I honestly don't know what shocked me more: Hearing the title, "Enslaved: Odyssey to the West", or seeing the box art depicting two white people.

I mean, what is the proper approach in that situation? The obvious solution is to name your game something else, but no, we can't do that; that would be self-imposed censorship. Do we make the game sensitive to the issue, elucidating the real-world horror of the slave-trade for a younger, ignorant generation? Well, no again, because such a game could easily be misconstrued as offensive, most people would rather just forget about the subject, and I suspect that such a game would not sell very well.

So f*ck it. White slavery in the future it is.

This is not what I really want to discuss. It's not even a good introduction. A better introduction would be this video, as it was the impetus for me to write this piece. It's from a series of critiques that, I feel, sets a new intellectual standard for the discussion of videogames, and I fear that I may be linking to them and rebutting their arguments with increasing frequency moving forward. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you.

If you took the time to watch the video (please do), you might have noticed that they approach the rather broad subject of diversity from a sociological perspective, and, to a lesser degree, a business perspective. I am here to supply the perspective of a consumer, and, to a lesser degree, a writer trying to figure out how to incorporate all of the proposed 'politically corrective' changes into a cohesive narrative structure. Trust me: It's not as simple as they make it out to be, and I aim to tell you why.

First up: Gender discrimination. They say, "it needs to go." I say, "it doesn't need to go right now." Specifically, we are talking about the skimpy outifts and gravity-defying anatomy that are usually tallied up by people who are embarrassed to be caught playing such games as "sex appeal". Let me tell you something: I come from a family of feminists. I have a great deal of respect for women. But, at the same time, I'm a guy. I like the sight of exposed, supple flesh as much as the next person with a Y chromosome. We are biologically programmed to seek out the thrills of sex and violence, and it is no coincidence that sex and violence are videogames' bread and butter. It's not just the objectifying of women in videogames that is alienating them - it's the blood, gore, and the whole sub-culture of high-tech, instant gratification, complete with its own masonic language and behavioural norms. There are so many social appurtenances to gaming that need to change before we can even BEGIN to talk about including women, it's staggering.

I don't buy games that push sex for the same reason that I don't buy porn in a supermarket. My guilty pleasures are MY guilty pleasures - no one else has the right to know what I like to do in my spare time. I suspect that there are a lot of gamers who feel the same way, and that this demographic will force some changes in videogame-marketing strategy. I see movie-marketing as the most probable model moving forward. There is certainly no shortage of movies that revel in T 'n' A, but the movie industry as a whole is less exclusive to male consumers than videogames are. Why? It's a little thing called "discretion". Put the exploitative crap at the back of the store; stop plastering **** front-and-centre on the box art. For me to advocate a paradigm shift towards maturity would not only be unrealistic, it would be hypocritical, but for the love of god guys, stop shoving it in our faces, would ya?

As for having a "feminine perspective" in a game's narrative, the video suggests the application of the Bechdel test: To have a feminine perspective in your story you must have at least two female characters who at some point talk to each other about virtually ANYTHING other than men. The problem with applying this test to a videogame is that the player has their character - ONE character - from whose perspective they view the whole story. Exceptions are made only rarely, and only in extreme circumstances. (We are in agreement that the Mass Effect games have noteworthy narratives, yes? Consider this: Only four times in ME1 and ME2 put together have we ever departed from Commander Sheperd's point of view for longer than 10 seconds. That includes cinematics.) If we leave our character too often, for too long, or for paltry reasons, we begin to lose our emotional connection to the character, which is fatal for a form of storytelling that demands so much of our time. What this means is that we cannot cut away to a chat between two NPC's unless they are a) talking about the main character, or b) saving the world in the main character's absence, in which case I should hardly imagine there would be much dialogue at all, resulting in a distraction that proves nothing. What about a female main character, you ask? Sure, that would work, but then you risk alienating male gamers, and you would lose more than you would gain. Even if you don't mind playing a female character once in a while, imagine if every single game you played solved the "feminine perspective" problem in the same way - with a female main character. It would get old, fast.

In the video, they acknowledge the difficulties in applying the Bechdel test to videogames and suggest modifying it, but they give no thoughts on appropriate revisions. To me, this feels like a cop-out: "We propose to solve the problem by proposing that other people argue about it until they find the solution for us." So here's my suggested revision: A female character saves the main character's life, and they maintain a professional relationship. No shagging, no snogging, and no flirting. A narratively significant, in-no-way sexualized female character. This seems to me to be in keeping with the spirit of the Bechdel test. How would you change it?

Second: Ethnic diversity. I find that white people are conditioned our entire lives to feel guilty and awkward whenever this subject comes up. I'm sick of it. I have never owned a slave, I have never refused to hire someone on the grounds of their race, and I have never treated a black friend any different than a white one. And these "African American", "visible minority" labels are only compounding the problem. Calling me white is no different than calling me tall or short, fat or thin: All that those words do is describe a person's appearance - nothing more. Ultimately we are all the same, and attaching too much significance to a description is the first step towards forgetting that. White people are white, black people are black, but first and foremost we are all 'people'. This seems so simple to me that I cannot fathom why writing ethnic characters into one's story is still an issue.

