Stay tuned after the credits for a special treat!

Above: Samus' goth high school portrait.

Metroid: Other M is not a bad game. It's not a great game, either. But it's a strange game, and the strangest thing of all is this: it gets much better after it's over.

The initial campaign took about ten hours, all told, and while it had its moments it was also frustrating. For the most part, you can't explore. You have to go where the game tells you to. Your suit upgrades are doled out by a third party, and not because of anything you do.

This last part is pretty ridiculous. You repeatedly run through hot lava levels that sap your life, before some guy says "Oh hey, how about you use your Varia Suit?" You've had it the whole time, you see. You just didn't think to turn it on.

The same thing happens a little later: Samus is about to be blown into the vacuum of space, but fortunately, the game seizes control from you and activates the Gravity Suit. Well thank god for that. I didn't want to have to do anything there.

Some items are impossible to pick up your first time through, because you can't use Power Bombs until the plus game starts. Besides that, because so many doors are arbitrarily locked in service of the story, you're not free to backtrack whenever you do find an upgrade.

Worst of all is the story. Look, Nintendo and Team Ninja were under no obligation to meet some Platonic ideal of Metroid that may exist only in my head. If they want Samus to talk, Samus can talk. If they want her to whimper while a manly man father figure heroically sacrifices himself to save her, they can do that too (of course, they really shouldn't have). But, Metroid or not, they shouldn't have made long, talky, boring cutscenes that, when they aren't interrupting the gameplay, are replacing it.

Then, after the terrible climax,* the credits roll, and Samus flies back to the space station. Suddenly, it feels like Metroid again. Samus is alone. There's not some idiot chirping at her every five minutes. She can explore the space station at her own pace, and under her own direction. At this point, you have all the powerups, so the only upgrades remaining are generally more missile packs and energy tanks, but that's okay.

I'm not sure what to make of it. The plus game is a hallowed tradition, but it's not something I've tended to pursue. One playthrough is usually enough. Here, I'd say that it's almost worth plugging through the first game just to get to the second one. It's not a good thing that it takes ten hours to get where you're going in Other M, but it's nice to arrive.

*Story of my life.

Mafia II

Above: Vito Scaletta hides from my review.

My review of Mafia II is up at thephoenix.com.

I've said before that a good game succeeds despite its flaws, and a bad game fails despite its virtues. This is a prime example of the latter. There is a lot of good stuff to be found here. I don't agree with Bill Harris when he says that the writing is brilliant, but it is above average: thoughtful, deliberate, restrained. Character driven? Not exactly, but closer than you usually get with a game of this type. Compared to other recent gangster games, Mafia II avoids the fetishization of violence of The Godfather II, and the tone-deafness of Grand Theft Auto IV.*

The story needs to be good if you're going to play through a game like Mafia II, because the structure is very much cutscene-gameplay-cutscene. It looks like an open-world game, but it doesn't play like one. Were there side missions? If so, the game did a good job of hiding them. Not that side missions are the most important part of a game. I just mean to say that when you're driving down a street in Empire Bay, you do not stop to explore anything that catches your eye. You keep going to your next objective.

When Mafia II is bad, though, it is bad. I couldn't believe how awful the shootouts were. The enemies are bullet sponges, which is very much at odds with the game's ostensible realism. Targeting was next to impossible (I eventually discovered that there was a smidgen of auto-aim if you snapped in and out of cover quickly enough, but it usually didn't help). And the worst thing was, they all played out exactly the same way: rote duck-and-cover sequences taking place along straight, narrow corridors. Even outdoor shootouts found a way to lock you into what were, functionally, crate-filled hallways.

My experience with the game came to follow a pattern. First, a slow burning enjoyment, as I eased myself into the slow pace and focused on the story. Then, bewilderment and frustration as I came upon some idiotic part of the gameplay that I usually ended up repeating several times. Any spell the game started to cast would be broken.

The worst thing about it is that I would like to be talking about Mafia II solely in terms of the story. I'd like to be talking about what it's saying about loyalty and friendship. I'd like to be praising not only the direction of the storyline, but the obvious pitfalls it avoids. And in a sense the game would deserve that. But it's too hard to see past the basic mechanics of the thing to do that. It's really too bad.

*Though GTAIV's story is the far more dramatically interesting of the two.

Announcing the Laser Orgy 500, plus a Hydro Thunder review

Got a couple of important links before your Labor Day weekend.

First, now that it's been out for over a month, check out my long-awaited review of Hydro Thunder Hurricane. I really liked this game. Like I say in the review, it's not groundbreaking, earth-shattering, or sky-rending -- nor will it convince Ebert that games are art -- but it is pretty awesome. I was especially impressed how unpredictable and chaotic online races were, given the lack of missiles and such.

There's a much more important project at the Phoenix that you need to check out. In the Laser Orgy 500, you can vote for the best video game of all time. This isn't like most best-of lists you might have seen, or participated in before. This is a battle royal. Two games are chosen at random from the database, and you must choose which is better.

Sometimes, this leads to agonizing choices (Counterstrike vs. Civilization IV, say.) Sometimes, pairings so comical you'd swear there was a human intelligence at work (Gears of War vs. Xenogears). Sometimes, games so bad that you'd rather leap off of something than play either one (E.T. vs Custer's Revenge).

After awhile, it becomes less about which game is "better" than which game you'd rather play right this second. You'd be surprised what you come up with.

Vote in the Laser Orgy 500. And say goodbye to the rest of your afternoon.

Limboned

Above: I'd even go so far as to say this game looks better in stills.

My review of Limbo is up now at thephoenix.com. I promise you that it is not intended as kneejerk contrarianism. The tone of this review is partly a reaction to the praise, yes, but I'll defend the substance of the criticisms any time. I'm not discounting the validity of the profound experiences so many other people are claiming to have had with this game, but, wow, I didn't see it at all.

