Thursday, May 28, 2009

Kingdom Hearts and Free Time

So.

I just spent about 200 cumulative hours playing Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II (normal mode) and Kingdom Hearts II (proud mode).

What did I used to spend my free time doing, before that franchise sucked me in? I forget. It's been a while.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Viceland Reviews: Star Ocean: The Last Hope and Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

They're up.

Words cannot describe the degree to which I'm disappointed in Star Ocean: The Last Hope, although I tried to come close there. It has so much cool stuff, but it also has so much ridiculous bullshit. It should be a crime to bury that much awesome in that much shit.

H.A.W.X., on the other hand, was a brief, fun diversion.

Monday, March 30, 2009

The Gaming Hour: Episode 1

Call of Duty: World at War and The Last Remnant.

It is, as it turns out, very difficult to write something and perform it both. Instead of just remembering the script, I have to also remember which bits of stuff I'm remembering as the script are the script, and which bits are cut material that were in the script for variable periods of time until I edited them out.

The camera and editing work is really impressive, though; thankee, Vice people, for making me look better than I am.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Killzone 2: A Review

I am unlikely to review Killzone 2 for Vice, on account of it's one half the subject of my first non-review Vice Magazine column, due in the April issue. I think that means can review it here, instead. Amy, my boss at Vice, is pretty cool and has never gotten angry at me doing this sort of thing before.

In some objective sense, Killzone 2 is an admirable attempt to move the tropes of World War II shooters into a science fiction context, where most non-World-War-II shooters dwell, while leveraging the Playstation 3 hardware to create one of the most visually attractive games I've ever seen. In a completely subjective sense, as a game it's pretty awful and I just as often hate it as enjoy it.

Its designers have chosen to import my least favorite parts of WWII shooters, namely, huge open battlefields with dozens of allies and enemies interacting simultaneously, which makes it hard for me to keep track of what's going on and feel like I'm winning because of my own mastery of the play mechanics. Two thirds of the way through I had to dial the difficulty down to easy to progress pass a few bottlenecks, places where the game was hard in an annoying, "Do everything right and maybe you die because of sheer bad luck anyway" way. Unlike, say, Halo, which I quite enjoyed tackling on Legendary difficulty, I can imagine no reward to trying this game in its harder modes. The weapons are poorly differentiated and distributed, the enemy soldiers are all very similar in appearance and behavior, and there's not much variety in play experience that I could detect. Maybe someone who's well versed in the subtleties of single-player WWII shooter campaigns might appreciate its play experience more than I.

Moreover, the elements it pulls from more traditional shooters, namely the boss fights (a fight on a rooftop against an enemy automated flying drone and a duel at the end against one particular elite soldier), are poorly implemented and feel both thematically out of place and badly designed. In the former's case, I can accept puzzle bosses in games that try for less verisimilitude than this one, but here it feels like the game stopped being Killzone 2 for a wile, and in the latter's case, the one guy isn't a puzzle boss but he is a teleporting super-soldier who can inexplicably take twenty times as many bullets as any other dude wearing the same model armor I've met throughout the game. See above, re: acceptable in games less verisimilar than this.

I can't recommend Killzone 2 to anyone who wants a solid game to play. It makes for a good, I dunno, historical benchmark experience, in a "This is the state of gaming right now" way, and it's going to go down in history as an Important Game, so if you want to have experienced that sort of thing it's good, but in terms of a polished shooter that requires player skill and follows internal logic, stick with F.E.A.R. 2, the other half of the subject of my first non-review column for Vice Magazine's April issue.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Why I Don't Actually Like Video Games

I said I'd do this some day. Now seems good.

Video games, on the face of it, are a ridiculous hobby; especially the sort of video games I play, which is to say largely the single player ones. There is nothing of value they provide that can't be provided better elsewhere. About the best I can say of them is: They're no more wasteful than television, and less wasteful than, say, brain-frying chemicals.

As an example, just read my reviews of Persona 4 and Prince of Persia, and then ask yourself this: When I say Prince of Persia is "not deep," what do I mean? Not deep compared to Persona 4? What is the value of depth in this context?

