The Invisible Eyeball

Right from the start, I had a love/hate relationship with Fallout 3.  It all started with my BB gun and that first altercation with a guard within Vault 101.    When he saw me and started bashing me repeatedly, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.  Do I try to actually KILL this guy with a BB gun, just for doing his job?  Do I just try to run away?  In the parlance of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along?”  I loved that I HAD a choice, but hated that I was so unsure of what the “right” thing to do was.

A minor quibble, but that’s not the real love/hate – merely the hint of what was to come with the game.  Let’s start with the good stuff.

Love

As in the Interplay-developed PC predecessors, Fallout 3 did a GREAT job with character progression.  It starts right from the beginning, where character creation is an organic part of the game, not a mere set of menus.  And heck, where else do you get to roleplay a BABY?  Try as I might, I couldn’t find my way out of the vault as a toddler, unfortunately.

The initial character creation is excellent, but the main course of character progression is the perk system.

The total freedom when selecting perks is only matched by the breadth of perks available to you.  You can choose to use perks to boost particular stats or skills in any number of ways.  Want to focus on Big Guns with a little lockpick ability?  You can do that.  Want to focus on your speech skill and intelligence, to try to talk your way out of trouble?  You can do that, too.  Heck, you could focus on Big Guns, speech, and lockpick if you so choose.  Talk your way into a ghoul’s good graces, steal all his stuff, THEN blow him away with a mini nuke.  All avenues are open to you.

While the overall narrative is weak and even outright bad in parts (see: ending), the storytelling and characters that make up the story are often good and sometimes amazing.  From the ghoul with the fine head of hair to the vaguely Minnesota-sounding Moira, the characters and their interactions with the player are interesting and often pretty damn funny.  I suppose you’d need a good sense of humor in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, eh?

Hate

So where’s the hate?  Well, it starts with the Wasteland.  Yes, yes, I recognize that there are some incredible vistas, some really nifty busted up landmarks, and some cool “found” areas throughout the world.  But if there’s one thing I can’t stand in an “open world” game, it’s impassable walls and structures.  This is alleviated once you actually DISCOVER a location and can fast travel to it, but can be a real pain when trying to find a location for the first time.  Hoofing it through samey metro tunnels all the time didn’t help the cause, either.  There is too much time spent in pointless, frustrating travel in FO3.

Why do developers insist on creating silly, irritating hacking minigames?  It marred the otherwise perfect Bioshock, and it’s not doing any favors to FO3 either.  I’m a smart guy, pretty dang good at logic puzzles, but I had no desire to try to “figure out” any terminal hacks.  I just kept picking random words until I found one that worked.  If I need to grab a piece of paper to try to figure something out, you’ve lost me.

Finally, though fun at first, the combat quickly lost its luster.  It was odd in that it made you THINK you were playing an FPS, but in actuality “to hit” rolls were determining your outcomes.  I had quite a few early deaths when I was SURE I was hitting that blasted raider, but was actually missing repeatedly due to my low weapon skills.

The VATS system, while cool as hell at the outset, suffered from monotony by the mid-game.  My combat went something like this:  enter VATS, target head, repeat.  While I COULD mix it up, and target legs, weapons, and arms, why would I?  Especially later on, when I got the more powerful weapons?  I don’t honestly know.  It was much more efficient to explode heads left and right.  There was a tactical aspect inherent to combat in FO1 and FO2 that is all but gone in FO3.

This last bit of hate is exclusive to my GOTY version on PS3.  I had heard about the crashes and bugs, and made the silly assumption that they would  have been cleared up by now.  Shame on you for still peddling broken software and not bothering to fix it, Bethesda.

60 Hours Later

Fallout 3 is proof that a game doesn’t have to be perfect to be gripping to the end.  Even though I found certain elements as frustrating as hell, the mixture of epic set pieces and great characters kept me coming  back.  Just when I thought I was at about the end of my rope with a long, boring journey, I came across just enough awesome to make me continue.  At times I loved being able to do whatever I wanted, but other times I felt aimless and lost.  Still, when I measure a game’s worth, I have to look at how many hours of pure enjoyment I got out of it.  With all its faults, Fallout 3 still comes out WAY ahead in that regard.  My love/hate relationship really comes down to one issue: I really loved my time in the wasteland, yet I can see plainly where a couple of tweaks here and there would have elevated it to a nearly flawless experience.  Maybe I ask too much.

I have a confession to make. I don’t always play games on the highest difficulty level. As a matter of fact, there are times I actually play games on EASY. I would have never admitted to this in my youth, when I took pride in my neighborhood-renowned skills with an NES controller in hand. But as my gaming time has become more precious with age, I often find myself taking the easy way out. So sue me.

