Friday afternoon tidbits

Because a links post is easier than generating new content...

-If you haven't been keeping up with Gamer Melodico, a new site led by Kirk Hamilton, one of the nicest guys on the internet, you should. This week he posted a hilarious video of Commander Shepard's anti-press tendencies. Hasn't this guy ever heard of the first amendment?

(The temptation to play Mass Effect grows ever stronger. I must resist.)

-Mike Walbridge has some advice for aspiring game writers: give up. Mike's not wrong on most of his points. It's hard enough to make any money writing about video games, never mind make a living off of it. The competition is fierce. It's a constant battle to get paid what you're worth when there are thousands of other people out there willing to work for less. And yes, writing about games changes the way you play them, which is not always for the best. It's all true.

But it's also true that if you love writing, and you love games, and you feel like you have something to say, you should say it. Maybe nobody wants to pay you, or publish you. Say it anyway. Start a blog. Write for the love of writing. It's not always easy, and sometimes the well of ideas is dry. That's okay. Do it anyway. Write when you can. Play when you can. Do it for the love of the game, and some kind of success will follow.

Just maybe get a day job, too.

-Gus Mastrapa wonders if he's too old to compete with the youngsters in online shooters. This is a great piece, ringing with truth. When I was a teenager, I put hundreds, if not thousands of hours, into Quake II Capture the Flag. It's the only game I've ever really been good at, and it's only because of the practice. That was a luxury I had back then. I don't have that luxury now. At the age of 28, I've accepted that I will never really be good at a game again. That's fine in single player games, in which you don't have to excel in order to complete them. But it does make multiplayer tricky.

It's fitting that Gus quotes Valve's Chet Faliszek, who worked on Left 4 Dead, because I've found that as I get older, my interest in cooperative experiences like L4D only grows. It's not multiplayer that I'm tired of, which is what I thought for awhile, but the grueling competition you find in the average deathmatch. What's the point? I'm old and slow, and I'm comfortable with that.

-Lately I've been playing more and more online games at sites like Kongregate, and feeling like there's a whole world I didn't know existed. For some reason I just assumed these were spammy, worthless aggregators, but it's not the case. There's some great stuff out there, most of which can be consumed in bite-sized chunks. This week's recommendation: I Remain, a point-and-click adventure set in a zombie apocalypse. It's pretty creepy.

-I hate Google Buzz. Do you hate Google Buzz?

Games of the decade: Leftovers

In the course of putting together the list of my favorite games of the decade, I omitted several great games. In the spirit of inclusiveness, here are a few that I wish had been on there.

Games that barely missed the cut

Yakuza/Yakuza 2 - A phenomenal series packed with humor, pathos, and bone-crunching hits. News that Yakuza 3 is coming Stateside is welcome, indeed.

Ratchet and Clank (series) - I feel like a lot of people overlook how great this series is, given that Insomniac delivers a fun, visually pleasing game every year like clockwork. That's not easy to do. I'm sorry that I also overlooked it in this list. Tough omission.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - With a terrific single-player campaign and best-in-class multiplayer, or so they tell me, I left this one off mostly out of spite for the sequel. But it is still terrific.

Games that wouldn't have missed the cut if I hadn't forgotten them

Left 4 Dead - An unforgivable omission, and a total brainfart on my end. I love this game. I feel bad. Actually, several times I thought about what to write in the blurb before realizing that I hadn't actually put it anywhere on the list. Dumb.

Fairway Solitaire - Mainstream bias may have hurt Fairway Solitaire here. I just plum forgot about it. But I can't recommend it highly enough.

Games that seem like they might have made the cut if I'd ever played them

Silent Hill 2 - I've enjoyed other Silent Hill games, and tales of sexual repression and self-loathing are always a good time.

Eternal Darkness - Before Denis Dyack lost his marbles.

Beyond Good and Evil - It's so well regarded in certain circles, I feel like I'm missing something big by not having played this.

Deus Ex - I played the demo. It seemed okay.

Friday afternoon tidbits

It's a holiday weekend, as we here in the USA celebrate "America, Fuck Yeah" day. (Contrary to popular belief, that is not every day.) Hopefully you're not still at work. If so, have some links.

