Game Theory: History Alive
It’s wonderful that even after 30-odd years as a gamer, there are still gaming moments that can surprise and delight me. Assassin’s Creed II (finally available for PC this month) absolutely knocked me cold within the first few minutes of the Florentine sequences.
It wasn’t the gameplay. Although the movement and combat are certainly strong (and a clear improvement over the original), we should expect that. It’s 2010: We’ve had so many quality exemplars of stealth and fighting systems that a developer has no excuse not to do it right.
It wasn’t the premise, which is dumber than a contestant on Conveyer Belt of Love. All the memories of all my ancestors are encoded in my DNA? Really? Right there between eye color and height is a base pair of nucleotides recording my 24th great-granduncle’s encounter with a hooker on January 24, 1472? And Veronica Mars is capable of extracting that memory and feeding it back into my brain as a simulation? That’s your premise?
No, the real treasure of Assassin’s Creed II, the real magic that takes the breath away, is Florence itself, and later, Venice. This is why I still game, and why the art of simulation is so utterly unique to gaming. Film and prose are, frankly, better media for narrative storytelling. “Gameplay” can be found in sports, puzzles, and conventional games.
But only interactive entertainment can truly simulate an environment, and then draw the narrative and gameplay elements into that simulation. The Florence and Venice of AC2 are masterpieces of design. It’s not just the architecture and open-city design, but also the living environment down on the ground, as people go about their lives. Merchants sweep the street in front of their stores, courtesans beckon from corners, pickpockets work the crowd, and threaded throughout all of it is the tension, plotting, and power-politics of Renaissance Italy.
I spent a semester in college (and a great deal of time since) studying many of these places and the history surrounding them, and Ubisoft Montreal nails it. Viewing 15th century Florence from atop Brunelleschi’s gravity-defying dome, and then being able to drop down to ground level to explore the city is one of the most thrilling things I’ve experienced in a lifetime of gaming. Thanks, Ubisoft.
Thomas L. McDonald has been covering games for 17 years. He is Editor-at-Large of Games Magazine.
The Game Boy: Why Gamers Need to Wise Up and Realize That “Streamlined” Doesn’t Mean “Dumbed-Down”
Listening to many gamers and critics prattle on about Mass Effect 2 is kind of like listening to a teenager talk about their first love. The game, they say, can do no wrong. It’s a pure, perhaps even blind sort of love, and at first glance, it’s well-deserved. But no videogame – no matter how much of its dialogue is delivered in Martin Sheen’s seductively raspy warble – is perfect. Problem is, many of Mass Effect 2’s detractors are picking on the wrong “flaw.”
For Mass Effect 2, the word of the day that’s got nitpickers screaming like they’re on an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse is “streamlined.” Or, in many cases, its more derogatory cousin: “dumbed-down.” “Mass Effect 2’s not even an RPG anymore,” many of them hoot and holler. “It’s just a shooter with RPG elements!” Now, ignoring the fact that large chunks of Mass Effect 2 see Shepard holstering his sticks and stones in favor of words so that the player can — you know — play a role, streamlining the game’s combat doesn’t diminish its effect. In fact, I’d even argue that it allows for greater strategic depth. Problem is, many gamers still cling to dusty, archaic notions of what certain genres should be, which – in my opinion – is keeping those genres stuck firmly in the Stone Age.
I realized just how much I appreciated Mass Effect 2’s straight-to-the-point take on running and gunning while I was making my way through BioShock 2. Yes, BioShock 2’s got all the trappings of a shooter, but – at any given moment – there’s just so much to do. Among other things, you’ve tons of guns and powers to shuffle through, health and plasmid meters to regulate, traps to keep an eye out for, items to pick up, etc. Now, BioShock 2’s combat definitely thrives on chaos, but – when the real meat of the game lies in staying just one precarious step ahead of splicers, Big Daddies, and Big Sisters – micromanaging the above factors really only serves to confuse and overwhelm the player. Don’t get me wrong: options are great. But so is food, and as with options, if you cram too much of it into something, you just get a bunch of unnecessary fat.
Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, gave me what I needed in battle and the means by which to quickly and conveniently access it. Nothing more, nothing less. My mind, no longer firing on all cylinders to just handle just the basics of combat, was free to plan out inventive strategies in the heat of battle. Instead of fumbling through my arsenal while working up a nice, refreshing nervous sweat, I was firing off orders and giving my enemies fits. Similarly, Mass Effect 2’s simplification of leveling, weapons, armor, and stats in general had me spending far less time bathed in the neon-glow of menu screens and more immersed in the stories of Shepard and his gang of incredibly dysfunctional cutthroats. A win-win situation, in my book.
That’s only one example, though. Over in Console Land, two games have (semi) recently come under fire for eschewing genre traditions and trimming away unnecessary fat. First up, Final Fantasy XII – in many ways the most progressive game in its entire 400,000,000 game series – bellyflopped its way right into the bargain bin because, as many gamers put it, “the game played itself.” Is that such a bad thing, though? Final Fantasy XII allowed players to program their characters for specific battle situations, all but eliminating the mundane menu-crawling that so characterized the series’ random battles for its entire existence. Again, Final Fantasy XII aimed to streamline and refine its combat system, but close-minded gamers were too stuck on their preconceived notions of what an RPG – and, on some level, videogames – should be, so they turned up their noses, scoffed, and went back to enduring random battle after random battle because that’s the way it’s always been. And guess what? Square Enix listened. Final Fantasy XIII’s a “return to form” for the series. Talk about a hollow victory.
More recently, PS3 heavy-hitter Heavy Rain took its fair share of flack for fusing a number of game genres with the cinematic flair and pacing of a movie. “It’s just a series of glorified ‘press A to not die’ quick-time events!” skeptics cried. “It might as well be Dragon’s Lair.” Again, however, by shaving off a few layers of interactivity, Heavy Rain created an entirely new form of videogame. But instead of embracing the notion of something new, many gamers hesitated to even call Heavy Rain a videogame. And yeah, it’s difficult to find a nice fit for Heavy Rain in the larger tapestry of videogame genres, but that’s the point!
And therein lies the rub: We’re operating on an outdated, utterly arbitrary notion of what makes an RPG an RPG, a shooter a shooter, and even a videogame a videogame. We’re taking our cues from a canon that’s still very much in the making. But really, if we want videogames to take off and reach their full potential, we need to stop binding their wings with our short-sighted ideas. We complain that videogames have stagnated – that they’re not innovative enough anymore. But when someone puts a new spin on an old idea, we roll our eyes and suddenly become cynical old museum curators, shooing away every piece that can’t fit in a frame and hang on a wall.
With the rapidly climbing price of game development, it’s already difficult enough for developers to breathe life into new ideas. So when a developer makes its very own Frankenstein’s monster of game genres, let’s at least wait until we’ve actually played the result for ourselves before raising our pitchforks and torches.
The Game Boy: Why Gamers Need to Wise Up and Realize That “Streamlined” Doesn’t Mean “Dumbed-Down”
Listening to many gamers and critics prattle on about Mass Effect 2 is kind of like listening to a teenager talk about their first love. The game, they say, can do no wrong. It’s a pure, perhaps even blind sort of love, and at first glance, it’s well-deserved. But no videogame – no matter how much of its dialogue is delivered in Martin Sheen’s seductively raspy warble – is perfect. Problem is, many of Mass Effect 2’s detractors are picking on the wrong “flaw.”
