Add to that the oppressively gloomy Canadian winters and dated grey architecture and you have a city in conflict with itself, a conflict that manifests itself in the countless Torontonians grappling with stress, depression, anxiety, and a great many other disorders.

Actual Sunlight, a game originally released in 2013 for PC and now in 2016 for the Playstation Vita, is about living in Toronto. Or, rather, it’s about living with depression in Toronto. Developed by Will O’Neill in coordination with a small team, the game stars Evan Winter, a 30-something living in one of the many condominiums that dot the city’s landscape. Every morning, he struggles to get out of bed, hops on a streetcar, and heads over to a job that he hates. We’re informed of Evan’s mental state by the imaginary conversations he has in his head with psychologists and talk show hosts. He’s very much grappling with depression and self-medicates with alcohol, pornography, and technology. He’s even had recurring suicidal thoughts, and the game’s central conflict is whether or not he jumps off the roof of his building.

Needless to say, Actual Sunlight is a very, very, very bleak game. It revels in the depths of self-hatred, regret, and pain, and never once does it come up for air. Whereas a game like Depression Quest comes from the perspective of people who have gone through the worst of depression and have come to terms with their illness, Actual Sunlight offers no such hope. The game takes the perspective of someone so deep into their misery, so cut off from support, that they cannot even comprehend a way out of their situation. Even the game’s title ends up being a sarcastic rebuke to the sort of self-help pablum that gets peddled to those who desperately need more than a one-size-fits-all answer to their problems.

What’s remarkable about the game is how specific it is to its time and place. While other games that tackle depression tend to be universal in their setting and themes in order to connect with a wide swath of people, Actual Sunlight views depression through a distinctly Toronto lens. Evan, like many of Toronto’s post-baby boom generation, feels economically trapped by the high rents and higher property values for even the modest of homes. He’s single, but even if he meets that special someone he sees no path from his current indebted lifestyle to one of home ownership and supporting a family. He loathes his job, but it keeps him from being homeless and it offers his only real connections to others, including a woman he pines for. Finally, the allure of the city’s social scene is intoxicating to Evan, and he spends far too much money drinking at his local bar in hopes of running into someone he can share a connection with. After all, Toronto is a city of hot young people, shouldn’t it stand to reason that his loneliness can be cured by just putting himself out there? But like many big cities, it can be incredibly difficult to meet new people despite the crush of humanity constantly surrounding us.

As a near lifelong Torontonian, these are all feelings that I can relate to. More than a few times I’ve been at a bar with friends as we’ve drowned our frustrations with a few too many drinks. Almost inevitably, the conversation drifts towards the shortcomings of our hometown. Everyone ignores everyone else. The subway and streetcars are always late when the weather is bad. We’re made to work too many hours doing pointless tasks by managers who long ago sold their souls to the corporation. Pretty soon we’re talking about that one friend who moved to Guelph (or Halifax, or Saskatoon) and how they seem to be living a happy life in a massive house with a dog, a short commute, and low stress. But then we drift back, explaining how our careers couldn’t possibly allow us to leave the city, and besides, isn’t July Talk playing at Lee’s Palace this weekend?

I’m still shocked that Actual Sunlight would be featured as a Playstation Plus title this month. Its minimalist design, short length, and subject matter don’t exactly scream mass appeal, and its laser focus on modern day Toronto likely won’t engender many fans outside of a very specific demographic. But perhaps I’m just unable to see outside my perspective here, and maybe the game has more appeal than I give it credit for. Actual Sunlight is raw, honest, and insightful, but the conclusions it draws may not provide much comfort to the player. If that’s something you can deal with, then consider walking a kilometer in Evan’s boots.