-The Brainy Gamer plays The Darkness, and makes some astute observations. It's impossible to play this game and not feel the urge to analyze it. At this point, it can't cost any more than 20 bucks. You owe it to yourself to give it a shot.

-Speaking of repairs, Mike Rousseau's Xbox RRoD'd on him. The service went fine, but then Microsoft tried to charge him to re-download his stuff from the marketplace. After that first post, somebody from the company contacted him and fixed the problem. That's good customer service, but they should be treating everybody that way in the first place. Right, Sony?

-As you may know, I'm a man who loves his taxonomies. So I was psyched to read Justin Keverne's "Taxonomy of Left 4 Dead," in which he breaks down the personalities of each of the characters. What I like best about the game is that the player's actions can mesh with the characters' personalities in unexpected ways. Francis might be written as misanthropic, but depending on who's controlling him he may be shown to have a heart of gold. That interaction makes for depth I wouldn't have expected before I played the game.

With that, I'm on vacation. Regular posting will resume the week after next.

Friday afternoon tidbits

It's Super Bowl weekend. (Now that I've said "Super Bowl," and not something generic like "the big game," I expect to be sued by the NFL.) Madden predicts a Steelers victory, while I predict that I don't care. Definitely rooting for the commercials this year.

-Earlier this week, we wondered just how many third-party games were available on the Wii. While there are obviously plenty, some readers took issue with my contention that they were dribbling out compared with third-party titles on other systems. So that's only tangentially related to N'Gai's article about third-party Wii games, but I need a lead-in somehow. He argues that more third-parties should lead development on the Wii, and then upscale them to the PS3 and Xbox. It's an interesting idea, and it would be nice to see Wii versions of games that aren't just shitty versions of other games with awful motion controls grafted on. It's especially hard to argue with N'Gai's claim that "the most powerful hardware is not what’s required for a game or a platform to succeed. "

-Tom Cross's "Diamond in the Rough" column at Gamasutra this week was about the challenge of storytelling in games. Much of the piece is about Valve generally and Left 4 Dead specifically. Left 4 Dead doesn't just work for the reasons Tom specifies. I've still been unable to say this in a way that feels satisfactory to me, but what is so impressive about Left 4 Dead is the way that its framework allows the players' own personalities to create a new and unique narrative each time through. It's true that Valve gave each character his own traits, but it's the players' actions that provide subtext. Maybe Louis really is just a good-hearted optimist -- but, depending on who's playing, maybe his sunny exterior is actually masking a craven, selfish heart. (I'm reminded again of Daniel Purvis's excellent recap of one such playthrough.)

-Ed Borden argues, a little counterintuitively, that the Xbox is just dragging everyone down: "Now, I can't play Halo or Fable, and Blizzard can't sell WOW to 22 million X-Box gamers. Now, X-Box gamers get crappy networking and "matchmaking" for multiplayer (console gamers don't even know what they're missing), and I get the joke that is Games for Windows Live. Now, X-Box gamers can't even use a browser or access the huge libraries of classic games from GOG.com or Steam, and I can't play XBLA games." It's a well thought-out piece with some provocative points. My last experience with PC matchmaking was Gamespy circa 1998, though, so I am pretty happy with Xbox Live.

-I won't get my hopes up for Arkham Asylum. I won't get my hopes up for Arkham Asylum.

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.)

Fourth-person shooter

Above: 2 good 2 B left 4 gotten

My Left 4 Dead review is up now at thephoenix.com. Yes, this is a wonderful game. I do have some doubts about how it will hold up over the long term, but I feel comfortable saying that it's something almost everybody needs to try once. Playing to the end of the "Dead Air" campaign alone is worth it just for the astonishing sight right as your team reaches the tarmac. The first time I made it there, nobody on our team had seen it before. We all stopped in our tracks, stared at it, and exclaimed "Awesome!" about five times each.

God I love Valve Software.

A question of motive

Between the Mirror's Edge conversation* and some recent shots across the bow of the Serious Games Journalist Network of Pretension, I've seen a couple of people mention that reviewers and gamers need to be considering more seriously the intentions of a game's developers. My gut reaction is to say "No we don't" and move on, but I'm incapable of letting this sort of thing go. Plus, upon further inspection, I don't think it's all that simple. Only mostly that simple.

