Action Games: Characters Part 2

So, I’ve finally gotten a chance to play some Dark Souls, and I have to say, while I like it, I’m kind of disappointed I rolled a Sorcerer as my first character.  Maybe the magic gets better, but right now, I’m just not enjoying it that much.  I think I’m going to reroll some kind of sword and board Paladin or something, unless heavy armor sucks.  However, this does segue nicely into what I wanted to talk about last Thursday (and Wednesday….), but I wound up watching Tucker and Dale vs. Evil with my friends and never wrote anything: protagonist variation in action games.  Now, Dark Souls is not an action game, although its combat does seem to have some nice elements from action games, nor does it have a set character (you make your own at start), but it does do something I like: it tries to mix up styles.  Mixing up styles leads to different protagonists and that leads to different experiences.

One thing I’ve been somewhat upset about for the past few years is the lack of sorcerer/wizard protagonists in action games.  Yes, there are heroes who have a handful of spells and magical powers in action games, but most of these guys are still burly barbarian men who scowl like Space Marines (another issue, but we’ll get to that later) and focus on beating and stabbing monsters to death.  Actual spellcaster types as heroes though are rather lacking, probably because conventional wisdom says that players would prefer to hit people with a sword than burn them to cinders, or maybe because spells are seen as too complicated.  I don’t know why there aren’t more of them, but I imagine part of it is that it’s difficult to figure out the mechanics of making an action game for a sorcerer.  After all, it’s pretty easy to figure out how to swing a sword.

See, Link's got the right idea!

Sure, it’s not easy to swing a sword in real life, but it’s not hard to figure out some basic mechanics for racking up combos and special attacks when it comes to a sword (or a chain whip as is more likely the case).  This is not easy for spells.  Can you juggle with a fireball (and not be a fighting game character), or are we going to have to bust out a wind spell?  Can you even give a wind spell a visual characteristic that doesn’t look cheesy?  So, yeah, it’s going to be a bit difficult for developers to figure out what to do, so I can understand the lack of these characters, but I think it’s time we break developers out of that comfort zone.

Building a sorcerer hero from the ground up is going to cause a developer to really look at and examine typical action game tropes.  Are juggles and combos necessary for the game, or can we do something else with magic to make the game just as engaging to play as God of War?  Maybe instead of trying to get a chain of hits to a rhythm, a spellcaster might fight several, weaker enemies and see how many she can roast with a single spell.  Boss monsters, instead of being gigantic, Shadow of the Colossus rip offs could instead implement some sort of counterspell system, although hopefully one that’s different than the tennis game Ganondorf likes to play.

Looking at the basic design of action games is going to make developers start trying different things, and different things means newer characters.  Hopefully, newer characters means we won’t have a bald, over-muscled scowler as a hero, and instead, we’ll get some one with a look all of their own, like a slender, athletic sorcerer, or a stocky, but jolly bard?  The two things may not be completely interconnected, but they are going to feed into each other, and the over genericization of action games has begun to lead to super generic video game heroes, which is always upsetting.

Ubisoft’s Latest DRM Blunder

I’m not really a journalist anymore, so I don’t really use this blog to “report news.”  Not like I used it to do that when I was a journalist, but I really prefer to offer commentary and opinion on various goings on with various types of media, but then, we get to see stupid crap like Ubisoft counting changing a graphics card as changing a system as far as their “X Number of Installs” DRM,or to be a bit less technical: a bunch of guys changed out their graphics cards while doing benchmarks and a game said it’s maximum number of installs and refused to work.

Oh wait, this is commentary!

Now, as the Rock, Paper, Shotgun article I linked indicated, this is probably a glitch and not an intended consequence of Ubisoft’s already arbitrary DRM crap, but it’s still rather irritating, especially with as of Monday morning, Ubisoft hasn’t gotten back to them after contacting them four days previously.  It’s things like this that make it really hard to want to support a studio that obviously cares enough about the artistic direction of video games when they pull this DRM shit.  I know I’m not really a PC gamer or anything, but I don’t want to support a company who will choose to shackle one section of the fanbase just because of their chosen access point.

I’m really trying to understand Ubisoft’s reasoning for their restrictive DRM policies.  I respect the idea of trying to curb piracy and I can get behind the idea of making sure they can protect their IPs, but their way of doing it is so ass-backwards, even by the standards set by the rest of the industry, it becomes infuriating to just think about what they’re trying to do.  I’m willing to grant to Ubisoft this particular instance is probably a glitch in the software, but in a lot of ways, it really encapsulates how little they seem to care or realize what their policies are doing to consumers.

Gabe Newell has said that a problem with piracy is really more of a problem with service, and Ubisoft is absolute proof of this.  We can bring up the arguments about punishing legitimate customers and the “$50 rental” all day, but those have been trotted out over and over again, and it’s clear they know these arguments and don’t care about them. I think they made that particularly clear this summer.

No, what we need to discuss are alternatives to this.  We need to show them that there are ways to incentivise legitimate consumers without being patronizing to them, like EA does , and show them there are ways of curbing piracy without making pirating a copy feel more legitimate than purchasing it (I’ve heard the argument that someone may buy a copy of the game, throw it out and then pirate it, just to show support of the game, but not have to be crippled by the DRM release).  Steam is one way of doing that, but it does have its own problems and issues that go along with it.  Day one DLC is an idea, but a lot of that is either superficial or it can feel like a way to punish pirates/used buyers/people borrowing games from their friends, so it’s probably not the way to go.

