Year in review: The best of the blog

Above: Actually the best of Insult Swordfighting.

Today through Christmas Eve, we'll be recapping the year that was. First up: the best of Insult Swordfighting, 2009.

Another year has come and gone, and with it have gone a crapload of blog posts. I continue to be amazed that anybody reads these posts at all, never mind commenting and linking to them. But you do. This year, Insult Swordfighting surpassed 1,000 subscribers, which is a thousand more than I ever would have expected. As of this writing, the count is over 1,100. I'm honored. Thank you for reading.

In the interest of not having to produce any original content, here's a look back at Insult Swordfighting's highlights from the past year.

January: Achievement points are awesome. Fallout 3 is also awesome, as evidenced by posts here, here, here, here, and here.

February: A plea for reader questions from readers results in the multi-part Request Hour series, which I should probably do again sometime. Plus, the argument about Guitar Hero that I never want to hear again, parts one and two.

March: Screw modesty. I think the best post I've done might be "Using the sniper rifle in Killzone 2: A photo tutorial." I'm surprised how well the photographs of my television came out. In March, I also attempted to explain why Resident Evil 5 isn't scary, a post I'm pretty sure Tycho responded to in a Penny Arcade newspost without linking it or mentioning me by name. Not that I am bitter.

April: The problem with casual games isn't that they aren't about shooting people and blowing stuff up, it's that the people who make them don't give a toss about user experience.

May: Have you ever wondered how to make your company's awesome new video game stand out from the competition? Here's a handy guide to writing a killer press release.

June: Morality in games is a great idea, and more and more titles are giving you a chance to decide what kind of hero you'll be. So how come it hardly ever works?

July: My friends got together to play a bunch of old video games. I detailed the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of a nostalgia binge.

August: I ensure that Game Informer will never offer me a job. I meant what I said, and I'm glad I said it. (They did a nice job with the redesign, though.) Also in August, a heartfelt defense of the traditional gamepad.

September: Only seven posts in September. What the hell was I doing all month? Oh, that's right: closing in on the end of an epic fantasy baseball season.

October: The second annual "Year in swooning" quiz is hilarious once again, and it doesn't even include a Modern Warfare 2 blurb! Plus, Borderlands is a blast, even when you're the most useless person on the team.

November: Re: Dragon Age, I throw myself on the mercy of much smarter gamers. Also, praise for level progression in Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2.

December: The games of the decade series just refuses to end.

Tomorrow: Year-end superlatives.

Games of the decade: Fallout 3

Part of a series of subjective looks at my favorite games of the decade.

Fallout 3

(2008, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC)

I tried so hard to be a curmudgeon and hate Fallout 3. Western RPGs have been my downfall for so long (and continue to be). Fallout 3 seemed like any other. Lots of choices about character builds that seemed to matter greatly, and even more choices about character appearance that didn't matter at all. A severely limiting inventory. Quests objectives that are, at times, downright stupid. The notion of guzzling irradiated water in order to help an NPC with her book was almost enough to get me to quit playing after the first couple of hours.

Why did I stick with it? I wasn't reviewing the game. Nobody was forcing me to play it. I could have stopped whenever I wanted. I kept playing, in those early hours, for the setting. A post-apocalyptic wasteland seems like such an unimaginative setting for a video game that you might forget how stunning it can be when it's done well. And it may never have been done better than in Fallout 3.

The moment when you step out of Vault 101 for the first time is one without compare. The screen turns blinding white for a second, to show the effect of natural light hitting your eyes for the very first time. Shapes and colors come into focus, and on the horizon you see the devastated ruins of Washington, D.C. It is a perfect moment. And though you'll never have that sense of wonder again, the map is constructed so that, at all times, you can see at least one other point of interest, and usually more. Resisting the allure of so many historic buildings and sites is impossible.