Whether we're talking about books, movies, or games, in general I don't put much stock in authorial intent. I think my distaste stems from way too many encounters with sloppy writers who wanted to blame their own shortcomings on their readers. It is true that sometimes a writer might be perfectly clear in his meaning, and run up against a stubborn, uneducated reader who doesn't know or care what words mean, and disdains those who do. But that's a rare case -- sort of like all those fat people who claim that they have a glandular problem just because somebody, somewhere, actually does.**

The truth of the matter is that if a reader doesn't understand what you wrote, it's almost certainly because you did a bad job writing it. You chose vague words. Your grammar was careless. Your syntax was confused. If someone responds to something you wrote, having derived a wholly different meaning than what you intended, then it's a sign that you didn't do the best job you could have -- not that the reader was an idiot. And yes, this is extremely hard to remember when somebody slams your writing. That's all the more reason to keep it in mind when we talk about a developer's intent.

So, as I said, I'm not terribly interested in what a developer was trying to do. I care about what they did. Even trying to read interviews in order to uncover their intentions doesn't seem all that valuable, because I'm willing to bet that they intended to make a good game. Should they get points for that? Trying to consider any factors other than the direct gameplay experience seems to lead in a direction I don't want to go. We should be talking about what works and what doesn't, and, more importantly, what playing this game is like. I can't read the developers' minds, but I can play their game.

Still, this is a bit of a straw man. The side of the argument that makes sense to me is that a developer sets out to make a specific type of game, and it's nonsensical to review their product as though it were something else. For example, talking about Left 4 Dead as though the single-player mode were its top priority is probably not a great idea (but I certainly wouldn't see anything wrong with bringing up the strengths and weaknesses of the AI teammates).

Here's the thing: If the developers did their job right, then you don't need to know what they intended, because it will all be right there in the game. You don't need to know, going in, that Valve was trying to make a multiplayer shooter. Every design choice they made underlines that fact. Hell, maybe they were trying to make the best single-player shooter ever, botched it, and ended up with this sweet team-based shooter instead.

That's why, when I answered Shawn Elliott's questions last week, I said that I try to answer these questions in my reviews: "How do the game's apparent goals seem to mesh or conflict with its execution? What is this game trying to say?" I specified "game" and not "developers," because a game can speak for itself. Once it's finished and shipped, it doesn't belong to the developers anymore. It belongs to the players.

*No, this doesn't count as a mention of Mirror's Edge!
**Oh my god, I didn't just.

Thanksgiving leftovers: Left 4 Dead

Above: My family treats Thanksgiving dinner the same way.

I've been lying awake at night thinking about what wrong ever since my last, unsuccessful game of Left 4 Dead. Last Wednesday night, I was playing the "Blood Harvest" campaign with Chris and Michael, plus a random XBL denizen to round out our crew. It's fair to say that we weren't the most adroit zombie slayers you'll ever meet, but we stuck together, were generous with our health packs, and plowed our way through to the final chapter without too much trouble.

We just couldn't crack the last stand. Every campaign ends with a sustained siege by the infected against a fortified location. If you can withstand the attack long enough, a rescue vehicle arrives. We tried this one 5 or 6 times, barricading ourselves in a secluded farmhouse over and over, and nobody ever made it to the evac. Only twice, in fact, did we even survive long enough for transport to show up, and both times nobody made it from the house to the vehicle.

So what happened? I'd played a public game with strangers earlier that day -- the "No Mercy" campaign -- and all 4 of us had gotten to the chopper without much trouble. I would have expected it to be easier when I was actually communicating with people and, you know, participating fully in the game.

There were a few problems, all with the same root cause. We didn't fail every time our unit integrity broke down, but every time we did fail, that was why. Our silent fourth player was the only one who wouldn't share his health packs. At one point during the siege, I had about 10 health points, while my three teammates were all safely in the green. Either Michael or Chris would have healed me if he could have, I'm sure, but this stranger was holding onto the only one, and refused to share. A couple of us mentioned it. I ran next to him to make it easy for him. He wouldn't do it. So what happened? I died in the next wave of attacks, and my teammates lost cover on their flank. Worst of all, it was friendly fire from this same teammate that did me in.