All I saw here was smoke and mirrors. Some clever ideas thrown onscreen with no regard for how they fit together, and no semblance of anything I recognize as good game design. Games are about rules, with the occasional exception that throws you for a loop. Limbo is all exceptions and no rules. If there had been an open microphone in the room while I was playing this game, I imagine it would have picked up nothing but a steady stream of "What?" "Huh?" "Wait... what?" (Plus the f-word a lot of times.)

Not that Limbo is difficult, per se. The puzzles aren't brain-busters, and even though you die a lot, it always puts you right back where you started. It's just so capricious. It never bothers to set limits or rules for the world you're in. Its sole concern seems to be killing you for no apparent reason. Instead of asking you to apply what you learned from your previous deaths, the game keeps changing the rules so it can kill you again. It's as though it's making things up as it goes, like a rambling first draft that could use a good revision.*

As for whether Limbo is the long-awaited proof that games are art, well. We can agree that it sure looks neat. And we can probably agree that the big spider is pretty scary. Beyond that? I'm not buying it. The closest this game gets to something resembling truth and not artifice is the occasional appearance of larger boys who ambush your character and then scurry away. This is interesting, and feels unforced, especially compared to the rest of the game. As with everything else, Limbo passes over this tantalizing opportunity. The boys come and go, and nothing much happens.

Meanwhile, the game moves onto much less evocative threats, like buzzsaws and electrified rails. (Yes, those certainly speak to the essence of your childhood fears.) Doesn't that all seem backward? The big spider comes first. Then the creepy bullies. Then a bunch of clanking machinery with no character at all. Talk about diminishing returns. If there had been another level, our hero would be trying to avoid eating his beets.

Limbo just seemed so desperate to convince me of its profundity. I wanted to put my arm around its shoulder and say: You've got a lot of growing up to do, kid.

*See also: this post.

At last, the game that will convince Roger Ebert that games are art

Above: A man who is ready and willing to listen to what I have to say, because -- no, seriously, listen.

A few months ago, Roger Ebert wrote the stupidest thing any Pulitzer Prize winner has written, at least since The Hours. This asshole actually said that video games are not, and can never be, art. (Not going to link him -- don't want to give him the traffic.) Can you believe this idiot?

To his credit, Ebert walked back his argument later, saying that while he, personally, does not give a shit if video games are art or ever could be art, he hasn't played enough to speak knowledgably on the subject.

Like we're going to let him get away with that.

I have just the game that will steer Ebert away from the dark path he walks. The game that will convince him not only that games are art, but that they have always been art, and always will be art, and will never not be art. A downloadable game has just come out that proves, once and for all, the incredible depth and meaning even the smallest games can possess. A work of uncommon subtlety and insight, it will convince even the lowliest, most wheelchair-bound, most unable-to-talk-anymore cretin that video games are art.

You know the game I mean. Roger Ebert needs to play Hydro Thunder Hurricane.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane uses well-worn gameplay tropes as a Trojan horse to deliver an army of metaphors into the walled city of your brain. Consider: Hydro Thunder Hurricane is a racing game. What else is a race? Working life is often called the "rat race." The Amazing Race is an Emmy-winning TV show. Politicians are always talking about the importance of race relations. (I'm not sure what this means??? I think it has to do with Nascar fans not getting along with Formula One fans.) Already you see how Hydro Thunder Hurricane is brimming with allusions to some of the core aspects of our humanity, not unlike other things that jerks like Roger Ebert would say are art, such as movies and books.

As the name implies, Hydro Thunder takes place on the water. ("Hydro" means "water," Roger. See? Games can be educational!) Maybe that's why it's so deep -- pun intended! Most of the courses aren't circular in this game. They have distinct start and end points, which are meant to represent birth and death, respectively. Each track is full of shortcuts, which are fun to find but which all lead to the same place. Isn't this like life itself? We all take our own paths -- maybe I'm a blogger, maybe you're a pompous movie critic who keeps talking shit about stuff he knows NOTHING about -- but in the end we all die. (Some of us hopefully sooner than others!)

Nor is the path to the finish line calm or smooth. Your hovercraft (representing you) is buffeted by wind and waves as you head toward the finish line (which is death, remember). The symbolism of the turbulent racing surface is clear: the waves represent the inherent uncertainty of our daily lives. We try to outrun our problems, but the faster we go, the choppier they get, and the more of their salty spray gets in our eyes, which makes it look like we're crying even though it's just because the saltwater stings. They're not real tears.

You can pick up "boost," which helps you get to the end faster, but is that such a good thing? And is it a coincidence that the boost is depicted in the shape of bottles? The bottle has had ruinous consequences for many people, most of whom were using it just to get through to another finish line (the end of the workday, say, or a long car ride). It was a brave choice of developer Vector Unit to tackle such a debilitating social ill, but I would argue that this is one of the noblest purposes of true art.

Hydro Thunder Hurricane toys with the emotions of the player -- it is at times beautiful and at times terrifying. The player runs the emotional gamut by the time it is over, and is left considering the consequences of what has just occurred. It is a difficult game, but there has never been one quite like it that so effectively communicates this trying world to the person who is experiencing it.

It is the kind of game that changes who we are. It tailors us; puts us in a place that is far away from where we were before we encountered it. And you can't say that about many things.

Spanktacular

Above: Death, spankings.

My review of DeathSpank is up at thephoenix.com. This was a terrific game. While I focused mostly on the humor in my review, I'd also like to mention how great-looking it is.

