Gaming First Impressions: Life is Strange: Waif Hipster Bullshit

I quite enjoyed Telltale's The Walking Dead, both seasons 1 and 2. They were decent adventure games, but I wasn't really playing them for the gameplay. In fact, the gameplay was the worst part. I played them because I loved the decision-based story-driven narrative. Your choices affected things that happened later down the road--well, to an extent at least. It'd be difficult for every choice to make a huge impact on the narrative (if a key choice split the narrative into two notably different storylines, then just one key choice in each of the 5 episodes would result in 32 different endings), so some choices ultimately don't matter to the plot. The real appeal of the choices is that they give players agency over the story.

When Season 2 came out, a friend and I began playing at around the same time. We decided to chat through Steam as we played, reacting as the story unfolded, and then comparing the decisions we made afterwards. Sure, we made a lot of the same choices, but we also disagreed on what the best choice was at times. Being able to argue your choices was one of the most appealing parts of the game for me, because even if your choices don't matter, the act of making the choice in and of itself matters.

Life is Strange is a choice-driven adventure game like The Walking Dead, so the aforementioned friend recommended it to me when it came out and was kind enough to buy me the first episode so that we could share the experience again like we did with The Walking Dead. I played it and while the gameplay is similar to The Walking Dead, it's definitely a different experience. With one episode released and four more on the way, here are my thoughts.

The Plot

Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old student, moves back to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon after an absence of five years to attend Blackwell High School for its photography program. While in class, she has a strange vision of a storm by a lighthouse. While trying to calm her nerves from the dream in the bathroom, a student enters, exchanges a tense and heated conversation with a blue-haired girl who follows him, and then pulls a gun and shoots her. At this point, Max discovers that she has the power to rewind time and uses her power to stop the incident.

There are also some strange things in general going on at Blackwell. There's the Vortex Club, a group of cool kids with a vague purpose. There's the missing Rachel Amber and the missing person posters of her put up absolutely everywhere. There's the push for an installation of an intrusive surveillance system. And, of course, there's all sorts of general teenage drama added on top of all that.

A note that pretty much everything that follows this is a spoiler for the first episode, but not the rest of the game, so stop here or proceed as you will. I'll be talking about other stuff less specifically in the other sections, but I will still be talking about it.

Max discovers that the blue-haired girl whose life she saves and the person putting up all the posters of Rachel Amber are the same person: her former best friend Chloe, who she had cut off contact with after leaving five years ago. Chloe became close friends with Rachel after Max left, and Max agrees to help Chloe find her.

At the end, Max has another vision of an impending tornado threatening to destroy the town in roughly four days. She explains the vision, as well as her time traveling to Chloe.

The Good

There's a lot to like about Life is Strange. While the models and such have some issues, the art is really nice. The ending scene in particular is beautiful, with Max and Chloe looking out at the town from the lighthouse at sunset while snow begins falling. The game has a nice soundtrack that fits it well, and there are some solid storytelling and characters.

There's also a lot to like about the time reversal system. The ability to undo choices is a good one. Sometimes people make a certain choice expecting it to go a certain way, then find out that there was a disconnect between what the developers were trying to say and what they thought it meant. It also allows for plenty of delicious paranoia-based traps. There were four or five key choices in this first episode, and I think that with maybe a few exceptions, I would always make a choice, rewind time to make the other choice, decide I like my first choice better, and then later think "I should have made the other choice" after it was already too late to change it. It's a unique take on the genre and I really hope the game is able to capitalize on it in later episodes.

The thing that stands out to me most, though, is the themes. In addition to spirals (the tornado and the Vortex Club feature prominently, and the time-travel mechanic interface is shown as a spiral), there seems to be an important theme of security vs. freedom. The principal and Chloe's father both want to control information more through the installation of security systems, one girl early in the game is piloting a drone, and social media and technology in particular are given attention. While social media is obviously just a part of most teen's lives now, particular attention is paid to the dangers. One character asks to sketch Max and then explicitly forewarns her that he posts his sketches on Facebook. Another girl, however, takes a somewhat unflattering photo of Max without her permission and posts it to Facebook. Public and private technology-based discourse and information sharing are brought up in various ways, from sexting to digital piracy.

On the other side of the coin, there are a few free spirits rebelling against the system. Chloe is obviously a very counter-culture character, but one of the teachers at the school is petitioning against the security system. Graffiti, an anonymous form of discourse, is also prominently featured. And then there are the symbols of the birds and the butterflies. Winged animals are often used as examples for freedom, and while the butterfly pulls double duty (since the story deals with time travel it almost certainly alludes to the butterfly effect), near the end Max makes a comment after seeing some birds, envying how free they are. The security vs. freedom conflict is set up subtly enough that someone who isn't used to looking for things like that might overlook it, and it's nice to see that a choice-driven game is setting up a conflict between two opposing sides without being blatant about it.

The Bad

That's not to say that Life is Strange is great, though. I knew literally nothing about the game before going into it, apart from it being episodic and decision-based, and my first thought when it started up was "wow, that wet hair texture looks awful." There's some noticeable failures on the parts of the models like hair clipping into necks at certain angles, and the voice acting isn't always stellar. And while the problem goes away quickly enough, the controls aren't always intuitive. When the game told me to look at a photo in the very beginning, I spent at least a minute attempting to follow the instructions without realizing that I was supposed to click on the word telling me how to interact with the object instead of the object itself. Overall, there weren't too many flat-out problems I had with the game, but there were considerably more things that should have worked better than they did, which I'll get to in this next session.

The Rest
 
A lot of the game swings around from legitimately enjoyable to a bit cringe-worthy (I'm sorry, was I supposed to find those selfie puns funny?), to somewhere in between.

The story is a bunch of stories I feel like I've heard before. It's got the whole "stranger in a familiar land" thing going on, and a large portion of the plot feels like it is literally The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I'm just waiting for the scene where Warren asks Max on a date and she constantly rewinds time to try to get out of it so she doesn't have to face her feelings, or for when someone asks her "Max...have you been...time leaping?" And of course, it has tinges of absolutely every hipster-based story I've seen.

Then there's the characters. I have no clue how I'm supposed to feel about these characters. Sometimes they feel nuanced and fleshed-out, but sometimes they feel like they're just caricatures. What makes it worse is that some characters feel one way, some feel another way, and some feel like a bit of both. Chloe's father, the principal, and Nathan Prescott are obviously designed to be hated, making them feel two-dimensional. But when other characters are more nuanced, it makes it feel like one group or the other is just poorly written. Chloe is one of the more likable characters, but some of her actions are pretty inexcusable. Are we supposed to like those aspects of her character, or are we supposed to see her as more morally ambiguous? I don't know. It's either good writing or bad writing and it's hard to tell right now.

Most specifically I want to talk about Max because I have absolutely no idea what to make of her. Max almost seems to be designed to pander. It's like one or more developers said "these are things I love that I think that most of the target demographic will love." And they weren't wrong! I might not like photography, but I love a lot of books, anime, games, and TV shows Max mentions! It's probably because she likes things that I don't really care about that I'm able to see through her interests that I do love to the fact that she's very obviously designed to be lovable and/or identifiable. She has a lot of interests, and most people who would play Life is Strange are going to share at least one or two of them, but probably not all of them. I know that this is just how people work on a general level, but there's been so much effort put into making Max into a love letter to the things the developers enjoy and think that their audience will also enjoy that it feels a bit manipulative. Add in the fact that Max is our point-of-view character so we're seeing the entire game through this lens and it makes the whole game feel like--to borrow a phrase Victoria uses to describe Max's public image--waif hipster bullshit. Yeah, yeah, okay, we get it, Max is a socially awkward person who likes things we like. Can we talk about the story and not the merits of The X-Files?

That doesn't mean that it's bad, though. References are not inherently bad and in this case they didn't make me enjoy the game's merits any less. I'll still be playing through the other four episodes when they come out. It just makes it hard to form an objective opinion on the game's quality. Maybe all my griping really means is that I've reached the point of analytic viewing where I can't even turn it off even when I'm enjoying something. Oh well. We'll see in March when episode 2 comes out, I suppose.

