MMMman

The day Half Life 2 was released my hard drive died. I never discovered what happened to cause the passing of my precious repository and at the time I never even questioned the why, simply the how. How could my drive cease to function on this most special of days? What terrible events could be inflicted upon Gordon Freeman without me watching over him? How, in short, could this happen to me? I played Half Life 2 shortly after these events. Sometime after the terrible circumstances surrounding the game I must have grown up somewhat as I stopped asking myself the whiney how’s and simply got on with playing games. Somewhere during this time Half Life 2 suffered the same fate as my juvenile sense of entitlement and slipped to the back of my mind; the excitement for the original game was simply not present when it came to the subsequent episodes. I bought them a few years later when steam launched for mac out a sense of guilt but didn’t give them much though. A few more years have rolled by and things, I, have changed yet again; the apathy which leached away the youthful excitement has in turn been replaced by scholarly curiosity. It seems Half Life 2 has been there throughout all of my formative years, waiting patiently for me to yet again be ready.

Both of the episodes prove to be fascinating time capsules in some respects and in others examples of superior design decisions which to this day remain curiously underused. The storytelling technique of maintaining a strict first person perspective which is employed in all of Valve’s single player releases has been heavily praised since 1998 yet is still largely ignored in favour of the more ‘cinematic’ use of cutscenes. Though Valve’s games are probably the best suited to this device through their casting of the player as a silent protagonist, thereby allowing them to completely inhabit the game world and indirectly interact with characters, other developers have attempted implementation with varying degrees of success. The Call of Duty series has used the technique throughout, though it is the Modern Warfare trilogy where this can be seen most prevalently. Unlike Half Life, however, these games dilute the powerful connection between player and supporting characters by jumping between protagonists in rapid succession, showing the hollow shell of the player-character to be just that. Gordon Freeman works as a host because we consistently use his eyes to see. The consecutive nature of all of the Half Life 2 games fosters an acute connection between the player and the world by way of Gordon, thus making him a tangible character unto himself, regardless of his personality being exclusively a projection of the player’s own. In breaking up continuity and changing protagonists the Modern Warfare games, barring a couple of effective moments in the first, impede our ability to suspend disbelief and accept our host as a complete character. This often reverses the relevance of one of the most important rules of narrative, that of ‘show don’t tell’. In wanting to show the player everything the Call of Duty games destroy any sense of identity the player characters could possess. It is for gameplay reasons, then, that the player is transported back in time to Pripyat and into the body of yet another character and only tertiarily connected to any narrative or character progression. The events of this flashback could be summed up in a short paragraph yet the game dedicates far more time to it. While the Half Life games similarly show rather than tell the player about many of the important plot points the fact we inhabit a single character following a defined and temporally linear chain of events is crucial. This elevates the narrative concessions made for gameplay from mere contrivances to understandable compromises.

One such gameplay compromise is that of player mortality. I had practically forgotten the time before recharging health existed in shooters before I endeavoured to see Episodes One and Two out. Neither Half Life’s health pack mechanic nor the modern shooter’s penchant for regenerating health prove to be narratively sound solutions when it comes to governing a player’s ability to sustain damage. I am not, however, going to attempt to suggest a more fitting replacement to either, I’ll save that for another day.

In my absentmindedness I hadn’t only forgotten health packs but also the way they define how we play these games on the whole. Jumping back into Episode One it had been some time since I had felt the levels of tension I was experiencing from finite health. Ordinarily one would just duck out of the action for a few seconds and then get back to the job of killing things, here I was forced to endure a number of reloads before my mind once again became used to the concept of being careful.

My ability to stay alive was more directly connected to my understanding and implementation of the games systems as a whole rather than relying upon them one at a time. For instance; close to the end of Episode 1 I was tasked with escorting a number of groups of soldiers and medics across a train yard, leading to a back and forth where enemies and obstacles would change every time I returned across the yard. During these trips I was using all of my movement options (run, duck, jump, strafe, cower, sprint, strut) along with the different interactions I could perform with the world (shoot, throw, gravity gun things, re-supply limited stocks of resources, cower). All of these actions were being performed in a beautiful sequence, fluidly linking into one another with grace and at my own free will. Much like the best sequences in Halo, i.e. anything outside, the stage was set and it was up to me to devise a way through. The cowering, then, was not a simple couple of seconds which broke my combat flow in favour of health regeneration, no, it was an intrinsic part of the dance which allowed me to avoid danger itself, not simply the percentage of health it would deprive me of for a short period of time. In forcing me to think carefully about how I took damage, in making the health system a participative one rather than the more passive ‘recharging duck’, the combat scenarios within the Half Life games proved to be much more organically flowing and divergent. Enemies were scripted to enter stage left, yes, but when they got there they had the entirety of the stage with which to make a scene, not simply one corner. With finite health the player is encouraged to lead and be led in this merry dance rather than the singular task of skulking around and occasionally peaking out from behind something to watch the show.