Even better, the stories within these buildings almost all stand on their own. While the main quest line is interesting enough, the subquests and side stories are the most compelling part of the game. Some of them are silly -- I still cannot get over having to steal the Declaration of Independence for a robot wearing a powdered wig. Some are strangely affecting, like "Agatha's Song," and some are terrifying, especially the trips into the other Vaults. None affect the central thrust of the storyline, and yet, without them, the main storyline wouldn't matter so much. Lots of games tell you that you're saving the world. Fallout 3 is the one that truly gives you a world to save.

More on Fallout 3:

• Anchorage aweigh
• O my soul
• The big picture
• Falling in and out of love, part 2
• Falling in and out of love, part 1
• How I learned to stop worrying and love Fallout

Anchorage aweigh

Above: You cannot explore any of that.

My review of the Fallout 3 expansion, Operation Anchorage, is up at thephoenix.com. The short version: It probably would have been really neat as an included quest in the original game, but it's not good on its own and not worth the money. One way to look at it is that Fallout 3 cost $60, and I got 50 hours of gameplay out of it, while Operation Anchorage cost $10 and I got 2 hours of gameplay out of it. I don't expect or demand a game to meet an ideal cost-to-playtime ratio, but that seems out of whack.

The worst part is something that was too convoluted to explain fully in the review. I think it'll only make sense if you've already beaten Fallout 3. My last manual save, with my level 20 character, was in Vault 87, or past the point of no return in the main storyline. I didn't think I could backtrack from there and take care of the Operation Anchorage quest. Instead, I loaded up my last save before that one, which was about 10 hours earlier. No real problem there, except that playing the expansion also overwrote my lone auto-save, which had been at the end of the game. If I ever want to experiment with the different choices the ending sequences offers, I'll have to re-play a bunch of stuff that won't be any different.

Not that I ever planned to do that. But still. It's the principle of the thing.

Like I said, if you're still on your first playthrough, or even starting a second or third playthrough, this expansion probably would be worth it, if just for the Winterized T-51b Power Armor. But since I'd already wrung everything I could out of the retail version, Operation Anchorage did not scratch my itch.

O my soul

Minor spoilers in the form of oblique references to the final sequence of Fallout 3.

I finished Fallout 3 this weekend. This should be cause for celebration, but instead I feel sad. I wasn't playing the game for a review. I wasn't trying to zip through it or affix a score to it. Most of the time, I wasn't even trying to do anything at all. I just wanted to explore the Capital Wasteland.

And now I'm done.

This isn't one of those complaints that you can't keep playing once you've finished the storyline. I knew that was coming, and I pressed ahead with it anyway. There was little left to do, really, particularly once I'd reached the level cap. Sure, there were plenty of locations left to discover, plenty of books to read, and even 17 more bobbleheads to hunt for. But at some point, you have to have some goal motivating you to keep playing, and all I had left was the main quest line.

In 48 hours of gameplay, I tallied 750 achievement points (which should have been 770). This is a personal record, just beating the 730 I got in BioShock.*

Every sidequest. 100 locations discovered. 50 locks picked. 50 terminals hacked. 10 bobbleheads found. 5 Super Mutant Behemoths killed. 300 creatures killed. 300 people killed.

I didn't have to do most of these. In most games, these sorts of tertiary goals strike me as padding. Not here. Almost of all these achievements came as a result of trying to put the post-nuclear world back together again. With the exception of the Behemoths, they all came over the course of my travels. Eventually, though, I ran out of people to help.

So I pressed on and beat the game. The climax was pretty neat, particularly the march with Liberty Prime. And while I share others' confusion about the very last bit of the game (why couldn't Fawkes go in there, again?), overall it was a satisfactory way to end things. I wouldn't have felt that way if I'd rushed through the main quest line -- if there was much left to do. But there was nothing else for me out there in the wasteland. There was only one way to finish my adventure.

*I can feel a post about achievement points coming on.

Fallout afternoon tidbits

Yes, I said "Fallout afternoon." I've now reached level 20 and completed all of the marked sidequests except for "Strictly Business," whose negative karma I just couldn't bear. Instead of accepting the quest, I murdered everybody in Paradise Falls. I think it was the right call. Now my goal is to collect a few more achievements, and then power through the main storyline.