Happy October dear readers! The air has become crisp, the days have become shorter, and a torrent of worthwhile games seeks to engulf us all. Unfortunately for me, this time of year coincides with baseball’s postseason and with it a Sophie’s choice on where to spend my limited funds. So far baseball has won out, and I’ve spent a significant chunk of my disposable income to go see a very memorable Wild Card game in person. Given my current monetary situation, I’ve gone through my backlog and found myself spending time with two games that in many ways are surprisingly alike; Forza Horizon and Destiny. On the surface it seems absurd to compare an open world driving game to a loot driven first person shooter, but for all their aesthetic and mechanical differences they remain steadfastly wrapped around the same core loop: grind. Whether it be better cars, guns, rank, or level, both games’ progression are inherently tied to advancing the player character’s effectiveness and standing in the world. However, the methods that each game uses to present grind differ, and within those differences we can see how grind can either elevate a game or weigh it down.

Progression, but to what end?

Forza Horizon’s central conceit is the Horizon festival, a sort of hipster gathering not unlike Burning Man that is dedicated to racers of all stripes speeding through the gorgeous Colorado landscape in order to get famous. Ignoring the expense and environmental impact of such an event, the concept is pretty easy to grasp. Let’s compare that to Destiny, in which I’ll quote the Giant Bomb wiki entry:

Set over 700 years into the future (after a period of technological advancement known as the Golden Age, thanks to a mysterious orb known as "The Traveler"), a mysterious event (known as "the Collapse") has decimated human colonies throughout the galaxy. With the last surviving human city on Earth defended by The Guardians (warriors who have unique abilities granted by The Traveler), players take control of a customizable Guardian, who must investigate the solar system and destroy a variety of alien threats before humanity is wiped out.

In that paragraph alone, I count two uses of the word “mysterious”, four parenthesized statements, and four separate pronouns that would be unfamiliar to a newbie. Granted, Destiny is a bit more high concept than Forza Horizon, so it’s not damning that it starts off as enigmatically as it does. But the game then needs to fill in the gaps as it proceeds. Ten hours into Destiny, those gaps have yet to be filled. I go on missions and have no idea why I’m fighting the various enemy factions, why I keep deploying my Ghost to hack things, or why certain missions allow me to go solo while others require I wait to be matched up with online players before deploying. The end goal to all this is similarly obscured. I am a Guardian and I’m to protect humanity from alien threats. But is that it? Am I simply to forever run patrols on uninhabited planets and recover artifacts so humanity survives? What is the end goal? The game seems reluctant to spell this out.

Contrast that with Forza Horizon, which if anything over-explains the hows and whys of everything you do. I complete events to increase my fan base and win money, which I can then use to enter more prestigious events and buy better cars. But that’s the treadmill, what’s the end goal? The game spells this out by presenting a ladder rank of 250 racers, of which you start at the bottom. From there, by racing well and doing risky maneuvers, you work your way up to be the number one racer at the Horizon festival. In addition to having this easily understood end goal, the game constantly reminds you of it. A meter pops up whenever you progress in some way that shows how close you’re getting to overtaking the next racer on the ladder, and in doing so ties in all of the Forza Horizon’s progression systems into one easily comprehensible number.

Good gameplay is not good enough

Forza Horizon and Destiny both come from highly regarded pedigrees. Bungie of course has practically written the book on console shooters with their work on the Halo series, and so it’s no surprise that the act of shooting a gun and moving around in first person feel satisfying. Playground Games, while lacking in previous experience as a developer, worked under the watchful eye of Turn 10 Studios, who have crafted one of the best driving franchises around in Forza Motorsport. Forza Horizon benefits from this by having a driving engine that allows each car to feel distinct yet responsive. If you were only to take a vertical slice of each game’s more exciting bits you’d be hard pressed to point out any flaws. But neither game exists as a vertical slice, and by considering the gameplay as a component of the complete experience we can see how important it is for basic mechanics to work in harmony with the rest of the game.