It’s not that I fear ultra difficulty modes, or that I feel that I can’t complete them. As a matter of fact, I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than completing a finely-tuned ultra difficulty mode. And although my twitch skills have undoubtedly declined with age, that’s not the explanation for my newfound avoidance of anything beyond “normal” either. The real issue that I have with higher difficulty levels is that they often substitute frustration for fun. There are a number of ways that developers can try to ratchet up the challenge of games, but too often they make bad choices. So what are some of the poor choices they make?

Unending Mobs

Doubling the number of enemies while cutting the available ammo in half isn’t challenging, it’s maddening. And there’s no worse sin than the famous monster closet. Re-spawning mobs make a lot of sense in MMOs and Gauntlet, but that’s about it. I can live with a huge total number of mobs, as long as there is some sort of end in sight. But it’s horribly frustrating to slowly and carefully clear a room of bad guys only to have them pop right back up again before you can continue. If I have to run like a little girl in hopes of hitting the next checkpoint, you’re doing it wrong.

Extreme Enemy Damage

I understand if you can’t take the beating in hard you can in easy, but I shouldn’t die with a single gunshot to the foot, either. Boosting the enemy damage tables is likely an easy way to boost the difficulty, but it doesn’t normally really ADD to the experience in terms of skill. It just kinda tires me out.

Extreme Enemy Resilience

Nobody can take 10 direct gunshots to the chest and keep going, not even Arnold in his prime. I’m fine with faster or stronger enemies, just don’t make them God-like bullet sponges.

Cheap AI

Cheap AI can come in a lot of different flavors, but what I’m referencing specifically is when the bad guys seem to be able to see through walls and/or predict every move you make. I like fighting smarter enemies, but don’t let them ignore the normal rules of the game world.

When They Get it Right, Though

It’s magical. Some of the most satisfying gaming experiences I have had come courtesy of the ultra difficulty levels. Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum. When you finish one of these on the highest difficulty, you really feel like you accomplished something.

There is one game that I feel really epitomizes perfectly tuned difficulty. Bioshock. What’s that? You say it’s easy? Go ahead and turn it on the hardest difficulty with the vita-chambers turned off. Early on, you couldn’t just unload your arsenal on the Big Daddies, that wasn’t enough. You had to set traps, think ahead, and use all the tools at your disposal. There weren’t more enemies. Nor were they unbeatable or supernaturally intelligent. Sure, the Big Daddies were bullet sponges, but in that case it MADE SENSE. In short, it was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in recent years.

So what are your thoughts on ultra difficulty levels? What are some examples, both good and bad?

We all have outlandish dreams of “what we’ll be when we grow up.”  Some kids dream of spacewalking as astronauts, some dream of game-winning shots in basketball, and some dream of becoming stars in Hollywood.  When I was young, the one job I wanted more than anything was as a Nintendo game counselor. 

I know this is hard to imagine now, but back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the heyday of the NES, there was no internet (at least not in regular usage.)  If you were stuck in a game, you couldn’t just hit Google up for a FAQ or walkthrough.  There was really only one option: the Nintendo Power Hotline, where you could talk to a totally awesome, totally LIVE game counselor to help you with your gaming problems.

I will freely admit that I needed their services quite a few times.  I remember phoning once for help on the original Zelda, and I also recall needing their expert assistance in Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest.  (I will also freely admit that even today I have no qualms about using and abusing walkthroughs and guides – I don’t have time to muck about in my games. )

I remember imagining what it would be like to work as a game play counselor.  I pictured them sitting in cubicles wearing headsets, hammering away at NES controllers while they played the latest and greatest games.  They must have been surrounded by binders covering everything from the Adventures of Lolo to Zanac.  At the time I had no real concept of computer databases, which is most likely what they actually used.  The whole constant game-playing part was probably not true either, but I like to imagine that it was. 

For a kid who loved video games like I did, what could have been better?  You mean I could get paid to play games and help kids beat Mother Brain in Super Metroid?  Hell yeah!  Sadly, as with all dreams, at some point you wake up.  After poking around this new-fangled internet a bit, I found out that Nintendo shut the program down some time in 2005.  Frankly, I’m surprised it lasted that long; I know by the late ‘90s there were virtually unlimited online resources for all your gaming hang-ups. 

And I’ll also admit that I never made any real attempt to become a game play counselor.  By the time I was old enough to give it a shot, my burning desire for the job had morphed into a burning desire for girls.   (Plus, growing the required mullet would probably dash any hopes I had of attracting the opposite sex.)  I still occasionally wax nostalgic about my old career dreams, but more often I try to focus on my career dream of today – writing about video games. 

I understand, I really do. Sometimes you just can’t let go of things, even if they are bad for you. It’s like how you convinced yourself The Phantom Menace was a good movie the first time you saw it. Just as fond memories of Luke and Leia can make even Jar Jar look good, nostalgic thoughts of your first zombie in the original Resident Evil can prompt you to overlook the flaws of later titles.  Well, sometimes you just need to pull the plug.  So let’s look at a few gameplay mechanics that are probably better off dead.