By the way, I've been linking to it a lot in my Fallout posts, but let me take a moment to say how invaluable The Vault, a Fallout wiki, has been. I feel no shame in turning to the Internet for help with any game, but the usually indispensable GameFAQs was useless for this. It's impossible for any one person to write the definitive walkthrough for a game as sprawling as Fallout. The wiki approach is much better. The Vault answered every question I had.

Like Stephen Totilo, I too was unaware of how repairs worked until late in the game. We talked about it a little bit in comments to this post, but basically I blame my ignorance on a couple things. I think what happened is that the "repair" option on the Pip-Boy was inactive so often that I eventually stopped looking at it all together. When people said it was there, I couldn't even remember ever seeing it, but there it is, right under "equip" and "discard." I'd keep making excuses, but the truth is I just feel dumb.

On the plus side, ever since I started repairing things, the game has gotten easier and more fun. But I still can't tell you why I kept prioritizing my repair skill with each level-up, despite having no idea what the hell it did.

Speaking of which, I guess I get why they capped the level progression at 20, but it's disappointing to no longer hear the cha-ching of added XP whenever I kill an enemy, discover a new location, hack a terminal, or do literally anything else. I didn't realize how rewarding XP was until I stopped earning it. I'm just playing for the achievements now, which is not something I usually do. This game has awakened the completionist in me, the first game to do that since Crackdown.

Scott Jones wrote an interesting piece at Crispy Gamer about how he was shamed into voting for Fallout for his game of the year. I salute Scott's capacity for self-criticism, and I think he knows as well as anybody else that he should have been this honest and unsparing about Fallout from the beginning. Particularly when the game was selling 4.7 million copies in its first week, a well-written contrarian view might have been valuable. I am a little surprised at his claim that there are many like him, though, who were lukewarm on the game but nevertheless felt pressured into giving it plaudits. If true, that really sucks. And strange, considering that Michael Abbott had no problem finding 20 people with 20 different GOTY picks for his year-end podcast.

For all the Fallout criticism you could ever need, check out Sparky Clarkson's "critical thinking compilation," a collection of links to all the interesting Fallout essays he's encountered. You could probably spend hours reading everything here. Sparky's doing the Lord's work.

On a non-Fallout note, the news that UGO was buying 1up.com was indeed huge. Jeremy Parish -- who still has a job, thankfully -- has some thoughts on the transaction, plus a eulogy for EGM.

The big picture

Above: The Red Racer Factory -- yep, there's a story in there.

It's fair, I think, to criticize psychic NPCs, repetitive interiors, and all the other problems that can pop up while playing Fallout 3. Certainly it would be nice if Fallout 4 could somehow do away with them. But it's still worth celebrating all that Fallout 3 does so well. The wasteland is a massive canvas upon which are painted scenes of depth and import, most of which aren't story-critical but instead serve to flesh out the mythology.

(Some spoilers follow.)

I talked about my trip to Vault 106 in an earlier post -- that was the Vault where all the residents had been driven insane by some kind of nerve gas. "Agatha's Song" sends you to Vault 92, whose overseers conducted mind-control experiments using white noise. And last night, I took a look around Vault 108, which was inhabited by dozens of clones named Gary. Regrettably, even Gary 1 felt the full force of my Super Sledge.

Vault 108, like 106, isn't integral to any quest line, and yet Fallout 3 would hardly be the same game without it. So much in this world is so interesting that I have yet to sit down and accomplish what I initially set out to do in a single session. I keep getting distracted. I also have yet to play it for less than 3 hours at a time. That's not just because there's so much to do, although that's part of the reason, but also because the extracurriculars are woven so skillfully into the fabric of the game world.

Take the Red Racer Factory. I never would have heard about it, except that in the course of searching a different building entirely (the Nuka-Cola Factory), I came across a dead body carrying a note. The note said that he was there to steal the Nuka-Cola formula, which he would then deliver it to his comrade at the Red Racer Factory. Logically, once I found the formula, that was my next stop. Once there, well, how could I resist going inside?