Given the expansiveness of both games and their relatively short core loops, there can be times when pacing sags. In Forza Horizon’s case, there can be some interminably long road trips to get to a racing event that just happens to be far enough away from a fast travel point to make driving there the better option. Add to that the fact that fast travelling costs money (be it in-game or *shudder*, actual cash), and the game actively disincentivizes players from simply proceeding to the next event where the real fun is located. Despite this, Forza Horizon makes things interesting by encouraging players to engage with open world events, collectibles, and stunts. It also gives you a steady stream of cars with a diversity of handling, horsepower, and aesthetics such that driving around is given new life each time you visit the garage. The game even encourages you to switch up your cars by using event restrictions such that you’re not just driving around in your “best” vehicle.

Destiny, on the other hand, offers no respite from its pacing issues. Missions all feel alike and have players trodding the same environments repeatedly. New weapons don’t feel significantly different from one another outside of basic variations in standard gun design (i.e. burst fire or full auto, fire or electrical damage, etc.), and there’s almost no reason to go back to an older gun once you find a “better” one. Furthermore, as you progress to higher level missions thanks to your higher level gear, the equipment feels like it’s performing as well as the equipment it replaced when you were facing lower level enemies.

One can make the argument that this sort of design is inherent in role-playing games, as you need to grind to keep up with more powerful enemies. However, that ignores the complexity that makes late game encounters interesting. For instance, let’s look at the Final Fantasy series. Whether it’s a lot or a little, each Final Fantasy game has some amount of grind necessary to move the game forward. But when you’re grinding up your party in those games, not only do basic stats like strength and defense increase, but you also unlock additional spells, summons, and abilities that give the players many possible options and strategies when in a tough combat encounter. While Destiny does have character progression, a lot of it is tied to making your avatar more efficient at the stuff he or she already does. It’s hard to get excited about leveling up when all it means is your grenades cool down slightly faster.

Narrative should acknowledge progression

Over the years I amassed countless cartridges, memory cards, and hard drives full of save files commemorating several thousand hours of game time. No one in the real world but me cares about the things I’ve accomplished in those save files, and really, if 95 percent of them were to burn away in a fire, I can’t say that I’d be too bummed (minus the cartridges, of course). But during those many hours, it’s vitally important that the game I’m playing creates an illusion that my progression matters; that my engaging and mastering the game will somehow affect the state of the virtual world. It’s here that Destiny and Forza Horizon go in opposite directions, and in doing so gets to the heart of why grind can be so contentious an element in games.

In Forza Horizon’s case, the narrative wholeheartedly reinforces your sense of progression. You get a hot new ride and you’re complimented for it, you move up in rank and someone chirps in your ear about how you’re making waves. Other racers will taunt you before a race and then will begrudgingly acknowledge your superiority when you inevitably best them. Fireworks shoot off as you approach the finish line, and fetishistic camera angles will ogle your car before and after an event. Can it be a little much at times? Sure, but for the most part the game simply makes you feel like a star, and it feels good.

Now, it’s understandable that Destiny isn’t as boisterous in acknowledging the player’s advancement due to its self-serious tone. Not everything needs to be as chipper as Forza Horizon. Still, there needs to be something that lets the player know that their actions are affecting the world around them. On this count Destiny fails miserably. No matter how powerful I get or how far down the upgrade tree I go, I never feel like anything more than an escort for my Ghost as it proceeds to whatever the next arbitrary objective will be. Enemies don’t seem to care that I’ve mowed down thousands of their friends and there’s no in-universe recognition of my contribution in keeping humanity safe. Rather, I feel like one of a million Guardians tasked with running pointless, repetitive errands. The result is boredom.

Final thoughts

Admittedly, I’m not very far in either Destiny or Forza Horizon, having only played about ten hours in each. In Destiny’s case I understand that the expansions fix a few glaring issues with the game, and I look forward to giving them a shot. Who knows, maybe Forza’s core loop will grow repetitive while Destiny’s late-game gets more interesting. But that’s beside the point I’m trying to make. Grind is a valuable tool in creating long, memorable gaming experiences, but without considering how to contextualize grind, it becomes busywork. Progression must feel substantial and meaningful for grind to be work, whereas grind for grind’s sake will sink even the most mechanically refined games. That remains true regardless of what planet you explore or road you drive.