For Mass Effect 2, the word of the day that’s got nitpickers screaming like they’re on an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse is “streamlined.” Or, in many cases, its more derogatory cousin: “dumbed-down.” “Mass Effect 2’s not even an RPG anymore,” many of them hoot and holler. “It’s just a shooter with RPG elements!” Now, ignoring the fact that large chunks of Mass Effect 2 see Shepard holstering his sticks and stones in favor of words so that the player can — you know — play a role, streamlining the game’s combat doesn’t diminish its effect. In fact, I’d even argue that it allows for greater strategic depth. Problem is, many gamers still cling to dusty, archaic notions of what certain genres should be, which – in my opinion – is keeping those genres stuck firmly in the Stone Age.
I realized just how much I appreciated Mass Effect 2’s straight-to-the-point take on running and gunning while I was making my way through BioShock 2. Yes, BioShock 2’s got all the trappings of a shooter, but – at any given moment – there’s just so much to do. Among other things, you’ve tons of guns and powers to shuffle through, health and plasmid meters to regulate, traps to keep an eye out for, items to pick up, etc. Now, BioShock 2’s combat definitely thrives on chaos, but – when the real meat of the game lies in staying just one precarious step ahead of splicers, Big Daddies, and Big Sisters – micromanaging the above factors really only serves to confuse and overwhelm the player. Don’t get me wrong: options are great. But so is food, and as with options, if you cram too much of it into something, you just get a bunch of unnecessary fat.
Mass Effect 2, on the other hand, gave me what I needed in battle and the means by which to quickly and conveniently access it. Nothing more, nothing less. My mind, no longer firing on all cylinders to just handle just the basics of combat, was free to plan out inventive strategies in the heat of battle. Instead of fumbling through my arsenal while working up a nice, refreshing nervous sweat, I was firing off orders and giving my enemies fits. Similarly, Mass Effect 2’s simplification of leveling, weapons, armor, and stats in general had me spending far less time bathed in the neon-glow of menu screens and more immersed in the stories of Shepard and his gang of incredibly dysfunctional cutthroats. A win-win situation, in my book.
That’s only one example, though. Over in Console Land, two games have (semi) recently come under fire for eschewing genre traditions and trimming away unnecessary fat. First up, Final Fantasy XII – in many ways the most progressive game in its entire 400,000,000 game series – bellyflopped its way right into the bargain bin because, as many gamers put it, “the game played itself.” Is that such a bad thing, though? Final Fantasy XII allowed players to program their characters for specific battle situations, all but eliminating the mundane menu-crawling that so characterized the series’ random battles for its entire existence. Again, Final Fantasy XII aimed to streamline and refine its combat system, but close-minded gamers were too stuck on their preconceived notions of what an RPG – and, on some level, videogames – should be, so they turned up their noses, scoffed, and went back to enduring random battle after random battle because that’s the way it’s always been. And guess what? Square Enix listened. Final Fantasy XIII’s a “return to form” for the series. Talk about a hollow victory.
More recently, PS3 heavy-hitter Heavy Rain took its fair share of flack for fusing a number of game genres with the cinematic flair and pacing of a movie. “It’s just a series of glorified ‘press A to not die’ quick-time events!” skeptics cried. “It might as well be Dragon’s Lair.” Again, however, by shaving off a few layers of interactivity, Heavy Rain created an entirely new form of videogame. But instead of embracing the notion of something new, many gamers hesitated to even call Heavy Rain a videogame. And yeah, it’s difficult to find a nice fit for Heavy Rain in the larger tapestry of videogame genres, but that’s the point!
And therein lies the rub: We’re operating on an outdated, utterly arbitrary notion of what makes an RPG an RPG, a shooter a shooter, and even a videogame a videogame. We’re taking our cues from a canon that’s still very much in the making. But really, if we want videogames to take off and reach their full potential, we need to stop binding their wings with our short-sighted ideas. We complain that videogames have stagnated – that they’re not innovative enough anymore. But when someone puts a new spin on an old idea, we roll our eyes and suddenly become cynical old museum curators, shooing away every piece that can’t fit in a frame and hang on a wall.
With the rapidly climbing price of game development, it’s already difficult enough for developers to breathe life into new ideas. So when a developer makes its very own Frankenstein’s monster of game genres, let’s at least wait until we’ve actually played the result for ourselves before raising our pitchforks and torches.
Murphy’s Law: An Open World of Warcraft?
Don’t burn your credit cards or start sending recruit-a-friend notices to everyone in your address book: World of Warcraft is not going open-source. You will still have to pay a monthly fee of $14.99 for the privilege of stomping your virtual friends and NPCs into corpse dust, and you will not be permitted to split WoW off into a side project that grants anyone with your name a free pass to level 80 (and/or a fixed "I win!" button). Blizzard isn’t stupid.
WoW might not be going open-source, but the company behind it is using the 1-2-3 trick of the open-source world to encourage increased adoption and interest in its core piece of software. In what I believe is a first for the genre, you’ll soon be able to access in-game mechanics from a separate Web or mobile app. You might not be able to run your daily quests off of your iPhone, but for WoW enthusiasts looking to make a tidy profit throughout their adventures in Azeroth, Blizzard’s mobile access should give you up-to-the-minute information for your business profiteering.
So how does this exactly work?
Blizzard’s using the tried-and-true method of hooking interested parties into a service offering, but it’s hard to discern exactly where the chain begins. That statement’s a little nebulous, so allow me to clarify: A large number of World of Warcraft’s features and offerings are themed around the same kinds of techniques for adoption that you see in the open-source world.
Borrowing a Page
Take World of Warcraft as a whole. It’s a game. You pay money for it every month, analogous to a service that you would purchase based on an open-source platform running in an office. The game’s completely free to download, much as an open-source program is yours to grab from wherever it happens to be hosted. The two realities diverge a bit when it comes to the feasibility of using the program: You can always use open-source apps without their pricy service or support offerings, though you can’t do a thing with World of Warcraft unless you pony up the monthly service fee (or hack the game into an illegal private server).
Still, the principle is there. World of Warcraft allows its users to build and incorporate add-ons to further customize their overall experience. While users can’t (or are extremely discouraged to) hack the actual mechanics of the game, they can nevertheless come pretty close to expanding the game’s features to a near-cheating classification. You can tweak your Warcraft experience much like an open-source developer can build new functionality into a program at a moment’s notice (Firefox add-ons, anyone?).
The Open Auction House
The auction houses scattered throughout the land serve as vital components of the game’s economy. Consider them a service that’s been built overtop the core hack-and-slash functionality of the game–much like a support mechanism that one would normally pay for on top of an open-source piece of software. Instead of paying cash, you’re paying in-game currency to use this service. If you want to expand your business beyond your faction’s linked auction houses, you have to pay a larger cut of your profits for the added service.
The new mobile and Web app that links to the auction house takes us right back to the beginning of the cycle. In this case, you’re getting a program for free–the in-game Auction House (I’m not counting in-game currency as a fee for use, as it’s not… real). The service spinning off of that is the mobile or Web-based access to the in-game auction program. Although the basic elements of the mobile and Web-based service will be free, an addition premium feature is expected to cost something extra for access.