While this difference in gameplay is rarely as dramatic as I am describing, I feel it highlights the changes shooters have undergone in a very short period of time, a change which would not have occurred so dramatically without the popularisation of recharging health. If a player has a finite amount of health within a certain section of the game the developer can control their experience with much lighter brushstrokes than if a player can theoretically heal most of the time. The ballet of the train yard and its varied, defined progression would be transformed into an assault course of infinite waves of enemies, a challenge to be traversed quickly rather than thoughtfully engaged with had Gordon Freeman recharging health. The APC he faces would not pose anywhere near the same challenge if he could duck in and out of buildings to replenish health. How would this problem be addressed? More APCs. More soldiers. More bullets. More rockets. More everything. This, however, rarely increases the difficulty, instead simply prolonging encounters to the point where challenge is now borne out of longevity, the gameplay of attrition if you will, rather than any increased test of tangible skills.

Half Life 2, I feel, presents a game where the lineage of shooters butts heads with the modernising of a genre. The game is the zenith of the corridor crawler, giving the player a clearly defined trajectory with just enough lea-way to mask the straight line we follow. This creates a world where combat situations are diverse, player-driven and divergent, pacing is (mostly) tight and character interactions timely. Modern Warfare seemingly promised to do all of this and take us out of the corridor, setting us free with pistol whipping, silencers and abseiling and all we had to do was turn the corner and follow the light at the other end. It’s just a shame that after only a couple of years our eyes adjusted to this light of modern excitement and we found ourselves trapped in the shooting gallery, firing an ever increasing array of munitions at the same paper targets.

@GTCknight:

I too enjoyed the story, though I though it best to comment on it as little as possible in the post to try and keep the length down (it ran away from me somewhat as it was). I was quite surprised how identifiable the characters became throughout the game as the ‘International team’ trope generally just opens the door to a whole host of stereotypes. The romance was a little out of the blue but the writers could have handled its progression so much worse, by the end of the game it made a lot of sense to me both for the narrative itself and the moral questions the finale reveals raised. The end of a console cycle is becoming more and more appealing to me as the years roll by thanks to the interesting games released when big publishers are a little more willing to go out on a limb. It’s a shame the beginning is so weak compared to the rest of it, that and the lack of a good marketing push, at least here in the UK, probably contributed heavily to its poor sales.

I enjoy the rare feeling of constantly ‘falling down the rabbit hole’ in games. When I began playing Fez I started with a sense of trepidation and caution; I had to collect everything within a level before I continued on with my journey. This completionist mindset prevailed for some time as I slowly made my way, literally a lot of the time, around the games early stages. Though it often made for torturous going I reassured myself that I was playing the game as we play almost all games; complete a number of small challenges and be rewarded with progression, complete a number of other small challenges and be rewarded with some more progression. Fez itself presents the player with this very idiom early on, giving us a series of doors which will be periodically opened when a requisite number of items are collected. Shortly after this everything changes.

Suddenly, and quite shockingly, collectibles begin to appear in seemingly unreachable places regardless of the perspective-altering mechanics at the centre of the game. Things begin the not make sense; the map shows I still have three different things to uncover on levels I swear have been mined of collectibles. My once methodical pace is accelerated almost exponentially. The palpable sense of terror brought on by not being able to succeed within the games rules, to attain its obvious and pre-defined goals scares me. I begin to climb, following the path of least resistance, no longer attempting to collect anything at all, exploring rather than participating within the challenges. If it isn’t on my direct trajectory I don’t even bother. Up, up, up. Up.

