• 7May 11

  Is Originality Enough?

  In 1995, a small development team named Crack Dot Com released an incredible piece of software, a 2D side scroller named Abuse. I remember the shock of playing that game for the first time in 1999 (Hey, I didn't even have a PC up to 1997) - The idea of controlling the character just like in any other 2D platformer while using the mouse to aim at enemies across the screen was so refreshing, and so different, that I still remember it as vividly to this day as I do Schwarzenegger's traumatizing Terminator 2 smile. I only wish I could get past that damned 14th level.

  
  Abuse. Revolutionary controls

  There's something about uniqueness that we love. The thrill of playing something different, something special, is hard to match by something that's completely devoid of anything it can call its own. Yes, this is why acting master Vin Diesel's Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, despite having a few problems with pacing and level design, was much more exciting for me than the action-packed, adrenaline-pumping, never-stopping experience of Sgt. Soap Mactavish's war. Riddick could have done with an English accent, though.

  Insert long sigh accompanied by smile.
  
  If only we were to get more of that.

  Unfortunately, not all is jolly in the world of original games. Having recently played DICE's hybrid platformer/first-person action game, Mirror's Edge, I came to realize that uniqueness is not to be considered the main attraction of a game. After all, what good is something that you've never seen before if it makes you go bananas with frustration? While it did feel like a breath of fresh air with its stunning visuals and fast parkour concept, this feeling often quickly switched seats with frustration as I missed that jump for the seventh time or met my demise by the hands of that cop for the twelveth. What kind of sick bastard fires at a woman, anyway?

  
  Mirror's Edge. More frustrating than anything, really

  Here comes our first question – what is originality to us? Is it a staggering, never-seen-before setting of an underwater city? Is it that twist on co-operative play? Is it the frightning feeling of being chased by Something Terrible, unable to fight back? Is it a story and writing like which we've never seen anything before? Or is it about gameplay and what we actually do within this setting with a friend while running away from Something Terrible, trying to unveil the story?

  Playing Dead Space and Mirror's Edge closely together was a bit of an enlightenment for me, in that I realized that anything that revolves around a woman makes a game great.
  Oh wait.
  ...in that I realized that one or two original elements (be it story, characters, gameplay, setting, you pick) are enough to make a game stand out in a world of derivation and franchise-milking. But, everything else in the game simply MUST get the same loving treatment for it to become a truly uplifting experience. Take Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, for example. I remember that as well as I do Abuse. Maybe that's because I played it a few years later. Nevermind. Sam Fisher was so much fun to play because he could do all this stuff and he looked so good doing it, and the game was as balanced as it gets. Everything just dripped with so much love and attention to detail that we only saw the cool gadgets, enemy interrogation and croch-tearing split-jumping rather than the fact that games like Hitman, Deus Ex and No One Lives Forever have done the whole stealth thing before. To cut a long story short, it clicked.

  
  Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell. It clicked.

  So the second, BIG question is: is originality more important than refined gameplay?
  I wonder.
  On one hand, I'm getting mighty tired of playing the same old get-to-cover-to-automatically-replenish-your-health and we'll-lead-you-by-the-hand-so-you-don't-see-invisible-walls gameplay. It feels like treading through increasingly familiar waters, and as those games keep coming, they only serve the purpose of becoming stale. Oh, and selling. The gaming industry, just like any other industry, is driven by money. But BioShock sold as well. Crysis sold nicely considering no computer at the time of release could run it respectably. Portal sold beautifully. There's something those games have in common – apart from introducing new stuff, they were all very well-promoted and reached out to a large audience of people that opened up their wallets and bought them. So we see that polished derivation is only an easy solution that people keep forking money over for.

  On the other hand, if our new game-we've-never-seen-before is flawed to the point of becoming merely decent, or even mediocre and less, it's simply not worth it. Developers should find the balance between original game mechanics and what makes a game... click. We all had a lot of fun traversing Far Cry's lush jungle setting, playing cat & mouse with witty mercenaries, but how did it feel when we were killed by a mutant just a second before we reached the end of the last, long checkpoint? That really didn't click with me. I'd rather play a game where everything... ok ok, almost everything (let's be realistic here), is made right, and you're still given the privilege of experiencing something refreshing, like a gravity gun, or stretegic dismemberment, or Lance Henriksen.

