Dishonesty May Be the Best Policy

People who've seen Brütal Legend in ads or are interested by the heavy metal aesthetic of the game may find themselves confused and perhaps alienated by what it actually is. The thing about Brütal Legend that's most likely to alienate players is the bait-and-switch that occurs as you're playing the game. The game starts out as an action-adventure game that admittedly feels rough around the edges, but what happens is that slowly but surely the game turns into something most players don't expect; a Real-Time Strategy game.

This game within a game will determine whether or not someone really like the game, because Double Fine makes it clear that this is the game that they intended people to play. The Stage Battles (the segments of the game in which strategy occurs) are clearly the most polished and thought-out area of the game. The three factions are all well-executed archetypes of the RTS genre ( Ironheade is the straightforward Terran faction, Drowning Doom are the numerous and status afflicting Zerg, and the Tainted Coil the restrictive but powerful Protoss), and while consistently successful strategies are already emerging online (I found that the Tainted Coil's ability to spawn units away from Stages made them ideal for rushing the enemy), it doesn't seem as though any one faction is far above the others.

Being an RTS on a console, Brütal Legend streamlines most of the aspects of the standard PC control scheme. Unit selection is allotted to the analog stick via a selection wheel, and since there are a maximum of 10 units to choose from at a given time, creating units isn't very complicated, if just a tad slow. Winning is a matter of destroying the opponent's stage, an all-in-one base, which acts as both a factory for creating units, and as a tech tree (you can make stronger units and upgrade your current ones by upgrading your stage). Fans are your one and only resource, and in order to harvest them you'll have to create merch booths by playing a solo near fan geysers.

The game also introduces some unique concepts to the genre. During battle, you take control of one commanding avatar (rather then be an ominous influence on troops). Through them, you give orders such as attack and defend, create merchandise booths, play solos to change to tide of battle, and directly attack enemy units.

The most interesting new concept, though, is the Double Team. Your commander can approach any unit and team up with it, usually taking direct control of that unit. Often this will allow that unit to perform a unique special attack, and some of these add a coat of flavor to combat; Double Teaming with the Drowning Doom's Bride unit will allow to summing lighting from a storm cloud, while doing the same with Ironheade's Fire Baron allows you to create a ring of fire that will damage enemies. The Tainted coil can only create its more useful units through double teams, which makes them the hardest faction to use, but the most powerful one to control.

The Double Teams, on top of the direct control of an avatar are what really made the RTS portion of the game for me. The ability to have a direct influence on the combat regardless of your troops clicked with me the first time I did it. I can easily see why other people would be turned off by it, though; by having the player control a hero character, the player loses the ability to command larger fleets, command multiple squads at once (more on that in a bit), and for the die-hard player of a more diverse RTS game, Brütal Legend doesn't offer much that would pry them away. Still, I had enough fun playing online that I could easily see myself going back to it.

The matches I played online all ended somewhere between the five and ten minute marks, though most matches won't let completely upgrade your units. Most matches were about rushing the enemy and disrupting them as quickly as possible. When hectically trying to command my units while also getting my hands dirty, I had a hard time effectively managing multiple squads at once. You can make beacons for your troops to head towards and summon rally flags, but I found that the command for selecting individual units and separating them (useful for engaging the enemy and finding geysers at the same time) severely lacking.

This lack of effective multitasking isn't present too often, since most online matches will end before either player has had much of chance to upgrade their stage, but in battles with more than two players, it can be hard to coordinate properly. This carries over into the single-player as well, where battles usually last longer due do a more defensive AI.

The odd thing about the single-player is that it buries the RTS portion of the game under several layers of action/adventure. Playing the rest of the game, you start to feel that most of the other components are shallow means to an end. The character combat, for example, isn't wildly creative. The animations feel stiff, the combos are slow, and for the most part, you're mashing one button over and over again. Guitar spells add some variety, but the few combos that mix it with regular attacks aren't very useful. You're either going to mash one button or the other.

Your vehicle, The Deuce, feels just as utilitarian. You can upgrade it to shoot enemies and increase its speed, but its main purpose is to allow you faster travel around the world. There are a couple of missions that take advantage of your car, but most will either place it in a turret, or have you following a convoy, which were probably the most frustrating missions in the game.