Tank Controls

It’s pretty simple really.  There’s nothing wrong with tank-like controls, as long as you’re controlling a tank.  If I’m a human being, I expect to be able to move like one.  This type of control scheme was at least mildly acceptable in the earlier days of gaming and in the first Resident Evil.  3D environments were still awfully new, and dual-analog stick controllers were still a pipe dream.  Developers were still trying to figure out how to best control a character in 3D space – and I LOVED the first Resident Evil.

But there are no more excuses for tank controls.  It’s awkward.  Imprecise.  Clunky.  I walked around the world of Heavy Rain like a drunk on a 3-day bender – running into walls, getting caught on furniture, missing doorways.  It was a little embarrassing.  Then I booted up RE5, and I felt like I was moving through molasses or something.  Zombies and a dude with a massive axe want to chew on my face, and I turn to run away like I’m on a Sunday stroll through the park. 

SSSLLLOOOOWWW  Targeting

This busted mechanic often goes hand-in-hand with the lousy tank controls.  Why do some targeting reticles move like molasses in January?  There’s a zombie over there, now SHOOT IT.  Sheesh.  Hugh Hefner has quicker hand-eye coordination than some of these fools in video games.  Are you honestly telling me that a specially trained commando takes that long to target something?  I guess it’s no wonder he’s on zombie clean-up detail in South America.

Stupidly Sticky Cover

Cover systems were a revolution in shooters, and a mechanic that I wouldn’t want to be without.  The problem is they still haven’t gotten it completely right.  I can recall dozens of deaths where I either: a) took cover when I didn’t want to or b) found myself unable to break away from cover to run away.  I just want cover systems to become more intelligent (I’m asking a lot, I know.)  Does the game really think I wanted to lean up against this wall right in front of a M-16 wielding bad guy?  This also factors into some traversal/grab systems in games like Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted.  Sometimes I really DON’T want to stick to every wall in the environment. 

Sprinting

Ugh.  I don’t want to have to tap or hold down a particular button to sprint (I’m looking at you, GTA).  If I can sprint without getting tired or without breaking the gameplay in some way, I want to sprint all the time automatically.  My right trigger finger is tired, and I’m sick of holding it down to sprint through the streets of Firenze or through the corridors of Arkham.  Just make me run at top speed all the time, please.  I know some people think they want to kind of “role play” and walk around a beautiful environment at normal walking speed, but those people are dumb.  Make THEM hold down a button to walk normal.  The rest of us have crap to do and want to do it quickly.

When I think about these kind of mechanics, I wonder how they made it out of testing.  Wasn’t there a single voice of reason saying “hey, tank controls are so 1998, maybe it’s time for a change.”  Didn’t any of the dudes who had to play the game for 9 hours straight say they were sick of holding down the sprint button?  I don’t get it. 

There are plenty more where these came from – busted save systems, horrible control schemes, idiotic puzzles – what are some of the gameplay mechanics you would like to see dead?

Today’s gazillion-dollar gaming business has a much bigger pie than it had in any previous era, and hence room for many more platforms and a whole heck of a lot more great games to play.  10 years ago we might have talked about the “must-have” games of the year.  There are times now when I wonder if we should discuss the “must-have” games of the month.  So how in the blazes can you maintain a good game collection without the deep pockets of a spoiled Hilton heir?  How can you avoid navigating the shark-infested waters of Ebay or pimping your games out to the local video game shop for a fraction of what they are really worth? 

Well, lucky for us we have this fancy new thing called the internet, and there are a handful of sites dedicated to gamers who want to trade their dusty old wares for shiny new ones.  Game Trading Zone, Playswitch, and Goozex are the three largest game trading sites.  I have had fantastic results since joining Goozex in November last year, so I’ll focus on that site and how it works.

Goozex works on a point system for buying and selling games.  Each game has a point value set by the administrators of the site.  Brand new games start at 1000 points (well, other than collector’s and other special editions) and the lowest point value assigned to any game is 100 points.  The first thing you do is add the games you have available for trade to your trading queue.  The system will automatically search out other users who are looking for the games you have.  The system will notify you if it finds a match, and you will have the opportunity to accept or reject the trade.  As the “seller” you are responsible for the cost of shipping.  First class shipping with delivery confirmation (you want this to protect yourself, and as a courtesy) runs less than 3 dollars to anywhere in the US.  I also ship my games in bubble mailers which run about 50 cents a piece, and less than that if you buy in bulk.

Buying games on Goozex works the same basic way.  You add games to your queue that you’d like, and the system tries to match you up.  The only real difference is as a buyer, you do not pay for shipping, but have to pay the point value of the game and spend one “trade token” per game bought.  Trading tokens are essentially the equivalent of paying Goozex 1 dollar per game you buy through their site. 