In doing this, Blizzard maintains complete control over the addiction factor. The auction house is a critical element of your game–the open-source software, if you will. The add-ons are the moneymaker, which you’ll be compelled to explore due to the aforementioned addiction, be it through the in-game service or the free mobile or Web-based app. (If you’re still confused… see the appendix at the bottom of this article!)
How it Really Works
Free begets paid. Even open-source software developers have to make money, and this is how they do so: offer a compelling product and supplement with additives once you’re hooked, or deliver a basic functionality that you can purchase extra tweaks for. Easy. Simple. Effective.
World of Warcraft might not be open-source, but both parties certainly share a common path when it comes to keeping users engaged… and paying.
David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. If you’re on the Black Dragonflight server… let him know!
Appendix
World of Warcraft
- Downloadable for free, need to pay for "service" or "support" to correctly access program mechanics
- Able to configure and code around set parameters to customize or tweak the program (addons)
- Can supplement core mechanics with additional "fee-based" services (auction house) or real fee-based servics (character customizations / transfers / etc.)
Auction House
- A free program that allows you to run business in a virtual setting
- Fee-based service expansions give you a larger market to choose from for selling and buying goods
- Can customize experience with coded tweaks and add-ons to ensure stronger capabilities
- Spin-off mobile and Web services increase your ability to interact with (and your dependence on) the initial program
- Fee-based service expansions offer increased access via new gateways
The Game Boy: No Use Reloading Your Last Save Over Spilt Milk
I’m a few loose ends away from wrapping up Mass Effect 2, and that terrifies me.
I know, I know. I shouldn’t be so frightened. I’ve turned the galaxy upside-down, shaking loose its roughest, toughest customers and sweeping them right onto my ship. My crew and I have fought back-to-back time and time again, leaving robots, aliens, and entire mercenary organizations battered and bloody in our wakes. But it’s not my crew I’m worried about. It’s me.
I mean, let’s be honest here: the term “suicide mission” doesn’t inspire much optimism. And here we are, betting the whole space farm on those abysmal odds anyway. But whatever, right? Mass Effect 3’s already been announced. Unless the game’s actually a bouquet of colorful Game Over screens, I’m pretty sure we’ve got this one in the bag. We may as well be running a victory lap at this point.
However, we’ve got one more major factor working against us – one that not even the great, no-longer-late Shepard has taken into account: I, the player, am not reloading a previous save if things go awry.
Oh, sure, if I slip up and take a headlong dive right into a red, pulsating Game Over screen, I’ll restart a combat scenario, but that’s just assumed. No – I’m talking about story-altering consequences here. Crew members can – and depending on my actions, may very well – die permanently during Mass Effect 2’s final hours. It used to be that, when this kind of thing happened in games, I’d simply hit the reload button and roll back the clock a couple of minutes as a quick, clean necromantic ritual. Then I’d do things the “right” way. No unnecessary blood or tears shed.
Now though, I’ve realized something: Undoing my in-game mistakes robs my actions of all meaning. In videogames, we can make mistakes. Sure, other mediums have filled tome-upon-tome, tape-upon-tape with tearful tales of regret and guilt, but only in games can we truly own those feelings. If I accidentally lead my exceedingly loyal teammates right off a bridge, that’s on me. And one of my favorite aspects of Mass Effect 2 – or BioWare’s recent works in general, for that matter – is that it leaves room for those sorts of game-changing mistakes. That, in my opinion, is a big step in the right direction for story-based videogames.
Take Dragon Age, for instance. I’ll try to keep this as vague as possible, so as to minimize spoilers, but here’s how it went: My party could have made it through the game’s final encounter fully intact. It didn’t. It was my fault. And before I knew it, I was saving my own hide at someone else’s expense. As I witnessed one of my companions selflessly charge through death’s gates, warm tears streamed down my face, uncontrolled – partially because I was saddened by my party member’s passing, partially because I was ashamed of my own cowardice, and partially because I could have done something to stop it.
If only I’d known what would happen.
And now, I do know. But I refuse to tarnish that moment with a do-over. Because I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so strongly about a videogame in my entire life.
Mass Effect 2 expands on this by allowing for quick moments of Paragon/Renegade action – or, often more importantly, inaction. Hesitate just long enough on stopping that gung-ho Quarian captain from going out in a blaze of glory and it’s too late. Then your stomach sinks, and you’re hit with the always slobber-knocking one-two combo of guilt and regret.
Too many games, I think, subscribe to the idea that there’s a “right” and “wrong” way of experiencing their stories.
Take BioShock, for instance. If you harvested a Little Sister early on – because, let’s face it, Rapture’s a kill-or-be-killed kind of place, and it was either you or her – you were locked out of the “good” ending. But that panicked “I have to harvest her or else I’m fish food” mentality and the mistake that arose from it are what makes the whole encounter so interesting. Your back was against the wall, so you lashed out. Later, once you got your footing (and a Plasmid or three), you decided to repent for your sins by freeing every brittle, barefooted Little Sister you laid eyes on.
In the above hypothetical playthrough, then, your early flirtations with the “wrong” path eventually strengthened your commitment to the “right” path. You made a mistake and you felt awful about it. The game, however, saw things differently. The second the game’s own excellent atmosphere and scene-setting drove you to whip up some delicious, nutritious Little Sister soufflé, you were judged guilty. Your actions after that initial mistake simply didn’t matter. “Bang, bang,” slammed the gavel. And just like that, you were either mostly evil, or mustachio-twirlingly, cape-sportingly evil. No middle ground.
Whereas Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age make these sorts of internal struggles viable, BioShock and many other big-name games brusquely shove them out of the way as they barrel toward the finish line. Videogames are interactive. Our actions within them should mean something. I say it’s time to finally make good on that particular promise.
The Game Boy: No Use Reloading Your Last Save Over Spilt Milk
I’m a few loose ends away from wrapping up Mass Effect 2, and that terrifies me.
I know, I know. I shouldn’t be so frightened. I’ve turned the galaxy upside-down, shaking loose its roughest, toughest customers and sweeping them right onto my ship. My crew and I have fought back-to-back time and time again, leaving robots, aliens, and entire mercenary organizations battered and bloody in our wakes. But it’s not my crew I’m worried about. It’s me.
I mean, let’s be honest here: the term “suicide mission” doesn’t inspire much optimism. And here we are, betting the whole space farm on those abysmal odds anyway. But whatever, right? Mass Effect 3’s already been announced. Unless the game’s actually a bouquet of colorful Game Over screens, I’m pretty sure we’ve got this one in the bag. We may as well be running a victory lap at this point.
However, we’ve got one more major factor working against us – one that not even the great, no-longer-late Shepard has taken into account: I, the player, am not reloading a previous save if things go awry.
Oh, sure, if I slip up and take a headlong dive right into a red, pulsating Game Over screen, I’ll restart a combat scenario, but that’s just assumed. No – I’m talking about story-altering consequences here. Crew members can – and depending on my actions, may very well – die permanently during Mass Effect 2’s final hours. It used to be that, when this kind of thing happened in games, I’d simply hit the reload button and roll back the clock a couple of minutes as a quick, clean necromantic ritual. Then I’d do things the “right” way. No unnecessary blood or tears shed.
