Egge

@RagingLion: In effect, I believe you've reiterated my "experience with horror games" argument from a slightly different perspective. People who don't play these types of games methodically and who don't expect "procedural" encounters clearly do not have any experience with the genre. I should perhaps note that my own experience with survival horror is very limited compared to people who, say, owned a Playstation 1 and were gaming far less on the PC than I was in my youth, but at least I know enough to always expect the unexpected, so to speak. Unfamiliarity with the basic gameplay concept is the key here, I think.

Inspired by the Giant Bomb podcast discussion following Patrick Klepeck's recent playthrough of the game, I decided to finally start making my way through indie developer Frictional Games' celebrated survival horror title Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which I bought when it came out two years ago but for some reason never got around to at the time. Although I have certainly been at least moderately frightened by various horror titles in the past (and YouTube is full of "watch-this-kid-scream" reaction clips featuring this particular game), Amnesia honestly doesn't scare me at all. To be fair, the gothic environments are atmospheric and the game artfully maintains the illusion that grisly monsters could emerge from the dark shadows at any point. Crucially, however, the somewhat Lovecraftian enemies aren't nearly as scary to the player as they are to the slightly unhinged protagonist himself, and these creatures all too soon (not to mention all too often) reveal themselves to the player in all their low-polygonal monster mundaneness, instead of remaining a more intangible but distinctly unnerving threat lurking in the dark corners of Castle Brennenburg (which would have made the game better). Not giving the player any combat abilities was undoubtedly a clever design decision, but in practice the gameplay soon becomes very focused on a few core procedures (i.e. methodically searching rooms for valuable objects and hiding once in a while to avoid detection) rather than on being immersed in any kind of sustained state of anxiety and horror. And while the sound design is great from a purely technical standpoint, the supposedly spooky noises and sudden outbursts of the game's predictably dissonant score are simply not original, unexpected or eerie enough to catch me off-guard. Disappointingly enough, even the infamous water monster scene (assuming it's the one I think it is) turned out to be a lot more silly and annoying than it was scary.

I must admit that I'm a little puzzled as to why Amnesia has garnered such a reputation for being unusually frightening. A partial explanation for the praise of the game as an almost overpowering experience could be the fact that many younger players (i.e. people below 30) simply aren't accustomed to survival horror as a distinct genre. Self-described genre fans such as Patrick Klepeck aside, an ever-increasing percentage of players got into gaming only after the Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark series began their transformations into decidedly more action-focused affairs. These poor impressionable youths were presumably not prepared for the kind of slow-paced, unabashedly action-free gameplay which Amnesia delivers, but which isn't that exceptional in the context of the genre as a whole.

But even though other games such as System Shock 2, good old Silent Hill 1 (which I played for the first time relatively recently and was genuinely freaked out by) and arguably even some of the more cerebral titles such as Pathologic are ultimately superior as far as horror experiences go, Amnesia still provides some pretty neat gameplay which manages to keep the player engaged via atmospheric exploration, compulsive scavenging and simple but at least moderately engaging puzzles. Taking care to check every chest and drawer in the vicinity is almost always rewarding the player with additional items (mostly oil for your lantern and tinderboxes) or a bit of optional lore, and there's generally a nice balance between moments when you're simply exploring and other times when skillfully avoiding enemies is the primary concern. So while Amnesia doesn't make me scream (even in a good way), I'm still having fun with it. Indeed, you might even call the game relaxing...

Videos of System Shock 2 would be great and, yes, Pathologic is a game Patrick (being a survival horror fan and all) simply must check out at some point.

Though Phil Fish, Jonathan Blow and the SMB guys are all respectable choices, it sounds insane to have hours of footage with Jason Rohrer and not put it in the "theatrical release" of the movie.

@Lebensbaum: Never said anything about entirely negating the reliance on bullet time (...and I was definitely thinking more specifically about "jumping sideways guns ablazing" rather than bullet time in general), but you make some good points. It's still far too early for me to tell whether Rockstar's efforts to stop the player from using bullet time in combination with cover - which, regardless of its inherent risks, seems an almost irresistable strategy for any modern third person shooter player - are actually enough to keep the gameplay focused on the ideal Max Payne formula. But, hey, if an even less shooter-oriented developer like Naughty Dog managed to make a respectable effort to stop cover spamming in the Uncharted series then I guess anything is possible...

Sequels made long after the original game(s) by a completely different developer are bound to make the Internet rage-o-meter rise to 11 and flood the global computational pathways with cries of "sell-out". However, in the case of Max Payne 3 I think the more interesting question is whether the series is even relevant at all in 2012. When MP1 came out 11 years ago it was arguably the most technologically advanced and impressively cinematic 3D action title ever released, but the third-person shooter genre has moved on since then and few of the series' hallmark features seem particularly amazing or ground-breaking today.