Remember the graphical arms race that marked every new console launch for years? My memory of the 16- and 32-bit generations contains lists of how many colors a system could display, how many polygons it could process (flat-shaded or texture-mapped), and how many special effects it could handle in hardware (alas, the Sega Saturn couldn't do transparencies!). Every mention of video game systems was about graphics.

Since the launch of HD-compatible systems, the cries of the graphics hawks have mostly been silenced -- perhaps because the best-selling console of this generation is emphatically not HD-compatible, or perhaps because graphics really are good enough at this point. They will continue to improve, and I'll welcome that, but today's games are making bigger strides in areas besides the visual.

The war cry always was that graphics are no substitute for good game play. Now that battle has been won. But it's also not the whole story. Raw graphical processing power is no substitute for good gameplay. Inspired, visually appealing art is a huge asset for any game. Sometimes it still can overwhelm a player's better judgment when the gameplay is less than ideal. (But we'll talk about Limbo another time.)

DeathSpank isn't just funny and fun to play, it also shows you interesting things all the time. The cotton candy-colored enchanted forest, the glowing orange demon mines, the fetid green swamps -- these are all equal to the zaniness of the story and the dialogue. The graphics amplify what's happening in the game; they don't overwhelm it.

One last point on this: it's interesting that you have to go to the budget space to find games that take risks with their art direction. The majority of AAA console titles all strive for realism. It works for some of them (the fidelity of Red Dead Redemption gave the proceedings the right measure of seriousness), but it's astonishing how many games about alien worlds and altered dimensions are incapable of imagining anything but gray industrial corridors. I guess it's a risky business move to delight your audience.

My superpower is running and hiding

Above: Because a Google image search for "Crackdown 2" yielded nothing.

One more note on Crackdown 2.

We talk a lot -- or we used to talk a lot -- about ludonarrative dissonance. In laymen's terms, it means a conflict between a game's story and the mechanics the game uses to tell that story. A recent example is Uncharted 2: in cutscenes, Nathan Drake is a charming everyman, sheepish and gentle, and in gameplay he's an unstoppable killing machine.

It might be hard to see how a game such as Crackdown 2 can have ludonarrative dissonance when there's almost no narrative to speak of, but it's there. The point of this game is that you are a badass. Right? That's the whole of it. You are a one-man wrecking crew who becomes a one-man army. Forget a plot about freaks and gangs -- that's the story.

But playing as a badass is often not the best way to progress. One of the objectives in the game is to capture tactical locations held by gangs. It's pretty simple: you find an area, trigger the scenario, and then kill a certain number of bad guys. Eventually the game will tell you that you have been successful.

In my time with the game, I found that there were lots of ways to fail at this. Charging in and trying to punch the gang members, for example. Trying to throw things at them rarely worked. Tossing explosives was okay if I was in range. But generally speaking, no matter how powerful I thought I was, if I went right into the hornet's nest, I was toast. (Especially since, thanks to the wonky targeting lock-on, it was all too easy to accidentally shoot a nearby explosive barrel instead of the bad guy behind it.)

Eventually I discovered that the best way to lock down a tactical location was to play it cowardly. I disappeared around corners, popping out just long enough to plug one enemy before seeking cover again. This was time consuming, and hardly ever fun, but it was the most effective way I found to accomplish my objective. Once I found it, I had little incentive to keep experimenting.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a game about a character who uses the environment to his defensive advantage. Here it doesn't make sense. One of the things I liked so much about Prototype was the extent to which it encouraged you do to absolutely anything you could think of with all the crazy powers it bestowed upon you. In Crackdown 2, you can safely ignore most of them. What good is that?

It's a number 2 all right

My review of Crackdown 2 is up now at thephoenix.com.

I liked the first Crackdown even before it was cool, with the added cred of not having played it to get a Halo 3 beta code. Time has been kind to that game: in my mind, it's grown in stature to be one of the best of this generation. Three and a half years later, it's just about the only non-new game I still take for a ride once in awhile. I'm still hunting for that last freaking agility orb.

So obviously, as a raging fanboy, I'm a candidate to love the sequel. Or, wait, am I a candidate for being unnecessarily critical? I can't keep these things straight. I'm even sympathetic to Lewis Denby's thesis on sequel syndrome, that sequels definitionally cannot be as good as the original because they lack the element of surprise. (Even though his primary example of BioShock 2 is one of the worst he could have given. That game rocked.)

In every big way, Crackdown 2 is identical to the original. None of the major mechanics have been overhauled. And there is that twinge of familiarity, especially since the game takes place, once again, in Pacific City. Isn't it strange, though: when I play the original Crackdown, familiarity is exactly what I want. It was new once, and it isn't now, and that's what I still like about it. When I played Crackdown 2, I didn't exactly feel thrilled to be back, but neither was I disappointed.

There are lots of tweaks to the sequel though, nearly all for the worse. Contra Joystick Division, I didn't feel the game was too open; I felt hemmed in by the hands of the designers. I felt like they (or their surrogates, like the narrator) were constantly butting in. In the original game, if you couldn't reach an agility orb, you knew because it was too high to reach. In the sequel, you might see a message onscreen that you need to be at a higher agility level. Thanks for bursting my bubble.

At one point, I grabbed something called an "ultra assault rifle," and laid waste to an underground horde of mutants. Nice. Then I took it back to one of my tactical locations so that I could store it for later use. Sorry, some onscreen text informed me, you need to be at a higher firearms level before you can store this weapon.

WTF?

This I don't get at all. If I'm not powerful enough to use the weapon, find a good reason not to let me use it. Don't arbitrarily prevent me from saving it. What's the concern here? That I might become too powerful too early? Isn't that the point of the game? This stuff never happened in the first Crackdown.

Dave and Buster's brilliant business plan

Above: After 10 PM, the "DB" stands for "douchebags."