Let me explain how offensive characters get written. I call it the "Caricature Cycle": 1. The writer feels bad that they only have white people in their story. They then set out to DELIBERATELY write an ethnic character into it ("deliberately" is in caps because this innocuous indicator of intent is actually the root of the problem). 2. They write in an ethnic character, but their ethnicity doesn't play a significant role, so it might as well be another white person. The new character is just a "token". 3. If the writer hasn't stopped himself by now, he's an idiot. Granted that he's an idiot, he's not going to stop himself here. He will invariable use other idiots' ideas about how non-whites behave. By the time he's writing "dayamn," and "fo' sho'," we have another offensive caricature, courtesy of another jackass who thinks that he can write.

Here's a lightly battered and deep-fried golden morsel of succulent writing advice, on the house, sans snooty Maitre d': You want to write an ethnic character? Here's how: You see all those white people running around in your story? Pick one of them (not the sidekick), and make that character brown. That's it.

That little twinge you just felt was your inner racist shouting "No! Don't make one of your good characters into one of them! You'll ruin it!" Do yourself a favour; b*tch slap that little punk 'til he shuts up. We all have that spiteful little bastard somewhere deep in our psyches, indecently proud of a simple melatonin deficiency. The trick is to keep him on a short leash. ...Alternatively, that twinge could have been creator's pride. You've created your characters, you're proud of them, and altering them seems somehow perverse. They feel like real people, and you can't change a real person. Well, they aren't real, you can change them, and if you don't want to change them, don't. There's no law that says you have to put a black guy in everything you write. As long as you're careful not to get caught in the Caricature Cycle, pretty much anything you do is okay.

Third: Sexuality. Okay, this one has me annoyed. Listen, nobody wants to play Brokeback Mountain: The Game. Making homosexuality the central thrust (pun definitely intended) of the narrative is a non-starter. The logical way to approach this is with characters that are, you know, just gay – they don't try to hide it; the subject simply never comes up.

I'd like to illustrate my point with a rather silly yet jaw-slappingly obvious example: Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem from Army of Two. Sure, lots of people have made the joke that they're gay but honestly, have we seen any evidence to the contrary? They are big, macho guys who, despite the obvious excesses of testosterone, never show so much as a fleeting interest in the fairer sex. They're happy with making rather more contact with each other than is strictly necessary. The nature of their relationship seems fairly clear to me. Do we need to have a sex scene before it counts? 'Cause I gotta tell ya, I know lots o' gays, and I have never seen them f*ck. I assume they do, but they're very private about it (like any other normal person would be). The bottom line is, if you want to figure out someone's sexual orientation, you just gotta pick up on the little things.

And this is where the matter gets infuriating: When you see them walking down the street, homosexuals are indistinguishable from heterosexuals. If at any point in a story a gay character's sexuality becomes relevant, it immediately consumes the narrative, or at the very least gets us pointlessly sidetracked. Trying to write an openly gay character into a story that has nothing to do with sexuality is just a bad move that smart writers will avoid. Period.

Geez, how am I going to sum up this marathon of a blog? I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is too easy to try too hard. If you wanna write, you need experience. You need people experience. Writers need to like people (understanding and interaction are optional). Seriously, the key to writing is to fall in love with the human race. Once you have that, gay straight, black, white, male, female...it all just falls into place. Setting yourself an arbitrary quota for diversity just distracts from creating sympathetic characters and compelling conflicts. I'm not saying that it's cool to have a homogenized cast – I'm saying that a good writer will instinctively branch away from such uncreative characters. So how about instead of setting a bunch of standards, we just get some decent writers making our games, eh?

(I wrote this post some time ago, but never got around to posting it. By now, the video people have probably expounded upon their original points in further videos. It's worth checking out. I just had to post this anyway because, well, come on, it kicks ass.)

[tags: diversity, enslaved: odyssey to the west, extra credits, exploitation, women, Bechdel test, mass effect, ethnicity, caricature, sexuality, writing, characters, narrative, army of two]

If I ever meet the man who decided that funny accents are endearing, I am going to punch him in the head. I am going to make him intimate with the pain that he has caused me over the years, and then I am going to break his fingers so that he may never write again. Then there will be a big party with lots of cake to celebrate his forced retirement, but he won't be invited, because no fantasy is complete without cake....The first person to quote Portal gets stabbed.

Hydrophobia's protagonist is an American woman who, whenever she feels like it, tries to talk with an Australian accent and fails. Her best friend is an American man who, whenever he feels like it, tries to talk with a Scottish accent and makes my ears bleed. The majority of the exposition takes place in conversations between the two of them, and it would probably be pretty funny if I could hear it over the sound of me grinding my teeth.

You see, I was deceived. I downloaded the trial game and started it up but was called away before I had left the protagonist's apartment. In the time I spent wandering around her living room, I felt that I had gotten to know her pretty well (which is usually when they tell me to get out or they'll call the cops): Her hobbies, her profession and her level of fitness, all of which are relevant to the game, all of which are revealed without a word of dialogue. Take note: This is the proper way to establish the main character in a videogame. So, when I left, I did so with the impression that Hydrophobia was made by a competent developer. "Lol," as they say.