Aside from points and trade tokens, there is also a feedback system.  You give feedback when a buyer, and receive feedback as a seller.  Your overall feedback score dictates how many open trades you can have going on at one time, and also effects when you receive points for a game “sale.”  New users will not receive their points until their game is received and feedback is given by the buyer, but after establishing a good enough reputation (roughly 4 positive trades) you receive points as soon as you confirm a game has shipped.

I won’t lie, you can’t sign up tomorrow and expect to have God of War III shipped to you by the end of the week.  New titles obviously have a lot of people interested, and you will have to wait for your turn in line to get a crack at them.  Now, how this works for brand new games is that on the game’s release date at midnight central time, the game is made available on the site to add to your queue.  If you can stay up that late, and don’t mind dealing with a slow server, you can land a good spot in line for brand new titles.  I managed to snag the 6th spot in line for Dante’s Inferno, for instance, and received the game less than 2 weeks after it was released.  I was then able to finish and review the game within a week and a half, and I then traded it back out.  Another aspect of brand new games is that though they start at 1000 points, if you trade a new game within 30 days of its release, you also receive 200 bonus points.  This worked out great for me with Dante’s, as I paid 1000 points for it, yet finished it quickly enough to receive 1200 points for it.  Pure profit! 

My experience with the site and its community has been top notch.  There are scammers that try to take advantage of the system, there always are, but you are protected and will never find yourself out of a game or points with nothing in return.  It’s very easy to search for and add games to your queues, and the system is just plain easy to use. 

A few years back I had tried Game Trading Zone, but my issue with that site was that I had to try to negotiate a match with users directly.  Let’s face it, it can be hard to find someone who has exactly what you want and who wants exactly what you have in return.  I spent more time trying to negotiate deals than I care to admit, and I quickly lost interest in the site. 

I admittedly had my doubts about the Goozex system in the beginning.  So I elected to play it safe in the beginning, using it to off-load old Xbox 1 games and PSP titles.  I quickly came around, though, when I saw how great everything worked.  I can’t recommend it enough, and as a father of two without a lot of disposable income, it’s been a great, great way to build up my PS3 library.  It’s really made mail-time around my house pretty exciting.    Honestly, I can’t even imagine bringing my used games to a local store any longer.  What do you get for practically brand new games?  30 bucks?  Maybe 40?  Well, I essentially traded Bioshock 2 straight up for Dante’s a few weeks back – I dare you to try to do the same at your neighborhood Babbage’s.

I realize that in a lot of ways a good story is way down on the list of important gaming elements.  It is a largely visual medium that focuses primarily on interactivity, so it doesn’t necessarily supply the same blank tapestry fit for a compelling narrative like a novel or film.  The fact remains, however, that video games are no longer just “child’s play.”  As the age demographic of gamers skews ever upward, the demand increases for more meaningful experiences.  Strong storytelling is an excellent way to keep older gamers interested, and Uncharted 2 is an excellent example of how the industry is slowly moving from the old ways of game story as an afterthought to fully fleshed-out, engaging narratives. 

In the early days of video games, they were created by small, dedicated teams that had to put a whole package together: graphics, gameplay, sound and story.  These small teams put a premium on flexibility and multiple skill sets – dedicated writers didn’t really have a place.  It made sense in the early days of game development.  After all, how strong a story do you actually need for Super Mario Bros. or Tetris? 

As budgets and development teams have evolved, writers have begun to play a much more pivotal role, and the overall quality of the narrative in games has increased tremendously as a result.  Just take a look at some of the best games of the last six months or so, and you’ll see that good writing playing a pivotal role – Batman: Arkham Asylum, Assassin’s Creed II, Mass Effect 2, the list goes on and on. 

When I first played through Heavy Rain, I thought it would be the ideal example to hold up in order to address the state of storytelling, but I was wrong.  I got too hung up on some of the story’s foibles that were largely related to bad translation – then I played Uncharted 2.  (I’m late to the party, I know.)  The story of Nathan Drake has a great mix of believable dialogue, humor and thrills.  And while it doesn’t attempt to hit the same emotional highs as Heavy Rain, it also avoids any glaring missteps or massive plot holes.  The structure is also more advanced than your average video game yarn.  Rather than follow a typical linear plot, the game throws you in the middle of the action on the derailed train and fills things in via flashback as you progress.  This is a classic narrative trick used to great effect here. 

For me, the real strength of Uncharted 2 isn’t about the story itself, but about how seamlessly it works.  The tale spun here by game director and scribe Amy Hennig is nearly perfect in the context of the overall gaming experience.   The action elements blend with the story elements to create a compelling, cohesive experience.  Everything just sort of made sense, and I never felt side-tracked by any of the cinematic interludes.