Not to put all the blame on that guy. I made my own mistakes. At one point, only Chris and I remained alive, and I heard the rescue vehicle lumbering outside. I should have followed him down the stairs and stuck close on the short trip from the house to the vehicle. Instead, I jumped out a second-story window, sure I could close the gap before any infected got to me. You can guess how this story ends. I got ensnared, and was dragged to the ground about ten feet from the vehicle. I was looking into its open door. I tried to tell Chris to forget about me and get out of there (how noble), but they got to him, too, and we both died spitting distance from our salvation.

Somehow, after all this, the game only got harder. I didn't realize the Director was such a sadist. Dispirited, we gave up.

We could have done a few things differently. First, we should have made the effort to close all the doors in the farmhouse. It doesn't hold back the infected for too long, but every second counts in that situation.

Second, we should have been smarter about our defensive positions. We actually got a pretty decent setup going by the end. The second floor has a staircase, three bedrooms, and a closet. With one person at the top of the stairs, two people at the doors of the far bedrooms, and a fourth person in the closet, covering the middle bedroom, you essentially have everyone's back covered. Why we didn't make more of an effort to stick to this, I don't know. It might have worked.

Finally, and most important, whoever was left when the vehicle showed up should have maintained cohesion for as long as possible on the way out. But if that failed, I think it would have been okay if only one person got out alive. I would have been perfectly happy watching my teammate get away safely as the evac kicked up dust all over my gnawed corpse. That's just the kind of guy I am.

Friday afternoon tidbits, Wednesday morning edition

Above: I can feel my tummy rumbling already!

It's nearly Thanksgiving, which means we're doing the links a little early this week. These should make for some good postprandial reading, if you don't lapse immediately into a meat coma.

(By the way, did you know my first job was at a turkey farm? I have intimate knowledge of how that bird gets to your table. I've seen things I can't un-see.)

-Simon Parkin is taking nominations for the best game writing of 2008. I'd never be so tacky as to nominate myself, but, you know, if you think there's anything I've done that might be worthy of the honor, I certainly won't stop you from suggesting it to him. Ahem.

-One of those fascinating cross-blog conversations blew up this week. At issue is whether game reviewers sufficiently value innovation. Leigh wrote two posts saying that innovation gets short shrift, N'Gai rebutted by saying that execution is paramount, and Leigh responded once more that there may be more common ground than N'Gai gave her credit for. For myself, I agree with N'Gai's points. Innovation is a means, not an end. The goal, in my view, is to make fun games that are easy to play.* If innovation helps with that, then innovate away! But without execution, innovation doesn't mean much. Sometimes you might have a great idea without being able to work out all the kinks, which seems to be what happened with Mirror's Edge.

(I covered some of this ground in a post last summer, "Standards and practices.")

-I loved Daniel Purvis's write-up of playing Left 4 Dead with strangers. The notion of the players' personalities creating a storyline within the more open-ended framework of the gameplay is exciting, and something I wouldn't have expected. My copy of Left 4 Dead is still in the shrinkwrap, but I think this weekend I'm going to rectify that.

-Tim Rogers's review of Gears of War 2 is insane. I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean the man's passion for the game has transported him to another plane of being, where he is unconstrained by your petty human concerns. He has become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.

-Is it Christmas?

*Not to be confused with easy games.

Picked-up pieces

(Update: Welcome, Slate Gaming Club readers! Scroll down for the bit about Gears of War 2 and Contra.)

Because you can't make fun of defenseless kids all the time, enjoy some scattered musings.

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All you need to know about why Rock Band is better than Guitar Hero can be summed up in five words: "Mission of Burma track pack."

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Which of these is the best joke:

"I can't believe I missed the first three Left Dead games!"

Or: "I can't believe I missed Left 1-3 Dead!"

Or: "Will I know what's going on in Left 4 Dead if I never played Left 3 Dead?"