Gaming Reflections: Bastion

Sometimes, after you finish a story, it makes you sit down and think. Ironically, it's not the stories with the explicit messages that do this to me. Elfen Lied just made me feel dirty (though the show's poor quality might have had something to do with that), and while I found Spec Ops: the Line emotional and powerful, it didn't prompt any further reflection from me beyond what the game itself said.

Bastion, on the other hand, was brought to what I think was a good, solid conclusion. It was just a conclusion that left me craving more rather than feeling satisfied.

Bastion is the story of a kid (known only as "the Kid") who finds himself as one of the only survivors of an apocalyptic event called the Calamity. His journey is narrated by an old man named Rucks, the only other survivor of his race. Rucks charges the Kid to help build the Bastion, a safe haven that has the power to undo the Calamity. The Kid also meets two other survivors of the Calamity, Zulf and Zia, who are members of the Ura race (as opposed to the Kid and Rucks, who are Caelondian). As the plot progresses, Zulf abandons the Bastion and leads the remaining Ura against it, after which the dark history of the Calamity and Rucks' involvement in it is revealed. The Bastion offers the possibility of hope, but also the possibility of more despair, and it is up to the player to make the decision of whether or not to actually activate the Bastion.

What makes Bastion such a powerful game is its narrative design. First of all, you play as the Kid, but the story is actually narrated by Rucks. Rucks has a rich, gravelly, soothing voice that I can only describe as "sexy cowboy." This choice does a lot for the game. It helps introduce the stylistic, frontier-style tone of the game from the very beginning. In addition, much of Rucks' narration is reactionary, with what he says based on what the Kid does rather than the other way around. Rucks is also able to use his narrative to seamlessly provide exposition on the world and what exactly is happening in an unobtrusive way. This choice allows for a structured plot while still giving the player agency. It puts control of the story in the player's hands and allows them to identify more strongly with the Kid--which is vital to Bastion.

The second thing that makes Bastion powerful is the world. The world of Bastion is visually dynamic, but the level design creates the feeling of a broken and empty world. This is partially because the world, as it is portrayed, is literally broken. As the Kid moves, the world begins to reform around his feet. It is filled with junk and rubble, and there are indications that it was a lush and rich world before the Calamity. In addition, there is an incredible sense of loss and emptiness. In the beginning, the Kid and Rucks are the only characters who show up at the Bastion. All other Caelondians are seen only as fossilized statues. When you encounter one of these statues the first time (and inevitably smash it), Rucks' response is a wry and darkly amusing "He always did want his ashes scattered in his bar." When the Kid actively goes searching for survivors, however, he encounters statue after statue. As you encounter them, Rucks lists off their names, followed by "didn't make it." The sense of loss is automatic, frustrating, and overwhelming. When the Kid encounters Zulf at the end of the level, he is in shock and near catatonic, meaning that even the survivor you do find is, in a sense, lifeless. It provides a very strong sense that you, as the Kid, are alone in the world, the weight of the future entirely on your shoulders. The feeling is a powerful one and allows players to understand much of the Kid's character solely through empathy.

This desolation and lifelessness provides great emphasis to the lively parts of the game. In contrast to the crumbling world of Caelondia, the Bastion is a solid place of hope, and it's easy to become very attached to it early on (in fact, revelations about the nature of the Bastion and the Calamity are accompanied by physical damage to it, making it appear more broken as our own perceptions of it begin to change). The Bastion is a broad example, but there are also two specific examples that come to mind. The first is when the player finds Zia. After feeling so alone in an empty world, the background music begins to shift. Rucks' narration fades out as the lyrics start. Suddenly, the BGM is not music, but a song, full of life. That's where the Kid finds Zia, alive and relatively well, playing harp by a pool of water. It feels like a huge success, rather than the Pyrrhic victory that finding Zulf was. The other specific example is when the monsters of the world begin creating their own Bastion. The player is fairly invested in saving the Bastion at this point, and it's heartbreaking to see the monsters attempting to create a safe haven when you know you'll need to destroy it for the greater good. To create life in a desolate world, you're forced to take it away.

In terms of the game's actual writing and plot, the story is full of themes of loss, regret, revenge, and hope. The Kid is a boy whose whole life has been filled with loneliness and hardship, even before he became humanity's last hope after the Calamity. Zulf's discovery of the Calamity's sinister history drives him towards anger and revenge. Rucks, as a man who had a hand in the Calamity, regrets his decision and is obsessed with the Bastion's potential to let him change his mistakes. And Zia, despite the hardship she suffers, is determined to move forward, doing what she can and holding out hope for a brighter future. These motives drive all the characters fairly strongly, and the Kid has to deal with all of them throughout the game. The Kid's loss and Zulf's vengeance drive much of the game's plot, as they have both experienced great loss, and that loss drives their vengeance later in the game. When Zulf's zealotry ultimately causes the other Ura to turn on him, the Kid is forced to make a choice: continue with his revenge, or abandon his ultimate weapon and save Zulf, leaving himself defenseless in the process. Interestingly, almost all players decide to save Zulf. They are rewarded with a scene where the Ura notice the Kid's decision and slowly stop attacking him. I don't know what happens if you don't decide to save him. I never made that decision.

The ultimate decision comes down not to vengeance or loss, but to Ruck's regret vs. Zia's hope. If you activate the Bastion, will the Calamity be prevented? There's a chance of it happening again, but is the attempt to prevent it worth that cost? Or should we just accept the past as it is, break free of the cycle of tragedy, and try to move on? The decision is left to the Kid, and consequently, the player.

All these themes, all these nuances of story--they're powerful because they're not explicit. They're lurking just below the surface, and while the game seems to take a definite stance on several of the questions it raises, it also invites the players to decide for themselves. Some characters aren't exactly right, but Bastion never gives you the impression that they're wrong. The game invites you to become the Kid and to make your own decision. I think that's the thing that left such a strong impression on me: that it invited me to question the choices I made, and then offer suggestions rather than answers.

To close, here's Zia's theme, since it's beautiful. Check out the rest of the soundtrack too, as it is equally marvelous.

Gaming Reflections: Gone Home

Hey, everyone! It’s been ages since I’ve actually bothered to write anything, huh?

Anyway, I’m here to talk about a game I played called “Gone Home.” I first heard about it in my narrative design class and it looked vaguely creepy but with a feel-good 90’s vibe, and I heard a few recommendations that were pretty much just “play this,” so I was looking forward to playing it.
When I actually played it, I was actually less than impressed.

Gone Home focuses on a girl named Katie who has gone home (I get it!) after visiting Europe. However, she arrives home sooner than her family expects, and she returns to an empty house. From there, the goal is to explore the empty house to figure out where her family has gone and why. Players discover who the family is through Katie’s interactions with the environment of the house.

That’s what the game is about in theory. In reality, it’s a bit different.

Let’s start with what I liked about the game. First of all, it did well at telling a story through the environment, and at building a realistic environment. It feels like a real house, and while several bits of matching furniture personally make me raise an eyebrow, the family is implied to be fairly well-off. If they want to get identical ornate cabinets, they probably could. The game manages to maintain a sense of non-linearity while simultaneously guiding the player through linear sections. In that sense, it did what it was supposed to and worked. The atmosphere was also decent, and while the music didn’t leave much of a lasting impression, it worked well enough and gave the game a particular flavor that helped counteract the whole “creepy empty house” thing.

In addition, there are a lot of things to love about the storytelling. I liked how I was left to put the pieces together from notes and the environment. Learning of the father’s struggles with writing through letters from his publishers and boxes of empty books was good. The unspoken implications in the communications between the mother and her coworker say volumes about the state of their marriage. The personalities of Katie, Sam, and Lonnie come through really well through the things they’ve written. There are a few things that made me smile just because the comedic interactions felt so real and true. They were friends/family joking around with each other, and you got a good sense of that.

So that’s what Gone Home did right. Now let’s talk about what it did wrong and why it left me unimpressed.

One issue I had with Gone Home was the whole “pick anything up” thing. It’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s nice to be able to look at a few personal items more closely and to be able to move things around. On the other hand, there is absolutely no point to being able to pick up pencils or packs of toilet paper. A lot of things that can be examined are completely arbitrary, and I don’t like being given the option to muck around with things that aren’t important. If you give me the option to take all the food out of the freezer and chuck it all over the kitchen, I’m going to want to do so. Also, give me the achievement for finishing the game while holding a banana.