The game also borrows some other aspects from the action/adventure genre. The single-player portion of the game plays out much like any game in the action/adventure genre would. You play through key missions to advance the story, and open up optional missions that give you Fire Tributes (which can be used to buy upgrades for your character). Most of these missions are novel the first time around, but there are only a handful of unique scenarios, which are repeated several times over. You can avoid the brunt of these missions, sure, but for the completionist, it isn't really an option.

The game also features several kinds of collectibles. Because there are so many of them (easily over 200), and there is no way to keep track of them, to find them all you'll almost certainly have to use a map. However, most of these have a direct impact on the game (such as increasing your health) for finding even a few, so you aren't forced to hunt for each and every one to get a noticeable benefit.

The actual campaign missions funnel you through them at such a rate that you'll have to consciously have to make the decision to look for them. The story, while very much a re-tread (it employs such cliche's as "the chosen one", and uses predictable plot twists), but the execution is top-notch. Tim Shafer's humor and likeable characters are in full force here, and the soundtrack does a good job immersing you into the heavy metal scenery. Jack Black as Eddie Riggs is as full of energy and snarky as he should be, and the guest performances are all put to good use without feeling overbearing. Though the story isn't anything new, it's likely the biggest reason most people will play the game.

This focus on character personalities and the fact that you are in control of a single character for the entirety of the game are put in stark contrast by the fact that game's biggest aspiration is to be a Real-Time RTS game. In the single-player, the action/adventure portions far outweigh the RTS portions, yet the multiplayer is a completely different game. The RTS game will likely be a love it or hate affair, and for those who love it, it will seem as though the campaign is trying to hide it. For those who hate it, it will seem like the RTS game is interrupting its adventure aspects.

At heart, Brütal Legend is a really good RTS game and a decent action/adventure game. It mixes these two games in ways that might not jive with everyone, but both of these games are ultimately worth playing. Fans of Tim Shafer's previous work will be right at home scouring every nook and cranny, and the player who puts enough time into the RTS will find an surprisingly experience that may be a bit too simple, but ends up being a lot more fun once you put your expectations aside and enjoy what Double Fine is offering, rather than the game you thought it was going to be.

I'm the Idiot Who Bought a PSP Go.

Against all common sense, warnings, cynicism, and even my own advice, I bought a PSP Go. I don't believe I have to defend my decision to buy a PSP; the stack of games I've wanted for the system has grown large enough to merit the purchase. The point of contention is why I chose the Go over the more versatile 3000 model.

The Go presents itself as a "premium" version of the system. It's more expensive, looks sleeker, and stands firmly on the platform of being an iPhone competitor. I won't go into a comparison between the two here, though suffice it to say the Go lacks the function of being a phone and an internet connection outside of hotspots. With that in mind, the assumption that most people come to is that it's in an overpriced piece of plastic that does nothing but reinforce brand loyalty.

So why buy the Go? Well, first of all, the 250 price point is less inflated than you might think. Right now, a PSP-3000/16GB Memory stick is around $230, so the Go and its internal 16 gigs are actually only 20 dollars more than the alternative. It's not exactly a fair comparison, though, since the Go is more likely to use up that memory than the 3000.

The most divisive facet of the Go is, of course, that fact that it lacks a UMD drive, which means that any games that someone looking to upgrade to the newest version of the system might have would be useless. It's possible that most of the ire directed at the Go comes from PSP owners who feel maligned and abandoned by the company they've been supporting, and that's a natural reaction to have, really. If, say, the DSi went digital-only, I'd be peeved about having to re-buy all of the games I have.

But from the perspective of a new buyer, it's extremely tempting to start fresh. UMD's, like most physical formats, are cumbersome to carry around, which is especially important with a portable device. Your options are limited by what's on the store (I, for example, am still waiting to play Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops), but those are the sort of growing pains that come with the territory.

Price comes into play as well; The one store you can buy from doesn't have to compete with anything else (or at least, anything that's legal), so there's little chance we'll see bargains or deals unless they're from the publishers/developers themselves.