Instead, the industry and the hobby, needs to collectively sit down and figure this one out.  PC gaming isn’t going to go anywhere and consoles will probably take on more and more aspects of PC gaming (until they eventually merge), and piracy isn’t going to go away either, so this stand off needs to end, soon, before fans and companies start doing even stupider crap than they have already.

Personally, I think it would be smarter if companies gave a larger incentive to pirate (or buy new) than they currently do. Honestly, things like extra characters or cool weapons to download at launch is kind of stupid (especially if I have to sign up for some kind of service just to get Zaeed…) and kind of comes off as condescending, like I said earlier in the post.  I mean, it’s cool that they have this extra character or weapon, but the feeling is that the publisher is saying to me “oh, you’ve decided not buy used?  OK then, I guess I’ll let you have everything on the disc.  Well, everything I don’t want to sell you later anyway.”  It doesn’t feel like I’m getting rewarded for supporting them, but instead, they’re begrudgingly giving me access to what I spent my money on.

It also doesn't help that my "reward" for buying new is a guy like this. Maybe if it were Kasumi...

I’ve found things like art books, posters and maps do a better job of getting me to buy new (or get Collectors Editions as the case may be), but that’s not really something that’s going to work for everyone and in the case of buying used, it may mean Game Stop will just require someone who wants to sell the game for a quick buck to include the art book or map.  They haven’t done it yet, but who knows what could happen if art books become widespread.  Still, it is nice to get little “feelies” with a game, even if it’s just a cool looking poster, so that is something publishers can start with.

I don’t think finding an ideal solution is going to be easy though, but I don’t think it’s entirely impossible either.  I think what we do need to see is more understanding of the mindset of the consumer on the part of the publishers.  I mean, it’s clear most of the developers understand their audience, but it’s time the business people do too.

Action Games: Characters

I guess yesterday’s rant about action games is turning into more of a thing.  I guess with Zelda and Castlevania, I’ve got action games on my mind right now, but I’m not sure if it’ll be going anywhere else with this, but hey, it’s a nice topic.  Anyway, continuing on from a thread I mentioned in passing in yesterday’s post, one of the advantages of moving to a more varied types of combat in action games is a wider variety of characters and character designs, and I don’t just mean characters with cooler clothes.

Although, lets be honest, we could use more heroes with this guy's fashion sense

More than just better looking characters, we could also be looking at a wider variety of character types beyond your average barbarian or ninja (let’s be honest, Ezio is basically a ninja, especially after Revelations), like thieves, mages or even bards (!).  Video games don’t necessarily lack for a variety of heroes, but it would be good to play something we really haven’t seen.  After all, when was the last time there was an action game that looked like the Dresden Files?

There’s a little bit of this already thanks to the explosion of superheroes over the past couple of years, and that’s cool, but there’s still so much more we can do.  Imagine a game like Devil May Cry, but instead of being armed with dual pistols and a giant sword, our hero shoots balls of fire or lightning bolts and can protect herself with magical auras.  I know there have been a few games that tried this, but not quite on the whole scale of what I’m talking about.

Action Games: Thoughts

Yesterday, they announced the Fifth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  If there ever was a time for me to comment on it, now would be it.  So, I’m not going to.  Not for a while, at least.  Maybe I’ll talk about some ideas for a Fantasy Heartbreaker I’d like to see, but in the meantime, I think I’m going to stick to talking about video games and comic books.  At least until I can form a better thought on the subject.

In the meantime, I recently bought the new Castlevania, subtitled Lords of Shadow, to play when I finished Skyward Sword on Sunday.  That was…kind of a mistake, playing Castlevania after beating Zelda, because despite being released only a year before Skyward Sword, Lords of Shadow feels like it’s a century behind in terms of level design, combat and even just plain running around.

Honestly, it feels out of date compared to God of War 3

The game isn’t really bad or anything, but after playing some kick ass action games (and action RPGs) this year, I can’t help but look at this as nothing but a low rent version of God of War, and as a big Castlevania fan, I’m rather disappointed.  However, it has done a good job of highlighting some issues with the post-Batman (post-Assassin’s Creed?) era of action games and what they need to do to develop.

The big thing I noticed about Castlevania is the movement.  It wasn’t the only problem, but it was right there at the start.  Well, that and the crappy fixed camera.  Gabriel, our Belmont this time around, moves quickly and takes to the air like Dante in Devil May Cry, but he doesn’t move with the fluidity and rhythm of Batman or the precision and grace of Ezio.  He doesn’t even have the agility or strength of Skyward Sword’s Link and that wasn’t even an action game.  Gabriel doesn’t move naturally, or at least, how natural in relation to modern video game characters.  Sure, he can run and jump and swing a whip around, but he can’t climb (can’t climb well), leap off of walls, or even turn his momentum into an attack (or maybe I just haven’t unlocked that).  Even his attacks are limited to a handful of stock animations and there isn’t much variety to mix and match.

Fortunately, it seems like Lords of Shadow isn’t exactly the wave of the future for 3D action games, but it does show we’re not quite out of the “God of War but…” woods yet.  It’s a shame we’re still dealing with this, because there are a lot of directions the genre can go, since it really, really needs to advance, and just aping on Assassin’s Creed and Batman isn’t going to be the solution, they are, however, going to help guide the future.