Inside the Red Racer Factory is, once again, a little self-contained storyline. Ghouls and Super Mutants patrol the interior, but they're controlled by brain implants that can be shut off by computer terminals. At the innermost point of the factory is a demented mad scientist wielding a missile launcher. There's no great reward for taking her out, but you do get a better understanding of what's happened to the world since the bombs fell. It would be possible to go the whole game without visiting this factory, just as I'm sure I'm missing many other similar places. But to do so -- to rush through the primary storyline -- would certainly be to miss what Fallout is really all about.

I once read an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto where he talked about creating The Legend of Zelda. He said he was inspired by the time he spent as a child searching the Japanese countryside for caves and other hidden wonders. Fallout taps into the same vein of curiosity and wanderlust. There have been a lot of games made where interesting things appeared on the horizon, but invisible walls blocked you from ever getting there. That doesn't happen in this game. If you see it, you can reach it, and you never know what might await you inside.

Falling in and out of love, part 2

Continued from part 1.

Problem number 2 with Fallout number 3: The clash between the open-ended nature of some quest solutions with the scripted interactions between quest-critical NPCs. Granted, trying to make all of the pre-scripted dialogue and actions line up neatly with the elements of randomness in this open world must have been like herding cats. But it doesn't mean I have to like it when something doesn't make sense.

At one point in "Head of State," you're given a few simple instructions.

1. Go to the Lincoln Memorial.
2. See if it's clear of Super Mutants.
3. Return to the Temple of the Union and tell everybody that the Lincoln Memorial is free of Super Mutants.

It's as simple as it sounds. As the quest is written, you aren't supposed to do anything except travel to the Lincoln Memorial, look at it, and return. Except this is Fallout, and what are you going to do, not walk up the steps of the Memorial? That's even if you didn't notice the slavers walking around up there, which I assuredly did. So I went up there and cleared them out, gaining positive karma and XP all the way. It was great.

The problem arose when I brought my buddies from the Temple to the Memorial, at which time they all started griping about the Memorial being in the hands of slavers. But it wasn't! I'd killed them all! So we all walked up there, and I thought the quest should have ended. Instead, we stood around, and none of the characters presented any new dialogue options. Back to the internet I went, whereupon I learned that sometimes there's a slaver hiding in a room underneath the Memorial. I went in there, and sure enough, there he was. Once I killed him, I could finish the quest.

Let's recap what happened there:

• I killed a bunch of slavers well before the game apparently wanted me to, even though it sent me right to their doorstep.
• The gang from the Temple of the Union was incensed to find the Memorial in slaver hands, even though, as far as they could tell, it wasn't.
• The gang from the Temple of the Union, in fact, was telepathic, and knew that a slaver was hiding silently underneath the Memorial.
• The gang from the Temple of the Union, despite their obvious psychic gifts, were unable to communicate to me that there was still one more slaver holed up.
  

That's dumb, right? At the very least, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense. And it's the kind of thing that punctures the bubble of reality that starts to surround you at certain points during the game. There's not a clear separation between the characters as physical entities within the reality of the game world, and between the "dungeon master" quality of the quest lines.

Further, my relationship as the player to my character is a little confused. This is the kind of game where blood spatters on your screen as though it's a camera lens, even when you're in first-person mode. That should be your eyes, right? Not a dealbreaker by any means, nor a mistake exclusive to Fallout. But a game that takes the time to think through these things will ultimately do a better job of creating an immersive game world with no stitches or seams (hello, Mr. Hocking!).