But that’s nitpicking. I could also nitpick the fact that there was pretty much no gameplay, which is why the “pick stuff up” mechanic seemed so prominent, but nitpicking that isn’t really the point since Gone Home is really more of an interactive story than a game. The real issue with the game is in the story. I mentioned earlier how I liked piecing the little scraps of story together. The game initially seemed to be an exercise in the principle of “show, don’t tell” when applied to stories in games. While there is definite value to telling when utilized properly, I really respected that Gone Home was trying to tell a story with as little text as possible. And then it completely destroyed that principle it had set up.

There is one story that is pushed to the forefront of Gone Home, and it is Sam’s character arc. Certain notes will trigger narration from Sam, elaborating on the story. This makes it clear that Sam’s arc and Sam’s arc alone is the one that matters. The father’s writing aspirations and the mother’s marital struggles are treated as unimportant. Instead, the important story is Sam coming to terms with her sexuality and her relationship with Lonnie.

While Sam and Lonnie are certainly interesting characters, their story is not particularly good. It’s stock “rebellious teen” stuff, and the ending (in which Lonnie goes AWOL from the military and Sam abandons her potential college career so the two can run off together, stealing a lot of valuables from the family in the process) is played as a heartwarming romance. However, past the surface level, it is the story of two young adults potentially ruining their lives because they think with their hearts instead of their heads. This is presumably supposed to be sweet solely because the relationship is a same-sex one. Make it a heterosexual relationship, and the characters’ youthful stupidity become much more noticeable. Are we really supposed to be cheering for these shortsighted and self-centered characters, just because of their star-crossed relationship?

Gone Home seems to have confused “hot-button issue” for “good writing.” I’ll admit that, as someone who comes from a conservative background and holds a lot of moderate political views, my opinions may be a bit biased, but I felt that much of Gone Home was just a heavy-handed political statement (as an aside, if my stance on such things truly matters to how seriously you take my opinions on the game’s writing, you can find my in-depth opinions here). But anyway, that brief digression aside, Gone Home got pretty blatant about things, sometimes at the expense of actual writing. The initial “abandoned house” set-up is a clear bait-and-switch that can feel a bit manipulative to some, the arcs of characters other than Sam and Lonnie are—as I’ve already mentioned—brushed aside as “not important enough,” and even some elements of the story itself get heavy-handed. I can forgive some things that seem like stock LGBT issues just because I’m sure those are stock issues for a reason, but the bit of Sam’s writing where her character’s love interest is given a magical sex change in an obvious metaphor for her coming to terms with her sexuality? This sort of transparent self-insertion is the sort of writing I’m legitimately expected to believe is coming from someone who wants to go into creative writing?

So overall, I found Gone Home to be a decent exercise in environmental storytelling and character development, but little more. On those two counts, it was incredibly strong. The soundtrack was fitting enough but unmemorable, the lack of actual game mechanics made issues with existing mechanics more noticeable. The “show, don’t tell” storytelling was wonderfully done, but putting emphasis on a single story over the others did more harm than good, especially since the story it chose to focus on did not have a particularly strong narrative. It was ultimately a very stock romantic story with a “but they’re lesbians” tacked on, and I think it detracted from what was otherwise a great experiment in storytelling. Personally, I don’t get the praise. I think that the praise is, again, largely because of the tendency of people to mistake topical statements for quality. It’s artistic, but “artistic” does not mean “inherently good.” I think from an objective standpoint, Gone Home is above mediocre at best, with its strong aspects dragged down by its weaker ones. In addition, it is incredibly short (2 hours long at best, 2 minutes long at worst), and is in no way worth the $20 dollar price tag--meaning that, unless you're able to get it on sale, there's really no good reason to buy it.

I guess it just goes to say, anything can get called a masterpiece as long as it’s about gay cowboys eating pudding.

Gaming Reflections: Assassin’s Creed: the Ezio Trilogy

I’ve given my first impressions and reflections on Assassin’s Creed, as well as my first impressions on the sequel, appropriately named Assassin’s Creed II (you’d think that the “appropriately” would be implied if it weren’t for the fact that Brotherhood and Revelations means Assassin’s Creed III is the 5th game in the series). However, I haven’t written anything on the franchise since, even though I’ve already finished ACII’s two sequels, Brotherhood and Revelations.

I feel pretty justified in this decision since the “Ezio Trilogy” as it’s called is all pretty similar. They run on the same game engine, the mechanics and HUD are pretty much the same, they feature the same character, and they were apparently originally going to be one game.  This last point kind of shows.

ACII was a huge improvement over the original. See my above-linked first impressions post for why. It stayed pretty strong throughout the story. There were a few sidequests to complete, the new weapons were implemented pretty well, and the implementation of money worked pretty well. Sometimes you had enough money, sometimes cash was tight, but overall, it worked. By the time I finished the game, I had done pretty much all there was to be done. Then there was a twist, Abstergo attacked the Assassin group chilling in the present time, and they took off for a different location. Overall, a satisfying game.

The next two games, unfortunately, felt like a step down.  Brotherhood threw more mechanics into the mix, such as recruiting assassins into the titular brotherhood, as well as buying and upgrading shops (something that was only done in one place in ACII, and only to obtain money) and a few tweaks to the mechanics. However, instead of adding to the game, I only felt like they slowed it down. Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II are stealth games, the second of which has a few sidequests. Brotherhood ended up taking those sidequests and expanding it into a full-out sandbox game. In addition to the main plot, you’re fixing up shops, searching for pieces of “The Truth,” trying to get the fancy awesome armor, managing three allied factions and the assassins, uncovering suppressed memories, and hunting down and destroying Leonardo DaVinci’s weapons. This is a game that, quite frankly, has too much shit in it, which simply bogs down everything. I play the games to discover the Templar/Assassin conspiracy and to assassinate some poor schmucks.

The other problem with Brotherhood is the plot—or rather, lack thereof. The story focuses on three aspects: Cesare (the primary antagonist) attempting to obtain the Apple of Eden, the reforming of the assassin brotherhood and gathering of allied factions, and what’s best described as “the brotherhood suspects Machiavelli betrayed them but in the end it turns out it was just some random dude instead.” The metaplot pretty much only shows what happens after the attack on their old hideout, and then has absolutely no more bearing on anything until the way end, when they obtain the Apple of Eden and Juno forces Desmond to kill Lucy. It’s a pretty big plot revelation, but I’ve boiled the entire thing down to one sentence.  So that bit of metaplot is pretty important, and the formation of the brotherhood is kind of a prominent thing, but everything else about Brotherhood felt like nothing more than filler.

Revalations started off on a more promising note, with an intense and absolutely epic opening sequence, a change of scenery, and the ability to upgrade to approximately the state you were in at the end of Brotherhood fairly quickly (Brotherhood blatantly took away your stuff from II and made you jump through hoops to get it back). They also cut back on sidequests, and the main one (i.e., the Caterina one) tied pretty heavily into the plot. This cutting helped streamline the game a bit more. They did, however, add bombs, which I ultimately thought were too difficult to use practically and given too much prominence. Still, that’s one flaw added and multiple flaws dropped.

The plot was also a bit more compelling: you had to find keys to unlock Altair’s library, getting to observe fragments of his life in the process. It brought closure to both Ezio and Altair’s stories, and while the main plot was about as compelling as the one in Brotherhood, so while it wasn’t that great, it wasn’t too bad.  The metaplot was great though, giving some more insight into the mysterious Subject 16, as well as Desmond’s past (as a South Dakota native, I was thrilled to learn he grew up in the Black Hills). It didn’t really advance the actual metaplot, but it provided some much-needed backstory. Overall, it was a pretty good game that was better than Brotherhood, though I still think it was inferior to ACII.