The upside to this, though, is that I won't have to worry about whether or not the money I put down will go to the developer. Used copies are pure profit for retail and retail alone, so I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm willing to take the price hike in exchange for supporting the people who made the game. I don't have any more or less money than anyone else, so it may mean I'll end up buying less games in the long haul.

The biggest reason I bought the Go, however, may have been to support the concept of a digital-only device. I may be overpaying for it right now, but I feel like I should be supporting such a platform from the get-go. The PSP may not have been the right console to go with on this front, but I'd like encourage anyone of thinking this way as much as I can.

Or maybe I'm just trying to validate a bad decision.

Half-cocked and Ready to Go.

From a "value" perspective, Wet doesn't have all that much to offer. It's a pretty straightforward, 5-hour shooter with some challenge modes, collectibles, and extras to keep you busy. Of course, not every game has to have to the Wal-mart seal of approval.

Even if it's short, if a game can provide the player with a quality experience, then there's not much of a need for the game to validate itself as a "value". Unfortunately, while Wet might offer the occasional thrill, the game manages to make its initially flamboyant action into something tedious. It's certainly stylish, but its influences don't elevate it above its problems.

Its most obvious inspiration are 70's grindhouse movies, an influence the game wears on its sleeve. The heroine, Rubi Malone, is a no-nonsense bad-ass who's never shy about turning a phrase. The plot is equally contrived, with missing suitcases, ham-handed pacing, outlandish scenarios, and cheesy one-liners. Your death is signaled by movie reels, there's lots of film grain, and there are even occasional retro commercials.

But while it manages to capture the feel of those low-budget B movies, it does so only superficially. It's so straightforward in execution that it leaves little room for interpretation. While most grindhouse movies were violent displays of blood and exploitation flicks, some of them held deeper symbolism and meaning. Wet's ending does little to provoke discussion, whether it be a reaction or speculation.

An homage with no heart can be forgiven, however, especially in an interactive medium, if the game plays well. For the first couple of hours, Wet's gameplay feels fresh and crazy enough to be really enjoyable. You're jumping, swinging, sliding in slow-motion, shooting dudes with dual-revolvers, and ripping them apart with your sword. All of these things feel good enough, with some small caveats (slides are just a tad too long, it sometimes feels like you're not hitting enemies when you're aiming right at them). The arenas are basically playgrounds to be creative in the ways you kill. You're graded and given points, which provides you with an incentive do all of these things well.

The problem comes when you're 5 hours in and that's all you've been doing. Doing the same thing over and over again isn't the problem, it's that what you're doing just isn't engaging enough to keep you interested for as long as you're playing it. You also begin to see how restricted you are; jumping, swinging, and sliding while shooting in slow motion is about all you'll be rewarded for. Exploring the areas between arenas shows that you really don't have anything else to do, and it's disappointing to know that you don't have many options, whether in shootouts or overall.

The game tries its hand at variety with some Quick-time events, time-trials, and "Rage" stages in which everything is red and the point is to get as big a kill streak as possible before reaching the end. In all honesty, the time trials were, for me, the times at which I felt the game was living up to its full potential. Aiming for the gold medal requires that you do everything in a given course just right, and the levels were designed in such a way that I felt that I could do just that if I tried it enough times. Most everything else felt thrown in. Aside from an increase in strength, there isn't much to the Rage sequences aside from high-contrast colors, and the Quick-Time events felt forced. The short platforming sections also feel forced and pointless.

Even as you're making your way through the story mode, there just isn't much there. You'll watch a cutscene, make your way through a linear path, enter an arena (which is where most of the firefights take place). Aside from looking for some clanging monkey toys (which I'll admit are charming) for achievements or trophies, you won't revisit areas you've cleared of enemies.

Games don't have to be values to be good, but if they're not values what they do provide does have to be good. Wet is interesting at the outset, but its novelty wears thin early on. Just like the movies that inspire it, Wet doesn't justify paying full price; it's better off rented or discounted.