Now though, I’ve realized something: Undoing my in-game mistakes robs my actions of all meaning. In videogames, we can make mistakes. Sure, other mediums have filled tome-upon-tome, tape-upon-tape with tearful tales of regret and guilt, but only in games can we truly own those feelings. If I accidentally lead my exceedingly loyal teammates right off a bridge, that’s on me. And one of my favorite aspects of Mass Effect 2 – or BioWare’s recent works in general, for that matter – is that it leaves room for those sorts of game-changing mistakes. That, in my opinion, is a big step in the right direction for story-based videogames.
Take Dragon Age, for instance. I’ll try to keep this as vague as possible, so as to minimize spoilers, but here’s how it went: My party could have made it through the game’s final encounter fully intact. It didn’t. It was my fault. And before I knew it, I was saving my own hide at someone else’s expense. As I witnessed one of my companions selflessly charge through death’s gates, warm tears streamed down my face, uncontrolled – partially because I was saddened by my party member’s passing, partially because I was ashamed of my own cowardice, and partially because I could have done something to stop it.
If only I’d known what would happen.
And now, I do know. But I refuse to tarnish that moment with a do-over. Because I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so strongly about a videogame in my entire life.
Mass Effect 2 expands on this by allowing for quick moments of Paragon/Renegade action – or, often more importantly, inaction. Hesitate just long enough on stopping that gung-ho Quarian captain from going out in a blaze of glory and it’s too late. Then your stomach sinks, and you’re hit with the always slobber-knocking one-two combo of guilt and regret.
Too many games, I think, subscribe to the idea that there’s a “right” and “wrong” way of experiencing their stories.
Take BioShock, for instance. If you harvested a Little Sister early on – because, let’s face it, Rapture’s a kill-or-be-killed kind of place, and it was either you or her – you were locked out of the “good” ending. But that panicked “I have to harvest her or else I’m fish food” mentality and the mistake that arose from it are what makes the whole encounter so interesting. Your back was against the wall, so you lashed out. Later, once you got your footing (and a Plasmid or three), you decided to repent for your sins by freeing every brittle, barefooted Little Sister you laid eyes on.
In the above hypothetical playthrough, then, your early flirtations with the “wrong” path eventually strengthened your commitment to the “right” path. You made a mistake and you felt awful about it. The game, however, saw things differently. The second the game’s own excellent atmosphere and scene-setting drove you to whip up some delicious, nutritious Little Sister soufflé, you were judged guilty. Your actions after that initial mistake simply didn’t matter. “Bang, bang,” slammed the gavel. And just like that, you were either mostly evil, or mustachio-twirlingly, cape-sportingly evil. No middle ground.
Whereas Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age make these sorts of internal struggles viable, BioShock and many other big-name games brusquely shove them out of the way as they barrel toward the finish line. Videogames are interactive. Our actions within them should mean something. I say it’s time to finally make good on that particular promise.
The Game Boy: My Favorite Games of the Decade, Part Two
Part two? Part two? Oh my goodness, you’re totally lost, aren’t you? Part one’s right here, and it ended with this really rad cliffhanger with a car chase and everything. Basically, you have to read it, or part two won’t make a lick of sense to you. So get to it. Or try your luck with part two. But you’d have to be, like, some kind of mega-genius to even begin to comprehend the complexities of an ordered list like this one without proper introduction.
Metal Gear Solid 3
“Eh. Metal Gear’s all right, I guess.”
No one has ever said this. You either love the zany stealth franchise and all its fat men on rollerskates, nanotech vampires, and cyborg ninjas — despite their tendency to speak in cryptic psycho-babble for 45 minutes at a time – or you completely reject it as the human body would an amputated arm that occasionally takes control of your brain and tries to conquer the world. Point is, Metal Gear’s crazy, Japanese, and crazy.
And I love it.
Metal Gear Solid 3, in my opinion, is the height of Snake and co.’s adventures, with creator Hideo Kojima’s eccentricities toned down just enough to create an emotionally captivating tale that’s still unabashedly strange – but not mind-bogglingly so. The game mixed tense “hide in plain sight” stealth sections, battles with everything from masochistic bee men to ancient wheelchair-bound snipers, and a backstab-heavy plot that’d make even James Bond’s head spin to create a balanced concoction of Kojima’s mad science that actually didn’t eventually explode in players’ faces. (The game’s bosses, however, did.) After Metal Gear Solid 2’s many missteps, I kept waiting for MGS3 to take a colossal leap off the deep end, but it never did. Instead, it upped the ante at a near-perfect pace, culminating in my favorite boss fight of all time.
The battle with “The End,” as the aforementioned seemingly comatose oldster was known, absolutely blew me away. In a single confrontation, I was forced to make use of nearly every skill Metal Gear Solid had ever taught me. He used a sniper rifle, so naturally, I evaded, gave him the slip, and tip-toed until I was right behind him. Metal Gear Stealth 101, in other words. But then he did something that surprised me: he sprinted like a six-legged cheetah. On his brittle old stick-legs. So much for the wheelchair.
Eventually, after ducking Lord only knows how many shots and scrambling into the underbrush every time I saw the sun glint off anything even resembling a sniper scope, I took him by surprise again. But this time, I went for broke. I hastily fumbled for a grenade, pulled the pin, and chucked it – just in time to see that The End had the same idea. Two tree-rattling explosions later, he was covered in leaves and sprawled out on the ground, and I was thanking my lucky stars that his was only a flash grenade.
And then I took a breath for the first time in an hour. Epic.
Fallout 3
I’ve written more about Fallout 3 than any other single game in history. Of everything in life, this is the thing of which I am most certain. Simply put, Fallout 3 is everything I’ve ever wanted from a videogame. Well, so long as you steer clear of the main quest, anyway.
The game world is the sort of thing I’ve dreamed of since I was a child. Not the “earth destroyed by bombs” part, mind you, but the sprawling world full of eccentric characters and tiny nooks and crannies that – at first – seemed innocuous enough, but actually teemed with all the carrots and sticks an adventurer could ever want. Fallout 3’s world was its main character, and everywhere I looked, I saw different facets of its personality. For a couple weeks, I toured the world five hours at a time, and each time, I had the privilege of sinking my senses into something strange and new. Everywhere I looked – from dank caves to abandoned office buildings – I found treasure troves of information. I’d spend hours hunting for clues, wondering “What was this place like before the bomb dropped?,” “Why are these people dead?” or “What kind of person used to live here?” Rarely did Fallout 3 leave my questions unanswered.
Fallout 3 reveled in the idea that it’s not the destination that counts; rather, it’s how you get there that matters. It single-handedly brought the wide-eyed, slack-jawed magic back to videogames that’d gone missing after I came to understand the simple 1’s and 0’s that actually comprise videogame worlds. If I had to pick a favorite game of all time, right now, it’d probably be Fallout 3.
Guitar Hero
I’m actually more of a Rock Band kind of guy, myself, but Guitar Hero set this rolling stone into motion, so I’m giving credit where credit’s due. Like it or not, Guitar Hero was one of the most significant gaming events of the last decade – in part giving rise to the casual revolution, and contributing greatly to one of its central tenets: looking utterly ridiculous. But despite the goofy-looking plastic instruments and most players’ tendency to stand completely still and stare directly at the screen as though its scrolling notes were oncoming 18-wheelers, the game’s incredibly fun.