A strangely familiar pipe? Down I go. A few screens of monochrome isolation and then a hidden door. Back here? Okay, on I go. Giant owl, doesn’t do anything, fine. What does this map mean? I don’t care if it doesn’t make sense at this exact moment. Lightening. Sunshine. The Black Lodge. Explosives. Smaller owls. None of it makes sense whatsoever. After a while, however, the blur of indistinguishable things slowed down. Patterns emerged and comprehension ensued. Fez was delightful, but once I began to understand it the sheer thrill of bowling through the unknown at a breakneck pace was diluted and transformed the remainder of the game. It ironically became the methodical exercise in collection I had wanted to play it as from the beginning, though after the hours of delirious exploration that had preceded everything became a bit, well, sedate. A lot has already been written about Fez since its release and it really isn’t what I want to discuss, though the way I played most of it makes it perfect for a somewhat protracted introduction.

As I said, I find there is something enthralling about relentlessly progressing through a game at breakneck pace and it seems Binary Domain was almost entirely designed to fulfil this very aspiration. A Japanese-made cover-shooter didn’t initially appear to be a very interesting prospect as it is no particular secret that Eastern developers have found it difficult to capitalise upon the genre since Gears of War set the modern template. The games opening didn’t do a large amount to dispel these misgivings; what with the fairly basic combat and an oddly placed stealth section which imparted skills it transpired would never be implemented again. In fact almost all of the first hour attempts to drag Binary Domain into the doldrums with a slew of overly gimmicky and mostly undernourished mechanics similar to the aforementioned stealth. While my excitable companion Roy "Big Bo" Boateng shouted many an encouraging compliment, his AI when partaking in these more gimmicky tasks was simply not good enough. “Saweeeeeet” he’d shout repeatedly as he neglected to defend me as I fiddled to assemble a makeshift bridge. A short while later I was tasked with stunning a large robot fiend and then quickly opening a door with Roy "Big Bo" Boateng, something which I could do perfectly quickly but took him longer to comprehend. Shortly after this everything changes.

In an attempt to speedily evade said large robot it becomes apparent the best course of action to take is a quick slalom down a large wall, for the obvious reasons of course. While this section is, in itself, not particularly engrossing it is the symbolism of this increase in speed within the game which I find most pertinent. It is during this insignificant three minute gameplay distraction when Binary Domain finally gets into its stride. The breathless acceleration encapsulates the majority of the game for me; everything is in constant flux with ever changing destinations. This is not to say that the game isn’t linear as it most certainly is, it just feels like Binary Domain’s corridor is twice as long as other shooters of its ilk yet the game wanted me to cover this ground in the same amount of time.

The combat which initially feels basic continues to do so throughout due to a lack of particularly interesting weaponry. The upgrade system, however, completely alleviates any boredom with its fantastically Spartan take on weapon customisation. Instead of spreading upgrade currency throughout multiple weapon types the game only provides the option of bolstering the default gun. This ensures the weapon is constantly being upgraded throughout the course of the campaign, sometimes with as few as a handful of minutes between meaningful upgrades. Instead of creating the sense of irrelevance one would expect from such a constrained set of choices, this singular focus constantly empowers the player through small amounts of regular progression, rewarding with a noticeable improvement with each one.

A couple of upgrades are all the assault rifle needs to lift the combat from pedestrian to furiously kinetic. The more power the gun amasses from the incessant upgrading, the more the sparks fly within combat situations and in turn the more satisfying these encounters become. Early on I was cowering behind cover at the sight of a couple of the games most basic enemies, by under half way I had the confidence and firepower to plough through entire waves of enemies, occasionally ducking away for a second of respite. After a couple of hours I felt fully able to take on any enemy with relative ease.

This could theoretically make the boss encounters overly trivial, stripping them of their importance. However, these enemies are expertly designed to take the general flow of regular combat and extrapolate its rules, grafting them onto increasingly sizeable robotic monstrosities. While their attack patterns are never particularly groundbreaking, it is their imposing size and the grand spectacle of sheering off chunks of their bodies which prevents them slipping into irrelevance. Most, unsurprisingly, have multiple forms, however the simple fact that this transformation is brought around by my destroying part of them feels, ironically, much more organic than most boss progression.

Finally, the health system goes a long way to maintain the pace of the game. I never died in combat for its entire duration, not once. Just as Roy "Big Bo" Boateng is present throughout its opening chapters, the game gives you a cast of surprisingly endearing accomplices to provide backup throughout. Aside from firepower they prove useful as med kit mules, coming to my aid if I ever took enough damage to go down with any force. The number of kits at my disposal meant I could happily push my recharging health to the limit safe in the knowledge I could get straight back up.