  I would like to take a moment and salute smaller independent developers, for not fearing to release refreshing games on a regular basis. Trine, The Ball, World of Goo, Gish, Eufloria and Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time are just a handful of examples of good games released recently by independent developers that are special enough to stand out above some of the bigger names in the industry as memorable experiences. Could salvation come from them? Maybe. All I know is, as those development teams keep getting more support from Steam and the likes, they have a better chance of keeping their heads above the water and delivering more interesting concepts. Just like mod teams (let us not forget that Portal, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and Team Fortress all took their first steps as mods before becoming commercial hits), independent developers hold an incredible amount of potential and I hope big game publishers and developers pull a Valve - look more closely at these dudes and hire them so that more of the big names can deliver more of the special goods.

  
  Trine. A unique experience from an indie developer

  I see now that my Abuse example isn't all that great, because that game was so difficult that I've never even beaten it. But in no way does that change my opinion – Even though I don't want to play the same thing time and time again, I also don't want my unique experience to be spoiled by broken gameplay, annoying bugs or poor controls. I want my game to be whole – I want everything about it to be great, and I want it to be better than the sum of its parts, all while being special enough to stand out. It's time for individuality to take over. I call out to game publishers and developers – don't limit creativity. Make original games, and strive to find the right balance between refinement and originality.
  
  I may be naive, but I also decide which games I buy. One can only hope that more gamers grow tired of the same-old, same-old, and that developers would take note of that and start encouraging experimentation. The world would be a better place.

  Then, we can smile. Just like Ahnuld.
  
  

  • Posted May 7, 2011 3:12 am GMT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 7Aug 10

  of Art and Crysis

  When I first watched James Cameron's Avatar earlier this year, there were two things that struck me as incredible: the movie was an absolute spectacle to behold, and Sigourney Weaver wasn't more of a badass than her fellow marines for a change. But that's not what I'm here to talk about in this latest here editorial. Avatar, especially when watched with them special 3D glasses, was a technical marvel (and an excellent headache inducer) – it created the most believable-yet-unreal environments ever seen in a movie, but it was not its technical prowess that impressed me most – it was the artistic vision, or, more correctly, the visionary art design, of the movie's Pandora. The movie has the most advanced special effects ever seen in a movie, but it's when you see the oversized smurfs running through bizarre glowing plants that your breath really gets taken away.

  
  Ellen Ripley. Way more badass than Dwayne Hicks.

  Same goes for 2007's Crysis, which is still, three years later, the prettiest game of all time. The game has phenomenal special effects and countless other technical traits that earned it numerous awards and enormous attention, but truth be told, I found the game's most impressive moment to be when Nomad ran to the light and into that delightfully bizarre alien ship, where the verdant island setting gave way to the otherworldly, disorienting environment where gravity and architecture played with your senses while stealthy shimmering aliens tried to bite you in the buttocks.

  Which is why, if you ask me, 2007's prettiest game really is Crysis. As for that year's most beautiful game? That one definitely goes to BioShock. I may sound like a crazy fool here, for BioShock suffered from low-resolution textures and very small environments that sometimes failed to astonish on a technical level. But as they say, real beauty comes from the inside, and if you look at the bowels of BioShock's graphics, you'll find one thing – an absolutely flabbergasting artistic direction that makes this strange underwater metropolis one of the most brutally beautiful game worlds ever created, so much so that it makes Crysis look, as pretty as it is, quite mundane.

  As an artist myself, I tend to look at photorealism with a smidgen of disdain. If it is photo-realism that I wish to create, why not just go ahead and use a camera? I find a strange artistic vision to be the most valuable treasure an artist can have (I do not mean in any way that a photographer is not an artist). And, just as I'd much rather behold a completely twisted, surreal painting over another breathtaking portrait, I'd rather revisit Max Payne 2's playhouse than, say, Modern Warfare's dull enemy bases and F.E.A.R.'s sleepy office buildings.

  BioShock, along with other games, displayed environments that weren't as technically marvelous as those of others, but its look had a soul, a heart, and a vision. It's just like how Mikael Åkerfeldt's incredible delicacte leads and emotional touches steal your consciousness more than any of Yngwie Melmsteen's highly technical, lightning-fast licks. I believe it's through the heart, soul and vision of an artist that a really memorable piece is conceived.

  
  BioShock. A truly memorable game world.