For comparison’s sake, let’s talk about Batman: Arkham Asylum.  While the tale of Batman’s quest to bring down the Joker was undoubtedly well-written and exciting, there were quite a few times where I hoped for a “skip” button during story interludes.  Frankly, I just wanted to get back to slow motion punching guys in the face (in the parlance of GB’s Ryan Davis) rather than watch Batman walk slowly with a finger to his ear. 

With Uncharted 2, I never felt the itch to skip a cut scene.  Even on my successive playthroughs (now up to 3 times through and counting) I often sit back and enjoy the interplay between Drake and co. unfold, even though I know everything that happens – that’s a testament to a wonderfully crafted piece of fiction.

Moving forward, game developers need to realize that it isn’t solely about professional writing or voice actors.  A memorable story also has to work within the context of the overall gaming experience.  In the early days of Hollywood, film writers struggled with similar issues.  It too was a new medium for storytelling that was different from everything that had come before.  Much early film writing was simple or cribbed directly from the theatre.  It took screenwriters some time to gain a real understanding of the machinations of film and how they could be used to tell stories in NEW ways. 

As a medium, video games as an interactive storytelling device are in their infancy.  It will be some time before we come to realize the new and exciting ways we can tell stories interactively.  Video game creators need to learn to strike the right balance between narrative and gameplay, and look at new ways to incorporate the two.  They must realize that they need to be two parts of a single whole, not separate entities entirely.  In my opinion, Uncharted 2 walks this line better than any game I have played in some time, and I wait with bated breath for the next effort from Amy Hennig and Naughty Dog. 

Nostalgia is an odd thing.  Sometimes it can deceive you, cloud your judgment and mistake trash for treasure.  I used to love the TV show "Land of the Lost" as a kid.  I saw it again recently, excited at first, but then I couldn’t believe I ever enjoyed it.  At all.  It happens that way.  But sometimes, nostalgia is dead-on balls accurate.  About 10 years ago I played the original Final Fantasy Tactics for the original Playstation.  At the time, I thought it was one of the best games I had ever played.  It had a great story (if you could get past the horrendous translation) and awesome, deep strategy RPG gameplay (if you could get past the difficulty level).  So when I heard they were remaking it for the PSP, I was both excited and a little anxious.  Would it be as good as I remembered – or was I fooled in some way by "new-ness" or the fact that I loved FFVII so much?

FFT (I’m just going to call it that, I don’t feel like constantly writing the long-ass PSP name) tells a story of succession, war and political intrigue.  The plot is 33% of the fun, so I won’t give away much.  On a basic level, it gets into the difficulties inherent in a class system (lords and peasants), involves more than one back-stabbing turn of events, and ends up causing a whole lot of fighting.  These are all good things for a gamer.  One of the issues with the original version is the aforementioned terrible, terrible translation.  It wasn’t quite on the "All Your Base" level, but it was bad.  They cleaned it up significantly for this remake, and the grand story is much easier to follow because of that.  They also added in brand spanking new cinematic sequences in key points of the game.  They have a nice hand-drawn look, and have some decent voice acting to boot.  They help bring up the overall presentation.

Story stuff aside, FFT is a strategy RPG.  If you’ve played anything like Tactics Ogre or Shining Force, you’ll know what your getting into.  You have a party of up to five characters that engage on strategic battles on various maps.  Each map has different terrain and obstacles to work with, and you can use things like elevation and such to your advantage. 

FFT sheds many of the limitations of classic RPGs through its job system (which you may have seen in other FF games, like FFV).  Basically, each character is not limited to a single "class."  You can switch around willy nilly and do what you feel like doing.  All characters start out with at least the two base jobs, Squire (fighter) and Chemist (Healer/Magic).  As you fight, you get the normal experience points to raise your level, but you also get job points.  Job points (JP) are spent on new skills and abilities.  A chemist, for instance, will use JP to purchase the ability to use better health potions, or special antidotes.  As you level your various jobs, more jobs will become available to you.  Hit a certain level as a Squire and the Archer job opens up.  Hit a certain level with the Archer, and you can become a Thief.  The unlocking jobs isn’t always linear, either.  To become a Ninja, you’ll need to get to a certain level with 3 different jobs.

In addition to the different jobs, you can "equip" a sub-job as a secondary skill.  Maybe you want the armor of a Knight but the special abilities of a Monk.  You can do it.  It really is far too much to explain fully within the context of a review, but you get the drift.  There is a lot of depth there, and exploring the job system is very rewarding.  It’s also the kind of thing that gives you that "just one more battle" or "just one more turn" mentality.  FFT is hard to put down, especially as you close in on the really cool skills (like dual wield) and jobs (like Samurai.)