Sure, it looks silly, but I’ll be damned if I don’t feel like an audience-awing, camera-punching rockstar after nailing a tough solo. On top of that, Guitar Hero took huge strides in broadening my then-meager musical horizons, and also inspired me to pick up an actual guitar in an (admittedly sad) attempt to unlock its melodic mysteries. So yes, I suck at guitar, but Guitar Hero got me interested in the wider world of music, and I’m forever thankful for that.
The Darkness
There’s no way to do this without sounding incredibly cheesy, so I’m just gonna throw it out there: The Darkness is my darkhorse pick on this list. Geddit? Yeah. Anyway, despite initially being born in the shadow of Starbreeze’s previous (and excellent) game – The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay – The Darkness was its own creature; far-removed from Riddick, sure, but arguably better for it. As far as videogame stories go, The Darkness was incredibly forward-thinking, conjuring up some of the most memorable scenes in all of gaming.
Those of you who’ve followed this column in the past will likely remember the scene in which tough-as-nails mafia bad boy Jackie Estacado and his girlfriend spend an evening together watching old movies. In real time. If you so choose, you can sit curled up on a dusty, coming-apart-at-the-seams sofa watching a grainy version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for more than an hour. And it’s brilliant. Eventually, Jackie’s girlfriend falls asleep on his shoulder, and you can choose to stay or leave. It’s up to you. I stayed. In my opinion, this is the most authentic instance of romance ever conveyed in a videogame. It’s simple and mundane, as romance often is. And when the game’s story takes a turn for the tragic, it stokes your emotional fires that much more.
Of course, the first-person person-shooting and creepy Darkness powers were equal parts brutal and thrilling, but The Darkness is one of the few games I’ll remember not for the action, but for an uneventful hour of downtime that I willingly endured. And, better still, enjoyed.
Crackdown
Crackdown’s an odd duck among today’s overproduced, overindulgently cinematic triple-A videogames. Even Microsoft knew this, so – in an act that proved its total lack of faith – the publisher bundled Crackdown with Halo 3’s public beta test, delicious bait meant to disguise the proverbial hook. For my money, though, Crackdown stole the show. Halo 3 was nice and all, but Crackdown’s superheroic-antics and addictive upgrade system could have actually stabbed me in the mouth – as hooks are wont to do – and I still would have kept on coming back for more.
Crackdown was refreshing precisely because it chose to eschew cut-scenes, characterization, or – indeed – a plot in favor of simply laying down a few basic laws and letting you run wild. Time and time again, its gameplay conceits defied reason and logic in favor of fun. Instead of trying to be something that it wasn’t, Crackdown was a videogame, pure and simple. While many modern videogames get complex novelizations and things of the like, if Crackdown were a book, it’d be one page long, and it’d read, “Jumping high is hella fun.”
So yeah. It’d be a pretty horrible book.
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age made me do things in a videogame that I’ve never done before. Ridiculous things. Things that I’d rather not talk about for fear of being approached on the street and summarily laughed at, then hung from a flagpole. But I’m going to tell you anyway, because I’m making a point.
At one point during my time with the game, I weighed my options and ultimately decided to delete my then-current save file in favor of one from four hours before. Four hours of my life wasted, with the knowledge that I’d have to spend another four hours doing everything nearly the same way all over again. And why, you ask, would I commit such a cardinal sin against time, progress, and common sense? Because I regretted a choice I’d made concerning one of my party members, and I was so heartbroken that I couldn’t bear to continue without rectifying the problem.
Dragon Age’s cast of characters was so well developed that even rubbing one of them the wrong way crushed me under a mountain of actual, honest-to-God regret. And occasionally – as in the above situation – grief. The game’s genius, then, lies in its knowledge of your bond with its characters, and its manipulations of your emotions based on that. Party members in Dragon Age aren’t blindly loyal drones. In previous BioWare games, party members would buck on occasion, but after a bit of smooth-talking, they’d once again trot along happily in your wake. Dragon Age, meanwhile, uses its incredibly memorable cast as the impetus for many of the toughest choices you’ll have to make over the course of the game.
I’ll admit it: Dragon Age made me cry. And I loved it.
BEFORE ANGRILY COMMENTING, READ THIS:
Where’s Deus Ex? Or Classic Videogame X, for that matter? Well, I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t played those. I really, really, really want to, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Therefore, all of my opinions are wrong. As is this list. Yes – that’s right – my opinions are wrong. Just like all other opinions that conflict with your own. So why not let me know about your favorite games of the decade? Preferably without calling my intelligence/integrity into question every other sentence, since I’ve already done that myself. Thanks for reading!
The Game Boy: My Favorite Games of the Decade, Part Two
Part two? Part two? Oh my goodness, you’re totally lost, aren’t you? Part one’s right here, and it ended with this really rad cliffhanger with a car chase and everything. Basically, you have to read it, or part two won’t make a lick of sense to you. So get to it. Or try your luck with part two. But you’d have to be, like, some kind of mega-genius to even begin to comprehend the complexities of an ordered list like this one without proper introduction.
Metal Gear Solid 3
“Eh. Metal Gear’s all right, I guess.”
No one has ever said this. You either love the zany stealth franchise and all its fat men on rollerskates, nanotech vampires, and cyborg ninjas — despite their tendency to speak in cryptic psycho-babble for 45 minutes at a time – or you completely reject it as the human body would an amputated arm that occasionally takes control of your brain and tries to conquer the world. Point is, Metal Gear’s crazy, Japanese, and crazy.
And I love it.
Metal Gear Solid 3, in my opinion, is the height of Snake and co.’s adventures, with creator Hideo Kojima’s eccentricities toned down just enough to create an emotionally captivating tale that’s still unabashedly strange – but not mind-bogglingly so. The game mixed tense “hide in plain sight” stealth sections, battles with everything from masochistic bee men to ancient wheelchair-bound snipers, and a backstab-heavy plot that’d make even James Bond’s head spin to create a balanced concoction of Kojima’s mad science that actually didn’t eventually explode in players’ faces. (The game’s bosses, however, did.) After Metal Gear Solid 2’s many missteps, I kept waiting for MGS3 to take a colossal leap off the deep end, but it never did. Instead, it upped the ante at a near-perfect pace, culminating in my favorite boss fight of all time.
The battle with “The End,” as the aforementioned seemingly comatose oldster was known, absolutely blew me away. In a single confrontation, I was forced to make use of nearly every skill Metal Gear Solid had ever taught me. He used a sniper rifle, so naturally, I evaded, gave him the slip, and tip-toed until I was right behind him. Metal Gear Stealth 101, in other words. But then he did something that surprised me: he sprinted like a six-legged cheetah. On his brittle old stick-legs. So much for the wheelchair.
Eventually, after ducking Lord only knows how many shots and scrambling into the underbrush every time I saw the sun glint off anything even resembling a sniper scope, I took him by surprise again. But this time, I went for broke. I hastily fumbled for a grenade, pulled the pin, and chucked it – just in time to see that The End had the same idea. Two tree-rattling explosions later, he was covered in leaves and sprawled out on the ground, and I was thanking my lucky stars that his was only a flash grenade.