This is the latest in a series of retrospective write-ups where I relate my experience playing through the campaigns of the Halo series all over again, this time in the remastered form of The Master Chief Collection. You can find previous posts in The Great Journey here:

1. Halo: Combat Evolved

2. Halo 2

3. Halo 3

4. Halo 3: ODST

5. Halo: Reach

6. Halo 4

Welcome back to the final entry of The Great Journey as we board the UNSC Spirit of Fire! Once again, we step away from the Master Chief’s adventures (and by extension, The Master Chief Collection) and conclude the retrospective with Halo Wars. The game, developed by Ensemble Studios as their swan song, stands apart from the rest of the series by expanding Halo’s scale to focus on the entire battlefield. Indeed, this real-time strategy (RTS) take on humanity’s struggle against the Covenant is a big shift from the established Halo formula. However, by adapting a traditionally PC oriented genre to consoles, Halo Wars taps into the spirit of Halo better than any game in the franchise since Master Chief’s debut on the original Xbox. But seven years after its release, does the game’s console-RTS ethos hold up? Let’s dive in and find out.

The game opens 20 years prior to the start of Halo: Combat Evolved at the Battle of Harvest. The battle, one of the first in the Human-Covenant War, proved to be a long, brutal affair in which humanity was able to retake the colony of Harvest at great cost in both resources and human life. It’s in the aftermath of this that the crew of the UNSC ship Spirit of Fire, led by Captain James Cutter, is sent to investigate Covenant activity on the planet’s surface. Cutter directs his Sergeant, John Forge, to rally troops on the ground and find out what exactly the Covenant are interested in.

This first mission acts as a tutorial, teaching the basics of controlling an RTS with a gamepad. The player is tasked with navigating Forge’s Warthog through several skirmishes with Covenant Grunts as he meets up with UNSC soldiers, at which point they come under the player’s control. The basics of commanding troops are pretty intuitive; A button to select units, X and Y buttons to direct units with contextual actions, and the bumpers to select either local or all units (complete with the eminently silly “ALL UNITS” soundbite). For the most part it works to allow you to control large armies, but falls apart once you try to micromanage as you would with a mouse. Ensemble wisely sidestepped this issue by balancing the combat to make mass attacks a viable strategy, and it becomes clear early on that the game is all about larger clashes between many units. This fits neatly into Halo’s focus on scale. Deep, surgical strategizing is replaced by Elites, Spartans, tanks, and aircraft all clashing at the same time, approximating something that feels like what players have seen countless times on the ground in previous games.

After a relatively straightforward first mission that ends with UNSC forces retaking an old base, the second mission has the player staging an assault from said base to prevent the Covenant from blowing up their discovery. It’s in this mission that we’re first introduced to base building. Unlike traditional RTS games, the base building in Halo Wars is much more constrained. The game pre-determines base building zones in which a main structure is airdropped in. From there, the exterior of the base can have up to seven set pods in which structures can be built. These structures include supply pads which generate currency to spend, barracks which train footsoldiers, reactors which increase your tech level (allowing for new upgrades), and armories enabling you to research bonus abilities. This sets up an interesting dynamic in which the main constraint to building isn’t cash flow, but rather real estate. Indeed, it’s almost impossible to get to the upper echelons of the tech tree with a single base, and players are compelled to constantly jockey with opponents over precious base building sites. This design decision, while coming off initially as the designers not trusting players to properly manage their base, has the benefit of preventing turtling strategies common in many RTS games. It also helps to manage the pace of a skirmish, as it’s very difficult to set up an effective tank rush in the early goings with only one base under a player’s control. That’s not to say you can’t bumrush an opponent with a dozen Warthogs or Ghosts at the start, but the game pushes players to focus on smaller objectives such unclaimed bases and Forerunner structures before mounting an attack on their opponents.