In ACII, we got to see Ezio grow from a brash and cocky boy to a confident man who has enough skills to become a leader. That’s why the assassins chose his memories to train Desmond.  It was a revenge story that was also a coming-of-age story, and it was great.  On the other hand, Brotherhood and Revelations was Ezio being a mentor and doing mentory things for two full games. It’s 30-some hours of, as Zero Punctuation’s Yahtzee put it, “faffing about.” A lot of it was redundant, and the pacing was slow. There were less compelling plots, and they filled their stealth game with too many sidequests. In my opinion, a sidequest should not sidetrack. It should divert, not distract, which Brotherhood and Revelations are unfortunately guilty of. Perhaps, if each bit of the main plot had been absolutely stunning, there would have been more incentive to sit back and mess about in order to take a breather, but the plot was so lackluster that by the time I got back to it, I had already mostly forgotten what had come before.

I don’t think that the three games should have been one, because that would have resulted in a lot of erratic pacing and jumping around. But I definitely think that the three games should have been condensed into two.  Take some things out of ACII and rearrange it so that it focuses on the revenge/coming-of-age story a bit more, only hinting at the conspiracy without immersing Ezio in it. Have the full revenge be the climax, and have the fallout of that drop the conspiracy on Ezio completely. Start the second game there. Cut a lot from Brotherhood and Revelations so they’re less redundant, and combine them both with parts of ACII.

Assassin’s Creed II is, at the point I’m at, the game in the series that I think is probably best. It expanded on the gameplay and ideas that were laid out by the first game, and wasn’t bogged down by all the unnecessary gameplay experimentation.  For every step Brotherhood and Revelations took forward, they took another back. That’s what really irritates me: that a series that should be intriguing me is becoming a chore.

I can only hope that, now that we’ve put Ezio and Altair behind us, Assassin’s Creed III and IV will be better.

Gaming Ramblings: The Legend of Zelda 3DS

So, Nintendo revealed a thing recently….

Now, it’s no great secret that I am a Zelda fanboy.  It is my favorite game series.  But when I saw this trailer, I literally spent most of it holding my hands up to my mouth and/or going “EEEEEEEE” in high-pitched squeals.

I’m just going to take a few moments to fanboy over why this is so amazing.

First: it takes place in the same world as A Link to the Past but with a completely separate story and design.  Obviously, most of the games take place in Hyrule, so they’re probably referring to the same incarnation of Hyrule as the one displayed in A Link to the Past.  This means one of two things: either it is directly linked to A Link to the Past somehow (and is consequently the first game specifically designed to be part of that particular Zelda timeline—there are currently canonically three of them), or it takes place in a different alternate timeline.  Either way, there’s plenty of opportunity to flesh out that particular timeline’s story and world.

Second: It is a top-down Zelda.  My first four Zelda games were Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, Minish Cap, and A Link to the Past, which were also all top-down games.  These are the games that got me into the series.  These are the games that contain the classic block puzzles.  Don’t get me wrong, the 3D games (by which I mean the ones that use XYZ directional axes as opposed to just XY ones—it’s an odd dichotomy where the first original 3D Zelda is a 2D one) are good and have clever puzzles, but there’s just something to the nature of the 2D puzzles that I love.  Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks for the DS pretended to be this, but ultimately weren’t.  It was like they were a 2D representation of the 3D games.  They just didn’t have the same flavor, and I yearned to play one again.  Well, I’m getting my wish.  I was worried that the 2D Zelda formula was dead, and Ocarina of Time 3D only reinforced that worry.  This video?  Completely reassured me.  2D Zelda is not dead.  They’re just making it better.

Third: It releases THIS YEAR!  I can be playing this game this holiday season!  Wow!  I am getting so hyped right now.  Seriously.

Fourth: The game mechanics they showed look cool.  The transformation into what looks like some sort of hieroglyph (or should I say Hyruleglyph?) in particular looks like it has a ton of potential as a game mechanic, allowing for real brainteasers of puzzles. It’s a new sort of Zelda puzzle: one that the series has never used before, but one that fits in perfectly.

And now for the one complaint I do have: the graphics look sub-par.  I’m normally not a graphics guy, but already they look kind of disappointing.  Link and the enemies look a little too much like plastic inflatables, and it already looks dated.  Too soon to make a judgment, and I really don’t care as long as the gameplay is good, but it’s detracting from my enthusiasm a little.

But just a little.

Because, come on.  This is the Zelda I’ve been yearning for since 2005, when they released The Minish Cap.  It’s a new top-down Zelda that remains true to the roots of the series and utilizes the advances in technology made since then.  There is no reason for me not to be excited.

Gaming First Impressions: Assassin’s Creed II

I promised that I’d talk about Assassin’s Creed II in relationship to Assassin’s Creed the First when I got into it some.  And there’s plenty to talk about.

A brief note to start: the graphics are improved.  That’s notable right off the bat.  The whole thing looks more smooth and polished and it’s also less gritty.  That’s all I need to say about them.

But the graphics aren’t what I’m here to talk about, because graphics don’t automatically make a game good or bad.  What issues did Assassin’s Creed have that the sequel fixed?

First of all, we’ve got the protagonist, Ezio Auditore.  Whereas Altair Ibn-La’Ahad, the first game’s protagonist, was a surly, overly serious unlikable character who thought himself above the organization he was part of, Ezio is improved in nearly every way.  He is a charming rogue and while he can be brash and hotheaded, it’s because of his youth and because of his motivation.  You see, while Altair’s motivation basically boiled down to “do what my boss says to regain my rank so that I can do what my boss says from a better position,” Ezio’s tale is one of revenge.  He becomes an assassin to get back at the people who had his father and brothers killed.  Now, while I as a person am really not big on revenge, I as a writer find it to be a far more compelling motivator than promotion.  Well, okay, Altair’s motivation was regaining his lost honor, but it was handled in such a way that it’s basically getting promoted back to his old position.

There’s a new HUD, but I could really take it or leave it.  Really, I don’t have much of an opinion on which is better.  It’s just a little different, and it works.  I’m not going to complain about it, but it’s not like the old HUD needed a lot of changing anyway.  Of course, part of this change is because of a change in the metaplot.

Desmond (the protagonist of the series as a whole) has been broken out of the Abstergo building he was being held hostage in, and made a few new assassin friends.  They decide that they need to train him, and rather than have him play (er, simulate) a more experienced character (er, ancestor), they’d set him up with Ezio, who started off inexperienced like Desmond is. Basically, they’re using it to Matrix the information into his head and give him a lifetime of experience in just a few days.  Interesting metaplot, but I’ve only seen two bits of it: the beginning where he first meets the team, and the bit where he finishes his first session.  I’m waiting for the inevitable twists before I make any final judgments, but so far I’m finding the metaplot less interesting than in the first game—largely because the plot sessions are so much longer.  Rather than being in and out of the animus fairly regularly, I’ve only been out of it twice.  That’s something I don’t like—that it’s not as easily broken up into different sections.

So.  Overall I like the characters and plot more, even if I haven’t seen enough of the metaplot to like it as much.  But what about the gameplay itself?  Well, it is vastly improved.  Assassin’s Creed liked to pretend it was a sandbox game, but Assassin’s Creed II actually is one.  There are the missions that advance the story, of course, but I spend a lot of time hunting down glyphs that reveal some metaplot information, walking through the crowds to casually pick every pocket that I can, hunting down codex pages to use them to create…some vague map of some sort, shopping for upgrades, searching for assassin tombs in challenging platform puzzle segments…overall, the whole thing manages to be fun where its predecessor failed.

The missions also lead into each other much better because there’s more variety.  It’s not “do these tasks and then you are ready to watch a cutscene, assassinate a dude, and then run back to the bureau.”  Instead, you hunt down a few targets across town that you get to in different ways until you get to the climax of that particular arc.  The missions are less formulaic and consequently flow into each other much better.

The battle controls are, for the most part, better.  It’s actually viable to use the hidden blade in combat now since you can actually defend and attack without countering, and combat as a whole just feels vastly improved.  The only difference would be the weapon selection, which requires you to hold a button and select instead of just switching weapons.  While you can select three weapons (hidden blades, sword, unarmed) quickly with the number keys like you could in the original, you’re given a lot of options that you can’t select nearly as quickly.  While you’re unlikely to use the poison much (it’s exactly like the hidden blade, only enemies die more slowly), being unable to quickly select your throwing knives is a bit frustrating.