Pure, Gorgeous Action

Games often try to be an encompassing medium. So many titles attempt to have as much for the player to do as possible, with vehicle sequences, dialogue trees and time-wasting fetch quests. Variety can be wonderful thing, but when the whole is only connected parts, it dilutes whatever product was there to begin with. In this sense, Muramasa: The Demon Blade is the most "pure" game I have played in a long while.

To say the game is cohesive isn't entirely true; It's just simple. Its feature set is one thing that does multiple things. Combat is the center of the game, and everything else is built around it. Everything that is not fighting is there to help you fight better or to offer a better fighting experience.

The combat itself feels like a cross between a 3D action game (think Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry) and a 2D fighting game (specifically Capcom's VS. Series). You come across encounters while running through a map to get your next destination, and then, well, it's on. The controls are relatively simple, but the one thing I thought was odd at first was jumping with up on the analog stick instead of with a button. Two hours in, however, it felt completely natural, and I understood Vanillaware's decisicion: when the combat in a game is this fast, pressing an extra button is far too slow.

Combat is very much button-mashy. There were very few times were pressing the A button was to my disadvantage. What gives the combat its feel, and its depth, is the immediate amount of control you have over your character. If the enemy you have caught in an air combo dies, you can immediately point the control stick down mid-combo and stab the enemy below you. If you're surrounded, you can switch directions effectively enough to keep both sides of enemies at bay.

The part where it starts to feel like a fighting game is in the impact of hits. Striking enemies produces the same sort of slow-down that you'd get from landing a hit in a fighting game, and to someone who's played their share of them, it feels good. Blocking and attacking are assigned to the same button, which at first sounds confusing, but what makes this simple is that they're both the same exact action; if an enemy throws a projectile at you during a combo, you'll automatically block it with that attack.

This may sound like it makes the game too easy, but there are many things that make add a certain amount of strategy to the button mashing: Every time you block an attack you're sword's health meter decreases, and when that runs out, the sword breaks (which means it does half damage and you can't block with it). To counteract this, you must constantly switch between the three swords you can equip, which vary in special attacks and in weight (long swords usually do more damage but are slower, etc.).

Also, if you find the game too easy, you can always change the difficulty whenever you're not in combat, but be aware that Shura (Hard) is akin to going from Medium to Expert in Guitar Hero, with Shigurui (Perfect) mode unlocked if you can manage to beat hard mode. In Shura, you'll have step your strategic game up a couple of notches to survive, to say nothing of Shigurui.

When you're not fighting regular enemies, you'll engage a Metroid-style back-and-forth trek across beautifully drawn landscapes. You'll begin to see some of the cracks in animations (especially in story sequences) that begin to key you in as to how Vanillaware was able to do something like this on the Wii, but it doesn't change the fact that the game is constant eye-candy. The characters, snow-capped mountains, rainy forests, and Japanese battlefields are all gorgeous enough to stop and take a look at on the way to the next boss.

You can wander through these areas as much as you like, but the game keeps you on the straight-and-narrow if you're easily lost. You'll have a point on the map you'll need to get to (there's a flag to point you in the right direction), you'll fight a boss, get a barrier-breaking sword, then break that barrier and move on the next boss. You're free to find secret items (and bosses), but you won't have much to do otherwise.

As to what else you could be doing, there are some RPG-lite elements to make use of. Shops are strewn about the maps, and you can purchase healing items, food, and items that heal a sword's health and teleport you to save points. You level up as you fight enemies, but I found that there wasn't that much of a need to grind. Levels come quickly, and I reached level 60 with both characters in just 18 hours, which is about as long as it took me to play through the game the first time through.

You'll be fine if you just play through the game once, but the game does reward multiple play-throughs. Both of your characters have interesting enough stories that you'll want to back through them to unlock their second and third endings. The story sequences are disjointed and sterile, but the plot is nonetheless intriguing. You'll also have access to more swords after you beat the game, as well as the ability to fight one character's bosses with the other. If most of this seems pointless to you, though, I woudn't bother with the end-game extras.

Muramasa doesn't need any of the "It's on the Wii" qualifiers. The game would look great on any platform, it's able to keep the one thing it tries to do (combat) entertaining for as long as it needs to, and it doesn't wear out its welcome with extra padding or features.The Wii may not as many "AAA" titles as the competition, but this is definitely one of them.