Certainly Persona 4 has more challenging gameplay and a more engaging story, but by what standards? Persona 4's story is very good by the standards of video game stories, but that still means it's very bad compared to, for example, 90% of the books I'd see if I walked into any given library and looked around. Even if one accepts the premise that exposure to quality storytelling is somehow life-enriching (I do, but am not sure why), few to no video games have provided a quality of storytelling that couldn't be easily exceeded by a trip to a local library, where access to the stories in question is free. As for the more challenging gameplay, as long as I'm questioning the values of things, what's the value of that? I can barely think of any; I may be engrossed in complex turn-based strategic battles between benevolent and malevolent elements of humanity's id, but while it may hold my attention, it's not life-enriching.

I play video games because I need something to fill my time and distract myself from the fact that for any moment of time I'm engaging with most of my hobbies, I'm not accomplishing anything of value, either internally or externally. The finite hours of my life tick by as I perfect the motions behind Ryu's fireball, so I can defeat M. Bison to unlock Sakura, so I can defeat M. Bison with her to unlock Dan, and once I've unlocked Dan, I'm not left with anything except a jerk with pink gi and a ponytail who doesn't even exist.

People who play multiplayer games are different; they, at least, are using games as a medium for socialization, which arguably is valuable if "value" is to be a useful concept.

Now, I personally am a bit of an outlier—for me, playing and writing about video games is life-enriching in that it nets me riches in the form of paychecks. So it all worked out peachy for me. Still, I can recognize that much of the challenge -> reward cycle video games use to keep our attention is manipulative bullshit.

I am not a big fan of the whole Puritan "First toil, then the grave" school of how one should live one's life, but the more I try to meaningfully analyze games, the more I come back to most games just not having much meaning, when you get right down to it. Exceptions spring to mind (Ico, Rez), games that show me new storytelling techniques—techniques that could not be accomplished in non-interactive media—and expand the range of imaginative tools with which I can envision the world around me. Arguably these games give the rest of the game industry meaning, in the sense that it provides an environment where they can be made. But individual games? Time sinks. I would be better off organizing my receipts or, yes, reading a book.

That's why I don't actually like video games, for some value of "don't actually like video games."

(Most of my posts are intellectually deconstructive these days. I figure if I keep doing it, I'll eventually find something to reconstruct.)

Viceland Reviews: Persona 4 and Prince of Persia

They're up.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

The Unholy Trinity

I don't play a lot of MMOs. I have tried World of Warcraft and I hated it. Eve Online... well, I don't much like unregulated PVP. I do like City of Heroes, though, and I especially like City of Villains. And not just for the character creator. I'll get back to why I enjoy CoV in a moment.

That said, due to my unfamiliarity with the genre, the following may be unqualified statements.

...

Tank/DPS/Healer is dumb. I can't stand it. The more a game separates those three roles, the less I will play it.

The ideal fantasy game, for me, is a game that allows me to feel as if I'm participating in the sort of fantasy fiction I enjoy, whether that be fantasy fiction first experienced through books, movies, or television. Even if I'm not playing Aragorn (actually I'm not a fan of The Lord of the Rings, either, but that's a topic for another blog), I want to feel like I'm playing a guy who might occupy an Aragorn-ish role.

Is Aragorn a tank, a DPS guy, or a healer?

He's none, and that's a terrible, stupid question, because fictional fantasy combat does not work that way. Fictional fantasy characters don't fill out those roles unless you squint so hard your eyeballs pop out of their sockets.

For lack of better terminology, the "Holy Trinity" feels very first draft. Very clumsy. It feels like the result of someone making a list of all the things you can do in virtual combat and then saying "Okay, we'll make one type of player character to do each of those things." There is no finnesse there, no effort put into making these characters feel like actual fantasy characters who show up in fantasy settings; it's just raw compromise for the sake of easy game design.

Compare City of Villains. City of Villains has five archetypes: Brute, Corruptors, Dominators, Masterminds, and Stalkers.

