Children of Hurin

I'll admit it, I'm a fan of Lord of the Rings. Despite this fact, I've never played any of the games. The upcoming LOTR MMORPG seems especially interesting, but usually games that are based on existing franchises tend to fall short of their possible greatness. So I have my doubts. LucasArts is the one notable exception to this claim: over the years I've been impressed with how the Star Wars games (Jedi Knight, X-wing & Tie Fighter, especially) have made significant strides in expanding and enriching that universe.

But the LOTR games have always been a disappointment, from what I can tell. I've played bits and pieces of them, and honestly never had a desire to play any of them all the way through. It didn't help that Frodo's stare, the One Ring, and the lidless eye all were given way more screen time than they deserved in Peter Jackson's trilogy. And since the games were so tightly tied to the movie franchise, I was expecting many more hours of a CG Frodo gazing at his CG Precious.

But with the new book The Children of Hurin, I think we have reason to be excited:

"In this way, before the summer had passed, the following of Turin had swelled to a great force, and the power of Angband was thrown back. Word of this came even to Nargothrond, and many there grew restless."

The many restless of Nargothrond... My hope is that these folk will be too restless to stare longingly at the One Ring for hours on end.

There are, however, many reasons to suspect that the new book will not be made into either a book or a movie. CNN's report on the subject states, "This is a gloomy tale -- Hurin's children doomed to failure by Turin's hubris and, of course, the curse." A video game where the protagonist doesn't win? That's a twist worth thinking about.

What if a good LOTR game could be made based on the Children of Hurin, and what if that game flew in the face of all conventional wisdom by being a game in which the curse was more powerful than the game's protagonist. What if the world was in fact doomed, and nothing you could do could stop the power of evil? A game without a happy ending. A game you couldn't win. Now that'd be something.

Good News Everyone!

In the last two days, my gaming fortunes have improved significantly. I am being sent a new Wii for free (warranties rock)and I received my confirmation email on the 17th.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Nintendo regarding our Advance Replacement
program. We wanted to let you know that your order has been shipped to you
as requested. You should receive your replacement product within the next
three to four business days.

Microsoft was a bit more terse in their email, received today.

Your Xbox Video Game system has been shipped! You can expect to receive it in 2-5 days. Thank you for your patience and get ready to get back into the action!

It is such a relief to be getting back to normal, and have such wonderful machines at my disposal, day or night at any hour.

Virtually Guaranteed to be better than either the Transformers game or the Transformers movie

Makes me wish I knew fancy modeling and animation. I tried to learn how years ago to make units for Total Annihilation, but I was never really good at it.

Perspective on Tragedy

Firstly, let me say that the shootings at Virginia Tech, which can't rightly be called anything milder than a massacre, are so shocking as to seem unreal. To anyone who was affected by this event, I extend my most sincere condolences and prayers. It's just not fair, and I wish I could do something to fix it.

This post is speculation on what will result from the media frenzy over these killings, and how much or little it will affect public opinion about video games. If this doesn't sound like something that you want to read, or out of place given the severity of the events in Virginia, then thank you for visiting, and try another one of our older posts. For those of you who are interested, keep going.

Kotaku has the jump on me here, posting the running commentary on the "Games-are-to-blame" debate first with the Jack Thompson fear mongering and vicious lying then by linking the first mainstream article to mention games and most recently Rush Limbaugh's surprisingly sane response to blaming games.

Actually, between the time of the Kotaku post and the writing of this post, the Washington Post changed the article that the link points to, removing any reference to games. However, a search for "Counterstrike" on their site still returns:

1. Shooter Described as Eccentric Loner by Students, Teachers
Debbi Wilgoren, Sari Horwitz and Robert E. Pierre (Edition) 04/17/2007
...Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using...

This text, however, no longer appears in the article.

NOTE: Kotaku has now published a post on the WaPo edit.