Once the UNSC forces successfully stop the Covenant from covering their tracks, the Spirit of Fire’s chief researcher, Professor Ellen Anders, is dispatched to investigate the artifact that the enemy had found. She quickly deduces that the artifact is a map pointing to the human colony planet of Arcadia, but before they can head back to the ship they are pinned by Covenant reinforcements. The third mission, Relic Interior, gives the player two Grizzly tanks placed behind enemy lines that are tasked with rescuing Forge, Anders, and their accompanying marines. The mission is relatively straightforward, and evokes previous Halo missions that give the player access to a tank, mainly because you feel like an invincible badass carving up the Covenant. It also comes as a nice change of pace, showing that Halo Wars can still be compelling even if you control only one or two units. Granted, those units are incredibly powerful and require little strategy to be effective, but having a small scale battle in an indoor environment feels refreshing after the first two missions got a little bogged down in tutorializing. In any case, the Grizzlies eventually succeed in their mission and our protagonists make their way to Arcadia.

As the Spirit of Fire arrives at Arcadia it becomes clear that the planet is under attack by Covenant forces. The ship’s crew touches down on the planet’s largest city to aid in the evacuation of civilians. While the level reads like a typical escort mission, the game offsets this by introducing Spartans. While they remain under AI control here, seeing Spartans (plural!) take the field is exhilarating. Though this made a bigger splash in 2009 (before Halo Reach showed us multiple Spartans in action), it’s still pretty cool to see John-117’s compatriots blasting away with chainguns, SMGs, and Spartan Lasers. While the Spartans aid in the evacuation, the player is given control of Hornet aircraft for the first time. These nimble units are able to cover a lot of ground and the mission quickly becomes an exercise in dealing with Covenant ships dropping off attack squads around the map before they can do major damage.

Upon successful completion of the evacuation, the player is given a base to hunker down in and await evacuation. I personally quite enjoy defensive oriented missions, and this one was no exception. Waves upon waves of Covenant funnel into a choke point allowing the defending forces to grind them up. Furthermore, players are finally given direct control of Spartans here, and they prove to be indispensable. Using the Spartans’ secondary hijack ability, I was able to commandeer the enemy’s Wraith tanks and eventually push the battle to the Covenant base. The battle felt like the best distillation of Halo Wars’s combat, a knock-down, drag-out fight with plenty of give-and-take between both sides.

The next two missions try to add some twists to the previous mission’s formula, and only partially succeed. The first of these missions, Dome of Light, has the player trying to crack a force field that is hiding some unknown Covenant activity in an ancient ruin. In order to do so, the player must position several modified tanks at specific locations to barrage and overload the force field. While there are plenty of Covenant opposition, specifically of the aerial variety, there isn’t a major enemy force on the ground that can be attacked. Rather, you’re going through the motions, ordering tanks to the required locations and defending them from damage as they get there. This is exacerbated by the fact that the game continually pulls the rug out from under the player by progressively increasing the number of tanks required to bring down the shield. Despite the dull set up, the mission ends on a high note by giving you control of an orbital gun to destroy the Covenant operation once the protective shield goes down.

At this point, the second mission (known as Scarab) begins, with the UNSC forces advancing into the Covenant base of operations. Unfortunately, the advance is blunted by a partially constructed Scarab tank guarding the entrance to the ruins. Due to the immense damage potential of the Scarab’s main gun, players must navigate units away from its gaze and destroy power nodes to slow down the speed in which the tank’s head turns. The intriguing setup is squandered, however, by giving the Scarab an insane amount of health that took minutes on end to fully chip away. It doesn’t help that the game’s heavy hitting units are typically very slow and unable to avoid the Scarab’s attacks very effectively. But that’s not the main problem with this mission or Dome of Light. Rather, the big issue is that neither mission pits the player against a significant enemy force. You’re either facing a giant forcefield or a giant, immobile tank. Both of these foes simply sit there until the player has done the seemingly unrelated tasks to complete the mission. There is no punch-counterpunch with these foes, and as such it doesn’t feel like much is being accomplished. Thankfully, the back half of the game switches things up, both narratively and mechanically.

