I'm going to bring back the T&R name.  But not necessarily in a review format, just kind of a general title for anything I decide to express my opinion on.  The previous iteration of Thoughts & Ramblings can be found at my YouTube channel.

I don't claim to know the ins and outs of the game industry; I'm not an industry insider.  I'm very much an outsider.  I read a lot of news and opinion articles and I listen to a lot of discussion on the topic of video games and the industry as a whole, so occasionally I glean some understanding.  But most importantly, I play a lot of video games.  Not every game, but a lot of games.  I felt I should get that out of the way now

Initially, I was extremely excited by the prospect of moral choice in games, as I'm sure most people were.  A deeper story and having a real character whose actions and  decisions were placed entirely in my control?  Gimme gimme!  The potential was huge for video games to evolve further and ultimately surpass the capabilities of other story-telling media.  But now, I'm not so sure that I actually want moral choices in my video games.

As of yet, I haven't played a game with great implementation of a morality system.  Most recently, I played Infamous.  Hopefully, I'll get the sequel soon, but in my reading and understanding Infamous 2 is only incrementally different, so, I'm sure it applies.  Other games with morality systems in recent years would include Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Bioshock, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins, and damn near every other game anymore has some touted morality or player choice to varying degrees of implementation.

The problem I run into is I have not found what I would call a true morality system.  Moral choices in video games tend to be hyperbolic extremes.  And the ones that are not, you kind o' need to choose good or evil from the beginning and stick with that.  There's no room for grey.  In some games that's quite all right, really.  In Infamous, for example, this is perfectly okay, because it's a very comic book inspired world which is largely black and white in that way.  But in a game world that is striving toward realism this is largely unfortunate and completely detracts from the realism, in fact.

And then sometimes it locks you out of whole parts of the game.  In Mass Effect, depending on your Paragon/Renegade score, you can find yourself locked out of several dialogue options.  In Dragon Age, if you want to keep a character you like happy, or a character that you just find most useful, you could be locked out of entire side quests to keep that person pleased.  If you instead, just go with what you, or your character if you're properly roleplaying, would do in any given situation you could very well end up with no one being particularly happy with you.  Mayhap you could at least manage a balance if you do the quests in an appropriate order.  Because if you do a string of quests a character doesn't like, you'll lose that character, but if you alternate between "good" and "bad" quests you can keep things even.  And once the story gets to that level of meta, it has lost its impact as a story and becomes just another way of gaming the systems.

I should note that I completely understand the developer point of view for second playthroughs.  It extends the length of the game, sure.  But I, personally, don't like it in most cases.  It feels somewhat like artificial lengthening and in 40+ hour games especially it seems just insane.  I would much rather the focus be on a very solid single playthrough with a single ending.  As opposed to playing the game twice or more to get multiple endings based on a half dozen choices or variations spread throughout the game.

In the course of writing this I came to the realization that morality systems may work in some games.  Obviously, some games still handle things improperly, but present me a game system, no matter how great, and I can probably find at least a handful of games that implement it poorly.  But, it works out well as long as you don't have a desire to see all of the content created for the game and can live with one playthrough and only seeing one ending.  I would still say it falls apart in every game if you're a person who tries to maximize their game by attempting to get everything in one go.  I would prefer developers focus on a great, singular story instead of crafting a largely ambiguous story so that it'll still flow and make sense with either choice in the few places where the story actually differs.  It tarnishes the story and ruins the impact of the entire concept of a moral choice.

Of course, a game can still be great even if I don't like a particular system, but it definitely makes the game pale in comparison to others.  I think I'm just tired of moral choices in games.  Maybe when I finally play Heavy Rain I'll find my shining example of a truly great morality system?  Are there any other examples of an excellent application of a true morality system and divergent story paths?

Games this week:

• Playstation 3 - Dragon Age: Origins, Infamous, LittleBigPlanet
  
• PSP             - ModNation Racers PSP
• Xbox 360      - The Darkness

For the PS3 games, mostly the same. Slowly progressing through Dragon Age, continuing to play Infamous evilly while attempting to cleanup all of the Trophies while dealing with the occasional bug and glitch, and collecting more shit in LittleBigPlanet.  Same ol', same ol'.