The truth is, we should all be ready to hide our gaming for the next few weeks. If history teaches us anything about the modern news (any three things, that is) it is:

• Cable news networks will pump a story as long as they can if it can pull the public's attention


• Most news outlets tend to report stories in the same way they reported similar stories in the past, with similar commentators (the press equivalent of the military fighting the last war)


• Simple explanations are easier to present and invite less criticism or confusion

When you add all this up, you can probably expect a fair amount of blame to fall on games. As much as I hate to say this, as much as it goes against every fiber of my being, Limbaugh has (mostly) the right idea. We can't just assume that one issue created this event. However, I disagree with the fact that he uses this as another occasion to push his views on gun control, and his statement "You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act." I would have put it "You have here a sick individual, an individual who committed an evil act." I don't know enough about Cho yet to conclude he was evil, but I have no problem condemning his actions as evil. I think it's a subtle and important difference. the minute we decide he is "evil" is the minute we cease to try to understand him, which is a tremendous mistake. This is not an isolated event, but part of a frightening trend in our schools and colleges of children going over the edge and killing their peers. To not attempt to understand how and why this is happening is irresponsible and dangerous, and this is why I would resist calling the shooter "evil."

All this said, I still think Limbaugh is a big fat idiot who is trying to drag this country back a century or two.

The fallout on games will not likely be as bad as in past shootings. It seems like the witch hunt is (in my opinion) going to decide that the local police and campus authorities are most to blame, despite the fact that they probably don't deserve it. This sort of situation is like an earthquake, impossible to predict and hard to react to. I'm sure that over the next weeks we'll know if they prepared and responded as properly as can be expected.

Video games have been called the new rock and roll, which is an interesting comparison. Both are driving social (and economic) forces that started in youth culture and quietly maneuvered themselves into the mainstream. They have also both faced a backlash from the defenders of mainstream culture, especially in moments of human crisis. I think it's worth exploring the worst example of rock and roll being linked to horrific violence, so we can see that we have, since the Columbine killings, moved to a more secure position within the mainstream where games may be less of a scapegoat.

I can put it in two words: Helter Skelter

From wikipedia

Manson regarded as foretold, by The Beatles, on The White Album, an apocalyptic war of which he was destined to be both the uncanny cause and the ultimate beneficiary. When, by his music, he, Manson, would have drawn to him the young, white female hippies of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, black men, thus deprived of the white women whom the political changes of the 1960s had made sexually available to them, would be without an outlet for their frustrations and would lash out in violent crimes against whites. After a resultant murderous rampage against blacks by frightened whites would have been rhetorically exploited by the Black Muslims to trigger a war of mutual near-extermination between racist and non-racist whites over the treatment of blacks, the Black Muslims would arise to finish off sneakily the few whites they would know to have survived.

In this epic sequence of events, which Manson told his followers would take place in the summer of 1969 and which he termed Helter Skelter, after the White Album track of that name, the Family had little to fear; they would wait out the war in a secret city that was underneath California's Death Valley and that they would reach through a hole in the ground. As the actual remaining whites upon the war's true conclusion, they would emerge from underground to rule the now-satisfied blacks, who, as the vision went, would be incapable of running the world.

Now, games have been blamed before, and will likely be blamed again, but at least no one has ever said "Doom 2 laid out the apocalypse, and I was just following the plan." No one as crazy as Manson has yet used games as an excuse for their crimes, and if rock and roll can survive this sort of scapegoating and bad press, the explicit rationale for one of the most notorious serial killers of our time, and wind up the vibrant force in American culture that it is, then games will survive.

At the moment, should any of us in our daily lives be asked to comment on whether or not games are to blame for this, I suggest that we defend games in the gentlest possible terms. Explain that they're art, free expression, and not tools of violence. Explain that they can be outlets for pure joy and exploration. And make sure to let the person, reporter or TV station know how depressing and shocking these events are to you personally. Games will make it through this one okay, so let's pay our respects to the real casualties here.