The difficulty of the game is a bit of an odd bird.  There are times it feels like battles are only BARELY winnable, and other times where you push over the content like a cardboard cutout.  I think part of this has to do with your dedication to the game.  FFT allows you to grind a bit if you like to beef up your levels and work on jobs.  You can basically take on random battles over and over to level grind.  Me being a former MMO junkie started doing just that about midway through the game.  Once I got up to respectable levels, everything became a little too easy.

Of course, that’s why I did it.  I wanted to demolish the baddies, I wanted to embarrass them.  And that I did.  My guess is that if you played the game fairly straight up without seeking out grinding opportunities, it would get REALLY difficult in places.  Still, whether I was getting beaten to a bloody pulp or flat out owning the later content, I had a blast every step of the way.

There are still some significant issues here, though.  For starters, the game just kind of throws you into the fire and expects you to understand the various systems you have to deal with.  Sure, it starts with an easy battle or two with some basic pointers, but before you know it you’re fighting for your life.  It’s not a huge gripe, mind you – it just would have been nice to have a little more of a leg up on the complexities of the game.

The camera can also be a problem.  The battlefields have a 3D isometric view, so it can be difficult to see all the nooks and crannies.  And in a strategy RPG like this, you often WANT to see all the hidey holes.  A top down option you could switch to would have alleviated this issue for me.

Lastly, it suffers from a problem that plagues many Square RPGs.  Long damn magic/summon animations.  I like the animations, they look great, but after awhile I just want to be able to skip by them and see how much damage I did quickly.  Sadly, the game does not allow you to skip any of this, which turns out to be a real problem later when you start playing with the Arithmetician job. 

In the end, there’s a reason that Final Fantasy Tactics holds a special place in many gamers’ hearts.  It has an involving story full of intrigue with excessively deep and rewarding strategy RPG gameplay.  Square did what you should do with a remake, keep the heart but make everything better.  Sure, they missed a few pieces here and there, but no game is perfect. It made an excellent translation to the PSP, as the fairly short individual battles make for a great portable gaming experience.  It also proved to me that sometimes a nostalgic memory is dead-on, and perhaps I’ll have to try it again in another 10 years.

[xrr rating=5/5]

Licensed games are a sorry lot, generally speaking. Maybe it’s because they are often rushed out the door to coincide with a movie release. Perhaps it’s due to the second- or third-rate studios that often churn them out. Whatever the reason, they show a history of suckage that dates back to E.T. on the Atari 2600 and continues today with titles like Avatar. Every once in a long while, though, a real gem squeaks through this gauntlet of trash and surprises everyone with its quality – Batman: Arkham Asylum is one such game.

In my opinion, previous Batman titles have made the error of trying to please everyone.  They would have combat interspersed with vehicle sequences interspersed with puzzles.  Rarely did they focus on what makes Batman truly great: he flat out kicks a lot of ass.  Developer Rocksteady put together a smooth, combo-heavy combat engine with a huge amount of variety to highlight Batman’s bad-assery.  You’ll Batarang fools into oblivion, yank dudes off ledges with your Batclaw, and deliver many slow-motion finishers. Let’s face it, you just can’t go wrong with a slow-motion kick to the face.

More important than the stellar combat engine is the overall feel of the game.  This is the first time in a Batman title that I thought “holy crap I’m really Batman.”  This is especially apparent in how Batman is able to move around and through stages. There are a myriad of escape routes and hiding spots including vents to crawl through, rafters to drop from, and even floor panels where you can lie in wait.  If things get really dicey, you can always grapple yourself out of trouble.  Some of the most fun I had with the game involved testing my ability to freak out the enemies as I slowly picked them off one by one.  Essentially, you can do everything you’d want to do as Batman.  Sneaking around, scaring the crap out of your enemies, and then beating them into submission.  The best part is that this mix of stealth and brutal combat never seems to get old.  I could play Batman: AA forever.

Above all else, Batman: Arkham Asylum delivers exactly what I’d want in a Batman experience. It has a beautifully rendered, gritty world, tight and varied gameplay, an excellent storyline, top-notch voice talent from Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill and a good amount of replayability.  It isn’t a perfect game, however.  I had occasional issues with the camera (as in most third-person action games) and found the final boss battle lacking in terms of the Batman/Joker mythos.  Still, this is the most excited I’ve been about a licensed game since perhaps Goldeneye, and that’s saying a lot (the OLD one, not the one on the way!)  For those reasons and more I give Batman: Arkham Asylum my highest possible recommendation.  You owe it to yourself to play this game.

[xrr rating=5/5]

Every video game generation has at least a few titles that push the graphics envelope – the kind of visual experience that makes non-gamers stand up and take notice. Games like Shenmue on the Dreamcast, or the Gran Turismo series, for instance. The problem is this: developers can sometimes focus so much on the look of the game that the other elements fall flat. What good is a beautifully realized world if the controls suck, or if it has terrible voice acting? There can be no doubt that Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is dazzlingly beautiful throughout. The real question is, did developer Naughty Dog get anything else right?