Basically, Assassin’s Creed was a decent game that could have been really good but had a lot of flaws holding it back.  Assassin’s Creed II took a lot of those flaws out, making it a game that is actually genuinely good.  It’s fun!  I like it when games are fun!  So thank you, Assassin’s Creed II.  Thank you for listening to my complaints about the first game (made five and a half years after the game’s release) and implemented them for me by the time I played the second game (three and a half years after the game’s release).

It’s just also unfortunate that the game still seems pretty long.

Gaming Reflections: Assassin’s Creed

I wrote fairly recently about my first impressions on Assassin’s Creed.  You can find that post here.  Long story short?  It was a good game in theory that was frustrating me to hell and back with its poor game design.

I said a lot about what I wanted to say there.  About the poor level design, the monotony of the missions, et cetera.  I don’t have to say much more about that, and while I do plan on comparing and contrasting that to Assassin’s Creed II (which I’ve started on), but I’d like to get further into it before doing so.

Now, though, it’s time for me to reflect on Assassin’s Creed now that I’ve finished it.  It won’t be too long of a post, as all I have to say boils down into one question: did my opinions of the game improve?

The answer: kind of.

Okay, yes.  Assassin’s Creed had some boring missions and the parkour stopped being fun and became a chore after having to do a certain amount of it.  Combat was pretty bad.  And I found out that all those flags the game asked me to collect and the generic Templars it asked me to kill?  Yeah, doing that doesn’t do anything other than giving me an achievement.  Or, since the copy of Assassin’s Creed I played was a DRM-free PC edition, nothing other than the satisfaction of 100% completion.  Those are all issues that didn’t change because they were part of the game.

However, I found that when you stop trying to go for 100% completion and just do the minimum of three tasks before embarking on the actual assassination mission, it’s more fun.  What’s more, the boss fights become a bit more varied later on.  My personal favorite was sneaking across the boats on the water to assassinate Sibrand.

Of course, while the missions get varied near the end, that doesn’t mean they get better.  The final battle is just a series of straight-out fights, and I’ve already mentioned that the combat mechanics aren’t exactly great.  That, and there’s no way to replace the throwing knives you use near the end, which I began to grow fond of.

The plot…improved.  It came together some at the end, and the story began to become enjoyable.  However, there wasn’t a lot that I found special.  It was a twist we’ve seen before, alongside some intriguing plot threads that were left ambiguous.  Overall, it felt like the game’s plot was nothing more than a setup for more games.  How they thought people would want to buy more games like this is beyond me, personally.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  The game is still really cool, despite its flaws.

So overall, my verdict remains mostly the same, with one small update: I no longer think that Assassin’s Creed is a good game that’s secretly really terrible.  Instead, I think it’s a decent game on the condition that you do not in any way attempt 100% completion.  Either take away the sandbox to streamline the game, or give me a shovel and a bucket or some other fun toys so I can actually have fun when I play in the sandbox.

I’ve heard good things about the sequel, and from the short amount I’ve played, I have high hopes for it.  I’ll see you when I have more to report on that.

Gaming First Impressions: Assassin’s Creed

What?  You mean I actually do “First Impressions” posts that aren’t about anime?  Perish the thought!

When I was building my computer, the graphics card I bought came with a free digital download of Assassin’s Creed III.  Their way of saying “we’re so glad that you bought our product that we’re going to give you a free game with it!”  I had heard some really good things about the series in the past, and I figured I’d play the two (and two halves, i.e. Brotherhood and Revelations) games that came before it before I got around to the third one.

Assassin’s Creed is sort of two stories: the story of Desmond, a bartender (and former assassin?) who’s been kidnapped and has two people going through his “genetic memories” to find something.  The memories they are going through are the memories of Altair, an Assassin during the time of the Crusades.

So I started with the original, and was instantly drawn in by the fun gameplay and assassinating people and what exactly are these sinister people who have imprisoned Desmond and PARKOUR, YEAH!

And then the game stopped being fun and started to suck.

Basically, the game starts out really strong.  It gives you a great mystery, develops a wonderful world, gives you some fun gameplay that’s easy to learn, and sets you off on a quest for redemption.  And for a level, it’s fun.  It’s fun to watch as Altair goes off on his quest for redemption, it’s fun to try to figure out what’s going on with Desmond, and it’s fun to jump around on buildings collecting flags and hunting down targets.

The only problem is that things don’t get more varied than that.  Here’s how the story so far goes:
-Desmond is being held by two people who are probing his memories looking for some Mysterious Thing™
-Altair ends up in trouble with the Brotherhood of Assassins because he is a Cop Assassin Who Does Not Play By The Rules™
-We really start learning controls in a pretty fluid way that’s still fun.
-Altair goes off to some city to find some dude the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after he’s assassinated.  Altair relearns a skill afterwards.
-Altair goes off to two more cities to find two other dudes the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after they’re assassinated.  Altair relearns skills after each.
-Desmond learns a bit more about the people who are probing his mind.  There is DRAMA and MYSTERY.
-Altair goes off to different parts of all three cities to  find three more dudes the Brotherhood wants dead.  There are hints to some larger scheme after they’re assassinated.  Altair relearns skills after each.

I don’t know what happens after that since I haven’t beaten the third mission in that last chunk, but you can see why I’m having issues with the game at the moment.  It’s extraordinarily repetitive, and just extends the length of each “memory block”/level by increasing the amount of repetitive missions in it.  Sure, the first mission is fun.  It’s great to jump around the rooftops of Damascus.  It’s less fun when you’re doing the exact same thing in Acre and Jerusalem, though being given archers as hidden blade fodder provides a bit of new entertainment.  But by the time you have to do it again in all three locations, it’s become a chore.  What’s worse, absolutely everything looks the same.  The landscapes and cityscapes aren’t diverse enough to provide enough good landmarks, and you’re better off navigating by the icons on your map.  The sandbox elements of the game (i.e., gathering all the information instead of just most of it, saving citizens, climbing viewpoints, collecting flags, and taking out Templars) are repetitive and take a terribly long time.  I don’t even know what collecting the flags or defeating the Templars DOES, since there are so many of them and there’s no way to find them other than trial and error or an online guide.

What’s more, the story moves painfully slow.  After the first bit, it gets as repetitive as the gameplay itself.  You’re given pieces of the plot through ambiguous hints, but it’s entirely separate from the rest of the gameplay and there’s not enough to keep me interested.  Your reward for an intensely long session of gameplay is a sparse section of story that probably only makes sense once you’ve played through the game twice, but come on.  With a game this long and repetitive, who has time for that (as well as it would fit, I refuse to say “ain’t nobody got time for that” because using memes instead of your own words is dumb and uncreative and stupid and dumb)?

Also, the game controls?  Mostly good, but the combat controls are terrible.  Your hidden blade is useless in direct combat, you have limited throwing knives, and the swordfights are dependent on unforgiving timing.  You’re given enough health that, after you learn how to counter, you can just hold down the defend button and hack and slash your way through the enemies with counterattacks.  But that makes the battles take much longer.  What’s more, swordfights draw attention and once you’ve engaged in one, it’s easier to take out all the enemies in a long, drawn-out fight instead of running, finding cover, inevitably being spotted right  before you dive in, and repeating until you manage to get away safely.  And rescuing citizens, one of the main sidequests, almost always requires a swordfight that can draw dozens of guards in later missions.

Let me take a moment to compare Assassin’s Creed to The Legend of Zelda (i.e. my favorite game series) because they’re both action adventure games.  Let’s look at what they do differently.

-The Legend of Zelda sends you through varied and diverse locations. This usually prevents players from getting lost.  Assassin’s Creed has buildings that all look the same, forcing you to navigate by the (limited) minimap.

-The locations in The Legend of Zelda take different skills to navigate that usually require a short period of thinking before moving.  Assassin’s Creed is more trial-and-error. instead of being able to plot clear, strategic routes to safety, you’re forced to run around a disorienting maze of streets and rooftops until you stumble across one of the three types of places you can hide.

-The Legend of Zelda usually has quick battles that require just a little strategy, like finding the right angle to attack at in Skyward Sword or figuring out how to best get around a dodongo to attack its tail.  The battles in Assassin’s Creed are less dependent on strategy and more dependent on hoping you press the right button at the right time.  The only exception are the boss battles, and even then the strategy consists largely of “chase the target down or go here and wait for the right time to strike.”