Video Game Subculture

toothpastefordinner.com

Another death in the family

So, after losing my 360 out of warranty and beginning the process of getting it repaired, I was understandably bummed. But now, I though, I would have the time to spent with my Wii that it so richly deserved. My girlfriend even bought me Super Paper Mario, which I was tremendously excited to play.

It appears, however, that the fates were not aligned in my favor. For the last few days I've had odd freezing issues, but they cleared up quickly and were at most a minor annoyance. But as the week went on they got more and more common, and I was worried that the console had to be unplugged after a freeze, not responding to the power or reset buttons. However now, the console has gone completely kaput, freezing immediately on start-up, before I can even load a game.

Now, I called Nintendo customer service to start the repair process and guess what happened. The first time I called, they said they were too busy and suggested I call back later. Fun fact: They play the Twilight Princess version of the Zelda theme when you're on hold.

I'll keep you updated on the status. Hopefully I'll be able to get through soon.

Three Lights Update

Well, I got my shipping box last night, packed up my 360 and dropped it off this morning. Here are a few photos for those of you who are curious what all this looks like.

The address of the repair facility from the shipping label.



Here's the rest of the label



The instructions (sorry for the quality, this is the first time I've used this camera, I got it this week for my birthday)



Finally, this is the little UPS drop-off where I got my receipt, where, incidentally, they tossed my box a good four feet into the spot where they leave all the packages without even asking me if the contents were fragile or sensitive. Good thing for them it's already broken.



So wish me all luck. Hopefully we won't have to document any more failed systems here.

THERE ... ARE ... THREE ... LIGHTS!

Well, my 360 has been hinting that it was on it's way out, crashing during three successive play periods on two different games. I had one last hurrah when I beat a R6: Vegas level I've been stuck on for a month or so (due more to apathy than lack of skill). Saturday night, I fired it up, got about a minute into gaming and it froze on me.

It did not respond to the guide button.

I walked over to the TV, powered down and back up, and there it was. The red ring of death was staring me in the face. I went through everything with tech support, and yes, my hardware has failed. Considering that I was camped out at midnight launch night to get one of these, and given how notorious the 360 failure rate is and that I had a launch console, I'm not all that surprised by this development. It is tremendously unfortunate that the extended warranty, while a nice gesture, failed to cover me when I needed it. It's strange to think that my NES, SNES, N64, Xbox and Gamecube (until I traded it in towards a Wii) all still function perfectly, and that a system I had less than two years, actually for only 17 months died in spectacular fashion. It may happen that as systems become more complicated and technologically advanced, they are subject to higher rates of failure. I hope it's not the case, but it may well be.

They funny thing though (well, not really funny) is that Ben was had not one, but two Wiis fail on him. Luckily for him, they were covered under warranty.

I must say, in defense of Msoft, the tech was nice, helpful, and efficient, and had an answer to every question I had. The box for repair was supposed to be shipped to me in four business days, the system repaired in two, and shipped back in four. With a bit of luck, I should have it week after next. This may prove to be a blessing in disguise, as it will push me to play the games I have on other systems.

I should be getting a digital camera for my birthday this weekend (it was actually Tuesday, but I had to postpone celebrations due to a full schedule), with which I'll document the proceedings.

Wish me luck readers.

Bonus points if you can identify the source material

In the words of Woody Allen ...

Those of you who've read this blog, or any of my others, you know that my interests extend beyond that of games. Don't get me wrong, I love them, but there are other things in my life, and at times my interests in one area inform the others.

Among other things, I'm a film buff, and Annie Hall is one of my favorites. Woody Allen used the phrase "mental masturbation" to refer to college courses such as "Contemporary Crisis in Western Man," or "Existential Motifs in Russian Literature." I've always thought this phrase was a great way to describe the sort of pointless, self-aggrandizing intellectualism that one comes across not just in college, but elsewhere in life. Philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, art theory, all of these are important fields of study, but at times they can run amuck. This affliction is not limited to scholars, or the small selection of fields I've listed, they were just the first examples that came to mind. This can even afflict game journalism. The one post in particular that has irked me appeared yesterday on Destructoid.