The plot of Uncharted follows the adventures of the brash, Indiana Jonesy Nathan Drake as he searches for El Dorado, the legendary lost city of gold.  As is to be expected, undertaking such a quest has more than its fair share of traps, detours, puzzles and enemies.  On paper it sounds fairly typical and uninspired, but the story has enough twists and turns to keep things interesting.  Uncharted also has hauntingly realistic looking cut scenes to propel the tale forward.  Cinematic is a term too often bandied about in the world of gaming, but I would have to say that Uncharted is approaches the quality of a good B-movie in its presentation and plot.  Excellent music and top-notch voice acting complete the presentation.  Uncharted is one of those games where I never WANTED to skip past the cut scenes, which is quite a feat for a busy, time-challenged gamer like myself.

It’s well-known that Uncharted is a heck of a game graphically, but I really had no idea just how crisp it would look.  The characters are as realistic as I’ve seen, featuring expressive faces and true-to-life movements.  My only gripe in this area is the look of hands when they interact with objects.  I have yet to see a game come close to getting this right, and they often end up looking more like paws to me than hands.  Outside of the characters, I was particularly fond of the water effects.  Waterfalls are appropriately majestic, and the various bodies of water (and there are many) are as good as I’ve seen.  Heck, even the “wet” look of Drake as he exits various pools and rivers is just short of stunning. 

Uncharted plays like a platformer mixed with a shooter, ala Tomb Raider.  You work your way through the game shooting and platforming your way through various ruins and structures.  The gunplay here works well enough.  The shooting controls are reasonably responsive, but I took issue with the slow tracking while aiming.  There were quite a few times I found myself assailed by a baddie outside my view, and the painfully slow tracking led to more than one death.  This springs in part from the typical complaint I have about any kind of FPS or shooter on consoles – no controller is as responsive as a mouse.  There is also an adequate selection of weapons ranging from pistols of various power levels along with a host of high-impact firearms like machine guns and grenade launchers.  Each time I found a new pistol variant I could feel the difference immediately, and the same goes for the various shotguns and machine guns.

Outside of weaponry, you can also choose to speak to bad guys with your fists.  The melee combat here, though, is some of the worst I’ve seen.  I never felt like I was actually in control of my punches and kicks, but rather felt like I was participating in glorified quick time events.  I rarely found a use for melee because of this, and only later used it extensively in order to unlock a few trophies. 

Uncharted also uses a cover system.  You can hide behind walls and boxes and such, then pop out and fire fairly easily.  (It’s interesting to note that I could always tell when a room would be the scene of a big firefight due to the presence of obvious cover points.)  The sticky covering system did occasionally cause some irritating issues.  There were quite a few times where I found myself sticking to cover I didn’t WANT to stick to, like right in the middle of a firefight.  There were also many times I found it difficult to get OUT of cover quickly enough to respond to moving enemies. 

As for the platforming sections, I’m being kind by saying I found the controls lacking.  Platformers in the 3D age often suffer from what I’d call mushy controls – which is the last thing you want when perched precariously above a waterfall.  I’m certain the vast majority of my deaths in Uncharted came courtesy of the poor controls sending me over the edge, literally.  The camera also contributes to the troubles.  Quite a few sections required diagonal jumps that were difficult to get right due to poor camera placement.  You do normally have some control in regards to camera positioning, but there are times you have almost no control at all.  It’s just plain difficult to jump at a precise angle with an uncooperative camera.  Another issue is that it isn’t always easy to ascertain where you need to go to reach objectives.  Some things LOOK like you could jump at and grab, but you can’t, and some routes through levels were very easy to miss.

The selection of puzzles in the game really aren’t worth discussing.  They are your typical mix of pushing statues, lighting torches and pulling levers.  I didn’t find any of them particularly challenging.  I suppose if I had anything nice to say about them its that I found them at least reasonably organic.  Nothing I had to do to progress felt completely out of place in terms of the game world.

I don’t have any alchemical formula to tabulate the overall scores I award.  A 5 in graphics coupled with a 2 in gameplay doesn’t equal a 3.5 overall, for instance.  Particularly strong elements can often cancel out bad elements, and vice versa.  What I look for is how I felt once the final bad guy was bested and my proverbial hero rode off into the sunset.  Was I satisfied with how it ended?  Did I enjoy myself most of the time?  Did it leave me wanting more?  Uncharted’s amazing visuals and cinematic storytelling outweigh its shortcomings in terms of overall gameplay, at least for me.  I found myself enthralled by the tale of Nathan Drake, and any misgivings about mushy controls and the like were forgotten by the time I reached Uncharted’s climactic final battle.  I left Uncharted with a smile on my face, itching to rush out and buy the sequel – can you really ask for anything more?