Action game protagonists need to be quick and agile and have a large range of movement.  Not every game needs to be some kind of open world sandbox, but simple things like easy counters and being able to run up a wall are going to expand the repertoire of the average action game hero.  Characters also need to move like they have weight behind them.  It was nice for Dante to give us some nice, weightless jumps, but Altair showed players that we can have a hero with speed and grace and feel like they have some actual mass to them.  Adding that bit of weight to the character will make their attacks feel more damaging and their movements more natural, even if they’re leaping 20 feet vertically from a standing position (Mario can attest to that).

That wasn't a fat joke, I swear

It’s also important to move beyond the Simon-says minigames, and the requisite “light and heavy attacks” set up too.  Cool things can be done by looking at fighting games like Soul Calibur, or even Guilty Gear.  Doing this would mean we can finally play someone who isn’t some kind of chain-wielding Ghost Rider wannabe.  Personally, I’ve found that I’ve done more cool sword stuff playing as Mitsurugi than I ever did playing as Dante or Ryu Hyabusa, and that’s a shame.  I’m not saying that I need to turn the analog stick in a quarter circle to throw out a badass special move (although it did work pretty well for Alucard in Symphony of the Night), but I do think being able to switch what kind of attacks I’ve got based on how I’m facing my opponent would be very cool.  Positioning is already a factor in video game combat, changing up what kind of attacks and how my style works based on positioning will be very cool, and encourage all sorts of new character designs.

On the whole, I think we might be moving in the right direction, as long as we can jettison some of the worst parts of the Devil May Cry/God of War era.  They were certainly excellent games, but some of their innovations have begun to run it’s course.  I’m growing really tired of Simon Sez.

Games of the Year 2011

This year I managed to play a lot more games than last, so, I’ve managed to expand my list to a full 10 games this year.  I probably won’t be going back to awarding games for specific consoles like I did in 2009, since that means I leave out a few games that should be recognized and it’s a somewhat stifling and self-limiting format.  Over the next couple of days, I may be doing some “Genre of the Year” posts, but I’ll be dedicating an entire post to those games, since I think they deserve more than the couple hundred words I’ve devoted to them here.  Or, in the case of a few games, they don’t show up here.

Anyway, without any other stops, here are my Top 10 Games of 2011:

10. Assassin’s Creed Revelations

Still good, but the series is starting to show a bit of age, and at only 5 years, that’s not a good sign. Too many crappy features and a mostly pointless story really push this away from being a really excellent game. There are some awesome set pieces and missions, but most of them are just duds, especially the final half hour. Revelations also takes an additional hit for adding the terrible tower defense minigame which rewards the player who masters it, by going away. The whole thing seemed terribly out of character for the series and ultimately pointless.

9. InFamous 2

This should be higher up on the list, but that ending causes the game to end crashing and burning. Overall, this game is a huge step up from its predecessor: better controls, an easier to navigate city, a more nuanced story with a better supporting cast and better villains. Unfortunately, it ends so horribly, that I honestly felt insulted by the game.

8. Sonic Generations

OK, saying this game is the best Sonic game since Sonic Adventure isn’t really saying anything, but it is an actually good Sonic game, which is pretty much the only reason it wound up on this list, since I’m biased and a huge Sonic fan from way back. The game is actually good. Like, it’s fun to play, the levels are well designed (gasp!) and some of them are actually better than the original (Speed Highway, City Escape, Sky Sanctuary, all of the Post-Dreamcast levels…). It’s a shame there are only 9 Zones and the bosses really, really suck.

7. Saints Row the Third

It’s funny, it’s crude and it probably ins’t as good as it should be, but god damn, I really enjoyed playing this game. I haven’t had the chance to really play any of the other games in the series, so I probably don’t have the best perspective on this game, but I thought it was a great sandbox in the vein of the old, silly Grand Theft Auto games. Sure, the story is goofy and there apparently isn’t as much customization as the previous game, but fuck it, it was a lot of fun.

6. Frozen Synapse

Normally, turn based strategy games aren’t really my bag, but this kick ass cyberpunk indie title really worked for me. It feels like playing high stakes chess on crack while wired to Shadowrun’s Matrix, so, yeah, it’s pretty fuckin’ rad. It’s harsh, unforgiving and it makes the players work for their victory, which makes it all the sweeter, and that’s just the single player campaign. It also shipped with one of the most robust multiplayer and communities I’ve ever seen in an indie title. It’s a shame all anyone wants to play is Dark Extermination though…

5. Uncharted 3

Once again, Naughty Dog delivers a kick ass Uncharted game, with all the action, character and storytelling players should expect. The game does a little bit more with the narrative, which is good, and is even more seamless in the transitions from a cutscene to gameplay, which can be good sometimes, but can also get Drake killed. The context sensitive controls have been improved, making the jump into combat by expanding the range of Drake’s melee combat skill. Melee is finally fun to do, which would make sense, considering the game’s pulp inspiration, and it makes up for the slightly skewed aiming (which Naughty Dog was nice enough to patch). Still, the game is very formulaic and its got scenes that have no purpose. That pirate ship kicked ass, but what was the point of it? Also, the game needed a lot more of new character, Charlie Cutter, easily Naughty Dog’s best supporting character since Sig.

4. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

OK, yes, the graphics weren’t that great and the story could get kind of silly at certain places. There were also the terrible and pointless boss fights, but the level design, the multiple ways to solve the same puzzle and the great gameplay more than makes up for any of the game’s shortcomings. Even the story is pretty good, if it has a few dead ends and the ending was just a lame multiple choice question that didn’t take your actions into account and had no real consequences. It does a good job of really looking at transhumanism, and its social, economic and political ramifications, from a rather unbiased perspective, which is pretty cool. Most games don’t go into as much detail as Deus Ex does, and while some of that detail does come off as silly, it gives the narrative much more weight. If only there were a bit more to the characters.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

All right, full disclosure: after finally getting a chance to play with the Wii Motion Plus, I am not impressed, and it really hurts this game. Yeah, it’s cool in combat, but sometimes the Wiimote can be over or under sensitive, which means Link didn’t attack like I intended more often than he should have. That’s okay, since the much-vaunted swordplay really doesn’t come up that often, since most enemies just need to be hit “the right way” once, and then you can just wail on them. Problems with the motion controls aside, the game is easily one of the best Zelda games ever. Not only does it explain a lot about the Zelda mythos (and those explanations are fucking awesome), Skyward Sword finally moves away from the Zelda staple of “dungeon, use over world to get to dungeon, dungeon, repeat.” Much like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess before it, Skyward Sword features lots of adventuring away from the dungeons, and actually, most of the adventuring is actual in the over world, which has become more varied in layout and design. Sure, there’s just a forrest, desert and volcano, but the design of these places are much better than the generic flat plains and forests Hyrule past (or, future, I guess) and since Link has decided to take parkour lessons from Ezio Auditore, running around in these new areas is just a lot of fun. I haven’t even gotten into the game’s great narrative, which explores Link and Zelda’s relationship like no other game in the series and has characters with actual arcs and some real emotions. Even the normally silent and stoic Link manages to have a broader range of feelings, which is awesome. This is one of Link’s most epic journeys and the few frustrating bits are easily ignored.

2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

This game is bad ass. It’s like a heavy metal album, with some of the best of Walt Simonson’s Thor and a bit of a Song of Ice and Fire for flavor, mixed to a wonderful and brutal sandbox epic of dragon slaying. Sure, magic is a bit weak and the quests could be a bit more in depth, but nothing really compares with climbing to the top of the tallest mountain in the world to talk to one of the most powerful dragon ever to live, or delving into dark dungeons to learn magic Words of Power or assassinating the MASSIVE SPOILER CENSORS to finish off the Dark Brotherhood quests. Not to mention the hand crafted world looks fucking gorgeous, thanks to the varied terrain types and magical city design. Seeing Solitude from a distance is an experience all to itself. Half the fun is just riding around on Shadowmere and seeing just what is over that hill, only to be attacked by a dragon and a bear all at the same time. Sure, the NPC dialog is a little off, and it would be nice if the faction quests had more meat to them (well, the Companions and the College of Winterhold at least, that’s not a problem for the Thieves Guild or the Dark Brotherhood), but those don’t distract from how much fun the game is. A bit immersion breaking perhaps, but it doesn’t make the game worse.

1. Batman: Arkham City

Arkham Asylum was the first game that made me feel like I was Batman. I was an unstoppable ninja detective superhero who could take on any challenge. Arkham City takes this same Batman out of the Metroid inspired Asylum and drops him into a fully realized, Gotham-sized city prison and it does so without skipping a beat. The flowing, graceful combat from the original is improved and expanded, with multi-counters, better upgrades and extra takedowns. The stealth based “predator” sequences also get some upgrades simply by moving Batman out of the gargoyle-strewn “stealth rooms” from the original game. Now, the stealth sections require more planning, more psychological warfare and more clever usage of Batman’s gadgets, creating some of the most awesome and badass sequences of video gaming this year. The story is a little muddled compared to the original, but that’s mostly due to the switch to a more open world gameplay, which can easily distract players with multitudes of cool side quests, all of which delve deep into Batman’s complex mythology.

Honorable Mention: Dark Souls

There’s always one highly acclaimed game I didn’t get to play and this year, it was Dark Souls. It certainly looked like it was a lot of fun, and certainly and improvement over Demon Souls, its spiritual predecessor. However, I just didn’t get around to playing it like I wanted, so I can’t accurately rank it on the list. So, I think I’ll put it here to give it some kind of recognition, even if I can’t honestly rank it on my list.

 Biggest Disappointment of 2011: Skyward Sword’s Motion Controls- There were a lot of big disappointments this year, and InFamous 2′s ending is probably actually worse than the controls, but these had the biggest impact for me. The game is phenomenal, yes, and it’s cool that Nintendo made the game compatible with the Wii Motion Plus controller and that Link will swing the sword in the same way the player swings the Wiimote, but most of the game can be beaten by just swinging the controller around wildly and hoping something dies. There are a handful of enemies that really require the correct swing to hit, but most of these guys are bosses or sub-bosses and most of the time, they only require a single precise swing to stun them, allowing Link to just wail on them with reckless abandon. The game is more about timing than correct swings, but with the removal of the cooler sword techniques from Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, the combat is more than a little gimmicky. Every so often, there’s an excellent badguy that requires some real precise attacks, but those are not common. Worse are the flying controls, which sometimes decide they’re just not going to work. It makes traversing the Sky much worse than it should be, slowing the game to a crawl. There are a few cross-area fetch quests, that require Link to travel the sky to get an item, and the controls just make this an exercise in frustration.