This post was on an interesting topic. Should games seek to grow beyond the idea of simply being fun? But beyond the premise, the article is a jumbled, rambling, poorly sourced mess that really only serves to advance the author's theories and comes off a lot like someone who wants to hear themselves talk. This article could have made a good round table discussion, or podcast, or a mildly interesting lecture, but as an article, it misses the mark.

I guess the other reason I took issue with this article is that I think it's thesis misunderstands the very nature of videogames, and of entertainment, and the author presents his points poorly and haphazardly. Should videogames try to reach the levels or art that prose, poetry and film have reached? Sure, and I'll try those games. But the real basic point, that doesn't require several thousand words, is that games need better writing. You do this, and the rest of what we want will follow. Have you ever watched a movie by a great screenwriter, and then one by a poor one? Would you be tempted to call one "art," and the other "escapist fun"?

Now here's the kicker: if you enjoy both of them, does the "fun" movie need to evolve into great art, or can we simply enjoy it for what it is? I say we enjoy it.

The title of the post is "Fun isn't enough: why video games have to move beyond escapism." Actually, fun is enough. Fun is the point. If you were to ask me why I love baseball more than any other sport, I couldn't give you reasons more concrete than "I enjoy it," or "I think it's fun to watch and play." That's enough for me, and I've enjoyed it as a part of my life for 24 years, and hopefully I'll be watching it until I die or lose my eyesight (in which case I'll just listen). All because it's fun.

Sometimes you need a masterful portrait of human events and emotion, and sometimes you need the Three Stooges. Sometimes you need a game with a compelling plot that challenges the way you think about the world, and sometimes you need Tetris. Games must remain fun, and them must remain fun first. We can make them better and more complicated, but even in five hardware generations, people will still play Tetris, Mario, hell, probably even Pong. They will play these games because they are fun, and for no other reason. The games described in this article will come about, but they will not be the only species or game left.

Now, the article makes some really dumb mistakes too. Such as:

Instead of looking at WWII as the horrific loss of life than it was, in video games the war is frequently depicted in much the same way it was in the 1940’s: a heroic, unambiguous fight against evil. Good guys die in large numbers, but their deaths are not terribly violent (not a single WWII game I can think of includes blood, much less gibbing). The enemies we fight are faceless and without personality (Call of Duty 2 seems to have about twelve different Nazi models, total).

Factual errors tend to undermine an article, especially when they are phrased like so: "not a single game I can think of includes blood." Well, after 10 seconds on the ESRB page, I found the following

Call of Duty 2 / Activision / T / Blood, Mild Language, Violence

Oh really. How interesting. He couldn't think of (or hadn't played, which is the greater sin) the game he mentions in the next sentence. And as for gibbing, it has gone out of style since ragdoll physics have come into style: why blow a person to pieces if you can watch them crumple and dangle to show off the neat new physics engines? Anyone who has actively played games over the last five years should be aware of this trend.

To the other point he made in the quote, about the exploitation of the seemingly simple good versus evil dichotomy of WWII, yes, simple can be dull, and deprive you of the enjoyment that a rich story with twists, turns and mixed motives might have. But there are plenty of games that actually do this. Despite being dumped on prolifically by Destructoid, Twilight Princess puts you in a situation where you have to assist someone who may or may not have any real interest in helping you, and may well just be using you. This is interesting, and subverts the usual good / evil framework, since you're not really sure what you're doing is good at all. Deus Ex did this as well, and gave you choices about how to move through the game. Oblivion and Morrowind let you reshape the world around your character, engage in political espionage and assassination, become a criminal or vampire, and the variety of the choices and freedom even scared some people off. Games already do all the things he talks about, and they do so outside of Shadow of the Colossus and FF VII which are the untouchable fanboy pillars of esoteric gaming.