-The Legend of Zelda offers a variety of gameplay between dungeons dependent on manipulating the environment.  In Assassin’s Creed, you do the same thing over and over and over again.

-The Legend of Zelda will often (though not always—I’m looking at you, Spirit Tracks) give you a bit more of the story as you’re moving through each new environment.  Assassin’s Creed gives you the gameplay, then the story, then the gameplay, then the story, etc.

You get the point.  And I get that the Zelda series is based around puzzles while the Assassin’s Creed series is based around stealth, so they’re obviously going to be different in some respects (especially regarding combat and how exactly the gameplay works). 

But I could really choose other Action Adventure games.  Let’s take Dark Souls, for example, which I’ve been playing for a class.  Sure, you’ll do a lot of repetitive things in Dark Souls, but it’s usually the same thing because you died.  That’s because, in Dark Souls, combat takes a lot of strategy.  It’s long and often tedious like it is in Assassin’s Creed, but the difference is the health bar.  Dark Souls won’t let you just charge in and attack because that’s a good way to get killed.  You have to wait for an opening to attack and avoid what attacks you can.  It’s not about pressing the right button at the right time, it’s about watching for right time and waiting until then to press the right button.  Dark Souls has diverse architecture and while it’s possible to get lost, the structure of the buildings are diverse enough that you can usually find your way around with ease once you’ve learned the landmarks.  And most all of Dark Soul’s story is told subtly and is integrated into the gameplay.

So what do I think about Assassin’s Creed?  Well, I actually think that it’s a good game, at least in theory.  It’s got great design and world elements a wonderful concept, and it’s fun.  The only problem is, it’s a good game that happens to suck pretty heavily.  The great gameplay and world are marred by repetitive architecture and some wonky combat controls, and you can only play ninja for so long before you start wanting more from the game—though I’m speaking in terms of quality, since I want less quantity.  It’s a concept that deserved to be great, and it wasn’t.  So I feel disappointed.  Disappointed and betrayed.  And really, that’s about the worst feeling possible.  If something’s inherently terrible, I don’t feel as bad.  But when something with great potential doesn’t capitalize on it, it feels like it’s broken a promise.  A promise to be good.

I hear the sequels are better.  I’m really hoping they are.  Because at the moment, Assassin’s Creed isn’t a game; it’s a chore.

Well, I’ve still got about half of the game to go.  It’ll hopefully pick up after this.  And if it doesn’t, well…the rest of those soldier-assailed citizens can just go ahead and suck it.  They probably were thieves anyway.

Gaming Reflections: Portal 2

Everybody grab your Companion Cube and get ready to think with portals, because I’ve finally been able to play the game that lets you have your cake and eat it too.

All right, and now that it’s not 2007 anymore, I’m going to stop referencing Portal memes.  Really, I don’t even know what I mean when I say the game lets you have your cake and eat it too.  I’m just contractually obligated to make a cake reference when talking about Portal.  See?  It says so right here in my file.  “Test subject [insert subjects name here] must make at least one reference to that overused meme that nobody even thinks is funny anymore.”

So, Portal 2.  Basically, Portal was a short little wonderful game that could only be defined as a “first person puzzle game.”  You shoot little portals out of a portal gun.  You solve puzzles with these portals by moving through them to otherwise inaccessible locations and drop boxes onto buttons.  Short, simple, and intellectually stimulating (my goodness do you get a rush from correctly solving a particularly tricky puzzle).  That alone would have made it a “good” game.  However, the game also decided to have a wonderful and unique sense of humor, launching it into “great” and making it pretty much an instant classic.

Of course, the original Portal was just a small little side-game launched in a package with several other games.  Portal 2 was designed as its own standalone game.  It expanded upon some implied backstory in the original game, keeping the tone of the first game wonderfully and continuing some wonderful gameplay and story integration.

As is frequent, spoilers follow.

You play as Chell, a test subject with an ambiguous past, though it seems to be somehow connected to the Aperture Science Laboratories that the game seems to take place in.  She has been put into stasis for an unknown amount of time that is implied to be extremely lengthy, but is broken out by Wheatley, a spherical AI.  The two of you accidentally resurrect GLaDOS, the robotic, science-obsessed antagonist of the first game.  Then puzzles with limited plot resume, until you find GLaDOS and replace her with Wheatley.  Wheatley, who is revealed to be a memory core specifically designed to make GLaDOS dumber, goes mad with power, then dumps you and GLaDOS (whose AI has been transferred into a potato battery—yes, you read that right) off somewhere to get you out of the way.

It’s at this point that the game really starts to diverge from it’s predecessor.  It moves to an older, abandoned version of Aperture Laboratories, and PA announcements reveal some more about the founder, Cave Johnson.  Chell and GLaDOS return to the newer Aperture Laboratories, do more tests, and then try to defeat Wheatley and put GLaDOS back in charge because, while GLaDOS is psychotic, she’s at least psychotic and capable and is consequently the lesser of two evils.

The story is strong, the way it’s told is beautifully subtle, and like its predecessor, the real charm of the game is the witty dialogue (this time, coming from three colorful characters instead of just one!) that is often silly but always in an intelligent way.  The gameplay is solid and exciting, and if you were to ask me for my biggest complaint about the game, it’d be that the puzzle sections in the first third drag on too long (and potentially, the the puzzle sections in the final third as well, though not as much).

The part that stood out to me most, though, was the ending (and major spoilers obviously follow).  GLaDOS and Chell have always had an odd relationship that is somewhere between enmity and love, and in this game, the relationship is defined a bit more.  After some character development, it becomes clear that GLaDOS, at very least, respects Chell as an archnemesis.  The ending, though, cements that GLaDOS does care about her, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.  After saving Chell’s life when a portal almost sucks her into space (again, yes, you read that right).  But let me go into detail on the ending: after Chell is almost sucked into space, GLaDOS saves her, then expresses relief when Chell awakens.  She then reveals that she has created robots to do the testing and doesn’t need her anymore, before stating that “the easiest solution is often the best, and killing you?  Well, killing you is hard.”  She then proceeds to bid Chell farewell, sending her…to another floor of Aperture Laboratories, where there are turrets waiting directly outside.  All seems lost, until the turrets start singing a farewell to Chell, and as the elevator rises, it’s revealed that there is an entire choir of singing turrets (yes, you have again read that correctly).  That GLaDOS would bid you such an elaborate farewell is absolutely stunning—but still very believable with the character development she’s gone through.  It gives you a big “awww, she does care about Chell!” moment before the elevator reaches its destination and Chell is ejected from a small toolshed in the middle of nowhere.  However, there’s one more surprise left for both Chell and the players: a charred Companion Cube the same one that GLaDOS guilted Chell so much over for “killing” in the first game, is ejected behind her a moment later.

The ending absolutely stunned me.  Portal is not a particularly dark series.  Sure, there are a few dark elements that are mostly hinted at, but it’s largely silly and upbeat.  However, it’s still not the sort of series that you’d expect a happy ending from.  However, that’s exactly what you get for nearly everyone.  GLaDOS gets to continue testing, Chell gets a beautiful farewell, her freedom, and a reunion with the Companion Cube, and the Space Core (who is rapidly approaching cake levels of annoying meme) gets to go to space.  The only person who doesn’t get some happiness is Wheatley, and his story at least gets some closure and development.  It’s a fully satisfying ending with nothing bittersweet about it, and I’m amazed that Valve managed to pull that off.

Gaming Reflections: Spec Ops: The Line

Why does everything have colons in the titles these days?  I hate having multiple colons in these titles.

Anyway, I’m not much of a gamer.  I’d call myself an intermediate: definitely more than a casual, but I’m not well-versed in the ways of video games.  However, I do enjoy a good game on occasion, and due to a combination of building my own desktop computer (and consequently having a computer that would actually run games), a Steam Christmas sale, and actually having funds, I went to having a pretty big backlog of PC games I’d heard a lot about (as well as some Xbox and PS3 games, which generally don’t come to the Wii (i.e., the only console I own)).  In addition to that, though, I was sent a game called Spec Ops: The Line. 