Rockstar's strategy has clearly been to retain some of the elements which made Max Payne unique while bringing in a few standard mechanics of modern action games and simultaneously suffusing the whole package with their own distinctive brand of cinematic storytelling (which apparently is referred to derogatorily as "Houser writing" these days). What's particularly Max Payne-ish about MP3 is of course first and foremost the inclusion of a "bullet time" mode as well as the comically absurd painkiller-based health replenishment. Also worthy of note, however, are some rather finicky shooting mechanics which - at least for a modern third-person shooter - seem unusually tailored to precision-based mouse aiming on a PC. The addition of Gears of War-style cover controls have been much-discussed, and there's no question that it fundamentally alters the gameplay formula by effectively relegating bullet time to a secondary role. Apart from the more questionable aspect of merely conforming to contemporary genre standards, I have a feeling the cover mechanics were added because Rockstar realized that handling most shoot-outs by constantly flinging Max through the air in slo-mo would get boring (not to mention silly). That they didn't dare bringing in any other, more original ideas of their own on how to modernize the gameplay is probably a sign that Rockstar still is surprisingly uncomfortable with the whole process of designing basic shooter controls.

Max Payne as a series has always been focused on delivering a more sophisticated, more stylized and arguably also more engaging form of storytelling than most other action titles, and in some ways that makes Rockstar the perfect fit for a sequel/semi-reboot of the franchise. Given that Remedy Entertainment is still around one might argue that they would have made a better job, but considering Alan Wake's flat characters, wooden dialogue and convoluted plot I'm actually somewhat relieved that they're not involved this time around. Rockstar has their own share of problems, though; most notably a one-dimensional and only vaguely political cynicism which dragged down the intermittently amazing Red Dead Redemption and could very well end up making MP3 into more of a downer than is absolutely necessary given the source material. So far it's clear that the writing in this game is less absurd and flowery than in its predecessors, but it remains to be seen if that was a wise choice or not.

The main reason I bought Max Payne 3 wasn't the actual gameplay per se but simply the promise of getting to experience an unusual and well-realized setting (the various locales of São Paolo with all its ruthless inequality and organized brutality) brought to life by Rockstar's usual attention to detail. If it ends up being an OK shooter too that's fine, but I feel the gaming world of 2012 doesn't necessarily need another Max Payne and has enough linear, story-driven action games already.

@Seastalk: You're quite right that $700 is a lot of money for most people, but as a direct response to your broad generalized statements about me as a person (being "crazy" and spending money "without thought" etc.) I do think it's useful to make a direct comparison to the genuinely insane sums being spent by plenty of other people on various game-related Kickstarter projects. I certainly qualify for the "big spender" category as far as KS projects go - after all, the majority of donors pledge the minimum amount $15-20 - but I'm still a pretty minor player in the grand scheme of things.

@ArbitraryWater: A "venture capitalist" is an investor of some form so that wouldn't fit in this context, but as mentioned above there's a bit of self-interest involved since the low $15 donations could work out in my favor if the games in question are more expensive than that on release (assuming that they do get released, of course).

By and large, I see most of my donations as acts of pure ideological conviction (the proper analogy would be donating to a political campaign), since these are the kind of titles I believe the video game industry as a whole would do well to produce more of. To some extent Republique is the exception in that there was a more emotional "root for the underdog" element involved (the campaign was struggling for a long while and Ryan Payton and co. seemed like nice people with a really intriguing concept etc.). Overall the desire to make a strong statement about modern game development was definitely the primary motivation, though; which to some extent makes it less relevant whether all of the games actually turn out to be any good or even get released at all. Getting the message out to publishers about what kind of games we as fans are willing to collectively spend millions of dollars on - or at least pay a hefty premium for - is what truly matters in the end. If nothing else, it might help rejuvenate the middle-tier "AA" game, which is what a lot of my favorite niche genres would benefit from.

@Seastalk: Again, $700 is actually not that much money compared to what some people have spent on Kickstarter. If you add them all together there are thousands of backers on the $250-500 tiers for most Kickstarters game projects, and let's not forget the really crazy outliers such as $1,000 for the honor of getting killed in Carmageddon or $5,000 for "consulting with an art director" for Shadowrun. But I guess most Giant Bomb users are probably still in school so $anything is going to sound like a lot of money to them...

@MrBoBo: Maybe the 2K Marin first-person shooter reboot will be "shit", but I really don't think the Firaxis strategy reboot will be bad. Xenonauts is still awesome, of course.