  Let me not be misunderstood – the advances in technology that have been achieved over the last five years or so are quite significant and extremely impressive, and I do prefer a sharp texture and delightful animations over a blurry texture and stiff animations. It's just that I believe that, the better the technology, the more of a tool it can be in bringing a unique artistic direction to fruition. Take Janelle McKain's Enigma. It is the perfect example of how to create a piece of art that is amazing on both a technical and artistic level, on paper. If you take a close look at Painkiller, you'll find the perfect example of this in a game. Back in 2004, it was one of the top-five prettiest games out there, and each of its environments (and its fantastic enemies) had its own unique look and details, and it's within these little details that I found a reason to think this game was so gorgeous.

  
  Painkiller. Excellent textures, excellent animations, excellent models, absolutely spectacular game world(s).

  Yet, when a game displays a striking world that is artistically strong, a lack of technological superiority is easily forgiven. Take for example, well, just about each and every level in 2005's Psychonauts. The game had, by no means, any superb lighting effects, highly detailed character models or stunning textures, but it did have character. It had its own look, its own atmosphere, presented by Schafer and co's bright minds, which also seem to prefer art to technology.

  
  Psychonauts

  At times, those arts can even make up for monotonous gameplay. I will use a more recent example, being UbiSoft's Prince of Persia. The repetitive exploration and slow combat weren't always enjoyable, and after six hours or so of gameplay, the game began to feel like watching Citizen Cane (say what you may, this movie was a snorefest). This is all sheer opinion, though, and I'm definitely not knocking UbiSoft for making a lacking game, even though I sort of am. Once the novelty has run its course, we were left with an unlikeable protagonist whose occasional sitcom humor and unnecessary attitude inspired nothing more than a gawk from me, good (if repetitive) boss fights and one remarkable… erase that… fabulous game world. Everything about it was incredible – the distant windmill, the floating halls, the machinery grounds, the enemy designs, the beautiful healing of corrupted lands – everything about this game's environments was pure brilliance, so much so that it softened the blow of the game's lackluster gameplay.

  
  Prince of Persia. Lackluster gameplay made up for by deliriously artistic environments.

  While I can count quite a few things that are more important to a game than graphics (gameplay and sound being the most shining examples) I can really appreciate a graphically proficient game. After all, it's way more fun to watch Nazis crumble into glowing bits and dust than seeing an alien marine immediately disintegrate into blocky pieces, and it's even more fun to behold a spectacle made available only thanks to a very creative mind than see the same old (meticulously detailed, amazing-looking) Russian base, countryside or tropical island. Am I saying that I'm looking forward to Bulletstorm's weird new planet more than Crysis 2's NYC? You betcha. Unique art is precious, and no powerhouse game engine in the world can replace that.

  • Posted Aug 7, 2010 2:01 am GMT
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• 1Apr 10

  How to Kill a Shooter in 10 Easy Steps

  Let me get this out in the open first: game design is art. There's a lot of creativity involved, and as with any other form of art, everything is flawed and nothing is perfect. Small flaws can be forgiven when the whole painting is so striking to look at, but some flaws are less easy to forgive: let us not forget the fact that on Metallica's 8th studio album, St. Anger, Lars Ulrich banged his drumsticks against tin cans and Kirk Hammett didn't play a single solo. Same goes for game design – the utter and complete uselessness of Doom 3's chainsaw has absolutely not as large an impact on gameplay as, say, Half-Life's horrible jumping puzzles.

  

  As a huge shooter fan, I take serious flaws, well, very seriously. A well-designed shooter can be a blast and everything could be fine if done well, but in all ways should it avoid those steps which I'm about to delve into on this editorial. I would like to present to you 10 sure-fire ways to kill a shooter.

  I'm here! I'm there! I'm everywhere!
  Ever felt so naughty and proud of yourself for running around and disappearing on your mom at the local supermarket? Yeah? You have, haven't you?
  That's a bad boy!

  Play Half-Life 2 and you'll see what I mean. Then go and apologize to your mother and give her a big kiss, and promise to help her with the groceries next time.

  Do not by any means get me wrong. I still believe to this day that Half-Life 2 is the most enjoyable shooter I've ever played. That is, of course, until the fearsome proposition of playing with AI teammates circa Anticitizen One. The whole point of having AI teammates is that they help you fight off your enemies, not go randomly running every which way aimlessly, clustering around doors and getting killed. And yes, I know you never got killed on your mommy.

  I would have said that Infinity Ward could teach VALVe a lesson, but thankfully the AI guys in the following Episodes were just fine. And oh, they weren't half as bad on "Follow Freeman".