Finally started The Darkness.  Immediately after starting I was reminded why I never played it to begin with, but, it was, like, five bucks, so what the hell?  The controls are just so sluggish.  The movement, specifically.  I can adjust the camera speed, but, ugh.  The walking.

And at first the combat is an unfortunate hindrance, also.  I had trouble with ammunition and the whole dying thing.  I was using all of my bullets to take out the damned lights!  Because they're useless against actual people.  I think the problem is there's no finesse.  You basically have to hope the auto-aim, which is prolific, stays on them long enough and that you're ammunition holds out until they're dead.  Which is unlikely.  So, you're better off holding on to your ammunition for the lightbulbs, then hang out in the shadows and use the creeping darkness.  Later on you get, like, a tentacle whip thing you can take out lights with and a set of Darkness fueled guns, but, your best friend is the Creeping Darkness power.

But what kept me playing was the unique and terribly interesting method of story-telling.  I don't know that the story itself is super interesting, as of yet, but the method of conveyance is supremely intriguing.  They're committed to the first-person perspective, and it is at its finest.  The televisions are the best thing, to me.  I always like when the televisions work and there are a variety of channels.  A little quirk of mine, I suppose.  And the Mike Patton voice work is also pretty great.  In fact, all of the voice work so far has been pretty good.  And the little darklings are pretty amusing, although there aren't that many lines so you'll hear them repeated a lot, which is unfortunate.

Final note on The Darkness, for now: I love the collectibles.  The phone calls to secure the collectibles, specifically.  Doing the small side missions for the random people on the subway platforms, mailing the long lost letters home from WWII vets... it's all the little touches in The Darkness that intrigue me and made me push onward through the combat.

Okay, enough about that.  I also played ModNation Racers PSP. Thank you Welcome Back program.  I just started it yesterday while I was doing laundry, so, not far into it at all.  But it's an okay little handheld cart racer.  I dunno, it's not too special as of yet.  I feel like I would probably like the console version better.  More on that as I play it.

And, no Dirge of Cerberus.  I haven't given up on it yet, I just... didn't want to play it at all this week.  We'll see if that one ends up on the shelf unfinished as well.

Games this week:

• Playstation 2 - Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
• Playstation 3 - Infamous, Dragon Age: Origins
• PS Portable  - God of War: Chains of Olympus
  

Short list this week.  I recently got Netflix, so, I've been watching a bunch of films when I should be playing games.  Bad me.

I got past the point in Dirge of Cerberus I was stuck at last week, so, that's something.  That game is so terribly uninteresting, but, I hate leaving games unfinished.  And, I find myself paying zero attention to the cut scenes this week, I noticed.  Maybe it's because I don't share the reverence everyone else feels for Final Fantasy VII?  It was a fun game, but, I just didn't love it as hard as everyone else.  Oh, well.

A little aside in between the big boys, I played a tiny bit of Chains of Olympus.  I wanted to see the story again after playing God of War III, so, I popped it in, started a new game with all my stats from a previous save, and went on my way.  I'll probably finish it up pretty quickly.

More Infamous, not much to say to that end.  Playing through on Hard difficulty and the evil side.  Also, old news, but, the evil side is way more fun!  Like, holy cow.  The grenades separate and explode EVERYWHERE.  And you don't have to worry about zapping any of the civilians who run in between you and your target, basically right into your lightning, the bastards.  You didn't have to worry anyway, it was nigh inconsequential on the good side.  But still not a very heroic thing to do.

Dragon Age: Origins.  I got severely stuck in Castle Redcliffe this week.  I thought I may have to quit playing, this damned Revenant kept kicking my ass.  It's making me realize what's missing with a controller instead of a mouse and keyboard.  Some of that precision in the combat is lost.  But, with a heavy stroke of luck, I made my way past that fight and continued onward!  Not for much, though, I was stuck on that fight for a couple days.