I need to take a moment to explain the story before I can deride it. In the future, the world is overpopulated, and the solution is to build giant ships for people to live on. Take a moment to ponder the phenomal absence of logic behind this reasoning. The first city-ship ever built is celebrating its anniversary when a terrorist group decides that this is the best time to sink it, thus putting their plan to reduce the world's population to sustainable levels into effect. Good job, guys: 1,000,000 down, only 9.5 billion to go.

The terrorists board the ship with the help of a mysterious inside man. As he is the only other person aside from the protagonist who survives the initial explosions, my money is on "Scotty". Oh, I'm sorry, his nickname is "Scoot". The Chief Engineer in Hydrophobia is not at all based on the Chief Engineer from Star Trek. My apologies to him, as well as to Helmsman Zulo and Navigator Chetov. Could you ask Captain Dirk to let me out of the brig now? And tell Mr Slock to stop pinching me.

Every time you walk from one side of a room to another, there is a cutscene. Every time there is a cutscene, the protagonist does something stupid. I was in a party with a friend back home while I was playing Hydrophobia, and this is what he heard me say during one such cutscene:

"There are bombs going off all over the place, and you're walking towards the beeping? Oh, look, it was a bomb. I HOPE YOU'RE DEAD!"

The impression that I had before I started playing Hydrophobia was that it was, as my friend so succinctly put it, "a glorified tech demo" for the Hydro Engine. After playing it, that's still my impression, because it certainly doesn't qualify as a game. I must confess, the behaviour of the water is very impressive. It would be even more impressive if it wasn't constantly obscured by foam, but I suppose that's realistic too. Unfortunately, the way in which your character interacts with the water is not the least bit realistic. A person cannot sprint in thigh-high water in real life, much less remain standing after being hit by a shoulder-high wave. These modifications were obviously made for gameplay purposes, and it was probably the right thing to do, but you can't go around claiming to offer realistic water when it has all the weight of a summer breeze. Nonetheless, it's a neat piece of programming, and I would like to see it again in a proper game.

This is not a review. I haven't played the whole game, nor do I ever intend to do so. Writing a full review of part of a game is not fair, so I'll leave the scarifying to the people who are being paid to play this piece of garbage. This is just a warning for the benefit of my readers, and an exercise in humourous writing for myself. Feedback is always appreciated. Thank you for your time.

[tags: hydrophobia, first impression, portal, bad accents, bad writing, start trek, humour]

A while back, it was pretty clear: If you're with Nintendo, you are onboard with motion controls; if you're with Microsoft or Sony, motion controls are a terrible idea. Now that Microsoft and Sony are jumping into motion control gaming and Nintendo are trying to get out without releasing a whole new console, I find that a lot of gamers are now scrambling to figure out where they stand.

Most of the commentors I'm seeing on the forums I frequent seem to be against motion control gaming, although I have no idea why. They don't actually give a reason. The biggest problem I find with online discussions is that people don't feel a need to support their opinions if their opinions happen to fall in line with those of the majority of the participants - but that is a rant for another time.

The best argument I have heard against motion controls is from (who else?) Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. Developers think that, if the player is performing the same action as their character, they will feel more involved in the action, and ultimately more immersed in the game. What Yahtzee says is that motion controls actually make the player further removed: To move your own body requires nothing more than a thought; the goal - motion - is instantly acheived. Using a controller, you have the shortest possible delay between thought and your character's action, because all that you have to do is move your thumbs a few millimetres at most. But with motion controls, the delay between thought and your character's action is prolonged by having to perform exaggerated movements. Motion controls let you use your body to control your character, but a controller lets you put your brain directly into your character's head...or at least it's as close as one can get with current technology.

But where do I stand on motion controls? Let me be clear: While I see considerable problems with motion controls, I also see SOME potentential. At the risk of sounding duplicitous after calling them out on the Rock Band 3 peripherals, I think that Harmonix are demonstrating the true potential of motion control gaming with Dance Central. This is a game that WOULD NOT WORK with any other control system. Admittedly it won't appeal to "hardcore" gamers, but, seriously, the hardcore gamers can go scr*w themselves. I have a life and friends, which is why I'm going to buy it. Many of my friends are not familiar with console controllers, and it would be nice to have a game that everyone can enjoy.

Before I go any further, I must point out that I see absolutely no potential for the Playstation Move. It is a transparent knock-off of the Wii (from which Nintendo are currently trying to distance themselves) that will have no appeal to people who already own a Wii or to the legions of Resistance and God of War fanatics. Can you imagine trying to mimic Kratos' movements in order to control him? I feel dizzy just from thinking about it. (I am aware that Sony will probably not release a God of War gamefor the Playstation Move; I am merely pointing out that the Playstation brand is associated with a completely different kind of game than is appropriate for motion controls.) So, from now on, when I refer to motion controls, assume that I am talking about the aggravatingly spelled "Kinect".

Now, allow me to illustrate the problems I foresee for motion controls by describing my ideal, hypothetical game: A game in which you and three friends can play cooperatively as a special forces squad...fighting zombies.