  Hey momma, can you please hold my hand?
  Imagine this. You're running around, shooting enemies that are fun to shoot. The graphics are great and the guns are satisfyingly loud and devastating. You simply have a blast. You fight through the last fight of the current level and progress to the next, where you're introduced to some sort of lame excuse for a character who's probably going to die anyway. Then you're told it's up to you to keep them alive for your next assignment so they can do X to help you do Y. All is well and dandy.

  You barely say Chaser and you and your new talking pet come under attack from such a juggernaut that you want to go cry to your mommy. No need to apologize again. Soon enough, your feeble new friend is all but tombstone-worthy and you're introduced to an encouraging little "game over" screen. Such are poorly designed escort missions.

  Some of the greatest shooters I've played included escort missions, among which are Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, Half-Life 2 and BioShock, and they all had those missions nailed to the very last script. But it's when games put you up against ridiculous odds that this problematic assignment becomes more a chore than a fun little variety and degrades a game that is otherwise as fine as a lovely chicka holding a gun.

  So what now? Where go I?
  If it's Chaser we're talking about, then this good game has another glaring issue that has also appeared in fine games such as Heretic II and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

  Hub-oriented level design is just fine as long as you're informed well on where to go, just like a tourist heading to the nearest supermarket. That was one of the greatest advantages of BioShock – even when it sent you to other levels to complete a mission, you always knew where to go. But that is not an obvious trait, oh no dear sir, it ain't. Now eat your cookie and read on.

  When you have a level that's built like a hedge maze and you get absolutely no indication as to where you have to go next, you might find yourself traveling through empty hallways and yards ad nauseum, having already killed all enemies in sight, completed your tasks and collected all the goodies.

  

  Then you find your way, and it's like finding the birthday cake of your dreams. Soon enough you realize that the truly daunting experience isn't the hour+ that Xfire just registered to your gaming profile of you doing absolutely nothing, but realizing it was there all along right in front of your eyes, and that the cake actually is a lie.

  At least those spectacularly tedious indoor levels in Halo had arrows on the floors.

  If a cat can do it, you probably can. 't.
  Cats are sneaky little bastards. I find it hilarious to watch a cat trying to use its fascinating sneakiness on a target as silly as a cockroach. The point is, just because a soft-pawed, omni-alert cat can do it, it doesn't mean that you, a buff, entire arsenal-toting Big Tough Guy can too.

  Be honest. Do you think true stealth missions can actually be implemented to a pure run-and-gun shooter? Well, yeah, but it's about as touchy as a lunatic. For the sake of example, why, oh why did the guys in 2015 think they nailed it? What is up with that night raid in Medal of Honor? It is obvious someone is going to see you and sound the alarm. Those missions should not be designed like that. What I find even more amusing is that, should you not run into a game-killing game over screen, the ensuing chaos is more often than not way more fun than trying to sneak around. Think about it. Walking this slowly at a crouched position with 8 weapons on your back must give you one hell of a backache.

  Stealth was fun in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way and Aliens vs. Predator 2. It was also fun in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (with what is probably the single best stealth mission I've ever played in a shooter), Crysis and Far Cry, but if I ever run into another Soldier of Fortune II I'm going to get seriously pissed.

  Thanks for reading this far. No need to catch me later, here's your beer:

  

  Right. Now that that's out of the way, let's move on.

  Tap tap tap! Tap 'till it's dead!
  Let's face it. No one but freaks likes little furry critters. If I hate them in real life, what fun is it to shoot them? I simply loathe spider missions, especially when you might find yourself under attack from multiple angles (Doom 3) and when those little tap-sound-making scumbuckets are too small (Unreal II: The Awakening). Remember the scene in Jurassic Park: The Lost World where the Russian guy is killed by a pack of little dinos? Does that look like fun enemies to fend off? DOES IT?!

  
  Ugh

  Please, game developers, please stop the spider missions. They're not fun. If anything, they're the epitome of tedium and frustration.

  Not if I see you first!
  Do you enjoy making eye contact with your enemies on your casual kung-fu fights on the street? Yes, so do I.

  Do you like it when your Ninja foe throws shurikens at you from the window across the street from you? Me neither.

  I guess the guys in 2015 like having their protagonists pierced by magical bullets that appear out of nowhere, because they're really into absolutely ridiculous enemy accuracy from magical Nazis that share the odd knack for invisibility. I think we all remember that mission in Medal of Honor Allied Assault where we're tasked with making it through a town filled with Nazi snipers. But those supernatural Nazis (wait, is this Wolfenstein?) can do the childish task of peeking out, shooting you while. you. are. running, and returning to hiding within less than a second. I'm surprised they didn't win the war.