Professor Layton and the Improved Sequel.

The Professor Layton series often reminds me of the educational TV shows that are the current bread-and-butter of morning television; They're both thinly veiled attempts to string together puzzles with a story. But where the early morning cartoons are aimed at children, the Layton series is aimed at everyone.

What's impressive about the series, though, and especially in Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, is that while the aspects of game and story are almost completely separate, it manages to tie both of them together into an at least somewhat cohesive whole. It's both a collection of brainteasers and a point-and-click adventure game without being bad at either one.

There isn't a lot to say about the "game" part of Diabolical Box, but there's something to be said about its meta-game . Whenever anything needs solving, the game has you solve one of 138 puzzles (with 15 more puzzles outside the main adventure mode), which are as varied in both style and difficulty as you'd expect. Everything from riddles to sliding puzzles to math questions is rated in Picarats (the higher the number the harder the puzzle), which serves as both point system (you unlock extras by having X number of Picarats), and as a way to guide your thinking.

It's subtle, but in both a puzzle's Picarat score and in the wording of the puzzle itself lie potential tricks themselves. This is obvious in riddles, of course, but there are those times when I've over thought a puzzle simply because of its high Picarat score. I'd already come up with the right answer, but I dismissed it because I thought it was too simple for a puzzle that was supposed to be hard.

On the other hand, because there are so many times in which the simplest answer is the right one, you can find yourself thinking simple on the puzzles that actually do require you to think your answer through. It's a dynamic that presents itself the entire game, and it encourages you to make sure have the right answer before tapping submit (wrong answers cause you to lose Picarats, which can only be regained by turning off the DS).

Another facet of the game I found myself thinking about often was the game's potential for multiplayer. My pride took a hit every time I asked someone for help, sure, but having an entire room of people attempting to solve a riddle turned out to be much more fun than struggling through it on my own. If you'd rather like to solve all the puzzles yourself, though, know that you can replay any puzzle, which means you can have a group try to solve it while you dangle the answer over their head.

And with the puzzles being the entire point of the game, you wouldn't expect there to much in the way of story, but it's arguably half the game. The sections between puzzles skillfully emulate old adventure games, albeit with more clear borders (want to get information? Solve this riddle). The surprising thing is that the story provides motivation for solving puzzles as well as a context.

The plot's simplicity is reminiscent of a children's movie, though it's more evocative of Miyazaki than Disney. It also provides more variation than last year's Curious Village. In Diabolical Box, you're traveling to different cities by train rather than explore one town.

The pacing is faster as well, which lead to some 4-5 hour sessions on my end. It does a good enough job at getting you through frustrating puzzles. There's also a higher attention to production values, with more cutscenes and spoken dialogue than in Curious Village. When all was said and done, I felt adequately satisfied during the last cutscene, even if it didn't mean I was done with the game yet.

The puzzles live up to expectations of the series, the story has as much mysticism and deducing as you'd expect, and it's a great multiplayer experience (albeit "Local"). If you're a fan of teasing your brain (as well as teasing the brains of others), occasional frustration, and British accents, this is the best the DS has to offer you, and the best alternative parents have to watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse again.

Narratives, "Narratives", and Playing to our Strengths.

Games are not novels, and the ways in which they harbor novelistic aspirations are invariably the least interesting thing about them. You can judge games by the criteria designed to evaluate novels: Are the characters believable? Is the dialogue complex? But inevitably, the games will come up wanting. Games are good at novelistic storytelling the way Michael Jordan was good at playing baseball. Both could probably make a living at it, but their world-class talents lie elsewhere.

- Steven Johnson

While Steven Johnson champions the cognitive merits of video games in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You, he makes clear his assertion of their storytelling abilities: they suck. He doesn't say that a lack of narrative capabilities impedes them, though; He simply asserts that telling stories just isn't their thing.

Now, I don't know if Steven Johnson is aware of the "Games as art" crowd, but most of them would disagree. To them, games have the largest potential for storytelling of any medium, in no small part because of their interactive nature. You aren't an observer of the events on-screen; you're their catalyst.