First up, character creation. I don't actually foresee a problem here, I'm just excited at the prospect of being able to scan my face onto my character - I have never encountered a game lets me get my goatee just right in the character creation section.

Second, moving around. If we have learned anything from the Wii, it is that making a shooter with motion controls demands on-rails movement. On-rails shooters are fine once in a while, just for the retro, arcade vibe, but in a game about tactical, squad-based movements, that just doesn't cut it. So, how do we move? Do we lean forward, backward, side-to-side? Do we actually take a step in the direction we want to go and then step back to stop? And how does the system actually know when we want to stop moving? What's to say that what I think of as 'stand still' won't be read as'slowly strafe to the left'?

Third, looking around. Even if the movement issue is resolved, how do we tackle this one? Making your character look around (id est, making the camera tilt in first person) would logically be accomplished by moving your own head, but if you look away from the screen, well, you're looking away from the screen. You're suddenly in your living room, whereas a moment ago you were fighting off legions of the undead. And what if you get attacked from behind? In Left 4 Dead, it was as easy as pushing a button to rotate 180 degrees, but if you try to do that with motion controls, you end up facing away from the TV.

Bioware VP Greg Zeschuk recently commented on motion controls, saying that they are a step forward. In the article I read, the scene in Mass Effect2 in which the player can choose to kick a mercenery out of a window was mentioned, and it was suggested that said scene could be improved through motion controls - having the player actually kick or shove at air to trigger the action. While I very rarely dare to criticize Bioware's storytelling methods, once again I am forced to take issue with their notions on gameplay (I realize that they are probably under pressure from Microsoft to push Kinect, so I won't hold this incident against them). I find the scene in question to be extremely effective because it's so easy. Shepard (the main character) is a trained killer; to murder someone in cold blood just because they are being uncooperative should be effortless, especially if the player is choosing to play as a Renegade (the negative moral alignment).

The king sentencing someone to death has power; the executioner swinging the axe does not. While I can see the appeal of being the latter, I generally prefer to be the former.

[tags: motion controls, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Wii, Kinect, Playstation Move, Harmonix, Dance Central, Left 4 Dead, Bioware, Greg Zeschuk, Mass Effect 2]

You're probably sick of hearing people complain about the Twilight saga - I know that I am. Nothing can be as bad as everyone says it is. And yet, I've avoided seeing any of the movies for fear that they actually are.

I still haven't seen any of the movies, but I recently found an extremely thorough review of the latest one. When I consider that my girlfriend grew up reading the Twilight books and has been banging on about marriage for a while now, I find myself rather frightened.

Watch the review; you will understand.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escape-to-the-movies/1839-The-Twilight-Saga-Eclipse

[tags: Twilight]

In the very first blog post I wrote on gamespot, I declared that music games could only go downhill as every good gimmick has already been exhausted. My friends and I discussed the possibility that Harmonix would add a keyboard for the next installment of the Rock Band franchise (Rock Band 2 had only been out for a few days), but we quickly dismissed the idea with the conclusion that a keyboard is virtually impossible to simplify in the way that the guitars have been: You may as well learn the real thing, and who wants to learn a REAL instrument just to play a game?

Check this out: http://www.rockband.com/zine/fender-squier-pictures

Harmonix have taken things to the next level, and while I applaud them for doing so, there is one issue that p*sses me off.

For as long as I can remember, the loudest (and potentially the most valid) gripe that people have about music games has been: "Kids should learn to play real instruments." This annoys me personally, because I play saxophone; the guy who plays guitar in my RB band plays clarinet; my bassist plays bass clarinet; and my drummer plays trumpet. I do not know a single person who plays music games who does not also play a real instrument. People who are interested in music games are, as a rule, interested in music, and usually play real instruments. Yet, somehow, playing sax, or trumpet, or clarinet doesn't count as playing a "real" instrument.

Anyway, I suppose I got fed up with hearing the idiots whine, so I decided to learn to play a real guitar. I bought a $300 Jackson Kelly, a $350 amplifier, and the various cables and picks to go along with them. I've been taking lessons, and I've gotten decent at it. I dare say, all those years of playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero gave me an unnatural advantage over people starting from scratch in the area of dexterity. (Eat it, critics! Guitar Hero translates to real world skills!)

My issue with Rock Band 3's option to use a real guitar is that Harmonix are insisting that a special guitar is required. Why? They've already set the game up to translate the scrolling notes into frets and strings - it knows how to directly correlate the game controls to the real-world notes being played on the guitar - why don't they just make a connector that lets me plug the guitar that I already have directly into my xbox? Why is a finger sensor in the fretboard vital to making this work? Wouldn't it be easier to make the game detect the pitch of the attached guitar instead of this overly elaborate (and guaranteed to break) monstrosity of hardware?

The answer to this move is obvious. 70% of the revenue on music games comes from the peripherals alone. From a marketing standpoint, it's brilliant. From the standpoint of someone who has already bought a guitar and all of the accoutrements, it totally sucks.