Worst Game of 2011: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

Well, it’s probably not the worst game of the year (that actually should go to Call of Juarez), but it’s the worst game I played. The campaign is short, about half the length of the other two Modern Warfare titles (games that were already too short to begin with) and features a serious 180-degree shift in theme and tone, turning the previously war-critical Modern Warfare series into a propaganda piece. The story lacks any of the real shocks or twists of the previous games, although it certainly tries to do so, with results ultimately failing or coming off as emotionally manipulative. The challenge maps are OK, and some of them do add to the story, but a lot of them are riffs on stuff from the previous games, or just stuff we already did in this game. There isn’t really anything new here. I’m not going to comment on the multiplayer, since I didn’t play it, maybe that is a saving grace, but I don’t play games for multiplayer, barring some exceptions.

Defining Property

In the future, and by future I mean within the decade, we’re going to have a serious discussion about what property in a digital, post-scarcity era means.  We’re going to have to determine how much control the purchaser, the original IP creator and the distributor has over a piece of data and how much of what we own, we actually own.  This is something that’s going to be fought out in countless legal battles over the next several years, although the current batch of “no lawsuit!” EULAs that are making the rounds may delay this, but not for very long (months at most).

Like I said last week, it’s easy to determine what is a person’s property when they can hold up a physical disc or tape as evidence of purchase and there’s very little another party can do to stop them from using it, even if that other party is the distributor or original creator of that disc.  Obviously, with a piece of data, something that can only exist within another physical product and cannot be held up with the same physical scrutiny of an object that can be held in a person’s hands.  In other words, it’s clear I own my iPod, but how much do I own my copy of Iron Maiden’s “Piece of Mind” that resides within the iPod.

Sure they look innocent, but this is where the battle began

The general expectation is, of course, what I paid for I own.  Yes, some things are licensed or rented, but that has to be determined right when money changes hands and can’t really be imposed afterwords.  This is what makes the overly restrictive DRM and last second EULA changes so odious to the consumer, since it feels like something illegal or at least malicious is happening, but no one is doing anything about it.

Take a look at the rumors of people being locked out or Origin accounts for being douchebags on the forums.  Granted, some of these people are being assholes on a public forum and that’s not a good thing, but if they are really being locked out of their games for things they are doing away from the game, it’s going to feel like someone is jerking a legitimate consumer away from their stuff through extra legal means.

I have a feeling this is going to become my new "Jean-Luc"

Plugging users into these inescapable elements like DRM or Origin may work for these companies in the short term, but I have a feeling that it’s going to become an albatross around the necks of these companies before too much longer.  There are a lot of people interested in the nature of digital property, and restricting it so far has led to mass amounts of piracy.  It’s also clear the current business model employed by media distributors probably isn’t going to work as long as digital media becomes more and more popular.

What needs to be done is that consumers and developers need to have a long talk about what constitutes right of ownership.  This is something that needs to go beyond copyright, because while the creator certainly has their right to get paid, the consumer is clearly not a passive consumer when there’s an exchange of money going on.  Things are already getting heated on both sides and continuing a drawn out war of words is not going to be healthy for anyone, and if big companies continue to try and impose old school market techniques on a brand new market, they’re just going to get their ass handed to them, SOPA, Protect IP, etc. be damned.

That’s not going to be good for anyone in the long term either.  We’re already seeing tons of piracy and an over-reaction to said piracy, which is creating bad blood among even legitimate consumers.  Boycotts and mass piracy probably aren’t going to topple any big companies, but it can do some damage to smaller or more esoteric projects if things don’t improve on either side.  Both sides need to be striving towards a more productive future, which will require both sides making concessions, because this fighting can’t really be sustained.

A Few Short Notes on Digital Distribution

Sorry I haven’t updated in a few weeks.  I got sick last week and then the week before was Thanksgiving.  I like to be lazy that week, which is a trend I hope to continue for the rest of my life.

Anyway, this article by John Walker at Rock, Paper Shotgun has been making the rounds lately, talking about the much discussed, but little detailed, EA Origin bans.  For everyone too lazy to click the link, basically, a lot of people are claiming they’re being locked out of their Origin games when they receive a ban on the official forums, or get moderated in some way.  One guy even claims he got locked out, eventually permanently, of his games, which EA said they would soon be deleting (along with saves) for being quoted in an offending post on the official forums.  EA hasn’t spoken a word about the bans other than saying they “broke the rules” about two weeks ago.

While it’s true that some of these stories could be fabrications, or exaggerations of the fact, it does point out some serious issues the gaming community needs to discuss when it comes to digital distribution.  Essentially, we need to talk about how much the player owns and how much control they have and deserve to have with what they have spent money on.  Essentially, the idea of digital property is in desperate need of definition, because if even some of these stories are true on the face, digital commerce is heading towards some difficult times.

When a consumer purchases a physical product, they own that product.  Now, there are some restrictions on the copyright that prevent the owner from doing certain things, like burning a bunch of copies of The Dark Knight and selling it on the street corner, but that physical disc, and its contents, are owned by the original consumer.  If the owner does something to offend Warner Brothers, there’s nothing in place for Warner Brothers to prevent that user from watching the movie.  They can get a person arrested if they start selling bootleg copies, but they can’t take away the physical disc (although the police could probably take it for evidence, but that’s another can of worms).

Obviously, this form of protection is not available for digital distribution.  People expect to own what they pay for, so it’s not surprise the reaction people are having to Origin (and other digital distributors, but I’m sticking with video games), because they feel like they’re getting their stuff stolen from for arbitrary reasons.  Further, very few of these games directly state the purchaser is actually licensing the game rather than purchasing it, which compounds the issue.