Brutes are heavy DPS guys who can mitigate damage against themselves, but they cannot tank effectively in the classical sense. (Fortunately, due to the way the rest of the archetypes work, they don't have to.) Corruptors are comparatively fragile but weaken enemies, acting as force multipliers in groups of player characters; they can heal, but it's not their focus. Dominators manage enemy behavior and can hulk out, increasing their direct combat effectiveness. Masterminds summon minions, which gives them both decent damage output and something like classical tanking ability (though, like Brutes, not to the extent of tanks in most MMOs). Stalkers do huge damage but are quite capable of defending themselves through stealth, if played correctly.

1) They all play differently.
2) They all play well alone.
3) They all play well together.
4) They all feel like the sort of character archetypes you actually get in comic books.

None of them fit obviously into one spot on the tank/DPS guy/healer trinity.

I would not call City of Villains the pinnacle of MMO design, just the most convenient example I could think of of... second draft play design. It benefits from the recognition that enemy damage mitigation, player character damage management, and player-character-on-enemy damage are the three roles that need filling in conventional MMO play, but it doesn't go the cheap and easy route of just making one character type to fill each of those slots. It's got problems (it's repetitive, for one) and I haven't actually played it in a few months, but it's a good illustration of the reason why I hate most MMOs, hold the design theories behind them in contempt, and will never play WoW again.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Where The Dislike Is

I hate Playstation Home. There's nothing to do there except wander around looking at the pretty graphics, play that UFO game in the central plaza, agonize over the face editor while looking at photo references of my own face, and spend money on clothing and a mountain apartment.

So why do I do all these things? Why have I bought a shirt, a pair of pants, two pairs of glasses, and a mountain retreat apartment? Why do I log in and wander around and not chat with anyone, and fail to decide whether I want to go with the more accurate brown hair or the better looking blue?

Well, okay, I know why I bought the mountain apartment. I was curious what it looked like, and it was five bucks. And I know why I bought the glasses -- they were a buck each, and the two pairs of default glasses look nothing like the ones I wear. (As it turns out, the bought ones don't, either; damnit.)

And I kinda know why I wander around. It's a confluence of factors. First, there's the novelty of actually existing in a virtual environment that's somewhat akin to those I read about in science fiction for ages and ages -- a fake world to be in, and not a set of skinned goals. Second, it's not demanding. When I play other games, lately, they feel like work, even when they aren't, so Home is an opportunity to engage in an activity I like (project myself into a virtual environment) without having to deal with any stress. Third, it really is pretty, if you can get by the vacant looks on the faces of (or so it seems) every character but mine -- you'd be surprised what a bit of tweaking the advanced eye and mouth options can do to make a Home character look less like these, especially if you're willing to introduce a bit of asymmetry.

I really don't like it, though. The environments need to be bigger and more seamless and there needs to be more stuff to do.

And I'm not buying any furniture. That shit is ridiculous -- the only way to make Home less boring is to walk around its environments, so what's the use of things that you can only sit stationary on?

Monday, January 19, 2009

The reason why I don't post here more often...

...well, one of the reasons why I don't post here more often, is that usually when I get the urge to post, it's something like "Sweet Jesus, I wish I had more time to play the games I want to play, instead of the games I have to review."

Which is a stupid, unworthy complaint to make, because I'm being paid to review video games, which isn't something I should be complaining about.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Gluttony

Sorry for immediately breaking my new year's resolution to post at least three times per week; I've spent this whole week tearing apart and reorganizing my living space. It's still a mess—boxes everywhere; dust and rubbish kicked up that need vacuuming; books, knick-knacks, and disc cases of various sorts that need shelving (more, really, than I have shelving to fit). I'm sure you all know how it is during a serious reorganization of a nerd's cluttered room. Today, though, something relevant to my gaming life occurred.

The following games arrived for me in the mail.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
Mana Khemia: Alchemist of Al-Revis
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Of them, I've played in the past only Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. I used to own them both; I lost them to separate thefts. Since then, I replaced them with Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (which I ultimately disliked, as I found the new voice acting inferior to the original) and Metal Gear Solid 2's Xbox port (which I ultimately disliked because it had sub-optimal controls due to the number of shoulder buttons on the Xbox controller, and because its framerate halved during rainy scenes). So for those two, it's just nice to have versions I like kicking around. And hey, they were cheap—they came in the Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection box.