Now, I am very much not a First Person Shooter guy.  Halo is about the only FPS I have any sort of experience with, and I think that military shooters are dumb.  Now, The Line is actually a Third Person Shooter, but it’s still a military shooter.  So I was a bit “ehhhhh” when I received it.  However, I had seen commercials for it while watching Hulu and was actually kind of intrigued.  It looked interesting.  And hey, free game.  That, along with a comment from a friend about how it changed his perception of military shooters (and a confirmation that it was a short game) prompted me to give it a try fairly early.

I don’t have much to go on in terms of military shooters, as I’ve never played any before.  I don’t know how they control, and I don’t know much about them beyond the fact that they tend to have a “MURICA, FUCK YEAH” attitude.  So the controls seemed fluid enough to me (though on my first playthrough (I’ve been playing through it again for the other achievements and because the plot is a bit complex and confusing the first time around) I forgot the key to switch weapons into their secondary mode).  Graphics seemed pretty solid, I guess?  Solid enough to be uncomfortable when they needed to be.  As a writer, I usually judge games on their story first, followed by things like implementation of graphics and gameplay.  And with The Line, the “other stuff” was solid enough for me, and the story was wonderful.

The Line is very much a deconstruction of military shooters.  It doesn’t glorify war; it reveals how brutal it is and how much stress and pain it can cause everyone involved.  The titular line is shown in the game to be the metaphorical line between doing what’s right and flat-out brutality.  And (spoilers follow but I can’t really talk about the game without them) in the game, the line is crossed when you blast an enemy camp with white phosphorous, a devastating chemical that leaves fiery destruction in its wake.  You’ve seen the effects of it earlier on in the game, but the game still forces you to use it to move on (which some take exception to—but from a narrative stance, I fully support.  How else is it going to get the point across and drive the plot?).  What’s more, after that, it forces you to walk through the camp to see how much destruction you’ve wrought—and then show that the people you assumed were your enemy were trying to protect civilians, and you’ve burned dozens of innocent men, women, and children alive.  What’s more, you later destroy the water that’s keeping everyone alive.  As the game goes on, you realize more and more that no, you are not the hero.

A large part of the game revolves around making difficult choices, all of which toe the metaphorical line.  It’s often hard to tell what’s the “right” choice, especially since there are multiple factions and the line blurs more and more as you go along.  There are achievements for all the possibilities, and as the protagonists start detaching themselves from reality, so do the players start detaching themselves from the game, making it even harder to make the choice.  Do you save a soldier who has vital information, or save the lives of innocent citizens?  Put a dying man out of his misery or let him die a slow, painful death for destroying the water?  Take revenge on a friend or fire on the crowd of civilians that lynched him?  Die to atone for the damage you’ve caused?  Return home a shell of your former self?  Become the villain you’ll eventually perceive yourself to be?  All fairly tough choices to make, and when you’re sliding down a slippery slope, it’s sometimes more tempting just to jump (in fact, now that I think about it, the protagonist literally slides down and falls off of a slippery slope around the time they start shooting American soldiers…symbolism?).

Basically, if you like military shooters, play this because it will change your perception of the genre and really make you think.  If you don’t like military shooters, play this because it’s everything that other military shooters aren’t.  It’s not a fun game, but it’s a game that says something, and it’s a message that I think a lot of people need to hear.

Gaming Reflections: The World Ends With You

I am not a Square Enix fan.  I'll admit that.  It's not that I dislike Square Enix; not at all.  It's just that I've played almost none of their games.  I grew up without owning a gaming console, and by the time I knew about Final Fantasy, I didn't have access to the games, as any Game Boy Advance ports were out of stores.  I've never had the chance to play Kingdom Hearts.  So how can I hate Square Enix?  But more importantly, how could I like Square Enix?

I really don't know what it was that encouraged me to seek out The World Ends With You, then.  Maybe it was Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's favorable review of it, when most of Zero Punctuation is dedicated to accentuating the negative.  Maybe it was the "Player Pin" decal I kept seeing everywhere.

You might not recognize this, but it's pretty recognizable to certain circles of gamers.

But whatever the reason, I decided that I'd give this game a shot since I owned a Nintendo DS and everything.  And I was not disappointed.

I'll admit that I'm not a gamer.  I really don't play a lot of games.  But I'm a critic.  The hardest part of making a "Top 5 Favorite Games" list for me isn't deciding which games are better than the others.  It's finding games I loved enough to put in a Top 5 list.  But TWEWY?  It easily takes my #2 spot (second only to Majora's Mask, which I love enough to write a pseudo-dissertation on.  Nothing's usurping that).  Why?  I'm glad you asked.  What?  You didn't ask?  Well I'm going to tell you anyway.

First of all the game flawlessly integrates story with gameplay.  Of the games I've played, only Portal has done as well.  This is because the entire story is based around the protagonist competing in an otherworldly game.  The game masters force Neku to complete certain tasks to get to certain places, require him to battle monsters, etc.  This story seems to have been formatted to work best as a video game, since the story itself is also based around a game.  There are monsters you have to face called Noise, and instead of fighting them as random encounters, you scan for them and choose to battle them.  You can grind for pins/money and experience when you want to, and you can just ignore the Noise when you want to.  There are, naturally, some story-forced battles, and later on there are some Noise that actively pursue you (though these can still mostly be avoided), but for the most part, you get to choose when and how you battle the Noise.  In fact, if you're well-enough prepared, you can run through the game and only engage in as many battles as are absolutely necessary.

This leads me into the second point: the replay value.  If you don't need to grind, why should you?  Because Noise drop pins, which are, in this game, both your weapons and your money.  And there are a lot of pins.  304 different types, to be exact.  Most of these pins level up after use, and will either max out or evolve at a certain level.  Whether or not a pin evolves is based on what type of experience it gains: Battle PP (gained during battles), Shutdown PP (gained by turning off the game), or Mingle PP (gained by "mingling," where you gain points for either encountering other people using wi-fi or just random encounters).  Even ignoring the desire to strive for 100% completion that games naturally evoke in people, training and evolving pins is fun because you get to see their different effects.  The gameplay changes drastically based on what type of pins you choose to equip.

On top of that, there's plenty of replay value in the story.  I'm going to keep it as spoiler-free as possible, but there are a lot of different agendas colliding with each other, some of which you might not even catch on the first playthrough.  About five characters have notable goals that are all opposing each other and our protagonist, Neku.  After you beat the game, replaying the story will do two things: first, completing the missions for each level will unlock secret reports that provide additional information about the world and some of the characters.  Second, the storyline is filled with brilliant foreshadowing that you almost certainly wouldn't have picked up on the first time around.  The second playthrough will provide new insight on one character, but after you've read all the secret reports, the third playthrough will provide you with insight on yet another.

The third point reason I love TWEWY so much is its brilliant use of a learning curve.  The game not only allows you to select your difficulty (Normal as a default, and then Easy, Hard, and Ultimate after you unlock them in that order), but to level down.  Why would you want to level down?  Well, while adjusting the level nets you different pin drops (and consequently requires you to play on Easy at times to get certain pins), lowering your level increases the chances of a pin drop.  In fact, to get all the pins from the Gatito brand, you'll need to face some of the most difficult bosses on Ultimate difficulty at very low levels.  This provides a wonderful challenge even after you've mastered regular combat.

And while I've touched on the story already, I'd like to bring the writing up as the my fourth point.  Not only is the story wonderfully complex with memorable characters and great dialogue, there are also some wonderful themes and motifs.  The central theme of the game is, I'd say, opening up to the world around you.  But it's the motifs I'd really like to talk about.  Shibuya (the Japanese city where the game takes place) is, in this world, a very trend-conscious place.  You gain boosts or deductions in power depending on whether your pins and threads (i.e., clothes) are trendy or not in any particular area.  Hate unequipping everything all the time?  Don't worry; it's not too big of a deal, and enough battles in an area will actually make the trends turn in your favor. 

But I digress. 