While Forge and Anders are investigating the wreckage of the Scarab from the previous mission, they are attacked and Anders is kidnapped by an Arbiter who believes that she can help find what the Covenant are seeking. Using her transponder to track where the enemy is headed, the Spirit of Fire makes an FTL leap to an uncharted planet. As Forge and the rest of the ship’s crew investigate the planet’s surface, they come into contact with two new enemies. The first are the Covenant Brutes, the apelike enemies first introduced in Halo 2, and the second are the Flood. While canonically the introduction of the Brutes works, seeing the Flood is a bit jarring as they were first encountered by humanity during the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. I understand the developers wanting to include as many elements of Halo in their game, and I get that with Halo Wars’s ending it technically works with the series canon, but it nevertheless feels unnecessary to include the parasites here. Also, unlike other Halo games, encountering the Flood doesn’t really require a change in tactics. Throw enough units at the problem and it goes away, just like the Covenant. Nevertheless, the next three missions, Anders’ Signal, The Flood, and Shield World, specifically focus on rallying UNSC troops who are pinned down by the Flood. They are a step up from the previous two missions in that you now have an enemy on the ground to fight, but the limited amount of Flood unit types make the encounters feel more generic than tussles with the Covenant. Thankfully, the game switches things up with two missions that take place on top of the Spirit of Fire.

After successfully rallying and evacuating forces from the grasp of the Flood, the Spirit of Fire becomes ensnared in a gravity well pulling the ship inside the planet. In what are easily the most audaciously designed missions in the campaign, Cleansing and Repairs, players are tasked with protecting the ship from Flood and Covenant by building and producing units on its hull. For the first time, players are forced to think in three dimensions as Flood adhere to the sides of the ship which ground troops cannot reach. The game also requires players to be more flexible in how they defend their base, as it is much more spread out than in standard skirmishes. This all comes together for some nail biting combat as you desperately try to repel the Flood and repair the ship’s engine, making hard decisions on what to sacrifice in order to achieve your main objectives. The only downside is that the relatively solid endgame feels like a bit of a letdown after these unique missions.

The last three missions, Beachhead, Reactor, and Escape, are all decent enough from a gameplay standpoint, however they feel largely disconnected from the plot and so lack a narrative thrust. In Beachhead, Anders manages to escape Covenant bondage and meets up with Forge, telling him that the enemy intends on using the planet’s Forerunner technology to mass produce an advanced armada capable of crushing humanity. In an effort to put an end to this, Cutter decides to use his ship’s FTL drive to blow up the planet. Players are tasked with establishing the namesake beachhead to act as a staging ground to deliver the bomb. The mission plays like a skirmish as you clear the area of Covenant and Flood forces. The one neat twist here is that you can get a Spartan to hijack an abandoned Scarab to make short work of any opposition. The next mission, Reactor, has you escorting the reactor core to its designated area while being attacked by Covenant. Finally, the last mission, Escape, has you punching a hole in the planet’s inner surface to allow for the Spirit of Fire to get out safely before the planet is annihilated.

The issue with these missions is that the real action is happening with Forge and his crew of Spartans. This is starkly apparent in the cutscene prior to the last mission where we see Forge finally killing the Arbiter and Spartans taking down Elites in stylish fashion. It is also Forge that activates the bomb and saves the day, leaving the player as a mere facilitator. As a result, this brings unwanted focus on the fact that the player’s role in the story is never clarified. You aren’t playing as any of the main characters like you would in a standard Halo game, nor are you a faceless general akin to StarCraft or Command & Conquer. The game makes clear that the chisel-jawed Sergeant Forge is supposed to be the protagonist (and gave him Nolan North’s voice to clear up any doubt), but I never felt ownership of his actions at any point. It created an odd distance between me and the story, and had me caring less and less about the characters as the campaign proceeded. By the time that the Spirit of Fire had accomplished her mission, her crew in cryo sleep awaiting rescue, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed in the narrative arc as a whole.