I want to say that everyone who was going to go along with buying a functional guitar has already done so. I want to say that there will be an overwhelming outcry from the gamers who share my position. I want to say that Harmonix will be forced to give into the pressure and add the pitch detection feature that I described (charging us an unfair price for the guitar-to-xbox connector, of course). I want to say all of these things, but I know that I would only be deluding myself. Harmonix are going to make a not-so-small fortune on this endeavor, and there is nothing that I can do about it.

I am quickly coming to the realization that Harmonix are jerks. I used to reserve my ire for Activision (while surreptitiously buying all of their games), but I'm not so sure anymore. Harmonix give their fans the ability to put their songs into Rock Band via the Rock Band Network for a $70 annual "subscription" fee, take 80% of the profits from the song sales, and then render the whole business an exercise in futility a year later with a game that will - most likely - not be compatible with RBN songs.

Harmonix are the undisputed kings of the music game genre. I just wish they weren't such colossal *ssholes about it.

...As an afterthought, I would like to make it even clearer that I believe the guitar-to-xbox connector to be a valid marketing move. Harmonix could charge whatever they want for it (provided it's less than the special guitar) and it would entice consumers who already have a guitar (and don't want to buy another one) to spend more. If anyone at Harmonix reads this, think it over.

[tags: Rock Band, Rock Band 3, Harmonix, guitar, real guitar, real instruments, Rock Band Network]

PS3 - $300

Heavy Rain - $60

Finding out you spent all that money for nothing 'cause you can't read the mutherf*cking prompts - Infuriating.

There are a number of games that have been pushing consumers towards HD televisions, but I've decided to focus my wrath on Heavy Rain.

It will come as no surprise to people who are more familiar with my views on videogames as an artform that I loved Indigo Prophecy. When Yahtzee declared Heavy Rain to be its "spiritual successor", I knew I had to have it. Between Heavy Rain, MAG, and the PS3 price drop, I finally got off my ass and bought said console and games.

(Allow me to say that this purchase was no small feat. Living in Colombia, luxury items such as videogames and electronics are hard to find. When you do find them, you get some funny looks because videogames are still thought of as being a children's toy here.)

I played the hell out of MAG (I wrote an extensive review, but then Zipper patched the game making half of what I said irrelevant), and then popped in Heavy Rain.

For those who don't know, rather than giving you a menu of dialogue options, all of your dialogue options go spinning around your character's head, paired up with the button required to activate that particular option.

Trying to read the button you have to push while it's whizzing all over the place is hard enough. Two chapters in, the main character goes nuts, and suddenly the dialogue options go all shaky, making them even harder to read.By the time you are being interrogated by the police and threatened with grave plot consequences should you answer incorrectly, this sh*t has got to go.

I get the feeling that I would do just fine if I had an HD TV, but I don't. What can you do?

Make a note, Quantic Dream: Give me the option to make the dialogue options BIGGER; give me the option to pause them momentarily; give me the option to have them in menu format. Do ANYTHING other than this!

If a game is to be a test of anything, it should either be of patience or skill - not my hardware or my wallet.

[tags: High Definition, Heavy Rain]

There are two experiences that I find most enjoyable in a videogame: The first is ripping indiscriminately into a mob of defenceless enemies (this is why I had a good deal more fun with Modern Warfare 2's "No Russian" mission than most normal people I know); the second is 'progression', whether it be levelling up or buying better weapons.

Perhaps then it should come as no surprise that the three games I revisit most frequently are Resident Evil 5, Earth Defense Force 2017, and Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires.

I resisted the Resident Evil series for a long time because of its completely stupid controls. There is absolutely no reason that I should not be able to walk and do something else at the same time. But my biggest problem was the lack of strafing. Going around a corner and having to take a second to turn to look at the enemies was excruciating. Resident Evil 5 solved the strafing problem, and with the addition of a partner, having to stop to shoot your gun isn't as cumbersome as it was in the past. Indeed, it adds to the tactical depth of the game: One person shoots while the other moves. It still doesn't make any sense, but at least it's fun. And with the option of infinite ammo, I can blast away at zombies with my AK-74 all day and never get tired of it. (I know they're called Majini, but they're zombies. Get over it.)

I have put over a hundred hours into my EDF file. I know, because it keeps track. There are something like 160 weapons to collect (albeit, most of them are useless), over 50 missions that last anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes, and 5 levels of difficulty, each more ludicrous than the previous. But here's the kicker: Sometimes, when you kill an enemy, they will drop a piece of armour, and each piece that you collect increases your maximum health by one point, permanently. I started playing with 200 health, and I now go into every mission with over 12,000. But even with 12,000+ health, I have yet to best the hardest difficulty. On occasion, I've been able to coerce my friends into playing co-op with me (the second player gets all the guns and health that the host has) and we'll maybe take down another couple of missions. But I've gotten off track here. My point is that EDF has progression - no matter how strong you become, every mission that you successfully undertake makes you even stronger. I just can't stay away from a game that rewards me for every single victory...not until that 300 point Achievement for beating the hardest difficulty is mine, at least.