This past weekend, I went to a Dave and Buster's for the first time. As a chain restaurant-cum-video arcade, it's actually not too bad. The chicken fingers were crunchy, and the beers were tall and cold. Not much more you can ask from a casual dining establishment.

The arcade portion feels more like a casino. In my experience, arcades are dark and dingy places, with hidden corners you're better off not exploring. Dave and Buster's is big and airy, cacophonous and bright. Trying to eat dinner while watching the attract mode of dozens of arcade machines is not easy.

What was interesting was that the place clearly was not catering to gamers in any real sense. It was all about flashy peripherals. Almost every game they had was either a driving game or a shooting game. If you could sit down on it, even better. There were no fighting games, no beat-em-ups. The only game I recall seeing with a traditional joystick-and-buttons control scheme was Virtua Tennis 3, and even that was on a huge, fancy cabinet.

Razing Storm

So I mostly played shooters. It's amazing how, even though they're nearly identical on the surface, the quality can vary so much. Razing Storm was a good one, a Time Crisis clone from Namco that had a much better gun and fully destructible environments. I also liked Sega's Rambo game, which interspersed clips from the movie with fast-paced shooting. (Fun fact: In the game's first chapter, which takes place during Rambo III, you're assisting the freedom loving, god fearing men of the Taliban. That worked out well.)

Deadstorm Pirates

Best of all: Deadstorm Pirates, another one by Namco. This was one where you get inside an enclosed space that seems to be made entirely out of subwoofers. You're shooting ghost pirates, not unlike those in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, with some kind of high-powered harpoon gun. Deadstorm Pirates distinguishes itself with a simple and fun co-op feature. When you and your partner cross the streams, you get a damage multiplier. There are also mid-mission QTEs that take advantage of a built-in ship's wheel. Good times.

Paradise Lost

The worst shooter I played was called Paradise Lost, which seemed to be based on the original Far Cry. Hard to say why it wasn't good, really, except that it was bland to look at and bland to play. The better shooters on offer all had some kind of twist, whether it was Razing Storm's destructible environments, Rambo's rage meter, or Deadstorm Pirates' FREAKING GHOST PIRATES.

I also played Daytona USA. They had 8 cabinets networked. Amen.

What's weird about Dave and Buster's is how hard it is to know how much money you've spent. It's just one abstraction on top of another. You can get certain entrees with a game card for a discount. I got chicken fingers and a $20 game card for $23.99. In other words, dinner was four bucks. Good deal, right?

Well, I have no idea. That $20 game card turned out to be worth 100 credits. And all the games cost a different amount of credits, which were rarely round numbers. Skee Ball was a mere 2.4 credits, while Guitar Hero arcade cost 8.0.

Then you add tickets to the equation. If you're already struggling with the connection between your $20 game card, your 100 credits, and the 5.7 credits you just blew on the claw grabber, now try figuring out what your tickets are worth. For one thing, each ticket is actually worth two tickets. Why would that be confusing? It says so right on the ticket.

So after you spend all the credits on your game card and earn a pile of tickets, you can head to the "winner's circle" to redeem them for valuable prizes. Granted, we played a lot of video games, which don't reward players with tickets, but we also played a fair bit of Skee Ball and those weird coin-dropping games, and had a pretty fat stack when all was said and done. Turned out we had earned about 270 tickets.

What does 270 tickets buy you at Dave and Buster's? A little can of Tootsie Rolls and a thing of Pop Rocks. If you've been following along at home, that means we bought about fifty cents' worth of penny candy with our $40 of game cards.

Obviously, this is why Dave and Buster's is still in business. Well played, gentlemen.

Red Dead Redemption

Above: The evening redness in the west.

Sometimes, so many people talk about a game that it hardly seems worth adding to the discussion. Red Dead Redemption is such a game. For what it's worth, I thought it was pretty darn good. My review of Red Dead Redemption has been posted at thephoenix.com. It barely talks about the gameplay at all. Those are my favorite ones to write.

Galaxian

Above: Feeling dwarfed.

Every time a new Super Mario game comes out, I approach it breathlessly, and spend the first few hours in a reverie, jumping and climbing and squashing mushrooms with abandon. In 25 years and countless iterations, something core to the Super Mario experience hasn't changed. Playing Super Mario Galaxy 2, which I reviewed for this week's Phoenix, isn't a nostalgia trip as much as it seems to unify a lifetime of gaming into a single moment. It's like playing games was when I was a kid; it's like playing games will be when I am old. It almost exists outside the normal progression of games.

That sounds like high praise, doesn't it? And it is, in a sense, and probably the sort of sentiment that has earned Super Mario Galaxy 2 a Metacritic score of 98, one of the highest ever. I can't say the reviews are wrong, as though I feel like we'd played a different game. Galaxy 2 is a playground through which a few basic gameplay principles are applied rigorously and with increasing ingenuity. This is virtual play in its purest form. I get that.

I just don't want to play any more. After the first few hours, the sugar rush wears off. I find myself trying over and over to acquire new stars, failing over and over again until the fun is gone and it's become a grim sort of attrition. Galaxy 2 hands out extra lives like breath mints at a chain restaurant, so it's rare that a single challenge results in a game over screen. But, in a way, it's almost worse to have 20 tries or more to get something right, when it stopped being enjoyable after the fifth try. I can't give up now! I've got 15 more tries to get this star!

Why am I trying to get more stars? So I can get more stars, of course. Lots of games use feedback loops like this, successfully, but here it's unadorned. I have a hard time imagining the player who truly desires to save the princess. Finding her is secondary, maybe even tertiary, to the ultimate goal of mastering a hostile game world.