And then I took a breath for the first time in an hour. Epic.
Fallout 3
I’ve written more about Fallout 3 than any other single game in history. Of everything in life, this is the thing of which I am most certain. Simply put, Fallout 3 is everything I’ve ever wanted from a videogame. Well, so long as you steer clear of the main quest, anyway.
The game world is the sort of thing I’ve dreamed of since I was a child. Not the “earth destroyed by bombs” part, mind you, but the sprawling world full of eccentric characters and tiny nooks and crannies that – at first – seemed innocuous enough, but actually teemed with all the carrots and sticks an adventurer could ever want. Fallout 3’s world was its main character, and everywhere I looked, I saw different facets of its personality. For a couple weeks, I toured the world five hours at a time, and each time, I had the privilege of sinking my senses into something strange and new. Everywhere I looked – from dank caves to abandoned office buildings – I found treasure troves of information. I’d spend hours hunting for clues, wondering “What was this place like before the bomb dropped?,” “Why are these people dead?” or “What kind of person used to live here?” Rarely did Fallout 3 leave my questions unanswered.
Fallout 3 reveled in the idea that it’s not the destination that counts; rather, it’s how you get there that matters. It single-handedly brought the wide-eyed, slack-jawed magic back to videogames that’d gone missing after I came to understand the simple 1’s and 0’s that actually comprise videogame worlds. If I had to pick a favorite game of all time, right now, it’d probably be Fallout 3.
Guitar Hero
I’m actually more of a Rock Band kind of guy, myself, but Guitar Hero set this rolling stone into motion, so I’m giving credit where credit’s due. Like it or not, Guitar Hero was one of the most significant gaming events of the last decade – in part giving rise to the casual revolution, and contributing greatly to one of its central tenets: looking utterly ridiculous. But despite the goofy-looking plastic instruments and most players’ tendency to stand completely still and stare directly at the screen as though its scrolling notes were oncoming 18-wheelers, the game’s incredibly fun.
Sure, it looks silly, but I’ll be damned if I don’t feel like an audience-awing, camera-punching rockstar after nailing a tough solo. On top of that, Guitar Hero took huge strides in broadening my then-meager musical horizons, and also inspired me to pick up an actual guitar in an (admittedly sad) attempt to unlock its melodic mysteries. So yes, I suck at guitar, but Guitar Hero got me interested in the wider world of music, and I’m forever thankful for that.
The Darkness
There’s no way to do this without sounding incredibly cheesy, so I’m just gonna throw it out there: The Darkness is my darkhorse pick on this list. Geddit? Yeah. Anyway, despite initially being born in the shadow of Starbreeze’s previous (and excellent) game – The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay – The Darkness was its own creature; far-removed from Riddick, sure, but arguably better for it. As far as videogame stories go, The Darkness was incredibly forward-thinking, conjuring up some of the most memorable scenes in all of gaming.
Those of you who’ve followed this column in the past will likely remember the scene in which tough-as-nails mafia bad boy Jackie Estacado and his girlfriend spend an evening together watching old movies. In real time. If you so choose, you can sit curled up on a dusty, coming-apart-at-the-seams sofa watching a grainy version of “To Kill a Mockingbird” for more than an hour. And it’s brilliant. Eventually, Jackie’s girlfriend falls asleep on his shoulder, and you can choose to stay or leave. It’s up to you. I stayed. In my opinion, this is the most authentic instance of romance ever conveyed in a videogame. It’s simple and mundane, as romance often is. And when the game’s story takes a turn for the tragic, it stokes your emotional fires that much more.
Of course, the first-person person-shooting and creepy Darkness powers were equal parts brutal and thrilling, but The Darkness is one of the few games I’ll remember not for the action, but for an uneventful hour of downtime that I willingly endured. And, better still, enjoyed.
Crackdown
Crackdown’s an odd duck among today’s overproduced, overindulgently cinematic triple-A videogames. Even Microsoft knew this, so – in an act that proved its total lack of faith – the publisher bundled Crackdown with Halo 3’s public beta test, delicious bait meant to disguise the proverbial hook. For my money, though, Crackdown stole the show. Halo 3 was nice and all, but Crackdown’s superheroic-antics and addictive upgrade system could have actually stabbed me in the mouth – as hooks are wont to do – and I still would have kept on coming back for more.
Crackdown was refreshing precisely because it chose to eschew cut-scenes, characterization, or – indeed – a plot in favor of simply laying down a few basic laws and letting you run wild. Time and time again, its gameplay conceits defied reason and logic in favor of fun. Instead of trying to be something that it wasn’t, Crackdown was a videogame, pure and simple. While many modern videogames get complex novelizations and things of the like, if Crackdown were a book, it’d be one page long, and it’d read, “Jumping high is hella fun.”
So yeah. It’d be a pretty horrible book.
Dragon Age: Origins
Dragon Age made me do things in a videogame that I’ve never done before. Ridiculous things. Things that I’d rather not talk about for fear of being approached on the street and summarily laughed at, then hung from a flagpole. But I’m going to tell you anyway, because I’m making a point.
At one point during my time with the game, I weighed my options and ultimately decided to delete my then-current save file in favor of one from four hours before. Four hours of my life wasted, with the knowledge that I’d have to spend another four hours doing everything nearly the same way all over again. And why, you ask, would I commit such a cardinal sin against time, progress, and common sense? Because I regretted a choice I’d made concerning one of my party members, and I was so heartbroken that I couldn’t bear to continue without rectifying the problem.
Dragon Age’s cast of characters was so well developed that even rubbing one of them the wrong way crushed me under a mountain of actual, honest-to-God regret. And occasionally – as in the above situation – grief. The game’s genius, then, lies in its knowledge of your bond with its characters, and its manipulations of your emotions based on that. Party members in Dragon Age aren’t blindly loyal drones. In previous BioWare games, party members would buck on occasion, but after a bit of smooth-talking, they’d once again trot along happily in your wake. Dragon Age, meanwhile, uses its incredibly memorable cast as the impetus for many of the toughest choices you’ll have to make over the course of the game.
I’ll admit it: Dragon Age made me cry. And I loved it.
BEFORE ANGRILY COMMENTING, READ THIS:
Where’s Deus Ex? Or Classic Videogame X, for that matter? Well, I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t played those. I really, really, really want to, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Therefore, all of my opinions are wrong. As is this list. Yes – that’s right – my opinions are wrong. Just like all other opinions that conflict with your own. So why not let me know about your favorite games of the decade? Preferably without calling my intelligence/integrity into question every other sentence, since I’ve already done that myself. Thanks for reading!
The Game Boy: My Favorite Games of the Decade, Part One
So here we are. The ball’s just about to drop on 2010, and while we’re not controlling games with our brains or Vulcan nerve pinching aliens on the holodeck just yet, it’s been a pretty great decade for games, all told. So I’ve written an arbitrarily numbered list of my favorite games of the past decade, because what else are you going to do to ring in a new decade? Your glamorous parties, oceans of alcohol, and prison cell slumber parties can wait. Read this list now.