Or are they all failures? (All based, by the way, on somebody I knew in college who saw a commercial for Cradle 2 the Grave, starring DMX, and said, "I didn't know they made a Cradle the Grave 1!")

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Last weekend I played Call of Duty 4 online for the first time in my life. Within 20 minutes of my joining, someone had called somebody else a "fucking little bitch" en route to mocking him non-stop for the remainder of my time in the game. Sometimes I think I unfairly generalize about the level of discourse in multiplayer video games. Then I, you know, play multiplayer video games.

Sub-musing: Why should it even bother me when a stranger cusses out another stranger during a game? I don't know. But it does.

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I never realized the extent to which games these days are just rip-offs of older games. It was suggested to me that a sequence near the end of BioShock, in which you assemble the pieces of a Big Daddy suit, was directly influenced by the plot of Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, in which Simon gathered Dracula's body parts in order to put him back together and then destroy him once and for all. Who would have guessed?

Gears of War 2 doesn't even hide its influences. There's an entire sequence that's basically the last level of Contra. It's not just that your squad gets swallowed by a giant worm and has to fight its way out. You have to avoid giant chomping teeth, kind of like this:

Arachnoid parasites leap from the ground and scurry toward you, just like this:

At the end, you must destroy the creature's heart, which bears more than a passing resemblance to this:

The big difference, of course, is that in Contra you were never in danger of drowning in a quickly rising pool of arterial blood. Lack of technology -- or failure of imagination?

(Thanks to this dude for taking so many great Contra screenshots, which I stole with glee.)

Gamestop.com User-Submitted Previews: Left 4 Dead

Above: Only teamwork will get us out of this accursed Web alive

Oddly, although Left 4 Dead only comes out today, Gamestop.com has already switched from their previews to reviews. You'd think that wouldn't be enough time for their users to appraise the game. You would even think that they'd want to play the full game before trumpeting their thoughts and throwing around phrases like "game of the year."

You would be wrong.

"PFCOKAT" reaches for the brass ring straight away:

By far one of the best games I've ever played. If you like house of the dead and resident evil, you'll love this game. The demo alone has a high replay value and it's only two stages and doesn't even have all the capabilities the actual game provides... there are no complaints for this game whatsoever, if you're only buying one game for christmas, this is definitely it.

I know this is the part where I usually make a joke, but... How can you judge replay value after a week? How can you know something is one of the best games you've ever played when you've only played the demo? It's just nonsense. On the other hand, nothing PFCOKAT wrote here would disqualify him from employment at most leading game review sites.

That is, if "Kaboose102" doesn't get snapped up first, thanks to this back two and a half somersault:

I think this game is a valve personal best. Heck i would even think its better than portal and half life and Team Fortress all put together. It just a simple zombie survival game and thats all. Buut dont get me wrong its not soemthing where u just fight zombies

The half twist at the end really put him into medal contention.

For "Ninjajaunt111," Left 4 Dead fulfills a lifelong dream:

I for one always wanted a great zombie survival game since I first saw dawn of the dead.

It's about time someone made a zombie game influenced by Dawn of the Dead. Okay, admittedly he specified a "great" game, and surely there haven't been any great zombie games since 1978 -- wait, he's talking about the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, isn't he? Get off my lawn, whippersnapper!

Lots of games recently have made moral choice a key part of gameplay, and according to "L4D demo Gamer," this one is no different:

In the game you start off with just a pistol and have the very important decision, Uzi or Pump action shotgun, it mean life over death.

And you thought you agonized over whether to harvest the Little Sisters!

"Penguin" gets a jump on the official strategy guide with these useful tips:

Some zombies have some bosses like the evil witch, if you point a flash light or shoot her she will hunt you down and kill you. The tank on the other hand, will see you if you go near that big guy, he's a big giant zombie, its like a zombie on steroids. I call him "The Hulk", because he looks like the hulk but just yellow! Eventually, I heard people in my party calling them The Hulk, and my friends call him that too!

I feel awful about this today. I feel like a jerk. It made this kid's day that his nickname caught on. What kind of monster would you have to be to make fun of him for that? It's like going to his birthday party and popping the balloons. While he was giving all the balloons names.

I am dead inside.