Finally, no article, opinion piece or post should ever include any heading as dumb as "Misery is friggin’ awesome." No, actually misery is miserable. We here at FPSS have all know each other for some time, and at times Ben and I have debated how one should approach their emotions. I always held that the most important thing was honesty in expressing how you feel; if you see reasons to feel sad, then feel sad, if you see reasons to be happy, be happy. Ben would say that the negative effects of sorrow and pain can be avoided by changing your frame of mind, and it's more important to focus on trying to keep yourself happy. However, neither of us would endorse the sort of feelings that were put forth in this article:

But misery? Misery, as said above, sticks with you forever. Misery can ruin your life, and fuel your creativity. Misery can give you purpose and drive where simple happiness and contentment lead to stagnation. Not to get any more philosophical or condescending than I already have, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see that misery present in video gaming, as well?

Not to be superior or snarky, but philosophical and condescending peg this article quite well. People (hopefully) grow out of this mindset as they leave their teenage years. At best, this attitude could be described as adolescent, and at worst this sort of wallowing is pathetic. So much great art has been inspired by natural beauty, or aspiration to create something beautiful, or to prove your love to someone, and to suggest that all art comes from misery is downright mean and cold to the bone.

Have the chutzpa to enjoy something - in the words of South Park:

BUTTERS: Wuh-ell yeah, and I'm sad, but at the same time I'm really happy that somethin' could make me feel that sad. It's like, ih ih, ih it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin' really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I'm feelin' is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid...

GOTH 1: Yeah.

STAN: No. No, Butters, that doesn't sound stupid at all.

BUTTERS: Well, thanks for offerin' to let me in your clique, guys, uh but, to be honest, I'd rather be a cryin' little pussy than a faggy Goth kid. Well see ya, Stan.

STAN: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a whole lot more than hating it. Screw you guys, I'm goin' home.

GOTH 2: Go ahead and go back to your sunshine fairytale!

No Butters, it doesn't sound stupid to me at all.

1337 Hacking Skills

Sure, I know that you want to use your skills for evil. Map hacks, aim bots, server abuse. But this is why we evolved huge frontal lobes, invented vacuum tubes and microprocessors, and put together the amazing entertainment devices known as the NES and the N64.



For those of you lacking the requisite gaming knowledge, I'll fill you in. This is Mario 64, re-textured using images from Super Mario Brothers and a smattering of Super Mario Brothers 3 (plus one image from Yoshi's Island).

Bravo; job well done. I demand more.

Modern psychology makes games more fun.

This post is in reaction to Jenova Chen's recent article in the Communications of the ACM, titled Flow in games (and everything else).

Chen writes an interesting article about how the psychological concept of flow is relevant to modern video game design. The trick is essentially that a game must be sufficiently challenging to significantly captivate the player’s interest, but not too difficult to cause constant frustration. Any dedicated gamer would agree, getting into the “zone” is a highlight of the gaming experience.

While this may sound like common sense, it is useful to have descriptors and measurements for flow, especially when it comes to video game design. Who wouldn’t want a game that is more attuned to that “zone” of creativity and mental acuity we all find so enjoyable?

The concept of flow was introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1970s, and is now considered one of the fundamental building blocks of modern psychology. According to Wikipedia, “Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

According to Csikszentmihalyi there are 8 major component’s of flow:

• A challenging activity requiring skill;
• A merging of action and awareness;
• Clear goals;
• Direct, immediate feedback;
• Concentration on the task at hand;
• A sense of control;
• A loss of self-consciousness; and
• An altered sense of time.

Any good video game designer will attempt to touch on as many of these as possible. Chen provides charts suggesting that flow zones for different players will occur at different difficulty levels. Like the GREs, video games that encourage flow will adjust their difficulty levels according to the ability of the player. Some games take a deliberate approach to this – we’re all quite familiar with Halo’s Legendary difficulty setting, for example.