Half-Life 2
My memory’s all right, I think. It’s not bad, by any means, but it’s also not great. As a result, looking back on a linear first-person shooter – for me – is kind of like looking back on a really good sandwich. Sure, I enjoyed it – as evidenced by the giant belch I expel shortly afterward, as I do after anything I truly enjoy – but I couldn’t in good conscience tell you about its different parts. It all just sort of runs together. So it’s a pretty big deal when – after only playing a shooter once – I can remember its every twist and turn with near-perfect clarity.
Half-Life 2 is the ultimate roller coaster ride. Each of its locales exudes an unsettling “strange-yet-familiar” vibe that I image would accompany an actual alien occupation of earth. Yet, more than that, when Half-Life 2 switches areas, the game changes. Rarely – with the exception of a few unfortunate vehicle sequences – does it ever force you to do the same thing twice. Other shooters are content to call their samey shooting galleries by other names and hope you won’t notice, but Half-Life 2 never settles into a predictable rhythm, and it’s headcrabs-and-shoulders above the rest because of that.
Also, if you didn’t scream while playing through Ravenholm, you’re lying.
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
If life is like a box of chocolates, Zelda games are like a bag of M&M’s: each has its own color, but you’ll always end up biting into the same core. Yet in the end, Wind Waker had a bit more flavor to it than the rest – both inside and out. Its art design was whimsical, magical, and zany in all the right ways, while its open, predominately sea-covered world provided intrepid adventurers with more carrots than most sticks have room for.
I whiled away afternoon-after-afternoon languidly sailing wherever the wind would take me, hoping to stumble across some new adventure. I was rarely disappointed. Despite the game’s “let’s help Link prevent another apocalypse” plot, Wind Waker never lost its carefree, adventuresome spirit, and in an era where big open-world games have to be “dark, mature, and guns!,” Wind Waker was a salty breath of fresh air.
Peggle
As I write this, there’s a 90% likelihood that I’m playing Peggle. And it’s not like I’m trying to be rude or anything by burying my face in a game while we have textual relations. It’s just that, on my list of needs – not wants – after breathing and before eating comes Peggle. It was an addiction years ago. Now it’s a part of me. Without Peggle, the Dashing Internet Figure known as “Nathan Grayson” does not exist.
So, what makes a little game about shooting silver balls at colored pegs so spectacular? Well, smart level design, a near-perfect difficulty curve, and a no-nonsense focus on quick, accessible fun play large roles, but the star of this show is Peggle’s presentation. The game rewards your every action – from hitting special pegs to utterly failing and missing every peg — with lights, colors, music, score multipliers, and things of the like, culminating in a slow-mo explosion of rainbows set to the blaring tune of Beethoven’s “Symphony No 9.” This end level phenomenon, known only as “Extreme Fever,” is the 9th, 10th, and 11th wonders of the world.
Jet Grind Radio
Here’s one I don’t expect many people to remember. It’s something of an under-the-radar Dreamcast game, but honestly, I think the radar was seriously on the fritz when JGR first hit the streets. The game was one of the first to really employ the cartoony looking graphical style known as “cel-shading,” but – like many pioneers – it was also one of the best. Why? Put simply: style. As your main character – decked out in colorful, eye-catching threads and headphones – flew down the street in his Future Rollerblades, you plain out felt awesome. The game wasn’t just the end result of some artist’s willy-nilly paint-flinging “experiment,” either. Its brand of stylishness was completely coherent. Each in-game graffiti gang had its own tagging method, music, locale, outfit set, etc. And, of course, JGR was fun to play as well. Graffiti battles and fast, frantic police escapes were especially enjoyable, as were the simple acts of grinding and tricking off the city’s many landmarks.
Now, I’m going to be honest with you: as a child, my “rebellious phase” consisted mostly of the one time I decided to plant both of my feet on a skateboard and let my (former) friends Gravity and Inertia give me directions. After roughly 12 seconds, my rebellious phase ended with me sobbing in my mother’s arms.
But Jet Grind Radio made me feel like a rebel – with an actual cause that wouldn’t cause me to go red with embarrassment years later, no less!
Resident Evil 4
One of the greatest games of all time got one of the worst PC ports of all time, but – ignoring that – Resident Evil 4 is easily the best entry in its long and (mostly) excellent line. It’s interesting too, because most of the time, when a game removes a time-honored genre staple – like, say, the ability to move and shoot at the same time, or, you know, zombies – the whole thing falls to pieces. But RE4’s run-then-gun gameplay rarely ever frustrated, and formed the core of an utterly addictive experience.
As far as action shooters go, RE4 – while a reinvention of the Resident Evil series – nailed its new formula from the get-go, deftly mixing off-the-wall boss fights, “ohcrapohcrapohcrap” pacing, and RPG-like weapon collecting and upgrading, ultimately stirring up the winds that’d power the sails behind third-person shooters for years to come.
Let us also use this moment to honor the passing of one very important individual who leapt in the way of the proverbial rocket that is life. By which I mean a real rocket. That exploded. He died, in case that wasn’t clear. That sadly deceased man was Mike the Helicopter Guy. When all bets were off and Resident Evil 4 had me against the ropes, Mike swooped in atop his namesake and set his gattling guns to work against the not-quite-undead hordes that – seconds earlier – had me sounding the horn of Gondor and making my last stand. And as we skipped hand-in-rotor, sweeping that little European country clean of Plagas, Mike joked that I owed him a beer after we made it out of that hellhole. I, of course, responded in kind by saying “OH MY GOD A ROCKET JUST KILLED YOU.”
I’ll buy you that beer in heaven, buddy. I really will.
World of Warcraft
When World of Warcraft first landed, I didn’t know what to think. My childhood was equal parts Freddy the Fish and Warcraft II, and if not for Warcraft III, I may never have gotten into online gaming. World of Warcraft, though, was different. And to 16 year-old me – for some inexplicable reason – that also meant “unexciting until a sufficient number of positive reviews tell me that it’s not.” I’d spent my MMO infancy suckling at Everquest’s teat, after all. Six months of grinding, grouping, and griefing was enough for me, thanks.
After one month and two or three game of the year awards, though, I couldn’t resist any longer. So I put a crudely drawn star next to “World of Warcraft” on my Christmas list. Little did I know, however, that I was actually signing away two years of my life.
World of Warcraft’s introduction of actual fun – and some much needed streamlining — to the tired old “grind, quest, level, loot” MMO circle of life was great, but it wasn’t revolutionary by any means. Sometimes, though, all it takes is a teensy change to the recipe to make people realize what they were missing out on all along. And boy did they ever notice. WoW itself may not have been a revolution, but it certainly sparked one. 11.5 million players and half of Activision’s overall income, after all, is nothing to sneeze at. Who wouldn’t want a slice of that pie?
And so, with execs licking their chops while inhaling the fumes of WoW’s massive success, the MMO market has grown into one of the sturdiest portions of PC gaming’s backbone. Which, admittedly, has given rise to a great many stinkers, but overall, has forced to developers to innovate in the space or risk forever living in WoW’s colossal shadow.
Check back on Thursday for Part Two!
The Game Boy: My Favorite Games of the Decade, Part One
So here we are. The ball’s just about to drop on 2010, and while we’re not controlling games with our brains or Vulcan nerve pinching aliens on the holodeck just yet, it’s been a pretty great decade for games, all told. So I’ve written an arbitrarily numbered list of my favorite games of the past decade, because what else are you going to do to ring in a new decade? Your glamorous parties, oceans of alcohol, and prison cell slumber parties can wait. Read this list now.