Right now, EA is pointing to their End User License Agreements, which all users sign before they can start purchasing through Origin.  This will work for a time, but I don’t know for how much longer.  People are getting angry, and there isn’t much legislative or judicial support for EULAs, at least in the United States, and I don’t know if EULAs are worth supporting in their current form.  I think to have an effective form of digital distribution, Origin needs to starting looking what Valve is doing with Steam (or Amazon is doing with their music).  Even Steam has its problems, but the current punitive measures aren’t going to work.

More on this in the future.

Sex, Sexuality and Sexism in video games

OK, I’ve been putting this one off for a while.  I think it’s time to talk about sex.  I just know I’m going to offend someone, women especially.  I just want to start by saying that I’m in favor of seeing better treatment of women in games.  I just hope that point gets across tonight.

I could have a hundred thousand “birds and bees” puns here, but I already know that I’m putting my foot in my mouth by broaching the subject and I’m going to be taking heat from all sides here in a bit, so I’m going to leave off any weak attempt at wit.  The past several months, I’ve been researching how sexuality has been portrayed in video games, specifically in regards to how it applies to women.  It’s no real secret that video games has been considered a “boy pastime” since its inception and thus, it’s no real surprise that many video games are aimed squarely at teenage boys.  Unfortunately, because of this, it’s led to video games having a rather simplistic and immature view of what constitutes sex, which has led to more than just confusion when it comes to the sexuality presented within video games and the culture that surrounds it.

Sometimes, that video game culture can be really awesome and can do some really amazing things, but it can also get really dark and that’s really depressing.  Part of this has been spurred on by the social isolation of the video gaming world for several years, but it certainly hasn’t helped when the primary female ambassador for video games to the outside world was sold more on her physical attributes than the fact she was actually a somewhat well-rounded Indiana Jones expy.  When you look at Lara Croft, it’s hard not to remember some of the more “interesting” ads that ran in the mid-to-late 90′s during the height of her popularity that focused almost entirely on how large her breasts were.  Considering that Lara herself is actually a strong female character who actually has a character beyond her boobs, this is rather distressing, which is made much worse by the thought that she probably wouldn’t have a shred of the popularity she had, nor the mainstream recognition, if the ads she featured in didn’t focus solely on her attractiveness.

There certainly isn’t anything wrong with the level of attractiveness that Lara presents.  Considering her job and hobbies, it’s not surprise that she’d be athletic and attractive, even if certain attributes of hers are too exaggerated to be realistic.  Uncharted’s Nathan Drake is also ridiculously attractive, and they’re basically the same person (actually, Nate is kind of needy and always has to have his girlfriend/wife around to bail him out, which rarely happens with Lara), but the problem is, Lara’s focus is almost entirely on her attractiveness while Nate gets to just be “Indiana Jones for the PS3 era” or something like that.  While this may speak to a larger culture outside of video games, it does illustrate a problem we have with female characters and our portrayals of them.  No one is putting Nathan Drake in a mankini or a wet t-shirt (outside of the video games at least…) in the ads to drum up sales, even though that might actually work in Nate’s case, but they are doing that with Lara and it’s extremely disturbing.

The problem is really all about mixed signals.  It’s clear that developers are at least trying, sort of, more on that in a bit, to be inclusive towards women, but their presentation has made things much more problematic than helpful.  Let’s take a look at Ivy, who is pictured to the left there in the skimpy, dominatrix style armor.  She’s clearly someone’s idea of a “strong female character.”  She’s physically strong and tough, doesn’t take any crap from anyone, independent, confident in her sexuality and isn’t really concerned with a romantic lead or anything like that (the games even hint that she is, and wishes to remain, a virgin to prevent the spread of Soul Edge through her genes), but, well, look at her.  She’s clearly more someone’s confused sexual fantasy than an actual strong character.  There’s nothing really good about her design from any kind of standpoint, and her armor or is so skimpy that it’s no surprise that most people see her as a walking sexual billboard than an actual character.  Truthfully, she’s more disgusting that sexy, and not just because she’s more naked than clothed.

Worse, her actual moveset is so overt in its sexuality, focusing on themes related to bondage and domination, that it’s hard to believe that she’s anything but someone’s sexual fantasy.  At the same time though, looking a little closer, Ivy seems less like a sexual fantasy and more like what a 13-year-old would see a sexually confidant and powerful woman and all at once, she kind of crystalizes the problem with women in video games.  She represents the immature view the culture takes with women.  It’s not that it intends to be sexist, they really don’t know any better.

Ignorance, however, really doesn’t make things any better if it had been straight up misogyny.  It does mean that the problems can be cured with some rational thought and education, but it still causes the same sort of damage culturally and socially.  The more and more people look at Ivy as the norm, the harder it’s going to become to make any radical chances to how the average gamer sees how women should be portrayed in gaming.  For every female Commander Shepard or Samus Aran (pre Other M), we’re seeing at least three Ivy’s and Sophitia’s, with games looking more like exploitation than art.

Like I said, it’s good that developers are trying to do better, but there is still a dearth of developed female leads, and sometimes, those leads can get corrupted and co-opted by some real misogyny, like Samus was in Metroid: Other M.  Having more female characters as leads, and having them wear more than a leather thong and a bra, will help, but these characters have to be more than just “female leads” and they need to not fall into a lot of the pitfalls female leads often fall into in Hollywood.  The upcoming “Female Shepard Trailer” for Mass Effect 3 is a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done.  At least Skyrim does a good job with guards spawning as male and female.