Of course, that’s not to say I hated the campaign. There certainly were flashes of brilliance spread throughout, and the fundamental gameplay felt good despite being a tad too shallow. Halo Wars has lost a bit of shine since its release, as the novelty of a non-shooter Halo game has waned a little in the intervening years. Nevertheless, as an experiment, the game largely succeeds by accurately mimicking everything from Martin O’Donnell’s somber score to the way that Banshees bank when they turn. If this sounds like Halo Wars tends to prioritize style over substance, it’s because that is precisely what the game does. I don’t say this as a criticism. After all, this is a Halo RTS, created for and marketed to fans of the franchise. For the game to succeed, it needed to fully replicate the trappings of its iconic forebearers. Ensemble clearly understood how important it was to get the small details right and how to marry them with a decently compelling RTS core. The resulting package is well worth any Halo fan’s time.

A few months ago I wrote a post discussing Microsoft’s new strategy to move the Xbox One from a traditional console to a platform that encompasses the PC and a regularly updating cycle of set-top boxes. The post garnered quite a bit of discussion at the time, with opinions ranging from utter contempt at the strategy to those that were cautiously optimistic of the benefits it could bring. While Microsoft recently kicked off their new initiative with the ultimately underwhelming one-two punch of the Xbox One S and the debut of the Play Anywhere enabled ReCore, it seems like Sony will be the one leading the charge with their PlayStation 4 Pro, a system that promises more power for the refined consumer. So now that we’ve moved on from gaming executives talking about hypotheticals to actual consumer hardware, I thought I’d revisit my thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, I’ve developed a much less optimistic vision of what this new future entails. We may have entered an era where enthusiast players segregate themselves from the mainstream, and we all could be worse off because of it.

Despite its inherent clumsiness, Sony’s appending of the word Pro onto the PlayStation 4 is no mistake. Like last year’s Xbox One Elite Controller, this trend of using words that typically reference individual skill to describe premium products is reflective of how enthusiast game players see themselves. We have the discerning tastes to avoid rehashed shooters and sports games. We have the technical know-how to assemble a killer gaming PC. We have the skill and patience to play rogue-likes and souls-likes. Granted, this sort of thinking isn’t necessarily new. There certainly existed the peanut gallery heckling those of us who had the gall to enjoy GoldenEye while they played Quake and Half-Life, or thought less of us playing the SNES version of Street Fighter II while they plunked quarters into the arcades. But like most things in the internet age, the distance between the haves and have-nots in gaming has only gotten bigger.

You can hear the resentment of the enthusiasts in a lot of online gaming discussion. How dare the console makers hold us back with under-powered machines! How dare lazy developers dumb down their games to cater to casuals! Nevermind the fact that everything, from the massive budget games to the vast ocean of indie titles, are supported by casuals on their under-powered machines. A game like The Witcher III, with its vast world and incredible amounts of content, simply would not have been profitable without the 70% of consumers that bought it on console. Nor would a game like Rocket League have achieved such ubiquity and success without being given away through PlayStation Plus. The unacknowledged truth of the matter is that the much-maligned mainstream consumer is in fact subsidizing the enthusiast. Without Madden and FIFA we wouldn’t get Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Without Assassin’s Creed we wouldn’t get Valiant Hearts: The Great War. Without Xbox Live and PSN, we wouldn’t get self-supported developers making quirky and fresh games.