What Chen does not touch upon, and which may be interesting research in the future, is to analyze which kinds of experiences prove to be most fulfilling for different types of users. I am not certain what all the dimensions of measurement should be, but it seems that World of Warcraft could provide at least some basic insight.

World of Warcraft approaches flow in all the right ways, and this is, I believe, the primary reason it is such a popular game. The concept of leveling is not new to the RPG genre, but Warcraft provides just the right amount of difficulty at each level to make the experience rewarding, even if you’re soloing. It succeeds because it provides opportunities for players to engage the game on many different dimensions. If you’re interested in finances, you can play the Auction House; if you’re a team player, there are dungeons and raids aplenty; if you’re a strategic sniper, you can do that; if you’re into narrative and stories, just follow the quests; and the list goes on.

A game needn’t be as vast and multivariate as WoW to promote flow. Seemingly simple games like Checkers, Tetris, or Mario 3 can be just as engaging, though perhaps not to as wide an audience as Blizzard’s masterpiece. The simple “speed-up” of the falling blocks in Tetris was always enough to keep my interest piqued, and the anticipation of what’s just beyond the edge of the screen in Mario could be a great thrill.

For myself, appropriate anticipation of future events in a game is what is most exciting. When I am forced to analyze the current situation, imagine what the future scenarios might be like, and to prepare my character/team/army appropriately, I am most engaged in the process. In Warcraft, the options of what to equip when, whether to use my druid’s cat form or feral form when attacking an enemy, how to cast heals on my teammates appropriately so I don’t run out of mana and so that none of them die; all of these things are what I find most intriguing.

My personal flow also manifests itself in RTS games like Homeworld or Total Annihilation, where the build-up is just as important as the actual fight. Of course, the fight itself often requires as much awareness and pre-cognition (to borrow a term from Philip K. Dick) and is also enjoyable.

What do you find generates the most flow for you?

Hopefully understanding flow will help game designers to create even more engaging games in the future.

Pacific City Approves Bond, Will Put More Agents On The Streets

While his answers in no way were prompted by my piece about the potential (and disappointments) of Crackdown, Realtime Worlds producer Phil Wilson did a Q & A yesterday with Eurogamer. Despite being far too tight lipped for my tastes, he did give us a few glimmers of hope in a form I hadn't predicted.

Repairmanjack: What are the chances of having a patch that resets the bosses? I'm having to create new gamertags or delete the game from the hard drive to replay it and Time Trials don't really make up for this.

Phil Wilson: Ah crap, I can only apologise for this cock-up on behalf of persons that shall remain nameless. You wouldn't believe what happened here even if I told you but suffice to say that we will have a 'reset gangs' option in the free DLC (in place of the current crimes on/off toggle - and it's quite possible that you heard it here first!) So while I'm spilling beans, there's also another great mode that I'm pretty sure is also kinda what you're asking for but a whole lot more - so I hope that goes some way towards compensation. Our bad!

...

Polar: Are there any plans to implement competitive multiplayer play in the future? Can you let you let us know anything exclusively exciting around the up and coming downloadable content?

Phil Wilson: Sadly I can't say much about the DLC but I will say that we've got some competitive (and one co-operative... if you chose to play it that way) game modes that we're already having a great time playing. Longer term it would be good to offer multiplayer to more than two players in the Crackdown Universe - the prospect of mass co-op is definitely an exciting one.

Kudos are in order, especially if this is all free / very cheap. The whole process of releasing a game, patching it within the first week, and then unloading overpriced content that should have been in the game from day one is a troubling trend. Keep it free, Crackdown, or else we won't even buy Crackdown 2 for the Halo 4 (or Halo Wars) beta.


Oh, who am I kidding, or course we will.

Lovin' from the Onion

The Onion, America's Finest News Source, just weighed in on the videogame violence debate in their brilliant series of Colbert-esque self-satirizing political cartoons.