Cinematic Gameplay: An Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception review

The Uncharted series has done more for action games and “cinematic gameplay” over the past half decade than nearly any other game in the genre, delivering high action and blurring the lines between what is played and what isn’t. The third installment, subtitled Drake’s Deception, goes further in blending cutscene and gameplay than any other game in the series, creating a rich and exciting experience, but underutilized gameplay features and a truncated story keep from reaching the success of the previous game.

Uncharted 3 sees constant treasure hunter Nathan Drake following in the footsteps of his ancestor, Sir Francis Drake, as he searches for the lost city known as Iram of the Pillars, sometimes called the Atlantis of the Sands. Drake hopes to find the city before a shadowy British secret society does, to prevent them from gaining whatever treasure, or dangerous weapon, that was left behind.

It should come as no surprise that Uncharted 3 is gorgeous. Everything about this game, from character models to the look of the blazing desert sun, looks so incredibly amazing and considering what’s actually in this game, these are some of the best graphics of any platform this year. These graphics don’t just make pretty screenshots to impress gaming journalists either, Naughty Dog has managed to integrate these amazing visuals directly into the core gameplay.

All three of the Uncharted games have blended cutscenes and playable gameplay where sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, with many of my lives being lost simply because I thought I was watching a cutscene. Uncharted 3 goes a step further with more context sensitive animations and actions than any game in the series so far. Even the updated hand-to-hand combat system utilizes these beautiful visual layouts and strong level designs by allowing Nate to utilize the environment around him to lay the smackdown on the bad guys who come after him. It’s even a gameplay tactic: if the player sees an urn or wrench or frying pan in the background, it will behove them to throw opponents towards it in order to have Nate bash them over the head with a foreign object.

This does a great job of making the game feel more like the player is playing an Indiana Jones movie, which is a good thing and a bad thing. While it’s cool to actually see things in the environment that Nate can use to beat up bad guys, but it also leads to way too many instances of the player sitting there asking “wait, am I playing or not…ok, I’m dead.” The game has issues communicating when it’s time to play and when the player can safely put down the controller and take a drink.

This kind of undermines what it is Naughty Dog is going for too. Sure, if the player knows when they can play and when they don’t need, the experience is seamless, jumping from one scene to the next with all the adrenaline of a top notch Hollywood blockbuster. However, more often than not, it’s difficult to say where gameplay stops and the cutscene begins, and vice versa, which leads to more than a few deaths, which breaks up all of the immersion the game has cultivated up to that point. This is compounded since the checkpoints aren’t placed as smartly as they were in the last game, which leads to a lot of the time where I was saying “come on, I saw this already” after I died.

Still, it’s important to give credit where it’s due for trying to emulate a more “pulp cinema” feel, especially in regards to combat. I’ve mentioned a few times that with the sheer number of people Nate kills, his character feels a little inconsistent, and it’s clear Naughty Dog heard the complaints, since combat is more focused on hand-to-hand and stealth than straight up gunplay. Even during the “Gears of War-lite” sections, bad guys will come behind cover to engage in fisticuffs, making the game feel less like “Generic Third Person Shooter” and more like an old-school pulp film.

This does skew the difficulty a little bit, since the other bad guys have guns, and Nate is not Batman and can’t fight more than one guy at a time, but for the most part, it works out pretty well. The hand-to-hand really comes down to a few quicktime events with some player-controlled punches thrown in for good measure, but that doesn’t really diminish the fun of the melee combat. It’s unfortunate it feels less like Arkham City and more like God of War, but it’s not a game killer.

There are still way too many shooting bits though, and not enough hand-to-hand or jumping bits, which is rather unfortunate. The gunplay is overall improved, with aiming a bit more precise and the levels are bit more generous with the ammo, but there are still a lot the same problems with the gunplay as with the other games in the series.

Nate is still too fragile to make the long shootouts anything more than an excerpting in frustration and some of the new enemies, like the brute or the endgame supernatural baddies that show up in every Uncharted game, are more irritating than fun. At least the heavy soldiers with the body armor aren’t always equipped with shotguns this time around, and they’re no longer immune to melee.

The biggest bugbear though is the story. All three games have been really story based, which would make sense since the developers are going for a real cinematic feel, but in this game, the story is so disjointed and characters seem to come in and out of the game at random. Sure, Nate’s mentor, Sully finally gets a chance to have some character development, but other long term cast members like Chloe and Elena seem to be here just to say “hi, we’re still here.” Hell, the fact that Nate and Elena are married isn’t even commented on during the game (just heavily implied and confirmed by the official guide). This is particularly annoying since their relationship is kind of a big deal in the last half of the game.

The game’s plot actually holds together a little bit better than the other ones. The bad guy’s goal is a lot clearer and Nate’s motivation for doing what he’s doing is a lot more personal and more keeping with his personality. The bad guys also do a good job of making it personal, since they have a real connection to Nate and his friends. The final fight with the big bad has a lot more emotional weight than the lame shootout with Lazarevic, which is good. However, it’s kind of short and there are these weird interludes, like Nate getting captured by Somali pirates. It feels like the end got clipped there at the end, like there should be another level or two after actually getting to Iram. I was honestly surprised that the game stopped when it did. I half expected another half an hour before the final boss, which sort of crept up on me.

On the whole, the game is great. It’s not quite on the level of the last game, but it does do a lot to push the series towards being that perfect blurred line between playing the game and watching a cutscene. There’s still a lot of work to do, but there are a lot worse they could have done than this.