Falling in and out of love, part 1

After the past week, it's safe to say I've now played Fallout 3 as much as any other game I played in 2008, except for Rock Band 2. Not that I'm anywhere near done. I took a timeout from "Picking Up the Trail" on the main quest line weeks ago, deciding to put my effort toward sidequests and reaching level 20. I'd probably even be at level 20 by now if I hadn't spent most of my time on easy mode, costing me precious XP with each mutated beast I crushed with my Super Sledge -- but that's a discussion for another time.*

Thing is -- and I say this with the caveat that, yes, I love this game -- my opinion of this game, graphed as a function of playtime, has formed a neat parabola. You may remember that I had a tough time getting over some of the quirkier aspects of the game when I started, but eventually gave myself over to the setting. Well, after however many hours of play -- 30? 40? -- some of those annoyances have come back. I'm not talking about the crashes and disc read errors that continue to plague the experience, none of which occurred while I was playing Prince of Persia at the same time. Rather, Fallout is so ambitious and unwieldy that it can't help but trip over its own shoelaces at times.

Sometimes, this takes the form of confusing and unfortunate conflicts between quest lines and the karma system. I've been doing a good job of choosing the positive karma path most of the time, but sometimes the game likes to trick me into getting myself into situations that seem only to have a negative-karma solution. "Tranquility Lane" is a good example of this. There is a positive-karma solution to that quest, but it's so obtuse that I never would have figured it out on my own. (No, I have no shame about consulting walkthroughs, particularly with RPGs.)

There's a good argument to be made that Fallout is simply trying to make the player's choices matter, by giving them the freedom to do anything in this world except escape the consequences of their actions. It's the sort of thing I like on an academic level. But when it comes to playing a video game, though, what I really want is the chance to do something over again in order to achieve my desired outcome.

In pursuing Dave as part of "You Gotta Shoot 'Em in the Head," I found out only too late that I had boxed myself out of the positive-karma outcome thanks to my dialogue choices. Now, if I want to finish the quest and gain XP, I'm going to have to kill him -- a negative-karma outcome. If I'd even realized this was a possibility, I might have saved my game immediately before talking to him, but why should that be necessary? One of the cherished traditions of games is the opportunity to try again.

(This is taken to the other extreme in the new Prince of Persia, with some success and also with its own problems. By the way, anything interesting I might have thought to say about the difficulty level and gameplay philosophy of the new PoP is rendered instantly irrelevant by Shamus Young's awesome video on the topic. You must watch this.)

Oh hey, this post got pretty long. Let's pick it up again tomorrow.

*Briefly: Isn't the challenge of a game like Fallout simply finding the time to play it? It's hard enough to feel like you're getting to everything without also having to worry about dying. Exploring and completing quests is so time-consuming that adding difficult combat seems like overkill.

The Year in Review: The Best Games of 2008

Above: This is the one.
(Note to Harmonix: "This Is the One" would make excellent DLC.)

We're wrapping up our recap of the year that was. Today: the best games of 2008.

If you want to read the blurbs, you'll have to read the feature at thephoenix.com. But for discussion, here's my list of the top 10 of 2008:

1. Rock Band 2
2. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
3. Braid
4. Far Cry 2
5. Left 4 Dead
6. Fallout 3
   
7. No More Heroes
8. Grand Theft Auto IV
9. Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2
10. Yakuza 2
    

A couple things should go without saying. First, yes, I am aware these were my favorite games of the year and not objectively the best. Second, there were more than a few 2008 releases that I missed, although thanks to my cram session I think Fable 2 might be the only serious contender there. But who knows, maybe I would have loved something that got tepid reviews elsewhere, like The Force Unleashed.

I do feel that 2007 was a much better year for games overall. Not that it matters what the calendar says. You could reframe the debate and come out with a much different-looking list, as Iroquois Pliskin does in suggesting that video games completed the Tiger Slam from August 2007 through August 2008. What the heck -- we all enjoy these year-end lists, even if bitching about them is also fashionable. It's nice to take a minute and reflect on what we already have, before rushing headlong onto the next thing. Isn't that what the holidays are all about?

With that, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

(Posting is likely to be light until January 5.)

Friday afternoon tidbits

We're approaching holiday zero hour, and that means parties and presents this weekend. Plus we're supposed to get hell of snow this weekend, so I may end up being housebound. Fine by me -- I'll take any excuse to get back to the Capitol Wasteland.