The other games in that list go on the pile already occupied by Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, Odin Sphere, Eternal Poison, and Armored Core: for Answer. The pile's theme is largely niche Japanese games I've gotten into, or wanted to get into, and dropped due to distraction. I'll return to them some day, I'm sure... though the presence of the two Kingdom Hearts games on that list suggest otherwise. This didn't stop me from buying the Disgaea 3 DCL characters the other day, though. On the plus side, I finished one playthrough of Chrono Trigger DS, and I've gotten pretty far into Persona 4; the latter's not optional, though—I'll be reviewing it soon. I'll probably have to put a "I haven't actually finished this game yet" disclaimer into that review. Note to self.

Long before I've fully delved into even a fraction of the above (I don't expect to have even half of all those games finished by 2010), I plan to have picked up Mana Khemia: Student Alliance and Disgaea 2: Insert Funny New Subtitle Here for the PSP. Never mind that each is a PSP port of a PS2 game I already have. They'll have extra content!

I'm a bit of a consumer whore. (Of course that link goes where you think it does.)

I may also be a bit of a poseur.

Do I like these games, or do I just like the idea of liking them? I think it's the former, but if it were the latter, would I know? It's hard to see the back of your own eyeballs. And it's not that I'm super-concerned with peoples' motives for self-identifying as part of a given fandom—I wouldn't use the word poseur to describe someone else. But it bothers me that my buying habits might be hoarding instinct rather than a genuine desire to play these things; I thought I'd gotten over that when I stopped buying every tabletop RPG supplement that momentarily caught my eye.

About a decade ago, I was a much bigger geek and Japanophile than I am now. This was before I had the Internet (thus, I'd never met the sort of people who'd today fling—accurately, at that—the word weeabo at then-me); we were poor. I bought gaming magazines despite owning no gaming consoles of the then-current generation; the magazines were cheaper and let me experience games vicariously I would otherwise have been unable to see at all. My favorite was GameFan, and the two games that intrigued me the most—neither of which I ever got to play, until two weeks ago—were Persona 2 and Suikoden. (Two weeks ago, Suikoden went up on the Playstation Network Store. I grabbed it. Maybe I should add it to the list above.) By that time I'd already been hooked on and Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, which back then I knew as Final Fantasy 3. I wanted more games like that.

For ten years I wanted to play a Persona game, based on nothing but a quarter-page review.

As my access to game consoles and the Internet gradually expanded, I learned, in bits and pieces, more about Atlus and the Shin Megami Tensei series. I learned that Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was the second half of a duology, and that the first half, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, had never made it out of Japan (a gay romance in a video game would have been too big a deal back then). I learned that the Persona series was a spin-off of the core Shin Megami Tensei series. I learned about companies peripherally associated with Atlus in different contexts. I developed an appreciation for Disgaea's humor from descriptions on the Internet long before I'd actually played a Disgaea game.

Then last summer, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES's release date came around just as I was aware of it. I picked it up, played obsessively for a bit, realized I'd been playing suboptimally, deleted my save file in annoyance and started again. Then I did that another time, and on the third time through the game's first ten hours I got distracted by something else. I forget what.

I like these games in theory but I'm poorly adapted to the play style they encourage; I'm simultaneously too obsessive and too impatient. I can't stand playing suboptimally, but if playing optimally requires too much time and patience I get frustrated and look for something else to do. Something like Final Fantasy X-2, with its normal bad ending and its hidden good ending that requires hundreds of trivial tasks performed to perfection, would drive me nuts.

If someone would just make a game with a quick pace and simple, twitch-based gameplay at about the depth of Halo 3, married to characters and a story as complex and engaging as Persona 4, I'd be in heaven.

Am I more a fan of the idea of video games than the games themselves? It seems likely. I dislike most games I play, after all.

...

I apologize for my rambling. I'll endeavor to make the next post more pointy. I'll probably just post my thoughts on whatever game I'm currently playing for the next little while; it should help me stay focused.