What results from these design decisions, then, is a satisfying one way trip through the typical Tokyo of the future; slums to gleaming over-city to terrible corporation HQ. The lack of interesting locales bothered me not; I was too busy running headfirst into the distance in a hail of bullets and a shower of scrap metal. The relentlessness is peppered with a couple of instances of humorous and pithy character development, an initially awkward yet increasingly convincing romance and the latest late title card I have ever experienced, presenting itself at around the ninety minute mark. However these moments never held me back or fragmented the pace, they simply were.

I am by no means attempting to directly compare Fez and Binary Domain as whole games, merely my reaction to the sustained use of their mechanics. I find it fascinating how my interest in Fez deteriorated so rapidly once the mysteries were unraveled and the game for the first time had a tangible rhythm, while Binary Domain somehow became more compelling the longer I was exposed to its singular beat. I would like to think this stems from the fact that puzzles are most captivating while one is solving them, creating great peaks and troughs of involvement. Shooting things repeatedly is a much more sustained activity, providing similar levels of feedback throughout a games duration. Though I came out of Binary Domain on an enormous emotional high was it simply created through hours of ever intensifying repetition? The reason I sped through Fez for hours was the wealth of seemingly never ending exploration it offered; the need to search everywhere, while I did the same thing within Binary Domain because it was the only, albeit well crafted, option open to me. Fez would most certainly have been a lesser game had it been linear, that is clear, but a non-linear Binary Domain where the sense of constant forward motion was created by not necessarily moving forward at all? That would be a rabbit hole I’d dive head first into.

@Deusx:

I'm sure it's a big problem for a lot of people who play games; I really want to share my interests but the learning curve for a non-gamer is so off-putting and intimidating it can end up feeling like a lot of work. I gave the Tintin tie-in a go mainly because I’ll play anything that at all reminds me of Shadow Complex so found it quite entertaining, though while playing I thought it might be a decent choice of introductory game. The co-op is relatively simple in scope; basic platforming, collection and one button combat and the 2.5D nature of the game removes the need for camera control which seems to add up to a gentle learning curve. I haven’t actually had a chance to give it a go with anyone yet but it may be an option for you to try.

I take my motor skills for granted. I am lucky enough, generally speaking, to be able to travel in any direction I desire and arrive at my destination quite easily. Sometimes the odd road or fence conspires to slow my progress but I have enough control over my mind and body to be able to assess these obstacles and plan my route accordingly. This skill transfers itself quite readily to my time spent playing videogames. Granted, we are often given a much wider array of movement choices than we would normally use in our day to day lives, but the core options are almost always present. I also take these motor skills for granted.

It was to my great surprise then that my girlfriend found the simple act of walking in a straight line so complicated when we sat down to share an hour of Minecraft: Xbox 360 edition. Apart from breaking her leg on some stairs a year ago she has always proved very proficient at walking. She has, however, never played a first person game before or many games at all for that matter.

That is what led me to the choice of Minecraft as our ‘let’s give bonding over videogames another shot’ game; relatively simple controls with a relaxed and danger-free brand of game play. With enemies turned off I imagined the fun we’d have digging our way into the exciting depths, mining minerals and hopefully finding a saddle to give to our pig friends; she liked the idea of riding a pig.

While I awaited her arrival at my modest camp I set about crafting up a couple of the bare essentials; a pick, a few torches for her, a second bed so I don’t look like I forget all about her when I’m spending our time apart digging virtual holes. She’d be here any minute; all she has to do is head towards the tower of sand I’d left as a reminder to myself. As I glanced over at her half of the screen all I saw was the empty darkness. Had the game cruelly spawned the first time adventurer in a hole as some kind of joke, poking fun at her naïve lack of videogame experience, a punishment for my evenings of solitary gaming?

No. My fresh faced companion was staring at the ground. I gently readjusted her line of sight, reminding her of what the right stick did and we continued our gruelling journey towards one another.