-I was just tickled to get an honorable mention in part 1 of Simon Parkin's roundup of the best games writing of 2008, for the "Sex, violence, and video games" piece. Thanks to him for the acknowledgment, and also to whoever nominated the story in the first place.

-Of the many great "year in review" pieces to come along, Iroquois Pliskin's "The Year of Being There" is one of the best I've read. It's true: this year's games took us to some amazing places, and many tried hard to stretch the possibilities of interactive settings. But there were definitely some growing pains involved.

-Also worthy: RPS's take on Far Cry 2. Jim Rossignol and Kieron Gillen both have excellent takes on the game. This seems like a game that's going to stick with people for a long time, despite its flaws.

-Shoe argues against reviewers trading or selling promo copies of games. This is something that feels wrong to me, too, but I could never figure out exactly why. Shoe doesn't really answer the question, either. He seems to take it as a given. For myself, I don't attempt to profit unduly from the free goods I receive once I'm finished with them -- I don't sell them for cash, and I often give them to friends who would enjoy them -- but I don't see any problem with trading stuff in for other work-related items. For example, I just traded in some games for Prince of Persia, which I'm reviewing, and Fallout and Yakuza, both of which I wanted to play before putting together a top 10. Still feels kind of dirty, but... why?

-Even though I'm a newcomer to Fallout 3, I'm glad to see that others are still writing some good stuff about it. Check out Tom Cross's column at GSW, CrashT's at Groping the Elephant, and Travis Megill's at The Autumnal City.

-Hardcasual's posts about David Schwimmer's WoW chatlogs really made me laugh.

How I learned to stop worrying and love Fallout

Above: VATS-tastic

I can admit when I've been prejudiced. Everything I heard about Fallout 3 made me suspect it wasn't as good as the rapturous reviews would suggest. That's not a fair way to put it: I was pretty sure I wouldn't like this game, despite its virtues. Mostly, that's because I didn't like Oblivion, and nothing I heard about Fallout made me think it was going to be different. Massive game world. Long-ass quests. Karma. Conversations with creepy, dead-eyed characters who have retarded requests. This is not a recipe for the kind of game I'm usually into.

For a while there, I thought I was right. Fallout's first hour is pretty interesting, both for the way it sets the scene and for the way it goes about the usual RPG rigmarole of creating your character. When I played Oblivion, I kid you not, I spent about ten minutes paging through the classes, trying to figure out what I should be. I eventually settled on "Dark Elf" and spent the rest of my (brief) playing time wondering if I'd made a mistake.

That's what happens in these games. You can perform the good action or the bad action, and each one comes with its own benefits and drawbacks. But I can't think of it that way. All I can think is that I chose the wrong one, I blew it, and I've doomed myself to a less-than-ideal experience for the next 100+ hours, all because of that idiotic decision I made before I had even played enough to know better. This first happened in Fallout, by the way, before I'd even left Vault 101. I thought the Overseer was attacking me, you see. I thought it was self-defense! It wasn't until his daughter was yelling at me that I realized I'd messed up. I could have gone back and re-loaded an earlier save, but that's the coward's way out. A man takes responsibility for his actions.

Anyway, I did like the way Fallout went about its character creation. When you're born, your dad says "We're going to name you --" and then you get to fill in your own name. That's the same way you determine your basic attributes, and your appearance. I still am not sure why you get so many ways to customize your physical appearance. You never see yourself except in those slow-motion VATS sequences, and my face has been covered by a mask 90% of the time. Just more things to fret about and, later, regret. (Why, oh why did I pick the guy with the sideburns?)

Later on, you take a Wonderlic-like test that fleshes out your character fully. But again, I agonized over these choices. I was convinced I picked the wrong ones. Even when Levar Burton (that was him, right?) gave me a chance to change my attributes later, I said no. This was my lot in life -- my cross to bear. Off I went, into the wasteland, muttering to myself the whole time, "Why did I stick with melee and science? Why? I should have chosen guns!"