Galaxy 2 does have lots of sights and sounds that I want to experience, but I don't want to have to earn it in blood. Ultimately, I don't play games to be good at them. These days I can't imagine why else I would play a Super Mario game. It's not that Galaxy 2 is the hardest game I've ever played, it's that there's no other factor compelling me forward -- no story, no moments of serendipitous delight, nothing but the next looming challenge.

The biggest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist, and the biggest trick Nintendo ever pulled was convincing the world that Mario games were easy breezy fun. They are hardcore.

Banned in Boston: The Splinter Cell Conviction review

For reasons that weren't adequately explained, a review of Splinter Cell: Conviction that I filed about six weeks ago never ran. Either there was a space crunch, or no one wanted to waste ink on a bad game, or Third Echelon has a highly placed mole in the paper's hierarchy. Another, less likely explanation is that the review itself wasn't very good. But that couldn't be, could it? You tell me.

4.0/10
SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION

FOR XBOX 360 AND PC/RATED M FOR MATURE

PUBLISHED BY UBISOFT/DEVELOPED BY UBISOFT MONTREAL

Stealth bomb

Splinter Cell lacks conviction

BY MITCH KRPATA

“Stealth action” has always been an oxymoron. Satisfying though it may be, there’s not much action in crouching behind a crate for five minutes, waiting for an enemy guard to turn around so you can snap his neck. The Metal Gear Solid series has attempted to solve this problem, with varying success, by including slam-bang boss battles alongside the main course. The Splinter Cell series, by contrast, has always been more about diversionary tactics, creative use of the environment, and those breathless moments when its outnumbered protagonist waits silently for armed bad guys to pass him by.

Yet the problem with the newest Splinter Cell game, subtitled “Conviction,” isn’t that it paints a more overtly violent veneer on the robust stealth mechanics that have distinguished past entries. In Conviction, Sam Fisher has turned into a man with no allegiances and nothing to lose, and little reason not to kill everyone in his way. This time, stealth is a survival tactic, not a mandate. Sam can blast his way from one end of a map to another if the player chooses. This is a little harder than using tried-and-true stealth tactics, but that’s as it should be. Of course you’re more likely to die if you charge your enemies with guns blazing.

No, the problem here is all on the surface. Not to put too fine a point on it, playing Splinter Cell: Conviction is a pain in the ass. For some reason, the designers decided to ignore every other action game ever made, and come up with their own creative button mapping scheme. Look, every game needs to tweak its control system to fit its mechanics, but standards have evolved over the decades for a reason. This must be the only game in history in which you reload your weapon by clicking the left analog stick. Good luck remembering that in the heat of a firefight.

Not only unpredictable, the controls are inconsistent. One of Sam’s most effective attacks is “death from above,” whereby he drops onto an unsuspecting enemy and kills him instantly. When Sam is dangling from a high spot, the left trigger performs the move. When he is standing on an upper level, the B button does it. This is horrible interface design.

Some of the annoyances are even more rudimentary than that. Sam’s opponents are motormouths, to a man. Each one spouts inane babble that is apparently supposed to provoke the player into giving away Sam’s position, but more likely will provoke the player into giving away his copy of the game. Kirk Hamilton, of the Gamer Melodico blog, bravely catalogued over 100 lines of taunting enemy dialogue, including gems like, “Fisher? That guy's harder to kill than a cockroach with an Uzi.” God help him.

It’s probably not worth mentioning how stupid the story is, except to say that the harder you try to understand what the hell is going on, the less sense it all makes. But the conspiracy goes to the highest levels! This, too, would be fine if checkpoints were placed after cinematic sequences, and not before them. Dying in this game often means watching the same idiotic and unskippable cutscenes over and over.

A mode called “Deniable Ops” cuts the story almost entirely and lays out challenge maps. This is a little better, but gets at another of the conceptual problems: when your character is in shadow, he’s invisible to enemies, which is represented by the screen turning black and white. This makes it impossible to see anything. You can also use special sonar goggles, which illuminate enemies quite well, but obscure everything in the environment. Then again, with a game this irritating, maybe blindness is a plus.

Light show

Above: Flash! Thunder!

My actual review of Alan Wake is up now at thephoenix.com.

I think it's worth spending even a little more time on the lighting. The game plays around with lots of different light sources, primarily Alan's flashlight, but also including road flares, flashbangs, street lights, car headlights, neon signs, spotlights, and many more. Each has its own look and feel, and in a way the lights almost become characters. When Alan lights up a flare, it's nearly as blinding for the player as it is for the Taken. Watching the flare gradually fade and sputter, taking Alan's temporary safety with it, is a tense experience. You find yourself willing it to stay lit just a while longer.

That kind of thing is important, because the shooting itself is pretty easy. There's a heaping helping of auto-aim, and there wasn't a single moment when I felt like I had to conserve my ammo or my batteries. The limited resource Alan has is light, but only when he's got multiple enemies on him. It's very easy to kill one or two enemies, but when four or five are onscreen it's usually better to say the hell with it and run. I still might have preferred to feel a tad more desperate in the course of things, but to me it's always a plus when I can actually get through a game without tearing my hair out.

This is the second game this year, after Deadly Premonition, that is apparently bursting with references to Twin Peaks. Not having seen the show, I can't say myself whether that's true, but it does raise an interesting point: I should probably watch Twin Peaks.

Awake

Hello.

Last week, for the first time in awhile, I played a video game. It was Alan Wake. I liked it. Maybe it wasn't as epochal as I might have hoped from a game that was five years in the making and that was pitched, if not necessarily as a killer app, then as a defining console exclusive. That's okay. Not every game has to rewrite the rulebook. Alan Wake is a good, solid shooter, with good, solid controls, and a good story that is more wobbly than solid.