Thankfully there are some people who know a thing or two about games who work for influential, widely read publications. Keep up the good fight Onion.

Everything I Needed to Know, I Learned From Old School NES Games

In the grand tradition of "Everything I Needed to Know" lists, here is my contribution:


1.It takes determination and a strong will to accomplish your goals. {Ninja Gaiden}

2.Even a seemingly linear path in life will reveal many alternate routes upon further exploration. {Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3}

3.It is very important to be able to see things from another perspective. {Metal Storm}

4.Cooperation and teamwork are necessary to avoid frustration and dead-ends. {Double Dragon, Bubble Bobble, Contra}

5.You must remain vigilant in order to avoid a sudden demise. {Paperboy, Castlevania, really almost every NES game}

6.Violence only gets you in trouble. {Metal Gear}

7.It’s easy to fall into in a routine pattern if you do not observe your own behaviors and actions. {Magmax, which featured two levels repeated ad infinitum}

8.The bigger they are, the harder they fall. {Godzilla}

9.Sometimes the experience we will have with a person, situation, or product is clearly advertised or broadcasted, but we will only notice this message if we are observant. (Marble Madness, Maniac Mansion)

10.It’s best to get off of a sinking ship (or a collapsing building). {Rampage}

11.Experience is valuable, but you need maturity as well. {Final Fantasy}

12.Adaptation is the key to overcoming obstacles. {Mega Man}

13.You will have to overcome your shadow before you can triumph. {Zelda II, Super Dodgeball}

14.If all else fails, use fire. {Zelda II}

15.The world is vast, and exploring it is very rewarding {Blaster Master, Faxanadu, Final Fantasy, etc.}

Software Slump

We've all seen it happen before; a magnificent game comes out of nowhere, holds our game systems hostage, and after the requisite 2 year wait, the sequel feels flat and uninspired. The most obvious and glaring example of this, oddly enough, it is a truly beloved game. You all know it, even Bungie's said it. Halo 2.

Bungie engineer Chris Butcher was blunter in his assessment. "We had about four to five weeks to polish Halo at the end...[but] we had none of that for Halo 2," he told [British game magazine Edge]. "We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it."

Butcher was even critical of Halo 2's multiplayer element. "Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right," he said "I ****ing cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it."

So what happened? How could a game that had (save a few last weeks) all the time in the world and an incredible base to build from turn out to be so uneven? Halo: CE was the Xbox. There is a real chance that the system might have failed if not for Halo: CE. So what happened?

Halo 2 is the highest profile example of the sophomore slump in videogames, something I've decided to call the software slump. But now that I've got a cute little moniker for this phenomenon, I'm obligated to explain it. Damn.

Crackdown inspired this post, along with the above quotes. Crackdown is incredibly fun to play around with, but at times it feels like some things were left out. Some are basic features that have been left out, possibly due to technical concerns (split screen deathmatch and coop), and others are finer elements of story and depth (more collectible weapons / cars / gear). What I see when I look at Crackdown is a game that should have a tremendous sequel, and that has a lot to do with the fact that it was lacking in the ways I described.

Halo: CE had none of these problems; the game was fully featured and the plot was fairly inventive. It played perfectly, and had very solid balance both in single player difficulty and in multiplayer -- well, you've played it. It was a great game in its own right, so how did the sequel go so wrong?

Don't misunderstand me, I enjoy Halo 2, and still play occasionally. But now that both Halos are 'last-gen,' I don't feel the overwhelming need to play the newer game over the older, and so I find myself suggesting Halo: CE at least as often as Halo 2, especially if we're going to play coop. Halo 2 missed the mark

• On plot - With the mostly horrible Arbiter sections and the ending


• On weapon balance - gimping the shotgun, plasma and magnum pistols, adding the tracking feature to the rockets while removing the fuel rod from the Banshee and slowing down the Wraith, and (though it's my favorite thing in the game) adding the unstoppable energy sword


• On the campaign - by changing the nature of the game and making Legendary difficulty unsatisfying and aggravating in coop, rather than the joy it was in the first game

They added some nice features too. Though I complain about the sword, like I said, I love it so hard, and having it available to the enemy in Halo: CE but not to the player seemed very unfair. Same thing for the Wraith tank, and while I'm on that point, vehicles should be destructible as they are in Halo 2. Dual wielding was overdue and pulled off well.