Finally, Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires. Truth be told, I have probably put more time into DW5: Empires, but the one I've been focusing on most recently is 6, so 5 can get stuffed. The levelling system is more limited in 6, but you get more direct control over it. But you get the most sense of progression from watching your country's colour slowly spread across the map, and you achieve this, of course, by ripping indiscriminately into mobs of defenceless enemies.

These three games excel at what I like most, but they also have something else in common - they're all Japanese (finally getting to the part to which the headline alludes).

The writing in Japanese games is...well, it isn't bad, per se, but you either love it or you don't. The archetypes, themes and expressions make sense in Japan, but the culture from which any work of art springs is vital for giving the observer context, and without context, art loses its meaning. The famous painting, 'The Third of May 1808' by Francisco de Goya presents a scene of massacre that is quite shocking, but is ultimately meaningless to anyone who wasn't alive during the period in which it was painted...which is to say everyone who is alive today.

I can't stand the writing in Japanese games. I tried to play a Final Fantasy game once when I was much younger. I didn't have time to connect with any of the characters; every time a new character joined my party, another character got arbitrarily (though heroically) killed off to keep the party size under the cap. I finally threw in the towel when a party member whom I had watched die miraculously came back to life because the plot demanded that I find someone who could build a whatever-the-hell-I-needed, and he was evidently the only person in the world who had taken the requisite night-school courses. And naturally, someone else conveniently died to make room on the team for Mr Lazerus.

More recently, I tried playing Lost Oddyssey. I got all the way to the fourth disc before realizing that I didn't give a sh*t about any of the characters and stopped. You see, the story is about five immortal beings who came to the world in order to perform some very important task (I didn't get far enough to find out what said task was). One of the immortals went evil, wiped the memories of the other four, enslaved them, and then set about scheming to conquer the world. You play as one of the amnesiac immortals as he regains his memories and recruits the other three, as well as some non-immortal hangers-on to fight the bad guy and finish whatever it was they were supposed to do centuries earlier. The problem is that since the protagonists have no memory, they also have no personality, and therefore do nothing to endear themselves to the player. You can't even pity them for having scrambled brains because they're freaking immortal! In the second cutscene, you see the main character get an asteroid brought down on top of his head, and it might as well be a warm breeze for all the harm it does him.

So what am I trying to say? I guess I'm trying to say that Japanese games are good as games, and nothing more. The three games I mentioned earlier as being my preferred games for revisiting have terrible writing. I can't take anything that anyone says in RE5 seriously; Sheva is too wimpy, Chris is too clueless and Irving sounds like someone who underwent brain surgery and was accidentally given helium instead of anesthetic. EDF...suffice it to say that I've actually turned the 'voice' volume option all the way to zero. And the Dynasty Warriors games have been reusing the Romance of the Three Kingdoms story since their inception, but in their case the story is all for naught because no one really cares whose peasant soldier legions they're hacking to bits.

Mass Effect 1 is, in my opinion, one of the best games of all time because it struck a good balance between action, story and progression. Getting better guns and mods was extremely rewarding (I remember the first time I got my hands on a Katana VII and put Incendiary rounds on it...), and seeing your acquisitions and customizations in action against your enemies was equally satisfying. Just to keep from getting sick of fighting on foot, plenty of vehicle sections were spliced in. And of course, I don't need to point out how good the story was. I think that ME1 had the best twist I've ever encountered, and when I say "best" I don't mean "most surprising". A good twist happens when the viewer/player is given all the information they need to put things together, and yet they don't. Shyamalan's 'The Village' is a perfect example of how a good twist does NOT work.

Mass Effect 2 feels like a step backward in every department. Not only are there hardly any weapons, but the levelling and skill progression system has been stripped down to its bare minimum. The difficulty has been upped, removing the option of just tearing into your enemies, and you can't even take your frustrations out by running dudes over in the Mako because the vehicle sections are gone as well. The story, while still good, definitely struggles with being the second chapter in a trilogy. The threat to the galaxy has already been revealed, but we can't go stomp on its neck just yet because that would leave nothing to do later, so we'd better go find someone else to fight. In 'The Lord of the Rings', the position of second chapter filler bad-guy was filled by Saruman. In the Star Wars trilogy (the good one), George Lucas used up all of his narrative tricks too early and so was forced to reuse the Death Star, except that this time it's more powerful for no other reason than to make the protagonists' situation seem even more dire...as if a weapon that destroys entire planets needs to use a few extra watts to become a REAL threat.

Why the hell am I talking about Canadian games in a post about Japanese games? I'll tell you why. Trends in videogame style are determined by the people who buy videogames. I'm afraid that not enough gamers feel the way that I do - that games should have action, story and progression. If western gamers really think that Mass Effect 2 is an improvement over the original, we'll keep getting games that strip away RPG elements, or even satisfying combat in favour of story. I fear that I shall soon have to choose between good-gameplay, bad-story Japanese games and good-story, bad-gameplay western games. This is not a choice I want to have to make.

Perhaps I'm being melodramatic in order to justify my rant on the differences between Japanese and western games. What I really wanted to do here was try to put a finger on why some people are fanatical about Japanese games while others can't stand them. To some degree, I think I've done that: Japanese games play much differently than western games. Some people like the differences enough to put up with the stories. Perhaps some people have a better handle on Japanese culture than I do, and therefore actually like the stories. I had a roommate in college who played through Mother 3 with a line-by-line translation guide. I though he was crazy, but then again, he thought I was crazy for having a knife collection.