The graphics are terrific, and I mention that not because the game is pretty to look at -- although it is -- but because the high-tech visuals are there in service of the gameplay, not as a substitute for it. In a game about light and dark, it's important for the light and dark to look right. They've never looked better than they do here. Flashlight beams, road flares, and far-off neon signs really do seem to be burning through a living darkness. There's a tactile sense to it all.

And even though the story is hard to follow, maybe that's okay. I suspect it would be less satisfying if I understood it. Still, this is manifestly a narrative game. Alan follows linear paths almost exclusively, with brief diversions to pick up supplies that never take him too far off the road. He picks up his cell phone without player input in order to hold long conversations. Many of the most interesting things Alan does happen only in cutscene form. The game is split into six episodes, none of which takes longer than about an hour and a half, and even if you immediately start playing the next episode, you get a "previously on Alan Wake" recap that's straight from television. Yes, it's clear that Remedy's primary aim here was to tell a story.

Yet the developer apparently didn't have enough faith in the power of their labyrinthine plot to compel players to repeat playthroughs. Instead, they populated their brief game with 100 barely hidden collectible coffee thermoses.

Look, I'm not against hidden items. Alan Wake's world is also dotted with portable radios, which you can turn on and listen to a local radio show. This serves a couple of purposes: one, the host is a minor character in the game's plot, and listening to his program sheds a little light on the spooky happenings in Bright Falls. Second -- and maybe this is just a personal thing -- late-night radio is really, really creepy, and it suits the game's atmosphere perfectly.

But these thermoses... yeesh. I don't know if they serve any purpose beyond the inevitable achievement for finding all 100. Maybe there's a status boost or something. Sure doesn't seem like it, though. They seem to be there only as an incentive to explore, which would be fine if they added anything to the game, but the reason to look for thermoses is just to look for thermoses. That's a nicely rounded circle that Remedy has drawn, but it's kind of like a perimeter fence.

Furthermore, having things like collectible thermoses can undercut the forward motion of the plot. At one point, Alan was charging into a cabin while somebody -- Barry, maybe -- was calling for help upstairs. Bam! goes the front door. Alan storms in, flashlight beam and pistol at the ready. Barry is screaming his head off. And instead of running upstairs, Alan notices a thermos, and takes a detour to pick it up. Then, for the hell of it, he rummages around the entire first floor of the house, looking for Energizer^® batteries (hopefully the longer-lasting lithium variety!).

Eventually, the sound sample of Barry's cries for help stops playing, but there's no reason for Alan to stop looking for ammo before going upstairs. Barry's not going anywhere. These are the value systems video games are still working with. Even the "serious" ones.

Friday afternoon tidbits

Rather than gaming this weekend, I'll be slogging through the cold and damp woods. It's fun, dammit!

-Chris Kohler echoes my thoughts on God of War III exactly: it's well done, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it proves beyond doubt that it's time for God of War to end. Everyone involved can walk away with their heads held high. Will Sony allow this to happen? Considering that God of War III was March's top-selling title across all platforms, I'm guessing it's not likely.

-When I was a kid, they always told me I'd grow out of video games eventually. It still hasn't happened. But, like Elysium, I find it impossible to shake the feeling that, yes, someday I still will grow out of gaming. Will it ever disappear from my life entirely? I hope not. But it's not hard to imagine a time when it doesn't seem like an integral part of my identity.

-Matt Matthews looks at the business of Gamestop. The big takeaways may not be too surprising: the biggest part of their profits comes from used sales, and that's also the part that's growing all the time. No wonder publishers hate them -- they don't see a dime from those sales.

-Now that Gears of War 3 has been officially announced, the Phoenix's Maddy Myers follows up on her post about the inclusion of, presumably, a playable female character. The tenor of the comments both on this new post, and on the original, are all the proof you need that Maddy's making good points.

-Tom Cross defends the story in Just Cause 2 -- or, more accurately, defends Just Cause 2 against its story. He brings up one of the biggest challenges for any reviewer, which is whether you're critiquing a game for what it is actually doing, or what it intends to be doing. This is where subjectivity and objectivity can run up against each other especially hard.

-Kyle Orland this week launched The Game Beat, a new media criticism blog. I'm a fan of Kyle's work going way back, and I know he'll be doing some great stuff with it.

Extreme fever!

Above: Witness the instrument of your doom.

Sometimes in this life, there are certain inconvenient truths that you have to acknowledge, or else they'll destroy you. The earth's changing climate is one. The viability of Sarah Palin as a 2012 presidential contender is another. Even harder for me to acknowledge, over the years, has been my love of -- or, more accurately, compulsion toward -- casual gaming. I'm not talking about today's handholding in AAA titles, or even party games like Rock Band. I'm talking about simple, basic games that are usually free to play, except, of course, for the price of your soul.

Recently a friend loaned me his defunct iPhone. It has no sim card, but I can use it to check out some of the apps I've been missing, such as the instant classic Fox Smoking Pipe. But I haven't connected to the apps store yet. I haven't played some of the interesting games he'd already installed on the phone, like Doom Resurrection or even Canabalt. No, I've been playing Peggle.

Do you need me to explain Peggle? You've probably heard of it. (It's been out for a few years -- you've probably played it.) It's essentially pachinko: the game board is full of pegs that light up when a ball bounces off of them. The twist here is that the pegs vanish after each shot. Your job is to clear the board of its relatively few orange-colored pegs. You can do this with the help of certain enchanted shots (fireballs, auto-aim, etc.), but mostly it's a matter of carefully setting up a shot, then watching it go to hell as angles and pegs you never accounted for make the whole thing feel a lot like luck.