I was committed to playing as a good guy. I only wanted to do that which would earn me positive karma. So when Moira Brown in Megaton asked me to help her research a book, I couldn't say yes fast enough. I was like a brownnosing grad student working for a star professor. Sure, I'll run down to the grocery store and grab some food for you! (I made two attempts to get the medicine, too, but those Raiders were too much for me.) With that accomplished, my next task was to afflict myself with radiation poisoning so she could study its effects. Again, I accepted the job, a little more hesitantly this time.

It was only after I spent five minutes slurping down irradiated water at a nearby well that I first thought to myself, "This is fucking stupid." I felt the same way a little later, when I was circling a pillar opposite a minigun-wielding mutant waiting for my action points to build up so I could VATS his skull in. And when I found out the the world map is basically useless for helping you get to where you want to go, I could feel myself about to get self-congratulatory and preachy.

But somewhere along the way, those bizarre quest goals and gameplay irritations faded as the allure of the wasteland started to take hold. When Ryan was reviewing Fallout for the Phoenix and I asked him how it was, he put it this way: "If you're walking down the street and you see the Lincoln Memorial, you're not going to not go in there." That is exactly what happens. I can't think of a better way to explain it.

Admittedly, even this sometimes has its drawbacks. On my way to Rivet City to talk to Doctor Li, I came across the Jefferson Memorial, and figured I'd take a look. Inside, I found a bunch of records my dad had left in there. Presumably, Dr. Li would have told me to go back to the Memorial to find them, so it was just efficiency on my part. But I generally prefer to be led along a dramatic path in a game, instead of stumbling my way through. I'm given so much agency in Fallout that I can actually play it in a way I'd consider to be wrong.

But the flipside was what happened when I was trekking up to Arefu and discovered Vault 106. It wasn't part of any quest: just another miserable, tucked-away place in the wasteland, home to a few straggling survivors who had all, regrettably, gone batshit insane. Vault 106 was bigger than I thought, and when the lights started turning blue and I saw people appearing and disappearing, I thought my Xbox was on the verge of melting.*

After I realized that, no, this was supposed to happen, that was when everything clicked. There was no reason to go into Vault 106, except that it was there. Inside was an entire chapter of the history Bethesda has built for this game. That was its purpose: to show me this world. I had only to look.

*I've been having serious problems, actually, and I don't know if it's the software or the hardware. Fallout has locked up on me about three times, and once the audio turned ungodly staticky for about a minute before cutting out entirely. Not to mention the Megaton Settler with no head, and a beam of light shooting from her neck into the sky.

LittleBigPlanet confounds the taxonomy

Above: The cuddliest lil' fellas to mince down the pike since Bubsy the Bobcat

In the New Taxonomy of Gamers series, I argued that two basic motivations drive players. One is the desire to experience a game world, and the other is the desire to master it. (Read more about Skill Players vs. Tourists.) The idea was less than perfect, but nothing I've played since then has convinced me that those classifications are fundamentally wrong.

That includes LittleBigPlanet, whose cutesy aesthetic and ostensibly old-school platforming belie its status as a game aimed squarely at both types of skill player. For completionists, each level is stuffed with hidden collectables that you can use to customize your character's appearance and "Pod" (essentially his apartment). For perfectionists, there's the map editor, which we'll talk about shortly. For tourists, well, the neat things you can see and do are betrayed by piss-poor play control and an inane storyline. It's just not that fun to run through LittleBigPlanet in single-player mode.

Which isn't the point, of course. This game is concerned with a different axis of player entirely, one that's been around on the PC for decades, but is relatively new to the console scene: content producers versus content consumers. That level editor is no joke -- I'm sure I don't need to tell you. Ever since the beta test, LBP users have been running wild, and they've turned out some pretty impressive creations. One of the first user-created maps I tried out, basically at random, was an escape from Alcatraz that nailed the look and feel of the place. There are some real gems out there.

There's also some garbage, which is neither a surprise nor a strike against the game. Rather, it just goes to show how small the percentage is going to be of players who create something of worth to the LBP community. First of all, the number of people who will even publish a level has got to be miniscule compared to the number of people who will play one, while the number of people who will create genuinely good stuff is that much lower again. (I'm basing this on well-known "Web 2.0" formulas.) Still, in absolute terms, the amount of solid levels being built by LBP users seems impressive.