Half-Life 2
My memory’s all right, I think. It’s not bad, by any means, but it’s also not great. As a result, looking back on a linear first-person shooter – for me – is kind of like looking back on a really good sandwich. Sure, I enjoyed it – as evidenced by the giant belch I expel shortly afterward, as I do after anything I truly enjoy – but I couldn’t in good conscience tell you about its different parts. It all just sort of runs together. So it’s a pretty big deal when – after only playing a shooter once – I can remember its every twist and turn with near-perfect clarity.
Half-Life 2 is the ultimate roller coaster ride. Each of its locales exudes an unsettling “strange-yet-familiar” vibe that I image would accompany an actual alien occupation of earth. Yet, more than that, when Half-Life 2 switches areas, the game changes. Rarely – with the exception of a few unfortunate vehicle sequences – does it ever force you to do the same thing twice. Other shooters are content to call their samey shooting galleries by other names and hope you won’t notice, but Half-Life 2 never settles into a predictable rhythm, and it’s headcrabs-and-shoulders above the rest because of that.
Also, if you didn’t scream while playing through Ravenholm, you’re lying.
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
If life is like a box of chocolates, Zelda games are like a bag of M&M’s: each has its own color, but you’ll always end up biting into the same core. Yet in the end, Wind Waker had a bit more flavor to it than the rest – both inside and out. Its art design was whimsical, magical, and zany in all the right ways, while its open, predominately sea-covered world provided intrepid adventurers with more carrots than most sticks have room for.
I whiled away afternoon-after-afternoon languidly sailing wherever the wind would take me, hoping to stumble across some new adventure. I was rarely disappointed. Despite the game’s “let’s help Link prevent another apocalypse” plot, Wind Waker never lost its carefree, adventuresome spirit, and in an era where big open-world games have to be “dark, mature, and guns!,” Wind Waker was a salty breath of fresh air.
Peggle
As I write this, there’s a 90% likelihood that I’m playing Peggle. And it’s not like I’m trying to be rude or anything by burying my face in a game while we have textual relations. It’s just that, on my list of needs – not wants – after breathing and before eating comes Peggle. It was an addiction years ago. Now it’s a part of me. Without Peggle, the Dashing Internet Figure known as “Nathan Grayson” does not exist.
So, what makes a little game about shooting silver balls at colored pegs so spectacular? Well, smart level design, a near-perfect difficulty curve, and a no-nonsense focus on quick, accessible fun play large roles, but the star of this show is Peggle’s presentation. The game rewards your every action – from hitting special pegs to utterly failing and missing every peg — with lights, colors, music, score multipliers, and things of the like, culminating in a slow-mo explosion of rainbows set to the blaring tune of Beethoven’s “Symphony No 9.” This end level phenomenon, known only as “Extreme Fever,” is the 9th, 10th, and 11th wonders of the world.
Jet Grind Radio
Here’s one I don’t expect many people to remember. It’s something of an under-the-radar Dreamcast game, but honestly, I think the radar was seriously on the fritz when JGR first hit the streets. The game was one of the first to really employ the cartoony looking graphical style known as “cel-shading,” but – like many pioneers – it was also one of the best. Why? Put simply: style. As your main character – decked out in colorful, eye-catching threads and headphones – flew down the street in his Future Rollerblades, you plain out felt awesome. The game wasn’t just the end result of some artist’s willy-nilly paint-flinging “experiment,” either. Its brand of stylishness was completely coherent. Each in-game graffiti gang had its own tagging method, music, locale, outfit set, etc. And, of course, JGR was fun to play as well. Graffiti battles and fast, frantic police escapes were especially enjoyable, as were the simple acts of grinding and tricking off the city’s many landmarks.
Now, I’m going to be honest with you: as a child, my “rebellious phase” consisted mostly of the one time I decided to plant both of my feet on a skateboard and let my (former) friends Gravity and Inertia give me directions. After roughly 12 seconds, my rebellious phase ended with me sobbing in my mother’s arms.
But Jet Grind Radio made me feel like a rebel – with an actual cause that wouldn’t cause me to go red with embarrassment years later, no less!
Resident Evil 4
One of the greatest games of all time got one of the worst PC ports of all time, but – ignoring that – Resident Evil 4 is easily the best entry in its long and (mostly) excellent line. It’s interesting too, because most of the time, when a game removes a time-honored genre staple – like, say, the ability to move and shoot at the same time, or, you know, zombies – the whole thing falls to pieces. But RE4’s run-then-gun gameplay rarely ever frustrated, and formed the core of an utterly addictive experience.
As far as action shooters go, RE4 – while a reinvention of the Resident Evil series – nailed its new formula from the get-go, deftly mixing off-the-wall boss fights, “ohcrapohcrapohcrap” pacing, and RPG-like weapon collecting and upgrading, ultimately stirring up the winds that’d power the sails behind third-person shooters for years to come.
Let us also use this moment to honor the passing of one very important individual who leapt in the way of the proverbial rocket that is life. By which I mean a real rocket. That exploded. He died, in case that wasn’t clear. That sadly deceased man was Mike the Helicopter Guy. When all bets were off and Resident Evil 4 had me against the ropes, Mike swooped in atop his namesake and set his gattling guns to work against the not-quite-undead hordes that – seconds earlier – had me sounding the horn of Gondor and making my last stand. And as we skipped hand-in-rotor, sweeping that little European country clean of Plagas, Mike joked that I owed him a beer after we made it out of that hellhole. I, of course, responded in kind by saying “OH MY GOD A ROCKET JUST KILLED YOU.”
I’ll buy you that beer in heaven, buddy. I really will.
World of Warcraft
When World of Warcraft first landed, I didn’t know what to think. My childhood was equal parts Freddy the Fish and Warcraft II, and if not for Warcraft III, I may never have gotten into online gaming. World of Warcraft, though, was different. And to 16 year-old me – for some inexplicable reason – that also meant “unexciting until a sufficient number of positive reviews tell me that it’s not.” I’d spent my MMO infancy suckling at Everquest’s teat, after all. Six months of grinding, grouping, and griefing was enough for me, thanks.
After one month and two or three game of the year awards, though, I couldn’t resist any longer. So I put a crudely drawn star next to “World of Warcraft” on my Christmas list. Little did I know, however, that I was actually signing away two years of my life.
World of Warcraft’s introduction of actual fun – and some much needed streamlining — to the tired old “grind, quest, level, loot” MMO circle of life was great, but it wasn’t revolutionary by any means. Sometimes, though, all it takes is a teensy change to the recipe to make people realize what they were missing out on all along. And boy did they ever notice. WoW itself may not have been a revolution, but it certainly sparked one. 11.5 million players and half of Activision’s overall income, after all, is nothing to sneeze at. Who wouldn’t want a slice of that pie?
And so, with execs licking their chops while inhaling the fumes of WoW’s massive success, the MMO market has grown into one of the sturdiest portions of PC gaming’s backbone. Which, admittedly, has given rise to a great many stinkers, but overall, has forced to developers to innovate in the space or risk forever living in WoW’s colossal shadow.
Check back on Thursday for Part Two!