Good god, is it addictive. Made by PopCap, the fine folks who brought you web-game classics Bejeweled and Bookworm, Peggle starts with a simple idea, gives it a few twists, and then polishes it to blinding. The luck aspect gives and takes away -- a bucket that slides back and forth across the bottom of the screen will grant you a free ball if your shot ends up there. Getting saved from a bad bounce is like reaching into your coat pocket and finding a twenty.

The presentation is pretty slick, too. Cartoonish graphics and humorous interstitial text is always welcome, but the end-of-round event is brilliant. As your ball approaches the last orange peg, the camera zooms in, the game slows down, and the ball takes on a comet's tail. The ball can still miss at this point, and if it does, it's agonize. If it hits, "Ode to Joy" bursts out of the speakers and the ball sends out multi-colored sparks, before falling into a bonus-point bucket that erupts in fireworks.

A couple years ago when I argued against the terms "hardcore" and "casual" to describe gamers, this is what I meant. Peggle is a "casual" game by any definition. I'm not against describing it that way. But I am certainly not a "casual" gamer by virtue of playing it. In fact, it consumes me in a way that many recent "hardcore" games have failed to do. I agonize over my launch angle. I consult online videos of high-scoring shots. I forget to pick up my pre-ordered copy of Splinter Cell: Conviction because Peggle is waiting at home.

For all the high-falutin' talk about games needing to mean something, and the imperative for narrative and play mechanics to mesh, and whatever the hell else I say to sound smart, sometimes -- most times -- it's only about having fun. There's a reason great-looking console games come and go, but my FreeCell game count keeps rising. In other words, I play games like Battlefield and ask why; I play games like Peggle and ask why not.

Finally fantastic

Above: Fortunately, Lightning is not introduced by removing a motorcycle helmet to reveal -- gasp -- she's a woman!

Still clearing out some of the backlog, my review of Final Fantasy XIII is up now at thephoenix.com. This one seems to be polarizing fans, but as I argue in the review, every new Final Fantasy game seems to polarize fans. Popular opinion only coalesces much later. At least, that's the way it feels to me. Is it true? I don't know. This review ran like a month after the game came out. I had to think of an angle.

Argh, still being flip. I like this game quite a bit. The criticism about it taking 25 hours to get good feels off-base to me, as I allude to in the review. I think it's great fun before it allegedly opens up, and didn't have any problem with the way the game was laid out. Besides, if you're going to suffer through 25 hours of something because you've heard it gets better after that, you may want to re-evaluate your priorities.

There's still the argument about what, at heart, Final Fantasy is. Lots of people argue that it's always been about exploration, but the exploration has never been what's attracted me to the series. In fact, I had a hard time getting into the games for a long time because of the open-ended style of play. Only when I used walkthroughs to get through parts 1, 6, and 7 did I start to appreciate what Final Fantasy does well. For me, that's the combat.

That's why I was taken with this one -- it's nothing but combat. I mean sure, it's more complicated than that, but everything is rolled out so slowly and confidently that I didn't realize just how complicated it all was until I tried to write it down. Try to sum up paradigms, stagger, the crystarium, and inventory upgrades in 600 words. Maybe you can do it, but it won't be much fun to read. That's why I said the hell with it and started making fun of fanboys.

On the other hand, maybe it's just auto-pilot at this point. I just went back to read my review of Final Fantasy XII and it says almost all the same things. Good night, everybody!

Friday afternoon tidbits

Between PAX last weekend, and filing two game reviews this week, I could use a break. Fortunately, it's a holiday weekend, and at the very least I will be able to pause and eat some ham. That's how I roll on Easter.

-A few months ago I was invited to contribute to an exciting project, and now it's been officially announced: the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Featuring capsule reviews of, you guessed it, 1,001 video games, the book covers it all, from Pong to Dragon Age, and every platform you can think of. I think it's going to be a really special product, and I had a blast working on it. It comes out on October 12. (By the way, that's an Amazon Affiliate link, and if you order through there you'll kick a buck or two my way. Yes, I will continue to post the link!)

-Some good stuff about women and games this week. The Border House ran a couple of satirical pieces for April Fool's Day that invert common posts on traditional game sites. The first is called "How to Get Your Boyfriend to Play Games with You," which lampoons the depressing number of similar articles aimed at (straight) men. The second, "A Matter of Resources," posits an alternate universe in which developers simply can't prioritize including male avatars in their games.

Also, the Phoenix's Maddy Myers considers the addition of a significant female character in Gears of War 3: "...now that there's finally a chance to include a female character in this hyper-masculine world, ... the developers have decided that the reason she's there is because there's something 'wrong' with her that makes her an 'ineffective' woman (at least according to the rules of this universe)." Honestly, I do give them points for trying, but Maddy's right -- maybe it would help to get more women involved in development?

-Several game sites have picked up on the story of the kid who tried to steal the Breach source code from PAX, but I've seen it covered best at Joystiq. Between part 1, part 2, and part 3, there are several surprising developments, and guffaw-inducing quotes. Quotes like:

• "He said several times he 'knew people' and 'could give us bigger and more important people' and he could 'name names.'"
• During the Q&A section of the panel, the alleged thief asked if he could have his Gamertag unbanned. Toulouse asked him what he'd done, and he said that he'd played Forza 3 before release, which Toulouse told him he shouldn't have done. Toulouse was clear to point out during the panel that buying games early, from a retailer that breaks street date, and playing them online doesn't get Xbox Live players banned, but illegal pre-release play does. The suspect later admitted to Joystiq he illegally downloaded Forza 3 early.
• An arrest warrant has been issued for 20-year-old Justin D. May, the alleged thief of the Breach code at PAX East, after he failed to show up in a Boston court today... May's current whereabouts are unknown, but we do have his Gamertag, which shows that wherever he is at the moment, he's playing Modern Warfare 2.
• "At the end of the day here, we aren't exactly dealing with John Dillinger, you know?"