What I wonder is why the game's biggest draw is aimed at such a small proportion of its players. Building a good level has got to take a combination of inborn skill and serious dedication. The question is, was Media Molecule gambling by assuming that a relatively small number of users would become the engine that will power their game? Certainly it seems like the game is a commercial success, so even if they gambled it sounds like it was a good bet. I just wonder that vast majority of people who can't or won't put in the effort to make levels will stick around to see what others end up doing.

Granted, I'm not this game's target audience. Things like customizing my character have always baffled and annoyed me. The way I see it, I spent sixty bucks on your game -- the least you could do is a design a character for me. The whole idea of user-created content is strange to me. It's not my job to make the game for you, it's your job to make the game for me!

I don't want to go on a rant here [background fades to black], but this whole trend toward user choice in games is misguided in some ways. I was just reading a post about Fallout 3, in which the author wondered why doing things like jumping up on tables in the middle of crowded taverns never seemed to bother anyone in the game world, and I thought, well, why would the game give you the option to do that if there weren't going to be consequences? If everything is possible, why do anything? Am I a character who would jump on tables? It's fine if a designer wants to give me that option, but then it's his job to think through the consequences.

Say what you will about Far Cry 2, at least that game was consistent. Everybody started shooting at you, no matter what you were doing. And the other thing they did right is not to give you a choice to do good missions or bad ones. Personally, when someone tells me to go blow up a crate of medicine, my first thought is, no, I don't want to blow up that crate of medicine. You'd have to be a real dick to go and do a thing like that. But that's exactly it: In Far Cry 2, you are playing the role of a real dick! And while the game gives you a ton of latitude in exactly how you can go about being a dick, one choice it doesn't give you is not to act like a dick. If you could go through Far Cry 2 being Mr. Good Samaritan, it would be a worse game for it. Games are at their best when giving you the illusion of choice, while playing you like a fiddle.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, stay out of my booze.

Quiz: The Year in Swooning

Match each of these games with the breathless excerpt from its review.

1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
3. Dead Space
4. Far Cry 2
5. LittleBigPlanet
6. Fable 2
7. Fallout 3
8. Resistance 2

A. "Is it possible to give a game an 11? If so, this would be the game that would merit that score."

B. "I now know how film critics felt after screening "The Godfather." ...doesn't just raise the bar for the storied franchise; it completely changes the landscape of gaming."

C. "It is not hyperbole... an achievement that rivals greats like Half-Life 2 and BioShock. Its nuanced and labyrinthine plot, fully-realized characters and devastating attention to minute graphical details are beyond reproach."

D. "...a staggering, genre-defining achievement - marrying an utterly immersive world, memorable characters, incredible production values, some of the most inspired ... mechanics ever devised and so much heart ... Stands so far ahead of the majority of the games ... that it would be a crime against gaming not to laud this title as anything other than a masterpiece."

E. "...a landmark title that fundamentally changes the genre. Better than the original in every way, it is an amazingly rich adventure packed with anything and everything from exploration to fierce gun battles to harrowing car chases. It's incredibly polished, enormous in scope, and one of the best games of 2008."

F. "While the single-player experience is a great tale with an epic scope, it is equaled, and perhaps surpassed, by the multiplayer modes, which are perhaps some of the best I've ever played, and I'm particularly picky about my multiplayer."

G. "...one of the most important games to be released this decade. A tall order with the hype machine running overtime for the game but the way it reinvents how video games are played is sure to have lasting effects indefinitely."

H. "One of the greatest RPG’s ever made, a must own game for fans of the genre and anyone who wants to experience something truly unique."

Answers:

1. B (Game Informer)
2. A (IGN)
3. C (GameSpy)
4. E (GameShark)
5. G (Kombo)
6. H (WonderwallWeb)
7. D (Xbox World 360)
8. F (IGN)