[xrr rating=4/5]

There’s a kind of mystic alchemy to the creation of a gaming masterpiece; you can put together a title with eye-popping graphics, killer sound and voicework, amazing gameplay and an engaging storyline and STILL not quite have a classic on your hands. There is an unknown quality that ties all of these elements together into a perfect and cohesive gaming experience, and very few games have managed to do so. Half Life 2 and Bioshock will live on forever in the memories of those who played them because they got everything just right. Heavy Rain is a title that at times almost got it to this level, but two serious design mistakes got in the way.

Play it Again, Sam

A high level of replayability is a trait shared by every gaming masterpiece.  I played my way through Half Life 2 recently for the 5th time, and I’ve toured the world of Rapture in Bioshock 3 times, and I expect to do so again soon.  You don’t replay these games just for nostalgia’s sake, either, you play them again because they are FUN every time you boot them up.  You would think that replaying Heavy Rain would be worthwhile, with all the branching paths the story can take both on the level of individual scenes and the overall narrative, but doing so is just not nearly as enjoyable the second or third time around.

I feared that a game driven almost entirely by quick time events wouldn’t be challenging or interesting enough for an entire game.  In some ways this fear was unfounded,, as I found the QTEs engaging and oftentimes quite exciting.  The QTE-heavy playstyle worked just fine for my first journey through the game, but fell woefully short on successive playthroughs.

Normally I relish a second playthrough of a great game.  I don’t have to pay as much attention to solving puzzles or figuring out bosses or whatnot, and I’m given the freedom to explore the world and gameplay in different and interesting ways.  With Heavy Rain, I was in a rush to just get it done.  I often found myself ignoring the story-heavy interludes , and even allowed many response windows to time-out in the interest of speed.  I just wanted to get through it and see the new ending.

Beyond the problems with the immediate replayability of Heavy Rain, I frankly don’t see myself compelled to fire this game up again in 2 years the way I am with Warcraft III or Half Life 2.  I’ve literally seen everything the game has to offer, and once was more than enough.  The QTEs were a lot better than I expected, but it’s not the kind of gameplay that will draw me in again and again (like fighting Big Daddies, for instance.)  I applaud the inclusion of so many different epilogues and endings, but it’s not enough to provide the game any real longevity.

An American in Paris, Sort Of

I fully understand that Quantic Dream is a French studio, and therefore I can’t necessarily fault them for employing French voice actors almost exclusively.  The problem with this approach to Heavy Rain is that it’s set in Philadelphia, and every character is American.  I realize that this still might not be enough reason to forego French voice actors for Americans.  If Heavy Rain were a 3D action/platformer with scant story sections thrown in for flavor, I could live with it; but the crux – the absolute heart of Heavy Rain is the narrative.   A game with weighty subject matter and heavy storytelling absolutely demands believable voice actors throughout.  If I were writing a dramatic game focused on French characters, I wouldn’t be knocking on Sly Stallone’s door to see if he was available.

Still, for the most part the voice acting is serviceable, and even borders on good in some cases.  But those times where it is bad, it took me right out of the story.  One particular scene late in the game involves the death of a child, and ought to be emotional.  The obviously French voice actors had me laughing.  If your goal is high drama and you get laughter, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s not only the voice acting that could have used an American here or there, either.  Some of the writing sounds stilted, out of place, and utterly foreign.  There are many examples of this, but here are a couple of my personal favorites.  “He was struck off the medical register.”  We Americans don’t strike people off the medical register.  We take away their licenses to practice medicine.  “It’s a painkiller.  It’s for the pain.”  Wow, I never knew what painkillers were for!  Ouch.

This kind of issue isn’t unique to Heavy Rain.  Quite often the dialogue for games (even AAA titles) is written by the game designers themselves – it’s not standard practice to employ professional writers.  If games are to move forward in terms of storytelling, they MUST start employing real writers more often, and not just the Tom Clancys of the world.  Even if they only employ an editorial staff to proof stuff that’s written, that could be a big step forward.

The Final Analysis

Though Heavy Rain didn’t quite make it into the VIP club of gaming masterpieces, it is a fantastic gaming experience.  It sets a new standard in terms of photorealism, the QTE driven gameplay is often exhilarating, and the story is engaging and appropriately mysterious.  I still feel a bit bummed out about it, though.  Tightening things up here or there could have pushed it into a whole new realm of greatness, but it tripped a few times and didn’t quite get there.  It could have been a contender; a great experience that could have been incredible.  Everyone should play Heavy Rain at least once, and once may be more than enough.  I do hope that its success can help reinforce new standards in storytelling.  Perhaps it could also lead to a bit more imagination when it comes to “adult” gaming experiences that focus more on mature subjects and emotions rather than fountains of blood and sex.  Heavy Rain has at least shown that there is a market for this type of experience, and hopefully it’s a harbinger of similar titles aimed more squarely at older gamers.