I don't really have a proper conclusion to sum up the thoughts I've presented here. Perhaps one will occur to me later. For the time being, I would like to invite discussion in the comments section. I know that hardly anyone is tracking me, so this discussion will not actually happen, but the invitation is there as a formality. Thank you for your time.

[tags: resident evil 5, earth defense force 2017, dynasty warriors, final fantasy, lost oddyssey, mass effect, trilogy, lord of the rings, star wars, japanese culture, western culture, story vs gameplay]

It has been clear for a while that developers really want to make games for portable platforms that far exceed what can be done with the hardware in terms of actual playability. I realize that that sentence is excruciatingly cumbersome, so let me say it simply with this declaration: I have never played a decent shooter on a portable game system.

All the PC snobs will, at this point, turn up their noses and say that theirs is the only platform that can do shooters properly. Shut up. I don't know if you've ever actually fired a gun, but point-and-click control is like riding a tricycle and pretending it's a jet - way too easy. I wouldn't dare claim that console controls are realistic by any stretch of the imagination, but at least they give a tentative nod to the fact that a firearm doesn't always point exactly where you want it to.

So like I was saying, in order to have the kind of control you need to make shooting work, you need a second thumbstick. Or perhaps I should say that you need two thumbsticks, because that slippery little bastard on the PSP does not count as a first.

Really, the solution here is obvious: Make a portable game system with full console controls. A console controller isn't very big; attach a small screen, a cartridge slot and a battery pack and you are essentially done. Why hasn't this happened?

There seems to be an infuriatingly insular mindset among game hardware developers that portable game systems must be small, smaller, SMALLEST! At first, it just had to fit in a kid's pocket so he could sneak it into class and game away while the teacher obliviously droned on (guilty as charged), but it doesn't even make sense any more. The compulsion is to make a system as small as it can possibly be, and damn the design concessions - no one expects good gameplay from these things anyway, right? Remake the DS, remake the PSP; don't make improvements or anything, just miniaturize them!

WAKE UP! Your core demographic are adults now! We don't need to fit it into our pockets, we just need to fit it into our backpacks. We just want to be able to get our game on when we're not at home with our PC's and consoles. This is a really simple concept. STOP SHRINKING EVERYTHING! Give us some god damn thumbsticks!

Once we see improvements in the hardware, no doubt we will see improvements in the software. It has been many-a-moon since I've seen a portable game that was worth buying. I don't care how ignorant this makes me sound, but I'm tired of reading books whenever I'm bored and away. I've read War and Peace, mother-f***ers. I've had enough. I'm done. Let me play.

[tags: portable gaming, portable systems, ds, psp, war and peace]

It's no secret that I love Mass Effect. I am somewhat disappointed by the steep difficulty of Mass Effect 2, as well as its determined focus on a combat system that is, shall we say, not up to Gears of War standards, but I love it all the same. If the Mass Effect games were my children, Mass Effect 2 would be the "special" child. It doesn't measure up to its older sibling, but when all is said and done, I can't place my affection for one above the other.

Let's face it: Bioware do not do combat; they do story, and they do it well. I hope that they ease up on the action for Mass Effect 3 and remember why they have so many fans in the first place.

It is with Bioware's superb standard of story-telling in mind that I would like to test my own abilities as a story-teller by hazarding a few guesses at what is to come in Mass Effect 3.

1. I suspect we will find out who or what built the Reapers. They had to come from somewhere, right? Perhaps they were built as a superweapon for some long-forgotten war. Perhaps they are even from another galaxy. I mean, I can't imagine that traveling for a million years through dark space would perturb them much.

2. The Terminus Systems and Council Space will form an alliance. It stands to reason that if the galaxy and its peoples are divided, they cannot stand up to such a massive threat as the Reapers the way a unified front could. Seeing as the Terminus Systems are lawless and fraught with bloody power struggles between slavers, mercenaries, pirates and rogue AI's, I suspect that Shepard will have to spend much of his time installing a warlord to bring them together. (I'm thinking Aria T'Loak.)

3. The genophage will be cured (if you kept the salarian's research in Mass Effect 2). Wrex will stand beside Shepard, leading a renewed krogan horde. I wouldn't be surprised if Shepard even has to put down a few uppity clan leaders who want to restart the krogan rebellions.

4. Shepard will have to defuse a war between the geth and the quarians, or else choose a side. Much of the way this plays out will be determined by the way you handled Tali's and Legion's loyalty missions in Mass Effect 2, but one thing is clear: Tensions between the two groups are near breaking point. I expect them to come to a head in Mass Effect 3.

5. This one I'm absolutely sure of: The Citadel will be destroyed...by Shepard. If the Reapers gain control of it, they can shut down the mass relay network, leaving the entire galaxy at their mercy. They could even use it to bring in reinforcements from dark space. Obviously, trying to stop the Reapers by fighting them face-to-face is a doomed proposition, so Shepard will make the call to destroy the Citadel to prevent it from falling to the Reapers.