Trends are based around thirteen brands: Mus Rattus, Jupiter of the Monkey, Wild Boar, Hip Snake, Tigre Punks, Pegaso, Natural Puppy, Dragon Couture, Sheep Heavenly, Pavo Real, D+B, Lapin Angelique, and Gatito.  Have you picked up on what these brands have in common?  If you're sharp, you'll notice that most of them (actually all of them) have animal motifs.  If you're very sharp (and have played the game to pick up on the more obscure ones (like D+B) through context), you'll notice that these animals are all the animals in the Chinese Zodiac, plus the cat.  This isn't really tied into the game too particularly much, but it's pretty cool.  Likewise, the seven "metal" pins (Scarlite, Rare Metal, Tektite, Adamantite, Orichalcum, Shadow Matter, and Dark Matter) all have a color and a number of gems on them.  Scarlite is red with one gem.  Rare Metal is orange with two.  From there, it continues with ascending numbers of gems as their colors move through the colors of the rainbow.  Again, not that important to the game, but a neat detail.

The more noticeable theme is the motif of music.  Neku is always wearing headphones, which he uses to shut himself out from the world.  But on closer inspection, most of the world of TWEWY uses musical motifs.  The person who created the Underground is the Composer, the one who runs the game is the Conductor, and there's a person whose title is the Producer as well (though going into that further spoils a few things).  Beings can move between different planes by lowering the "frequency" of their soul's "vibe."  And unlike the other motifs/patterns, this fits in much better with the story.

And speaking of the music, it's great.  It's maybe not my style, but it's still very enjoyable, especially the song that plays over the closing credits (don't worry, no spoilers--as long as you stay away from the comments).  Do yourself a favor when you play and wear a pair of decent headphones, which vastly enhance the experience.  The DS's speakers do not do the music justice.

Finally, there's the controls.  Lots of people think that the Nintendo DS is gimmicky.  I won't lie, it kind of is.  Every game seems to shoehorn in the microphone or touch controls when they're not necessarily needed.  Well, TWEWY makes extensive use of both the touch controls and the microphone.  But it does it in a way that's natural instead of gimmicky.  You can be using up to six pins in battle, and they all need different commands.  From blowing into the microphone to slashing an enemy to tapping an enemy to drawing a circle and more, there are plenty of varied and distinct commands that work well because you need that many distinct commands so that the controls are distinct and the DS can pick up on them.  Why not just use the buttons instead?  Well, because the D-pad or the ABXY buttons (depending on whether you're right or left-handed) control your partner, while the stylus controls Neku.  The combat is challenging, but insanely fun, and the touch controls work well instead of seeming obtrusive.

I've said earlier that Madoka Magica is about the closest thing to a "perfect show" that I've ever seen.  Well, The World Ends With You is about the closest thing to a "perfect game."  Now, this obviously doesn't mean that it's the best game ever (as evidenced by my ranking it second to Majora's Mask), but it's an amazing game that's worth playing.  If you own a DS, you need to play this game.  Buy it, even.  It's worth the price.

What's that?  You don't have a DS because you don't do a lot of handheld gaming?  That's fair.  I don't expect you to go out and drop about $100 for a used DS and TWEWY cartridge, just so you can play one game.  However!  Fairly recently, the game was ported to iOS as "The World Ends With You: Solo Remix."  You can now play TWEWY on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.  While there are obviously some differences between it and the DS version (being short a screen will do that to you), and while I can't vouch for it myself, I've heard that they did a very good job with the port.  If you're willing to shell out $18, an admittedly steep price that I still think is totally worth it, you can play it too.  Seriously, play it if you get the chance.

What, you're not going out to buy it at this very second?  So zetta slow!

All other games are garbage!  CRUNCH!  I'll add them to the heap!

Project Updates

Just an update on what I've been working on lately:

Writing

Wandering from Death: My one openly ongoing Slenderblog.  I'm largely in the development phase for my plot at the moment, but I've got ideas.

Warrior, Wizard: a short story about, well, a warrior and a wizard (or, more accurately, "mage").  The two become close friends but are both forced to deal with their feelings of inadequacy as their growths differ.

Operation Stirling: A collaborative Slenderverse project that is currently remaining secret.  Let's just say that I'm finally starting to get to the meat of my part of the project, though.

I've also reacquired a ladybug bucket hat, so my "DaLadybugMan" persona can finally get back on camera and do some reviews I've wanted to.  I'm leaning towards House of Leaves for the first one.

In addition, I'm also occasionally working on A Terrible Fate, my Zelda fanfic, and a commentary for Don't Shoot The Messenger, though those are less frequent.

Reading

I'm currently reading Chronicles of the Black Company, a compilation of the first three Black Company books.  I'm also picking back up on reading the Trigun manga and have managed to find the first two copies of Video Girl Ai (by the same guy who did I"s, one of my favorite manga), though acquiring the rest of both series might be difficult as the former is fairly expensive and the latter is pretty hard to find.

Watching

I've finally decided on an order to watch the shows I'm catching up on in.  Top priority is ABC's Once Upon a Time, an entertaining (if not fairly campy) show about a town in Maine where storybook characters are living with their "Happily Ever Afters" taken away and no memories of their former life.  Kind of like LOST if LOST had magic OH WAIT

The next two on my list are Trigun, which is about a gunslinging pacifist on a desert planet, and Fullmetal Alchemist, which is about...a kid who's an alchemist, I guess.  A hotheaded alchemist working at his craft under the government.  There's obviously more to both shows, but that's the best I can put their concepts.

Playing

I finished Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, and was excited to transfer my info and launch into the sequel, Radiant Dawn.  Then I found out that my disc was one of the ones that didn't recognize Easy Mode saves (since the PoR "Easy Mode" came about when the translation was made easier; it didn't exist in Japan).  I COULD play Radiant Dawn anyway, but I want those few bonuses I get from transfering a PoR file over, dammit!  So basically, I'm going to have to pay through all of PoR again.

I've also gotten my hands on No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle.  I've beaten the first three (of 10) bosses in the former, and so far I'm not particularly impressed.  I'll stick with it, though.  See if it improves.

Gaming Ramblings: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones: No Benchwarmers!

I've recently legally acquired a copy of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (after having played some of it on an emulator less than fully legally) and have been playing that, going through Ephraim's route.

I've actually never beat The Sacred Stones (or Blazing Sword (just "Fire Emblem" in America), though I have beat Shadow Dragon) because of, well...I guess because of how I always want to play. I'm a fan of the Pokemon series (Pokemon Crystal was the first game I ever owned), and you tend to get better Pokemon if you raise them from the ground up.  Add in the fact that the more powerful units tend to be experience thieves (I'm looking at you, Seth), and I always want to raise all my units evenly.  The lowest-leveled characters were always in, the highest were out.  The problem is that Fire Emblem doesn't do one specific thing that a lot of other RPGs do: Grinding.  Most RPGs require grinding, and many people see that as a bad thing.  However, in Fire Emblem, when there's no ability to grind, you run into problems--in this case, the fact that you have to leave some characters on the bench.  You just can't raise everyone.  And since it's natural instinct to make sure you carry your entire team the whole way, well....

And in The Sacred Stones, it is...actually almost possible.  With the skirmishes and the Tower of Valni, it's possible to gain infinite experience.  Unfortunately, weapons in Fire Emblem also break after a certain amount of uses.  You just can't get enough money to support raising an entire army. I suppose it's possible, but it's incredibly difficult.

I learned from Shadow Dragon, where, in order to do the bonus chapters (many of which require you to have 15 or fewer living units to unlock in a game that tends to throw two or three additional units your way every chapter), I was forced to let units die.  Not even let them die, but specifically try to get them killed!  So now I'm trying to raise a smaller team.  I.e., not raise everyone.

Who is this team on this runthrough?  Ephraim (I kind of have to, as he's my Lord and I can't choose to not send him out), Colm (I love thieves, though Matthew from Blazing Sword is much better offensively), Neimi, Amelia, Ross, Natasha, Marisa, Joshua, Franz, L'Arachel, Tana, Cormag, Ewan, Lute, Artur, and Knoll once he joins (I'm a fan of magic users and Mages in particular, if you couldn't tell), with Gerik, Kyle, and Garcia filling in on occasion.  Oh, yes, and also Eirika when she rejoins as well.

Anyway, wish me luck with that, I guess!  I'll update with thoughts and the like once I'm done with the game!