Fantastic.

-Finally, a couple of PAX recaps. Julian Murdoch relays a funny and kind of touching tale of mistaken identity. Eric Swain captures the whirlwind of handshakes and introductions (with bonus photo of me!). Simon Ferrari had an interesting encounter at the Breach booth, which did not involve attempted theft. Sparky Clarkson focused on the indie games on the expo floor, as did Daniel Bullard-Bates at Press Pause to Reflect. And if you'd like the full story of the guy who yelled "These are my people!" at the first PA panel, read his recollection at Punching Snakes.

Clash of the Titans: The Official Game

Above: That fiery dude is always photobombing people.

All right, I think we can stop fluffing PAX and get back to talking about games now. And what's this? My review of God of War III is up at thephoenix.com.

I remember finishing the second God of War, which ended with Kratos scaling Mount Olympus on the back of a Titan, and wanting to play the next one that instant. God of War III does indeed pick up right there, and for a minute I was all jazzed up. Then they knocked Kratos back down to Hades, and he started ripping people's heads off and everything, and...

I don't know. This game does almost everything right. It's better in some clearly definable ways than its predecessors, and somehow worse in the gestalt. Playing God of War III, I was aware that I was playing a game that had been produced at a high level, but I just didn't care what was happening.

There was one sequence in particular that crystallized my tepid reaction to this game. In the Gardens of Olympus, there's a neat puzzle in which you have to look at your surroundings through the jeweled eye of a statue, which will turn a flat image into a usable staircase. As you do this, you need to drag around a big pedestal in order to fill several vessels with water, because they're on pressure plates that will open up parts of the path for you. You also need to use the deceased body of Hera to weigh down the final vessel.

This is pretty standard God of War stuff, and it's a fun enough puzzle on its own. It also rewrites all the rules of the game to that point. The garden has walls low enough that Kratos could easily leap over in any other part of the game, but here invisible barriers block his path. (He can't grab onto them, either). Although we've seen him perform astounding feats of strength and agility, including prying open the clenched fingers of a Titan and leaping hundreds of feet in the air with blades akimbo, for some reason he can't carry a 120-pound woman over his shoulder without lurching around like a drunk person. Kratos can't jump while he's carrying Hera, or throw her even a few feet. For the purposes of the puzzle, the game completely handicaps him without any good reason.

Beyond that, you can't say the action is bad in any traditional sense. It looks great, plays well, and sticks to the solid fundamentals established by the first couple of games. I felt like they went a little too far over the line with the gore this time around, but that alone isn't the reason I felt so disconnected. We've just played this game before, is all. Time for something else.

PAX: People

Above: Onlookers gather as an unidentified fan chats with a famed internet author (left).

During the Q&A sessions between audience members and the tandem of Gabe and Tycho, you never knew what might happen. Most people couldn't help gushing a little, either about the comic or about the convention or about Wil Wheaton. Lots of people made jokes. Some asked for life advice. Some simply wanted to express their happiness. "These are my people!" bellowed a questioner at one panel.

But for me -- and, I suspect, for many others -- the high point came during the last PA panel, on the closing day of PAX. A girl stood at the microphone and confessed that she wasn't sure she'd be able to say what she had planned to say without crying. She told a story about being in the hospital as a teenager, spending most of her waking hours in agonizing pain, and not knowing if she'd survive her illness. The best part of her day, she said, was when the nurse wheeled in a cart with a TV, an N64, and a broken PlayStation. Gaming provided the only real relief during the endless surgeries, not just for her but for her constantly worried parents. It was a chance to get her mind off things, and to play like a normal kid.

Listening to this story, I was blinking back tears, and I wasn't the only one. When she finished, Gabe climbed down from the stage to give her a big hug. I've since heard that a scene like this happens at nearly every PAX, but that didn't make this one any less genuine or moving.

This spirit suffused PAX. At another point during the panel, Tycho attempted to give a prize, some fancy-pants Intel processor, to an attendee. After the fan took it, he gestured for the microphone and said he'd like to donate the processor to Child's Play. Somewhat abashed, Tycho took it back.

Any tribal gathering probably sends people away with positive vibes. I wouldn't be surprised if Tea Partiers get home from a protest, set down their "OBAMA BIN LYIN'" signs, and say to their spouses, "Y'know, that was just a nice group of people out there today. I feel so good right now." What the hell, I'm going to say it anyway: attending PAX made me feel great about gamers. My god, they were polite. I've never heard so many people in a crowd say "excuse me." Are these the same people who cuss me out on Xbox Live?

It all comes from the top. I ran into Tycho on the expo floor, walking along a row of booths with a smile on his face, and I had to say hello. That was all I intended to say. He wound up pulling me to the side to talk about Heavy Rain, and some of the things I'd written about it. Several other people started massing around us, and I began to feel guilty for monopolizing his time. But it was the most normal thing in the world -- just two guys talking games.

Blogging sometimes seems to take the form of a conversation, and some of my favorite things to write are responses to other posts. Even so, at the end of the day writing is a solitary pursuit. Writing, and playing, are things I do with my head down and the world closed off. This works most of the time. Writing may be its own kind of dialogue, but it's no substitute for the real thing.

When PAX East has faded a bit, I imagine the memories that remain won't be of the playable version of Splinter Cell Conviction on the expo floor, or listening to the Video Game Orchestra smoke a rendition of the Final Fantasy VII battle theme. I think it'll be the human moments. Getting beers with several incredibly smart writers. Using Twitter to figure out who else is standing in line with you. Making eye contact with someone and thinking, "Aren't you...?" and seeing the nod that says, "I am."

I can't wait for the next time.