“I can see you!” she yelled after a couple more minutes of traversal. Which was very strange considering I was swimming in the sea and she was on top of a snowy hill, although her enthusiasm was as unexpected as it was welcome. In this enthusiasm to maintain a forward facing perspective on the journey she had inadvertently altered the camera (conveniently placed on that troublesome right stick), and was in fact yelping at herself. I was becoming nothing more than a mirage of a boyfriend, my loved one stranded in the unforgiving snowy desert of procedural generation.

What I had initially though would be an inviting first step into the world of co-operative construction was being severely hampered by a lack of communication between the mind and body. Something as simple as looking where one is walking is fundamentally altered when the motor function associated with it is changed. As a gamer I know that my vision is controlled with my right thumb, it is a reflex built into me from childhood, to my girlfriend however it is alien and as such something which takes her great thought and concentration.

This was fully on display when it came to climbing out of a hole she found herself at the bottom of. Unable to control both her movement and vision for very long led her to jump up a couple of blocks only to lose control of her sight and fall back down. Staring at the sky or ground was very common as she attempted to turn corners or assess her surroundings; her vision seemed constrained to gradations of 90 degrees as she knocked the right stick around. Her frustration was palpable though she seemed unable to move both thumbs in harmony, she knew what to do but somehow couldn’t. The disparity between the act of moving her thumb and the effect of altering her vision was too great in such a short play time for her to wrap her mind around.

Given more time I’m sure she would have adapted to the control scheme perfectly. When we began to actually mine a little her skill with the game had already improved dramatically. The constraints of small tunnels meant she could concentrate on movement or vision independently, thus making it easier for her to grasp the different effects her thumbs had on each. For years I had wondered why many games still contained the ‘look up, look down, do you want to invert?’ section at their beginning, here in my girlfriend was the answer. The opening act of simply allowing a new player to experience camera or vision controls without being burdened with other responsibilities, such as movement or interactions, could prove to be not just useful but vital in allowing them to make their first tentative steps with games. As her guide, should I have broken down my instruction to more than simply ‘this does this and this does that’? Maybe then we would be deep within some subterranean cave instead of still wrangling with the controller.

Perhaps, then, it was fitting that whilst inadvertently looking at the ground she dug us both into a hole we couldn’t get out of. Stranded; in my eagerness to play games with her I had neglected to properly teach her how to play. This is a difficulty shared by both new players and designers themselves. I failed at my introduction to Minecraft because I didn’t think like either group, I took my abilities with games for granted, projecting them onto my girlfriend who ultimately gained very little for the entire experience except the knowledge that, yet again, ‘games just aren’t for me’.

Next time I’ll have to be much more prepared or we’ll forever remember the last time we played games together as the one where I beat her to death trying to climb out of a hole I ultimately dug for myself.

"MMMman said:

GTA IV is just a prettier GTAIII"

And I am completely content with that, because III was, and still is, my favorite of the series."

I personally think the GTA series could have easily reached its high-water mark with IV. While I’ve been a fan of the series since the first instalment over a decade ago I feel there aren’t many more options left for the series in terms of innovation and progression of the gameplay. I rushed out release day and stood in the centre of at six in the morning to get my copy and I travelled home with a huge smile on my face and played it for nearly 24 hours solid with my buddies before I finally passed out and needed sleep.

This initial excitement was brought on by the countless number of ‘little details’ which litter the game and are so commonly known it is not worth discussing. However, once the drunken driving, deceptively shallow side missions and amusing physics engine, to name but a few, lose their novelty it becomes instantly clear; GTA IV is just a prettier GTAIII. Barring the undeniably enjoyable set-piece missions (such as the museum double-cross or the hospital escape,) the rest are re-hashes of missions we’ve played again and again over the years. One of my biggest qualms with IV was the high number of ‘travel to kill target at A, target flees in car/bike/boat, chase target to B, kill target’ missions which seemed to pad out the majority of the game. This was further hampered by the fact this iteration of Liberty City is so damn big that you spend much more time within missions driving around and chasing NPCs than in previous games, which is a shame because the new shooting mechanics make gunplay a lot smoother than it has ever been.

I feel the freedom afforded through the sandbox action game will ultimately prove to be GTA and the sub genre’s undoing; because there simply isn’t enough variety can be packed into the few staple mission types which have made up the series since its inception. So while you all clamour for a or a European game I’d prefer one GTA every generation with the possibility of DLC to tide gamers over every couple of years. That way the franchise would still stay fresh despite the fact the only changes made since 2001 are mostly superficial ones.