Taking it to the Streets: A Batman Arkham City review

Batman: Arkham Asylum pulled off something that should have been impossible, it made the player become Batman. It had a few flaws, lame boss encounters and unclear objectives, but on the whole, the game was a brutal, dark combination of the best of the Batman mythos. It was missing Gotham City, and while the claustrophobic Arkham Asylum was plenty to evoke the Batman feel, the grime and darkness of Gotham, so central to Batman lore, was no where to be found. Batman: Arkham City thrusts Batman back into the gritty alley ways and crime-ridden streets of Gotham City for what is easily the best Batman game, albeit one with a few flaws carried over from the previous entry.

When woefully underutilized villain Professor Hugo Strange transforms bits of Gotham City’s slums into a city-wide prison system, Batman uses his Bruce Wayne persona to protest the prison’s creation and lobby for it’s dissolution. Strange, knowing Wayne’s secret identity, has him kidnapped by private military contractors and thrown into the prison and begins to enact the mysterious “Protocol 10” while Batman tries to stop him, and the resulting gang war within the city streets.

Those streets do a great job of establishing Batman as he’s meant to be seen. Replacing the shadows and gargoyle statues of Arkham Asylum with run-down sky scrapers and dark alleys, Batman seems more at home here than he’s ever been. It helps that it’s easy to get around Arkham City, and it’s a lot of fun too, especially gliding into some goon from out the sky like an avenging eagle. The game doesn’t wait up either, pushing the player right into the experience from the very beginning.

That opening is absolutely explosive. It does an excellent job of setting the stakes by putting Batman into one of his most hellish nights. Right from the beginning, the game promises to be brutal and harsh, and the game does not disappoint, nor does it oversell, either.

The best part of this game is that it doesn’t relent. Batman is being pushed through one of his worst experiences and it doesn’t hesitate to kick him while he’s down, nor does it let up on the player, either, pushing you through more desperate encounters than anyone should be able to handle. Through the very end of the game, the game’s narrative continues to build to an almost perfect climax.

That’s the one thing Rocksteady fixed from the original game, where major encounters and boss fights seemed mostly distinct entities. Here, each encounter builds on the next, with one major boss fight actually foreshadowing the final showdown in an incredibly memorable hallucination sequence. Even the Predator sequences, where Batman goes into full on ninja mode, continue to increase in complexity and difficulty as the game goes on.

While the gameplay has great pacing, the story, unfortunately, suffers slightly in that regard. On the whole, it’s a pretty good Batman story, but there are a lot of disparate story arcs, with a handful of them going mostly nowhere. The whole “gang war” storyline does tie into the overall plot, but what we see, especially when it comes to Two-Face, seems disjointed and almost serves as a distraction to the overall story. Also, while the sequence itself is awesome, and a nice little side story to boot, Penguin’s part of the story could almost be entirely excised from the game with no real change to the experience.

What’s unfortunate about this, is that some of the side missions, most of which are really good, do a much better job of tying into the overall story than some parts of the actual story. The Deadshot missions, as an example, tie in so well, they may as well have been regular missions instead of optional ones.

The writing is also somewhat problematic when it comes to the incidental dialog for the goons running around the city. It’s very crude and sounds way too much like a teenager trying to write an R-rated film, which is a serious disappointment, since the rest of the game has amazing dialog, especially when Mark Hamil puts in his best performance as the Joker.

Gameplay wise, there isn’t much new here. Arkham City is a refinement of what already works and cutting out what doesn’t. Rocksteady so seamlessly integrated new features, such as multi-counters and weapon quickfires, that they may as well have always been in the games. Granted, a couple of the new gadgets are mostly useless, ice grenades show up so late that the player will have already developed their own combat style, thus limiting their utility, but that’s just a minor issue.

Stealth and the Predator modes, do get something of an overhaul, since it’s clear the developers wanted to stay away from the “gargoyle rooms” of the previous entry. The player has to be a bit more crafty when taking out guards, since now they’ll break gargoyles, or they won’t exist at all, requiring the player to use some real stealth and misdirection to take out a whole bunch of goons.

Oddly, the changes in combat and stealth have managed to make the fighting somewhat easier, and kind of marginalizing the effectiveness and challenge of the goons armed with guns. Batman is good enough at dodging gunfire, disarming or just plain getting out of combat, that a lot of the challenge in taking out a group of guys with guns is gone. Batman can’t stand up to a whole squad of the guys without resorting to ninja tactics, but now three or four armed guards aren’t enough to take down the Batman.

It doesn’t make the fighting feel any less fun, if anything it does allow for some larger combats, which goes a long way in making the player feel more like Batman, but there are fewer instances of savoring the last stealth takedown of the Joker thug who’s about two seconds from wetting his pants in fear. That still happens, just without the regularity of the previous installment.

The open world aspect, which shifts the game away from a more Metroid feel towards a more Assassin’s Creed, is very cool and doesn’t really kill the flow of the game like in a lot of other open world games. It also lends itself to a whole lot of extra crap to do, which would be cool, if some of the side quests didn’t have to be completed by the end of the game (Heart of Ice, I’m looking at you).

The game tries to artificially extend its lifespan with even more challenge maps than the last game. While these are very fun, and very cool (and you can play as Robin and Nightwing…provided you pay for the DLC), there isn’t a lot of substance to them. They’re one room, and Batman either beats up thugs or takes them out with stealth. It’d be nice to see a remix of, say, the Iceberg Lounge or the Steel Mill with new objectives and new layouts.

On the whole, this is easily the most “Batman” Batman game, going even further than Arkham Asylum. It’s got some flaws, but the mean streets of Gotham more than make up for them.