6. As a final thought, I would like to suggest the possibility that the Keepers built the Reapers. The Citadel is Reaper technology, and the Keepers maintain the Citadel. How do they know so much about their technology? The Keepers are also the only species that seems to be untouched by the regular harvesting. If I am correct, clearly something went wrong. They made the Reapers too smart, too powerful, like what happened with the geth and the quarians if the geth had ultimately enslaved their former masters. (This possibility only just occurred to me; I am not certain about it. That is why this point is separate from point number one.)

I want to point out that I am NOT acquainted with anyone who works at Bioware. These are my own conjectures arrived at by playing the Mass Effect games fanatically, reading the codex entries religiously, and having a knack for telling stories. If I'm right about the above plot points, I'm just awesome. If I'm wrong, I'll be pleasantly surprised to discover a unique and unpredictible story. If anyone at Bioware reads this, I CAN drop everything I'm doing to come and work for you. It would be a dream come true. Or if you just decide to rip off my ideas without paying me, I would be satisfied with a mention under the "thank you"'s in the credits.

For the record, this blog has been posted on the 20th of February, 2010, long before anyone has even whispered about the plot or release date of Mass Effect 3.

ADDENDUM (25th February, 2010): I recently came across a forum thread on escapistmagazine.com in which the OP (original poster) posited the theory that the Illusive Man is a Reaper and that the Protheans/Collectors were trying to stop the next harvesting. This would mean that Shepard was actually used by the Reapers to eradicate their true enemy. While this would explain SOME of the Illusive Man's motivations, the MANY faults with this theory will be immediately apparent to anyone who has played Mass Effect 2 (and if you haven't played it, why the hell are you reading this?). Among said faults are the implication that the Reapers would have had to anticipate humanity's importance some 50,000 years prior in order to leave an appropriately disguised agent, and the fact that the Protheans/Collectors were themselves being used by a Reaper called Harbinger (revealed at the end of the game). Barring a Reaper civil war, there is no way this could work.

The reason I mention such a flawed theory is because I like the core premise: The irony. We would have been set up for a head-spinning reversal in Mass Effect 3. A "switcheroo", as the OP puts it.

You can see the thread here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.177464-I-know-who-the-Illusive-Man-and-The-Collectors-truly-are-ME2-Spoilers-afoot. Finally, I would like to say that if the OP's theory turns out to be true, I will lose all respect for Bioware. This twist has way too many holes in it.

[tags: mass effect 3, spoilers, bioware]

A couple of weeks back I was playing Divinity II: Ego Draconis. I stopped playing for reasons that I will make clear in this post. I considered writing a review, but realized that since I had only had a few hours of gametime, my review would be incomplete and therefore erroneous.

I want to recite part of the introduction to the game from the game manual for you:

"With Divinity II - Ego Draconis, we've tried to make an RPG that continuously offers you different types of gameplay and that doesn't rely on repetitive mechanisms to accumulate playing hours. Personally, I have a big dislike for games that force me to do the same thing over and over, and I hope that you'll find that Divinity II - Ego Draconis is different." -- Swen Vincke, Larian Studios.

This is the wrong kind of person to be making an RPG.

There are some basic rules that should be observed by all game developers: You do not take guns out of an FPS; you do not take resource management out of an RTS; and you DO NOT TAKE GRIND OUT OF AN RPG!

I appreciate RPG's that let you barrel right through without grinding. This is a really difficult balance to achieve. Divinity II: Ego Draconis does not even come close to achieving it. If you set one foot in an area that is above your level, you will get murdered. A lot. The game's philosophy is that you should do EVERY SINGLE MISSION that you are given to acquire experience points, and only once you have reached the appropriate level can you proceed without suffering innumerable bullsh*t deaths.

Enemies don't respawn in Divinity II: Ego Draconis (unless it's part of your current mission that you should be ambushed on the return journey). Once you kill one, they're gone for good. This makes experience points a precious commodity. And then they ask you to spend those points on reading people's minds!

You know, Mr Vincke, most gamers are much less averse to killing the same goblin a hundred times than they are to dying to the same enemy ten times. Grind is an option. If I want to put a couple of hours into levelling my character so that I can breeze past the next mission, that's my decision. Your job, as the developer, is to make missions interesting enough that I want to do them regardless of how easy they may be. Your job is NOT to take away the option to make them easier.

That was my only problem with the game. I found the writing to be solid. All of the characters are based on the same models with slightly different hair and beards, but that doesn't bother me because I'm a big fan of keeping things simple. The combat system is really engaging as well - much better than that farce in Dragon Age: Origins (and don't bother posting a response to that unless you've played BOTH games, as I have). This game clearly demonstrates how to port a combat system from PC to console in an intuitive way.

I like so much about Divinity II: Ego Draconis, but the non-respawning enemies render it completely unplayable. If Larian Studios had simply stuck to gameplay traditions that have been proven to work, they would have had a masterpiece on their hands. Instead, well...such a waste.

[tags: divinity ii, ego draconis, rpg, game traditions, swen vincke, larian studios]