  But they're snipers. With enough being a forgiving rag you can forgive them developers for surprising you with foolish design choices. But it's when it's a darn punk with a .22 gun who hits you three times in a row from fifty yards away (a certain baseball bat Mafia mission springs to mind) that you wish you had a gravity gun.

  Running away from snipers can be a blast (see: Half-Life 2, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow), but I have a feeling growing inside me like an evil fetus that developers might not always be too aware of their mistakes.

  No, really, baby. I was just waiting for the right moment!
  Hack-abusing enemies aside, there's another form of annoyance. I'm talking about those fools who have the ability to be invincible and suddenly (and foolishly of course) relinquish it just because you're around.

  I don't think triggered enemies are fun to fight. And if they are, please let them appear after I trigger them so that I don't waste my trusty bullets not killing them.

  Here, my pet! Jump. Jump. JUMP, or die trying!
  Shooters shouldn't have jumping missions unless they're designed around them. Especially first-person shooters. It's obvious. Why would I want to do athletics when I can do some shooting stuff in the face?

  

  Unfortunately the best example I can give you comes from another favorite of mine, Half-Life. Do you remember those horrible Xen levels? Where you had to jump from platform to platform lest you plummet to your invisible death? That's simply something you want in your shooter as much as a tsunami wave in your hometown. A few jumps here and there aren't harmful if they're done right, but man oh man. Jumping from rotating platform to rotating platform doesn't make Gordon Freeman feel like Lara Croft. It makes him feel like an idiot.

  BOOGA BOOGA!
  There's an evil monkey in the closet, and he's going to bite you in the butt when you turn around. Cheap scares are cheap for a reason, dear developers. I don't buy enemies hiding in the secret broom closet and treasure chests. They can suddenly appear for a nice scare here and there, but building an entire game whose name I'm not Doom 3 going to give on it shouldn't become your next New Years resolution.

  

  Dead Space actually did a pretty good job with cheap scares because its enemies were actually scary, what with their high speed and remaining human features, but at least they pretty much stuck to vending shafts. They didn't cower in the closet like children. I want to fight brave, heroic creatures! Not children. Killing kids is illegal, you know.

  On a lighter note, I'm pretty happy to see that "prize fights" are dying and out and only appear in compatible Painkillers and Serious Sams. No thanks, dear Mr. Carmack, I don't want to grab that armor.

  We will now move to THE most annoying annoyance in the annoying history of annoying shooter annoyances. Take a breath, people, and enjoy the drumroll.

  Hey there, Sunshine! It's me again!
  Don't you just love it when that enemy you just fragged reappears out of nowhere? How does the next proposition sound: if you stay put, you're just going to get swarmed and run out of ammo, so I will now DEMAND that you keep moving. Yeeeep.

  Respawning enemies are an epidemic. I simply can't see why any developer would want to do that. They weren't that bad when the occasional zombie reappeared in Ravenholm, but No One Lives Forever 2's Soviet base mission was absolutely horrendous. Same goes for the same game's submarine mission, that spider battle in Doom 3 where you're waiting for that ladder to come down, and what is, in my opinion, the most terrifyingly horrible level in shooter history, Halo's Flood-flooded The Library.

  This isn't the tip of the iceberg. It's very bad when there's one or maybe two levels that implement this cheap method of inducing challenge, but it's an absolutely devastatingly critical flaw when certain developers base entire games around them. It doesn't matter how intense the mission can be and how, in the end, you had some fun with the game. Fighting through countless waves of infinitely spawned enemies is just not what I call good game design, and definitely a cheap way of challenging you and keep you going. As cheap as Far Cry's intelligent enemy taunts.

  
  If seeing the same baby is this disturbing, why see the same enemy time and time again?

  Everything can be done well. The problem is that most of the things mentioned here tend not to be very well-done in a lot of games. They tend to be tedious, frustrating and at the end of the day - it's all a question of what the shooter is trying to do, or be.

  So yes. There are games out there that contain some seriously flawed design that I simply cannot underrstand. For me, a good shooter creates challenge, emotions and good gunplay through good design and a long thourhg process, not something cheap and fast like... respawning enemies, or ways to prolong gametime with bad level design and hair-pulling sniper missions. Here's a toast to a future of well-designed shooters that have no respawning enemies. Please, no more respawning enemies.

  Congratulations! You've made it through my new, and admittedly long, editorial. Hope you had some respawning fun reading it. Thank you and see you next time!

  • Posted Apr 1, 2010 7:31 am GMT
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