What saddens me most about gaming enthusiasts maligning the mainstream is how classist it all sounds. The epithet of “console peasant”, for instance, lays bare a socioeconomic truth that few wish to acknowledge. If you’re someone who doesn’t have a lot of money but still enjoys gaming, consoles remain your best bet. Despite PC owners’ protestations, the upfront cost of purchasing or building a computer can be very high. Even three years after the Xbox One’s launch, it would be next to impossible to build a PC that matches its performance for $300 US (and yes, you must include a copy of Windows and a hard drive in that calculation). Certainly, you can make the argument that the lifetime cost of ownership for a PC is less than console, but that just acknowledges the fact that it is often cheaper to be rich than poor.

Of course, the domain of PC gaming is not entirely for the rich. Plenty of developing countries, such as those in Eastern Europe and Asia, are primarily PC due to the expensive nature of consoles there. But those countries’ players aren’t running the latest CPUs and GPUs, but rather are making due with aging hardware by playing games that scale down to their specs. Those multitudes of players are just as responsible for “holding back” gaming technology, but are not nearly as villainized as those who have the gall to spend money on a PlayStation or an Xbox. Is it because we refuse to acknowledge the economic hardships of our fellow first world citizens? It is because we must gatekeep our hobby from being taken over by so-called “undesirables”? Or is it simply because of our human tendency to villainize those outside our tribe? Whatever the reason, it’s a sad state of affairs that many of my fellow enthusiasts continue to look down upon the masses that make our medium so vibrant and interesting.

Paraphrasing SIE President Andrew House, the PlayStation 4 Pro was designed in part to retain the enthusiast player that would otherwise jump ship to the PC in order to get the best performance. I suspect a similar motivation is driving Microsoft to develop Scorpio (and the One S to a lesser extent). I applaud these efforts to keep the consoles relevant for enthusiasts, however, it concerns me that less-informed and less-moneyed consumers will get the short end of the stick. Will future games be able to run decently on the old model consoles? Will they even be a factor when developers are targeting cutting edge PCs and high-end consoles? Those of us with disposable income to spare will likely be unaffected, but what of those people that scrimped and saved to get their prized console? Will they be left out in the cold if and when their system can no longer play the latest Batman game?

Of course, we are still in the early days of this shift and it will be a while before the vanilla X1 and PS4 are gone for good. According to Fortune, we are currently at about a 5-10% penetration rate for 4K displays in the United States, with a projection of 33% by 2019. With plenty of people happy with their current HD sets, and with the new consoles so focused on 4K, there will be little incentive for current console owners to move for at least the next few years. Developers, seeing the low market share of the new consoles compared to the launch versions, will likely focus on the lowest specs while occasionally throwing a bone to the consumers that did upgrade. But eventually there will be an inflection point where development resources are shifted to the upgraded consoles, and before long we may see games that are basically unplayable on the old systems.

A valid argument can be made that the nature of technology is one of progression. Things get better and sometimes there will be those left behind. Xbox 360 owners, for instance, who got a bad version of Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor should save up and upgrade. I’m sympathetic to this sort of thinking insofar that I think gaming as a medium improves as technology improves. But here’s the thing with the Xbox 360 (and PlayStation 3 for that matter); they had lifespans of nearly a decade and remained viable gaming machines for some time after their successors were released. With the PS4 and X1, they have only had 3 years before being replaced by more capable successor machines. The value proposition is significantly worse than before, and affects the poorest game players most.

I fear that after years of games and consoles getting cheaper to access that a reversal is in the cards. The enthusiasts, buoyed by the strength of their spending and the volume of their voices, will push developers and console makers to make core gaming exclusive to those of us that can afford its ever-increasing costs. Games coverage will increasingly focus on these expensive machines, leaving those without the latest hardware out in the cold. In doing so, we risk making gaming less mainstream and less appealing to those of lower socioeconomic standing, and so we may push the next generation of potential players and developers to more accessible mediums. As someone who adores the vibrancy and diversity of console and PC games, I hope I’m wrong.