That's probably part of why I didn't do as much gaming this week: kept getting stuck.  I'd lose several times and say, "Fuck it!  I'ma watch Hellraiser," or whatever movie I put on instead of playing video games.  Also, I watched The Big Hit, love that movie.  Anyway, that's it for vidgames this week!  See y'all next Sunday!

This is something I do on my Tumblr account, but, it seems fitting to have it here as well.  So, this was last weeks.  There'll be a new one tomorrow.
 
Games this week:

• Playstation 2 - Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus
• Playstation 3 - Infamous, Dragon Age: Origins, LittleBigPlanet
• Xbox 360      - Bayonetta

So!  Let’s work our way down the list.  I played a little bit of Dirge of Cerberus.  Not a lot, it’s definitely not catching my interest.  And I hit a wall where I literally could not figure out where to go next, so, I just put it down and moved on.

Specifically, moved on to Infamous.  And finished it.  At least the good side!  I started it again to beat the EVIL side, which is already way more fun.  Speaking of which, ugh, morality systems.  They’re never very good in video games, are they?  I mean, in this game, you can’t ACTUALLY make choices because if you stray from one path to the other you can very likely lock yourself out of missions.  Not that anyone would ACTUALLY want to do any of the evil stuff, because it’s all audaciously evil.  Like starving people so that you can keep three weeks worth of food all to yourself.  And it’s this way in all games with morality, there’s no actual grey area and you’re damn near punished for not going specifically one way or another.  Hopefully they don’t necessarily stay forever in video games.  Or get better.  But, anyway, Infamous is pretty fun, if a little insane with the storyline.  Also, some serious gameplay issues.  Specifically, with some of the collision detection.  There was one especially memorable moment where I just fell through the ground geometry.  Imagine it with me.  You’re Cole McGrath, you’re walking along with your badass lightning powers, and you’re just on your way to a meeting with whoever is going to give you your next mission objective.  Suddenly… the world opens up and you fall!  Not toward hell or anything, but toward a grey… nothingness.  Just a void.  And you do not land.  You just keep falling and falling.  Forever.  All jest aside, it’s incredibly frustrating to clip through solid walls you’re trying to climb and trying to convince Cole that this piece of debris or piping is definitely something he can hold on to because he sometimes seems terrified to even try.  But it’s still a lot of fun, particularly if you suck up your morals and play the evil path because then it’s way more fun.

But, hey, what else have I played this week?  Why, Dragon Age: Origins, faithful readers!  I initially started as a Dwarf.  A Casteless Dwarf, specifically.  After playing through that, I decided I didn’t care for that particular one.  Nothing wrong with it, I guess, I just didn’t want to role play that particular character.  So I restarted with the City Elf.  Likin’ it a lot more.  Not too far into it, though.  Too early to tell.  I’ll get back to you next week.

Also, I started and played a little bit of LittleBigPlanet.  Entertaining, cutesy, kind o’ floaty and frustrating platforming physics… yeah, the jury’s still out on whether it’s fun, but, it is adorable as fuck.  That’s really all right now.  Oh, worth noting, since this is a short paragraph anyway, I got this and Infamous with Sony’s Welcome Back program for the Playstation Network.

And finally, my nemesis, Bayonetta.  I BEAT IT!  I’m still awful at it, but, I beat it.  And it’s now on the shelf and probably won’t be played again any time soon.  At least not by me.  But, let me do a short little blurb on it here.  Um, it’s incredibly frustrating, and some of the little side game things last way too fucking long.  But, despite the ball-crushingly difficult fights it sometimes throws at you, it’s insanely awesome.  The spectacle is insane, it’s hilarious, and it’s full of references to other Sega projects.  The ending in particular is amazing, it’s really not a difficult boss fight at all [except for the tornado, floating platform part, fuck that part], but it seems to go on absolutely forever and after the credits it goes into this crazy dance sequence.  Which is then contained in the extras menu and you can watch at your leisure.  It’s completely over-the-top and definitely worth playing at least once.  But I will never play it again.