I think the trouble was that the team got wrapped up in all the new features they were adding to the game and missed the bigger picture. Often times these new features only served to throw off the balance in matches. I think that the story in the game was beyond salvation, but multiplayer was not. Halo 2 multiplayer was fun, but always seemed a bit too chaotic, and never approached the ballet-like matches I remember from Halo: CE. Furthermore the removal of the health gauge in addition to the shield was a terrible decision. Having two levels of life, one that dynamically recharges and the other that could only be revived by a power-up, makes for more strategic matches. Would I assault a superior foe with my spawn guns if I knew I could knock his health down halfway and I could keep him from reaching the health kit on my next life? Do I pick up the health and expose myself to potential ambush? With the addition of so many new weapons to Halo 2, most of which are not expressly superior to any others, there is little interest in setting traps or stalking a player - simply blast away at the next body you see.

Maybe these aren't the problems that Chris Butcher of Bungie was referring to above. Maybe I haven't even noticed what he things makes Halo 2 unplayable. However, these are the problems I see, and they came about because Bungie put too much into features at the cost of the balance and playability of the game.

Crackdown is at the other end of this spectrum. The basic structure of the game is fantastic, but it is almost criminally lacking in features. Split-screen coop is mandatory, period. Even minigames in split-screen, like the already included rooftop races, or see who can throw a body the farthest or juggle it the longest with rockets, or who can kill the most civilians or gang members in a time limit or with a single life. The game also begs for deathmatch, with a redesign in the aiming system (and the ability to hit something you're not locked on to).

A plot, even something as cliche-ridden and bland as Saint's Row would be greatly welcomed, and the fact that you're cloned every time you die could actually be used to write a Phillip K Dick-esque story around. The game bursts with potential. Bosses could use giant mechs, or use similar superhuman powers to the main character, or even use parts of the environment to attack you.

The eventual question I'm pushing towards is - Will a game with tremendous potential, but lacking in features and depth(Crackdown) spawn a better sequel that a game that achieves everything it set out to do right out of the gate(Halo: CE)? A lot depends on the development team, but sometimes it takes drastic changes in focus to make a sequel work for a great game.

The series that jumps to mind as the perfect example of a team trying to make a sequel to a great game, once meeting with success, once with failure, is the trio of GoldenEye 007 / Perfect Dark / Perfect Dark Zero. GoldenEye and Perfect Dark were both smash successes, and PD:Z was sloppy at best. I had tremendous expectations for the PDZ, as PD is in my top 5 games of all time, but besides next-gen graphics the game had little going for it.

I believe that Perfect Dark was able to capitalize on GoldenEye's success without succumbing to software slump because they found features that gamers wanted and needed and implemented them without destroying the balance in the original game. I think losing the Bond license might have been the best thing that happened to PD, since it forced Rare to think of how to pull gamers in without the heavyweight tie-in. This change in focus brought enough freshness to the title to keep us happy without changing the basic feel of the game. This is where Halo 2 stumbled - they lost the feel of the original in pursuit of adding new features and items to the game.

I guess in a few years, we'll know if Crackdown 2 winds up better than Halo 2. I wouldn't hold my breath, since most developers either don't think like me, or find it too hard to code some of the ideas I've laid forth for the game. Still, it's interesting to see that success can sometimes come from mediocrity, and that brilliant success can sometimes lead to lackluster production. Hopefully this won't afflict some of the top tier games right now that are clearly going to get sequels, (Gears of War, Zelda, Resistance) but if it got hold of Halo: CE, then what game is truly safe?