And because of the player's ability to influence the events and environments and in turn determine the outcome of the story (theoretically speaking, of course, because anyone who's played games for a while will know that most of the time, the player is simply triggering a series of linear events), the sense of immersion this can create is unmatched by the other "passive" mediums.

As I see it, this view is somewhat skewed. While those sentiments are most certainly true, we tend to re-hash our most convincing arguments (Braid, Bioshock, Portal, etc.) as the pinnacle of our medium as an art form. Whether it be the writing, the layered narrative, or the atmosphere that these games so plentifully provide, those games always seem to be at the head of the discussion whenever someone dares to deny that our favorite pastime isn't culturally relevant. We as the advocates of games use these games because they're the ones that are the most likely to convince naysayers to our side.

And I believe this isn't doing us any favors.

Or rather, that this strand of argument is counter intuitive to what our cause is (or should be). By pushing the games that we believe are art because of their narrative capabilities, we're in effect arguing that storytelling is the only qualifier of art. Because games like Braid, Portal, and Bioshock all have a focus on storytelling, when we push them as the pinnacle of our medium, we're doing a disservice to the games that don't focus on story aspects. And if the point of games as an art form is supposed be to tell a story, we're sending the message that games are just trying to be a new form of novels or movies; a vehicle to drive emotion through story. If this is the point of games, we're certainly not doing all that well.

Games certainly do have that potential to tell stories in thoughtful and meaningful ways, but a game doesn't have to pull us in with its awe-inspiring narrative to be "culturally relevant", and for the most part, history has proven this to be true; The games that break through to the mainstream are usually the ones that the most people play (obviously), and the games that the most people play just happen to be the ones that are the most fun.

Halo, Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, and Madden are all popular with the "Hardcore" players because of their replay value and because their intense multiplayer. Likewise, The Wii (game) brand and its ilk are popular because of their ease of use, lasting value, and family-centric/self-betterment focus.

And that isn't to say that games should just abandon narrative aspirations; I've definitely had my share of games that I've completed simply to see the story through. The fact of the matter is, though, that games are narratively deficient by nature. Most of the time, the story in a game serves as backdrop for your actions, context that allows the player to more easily suspend their disbelief.

This is because the focus of most games is are the actions themselves. This is where games, to me, are an art form; this what Johnson would refer to as their "basketball". What captivates the player is the thought process they engage in while playing the game, as well as the feeling of tangible reward and progress for actions and the feeling of immersion.

In a game like Call of Duty, for example, the player can have any number of concepts to juggle, from direct actions (looking for and aiming at enemies) to more strategic and abstract decisions (when and where they should launch their air-strike). These thought processes are complemented by the reward of getting a 7 kill streak, and that they feel like they're a skilled soldier while doing it.

This is why most companies only bother with story in a game to the extent of it providing a convincing framework for what the player is doing in-game. The ones that are attempting to tell meaningful stories through this interactivity are laudable because better frameworks provide a greater sense of connection to a player's actions, but the reason that that can hard to do is because the interactive format doesn't leave much room for thought out exposition or the intricacies of various characters.

Metal Gear Solid 4 had mixed reactions to its elements of cinematic storytelling. The long, explanatory cutscenes that it used to get across much of the game's story seemed at odds with its revamped and improved gameplay. And for the most part, times when game attempt to be movies can detach the player from the game because what they're looking to do in a game is interact, not observe. The characters become more intricate, and the plot can diverge into areas where certain aspects can be expanded on, but it can be easy to bore those who are disinterested.

When games intertwine the cinematic aspects of their games with the gameplay (Bioshock, Half-Life), they have the potential to more effectively immerse the player while allowing them to interact, but do so at the expense of the depth that multiple perspectives and angles can provide.

Writers for games also have to deal with being second string players. If a particular section of a game has to be cut or changed, the story must follow. Starcraft 2 lead designer Dustin Browder mentions that Blizzard is not shy about changing the lore to fit the needs of the balance of gameplay.

In Movies and Books, sections are cut only when they don't fit in with the rest of the story or if they're found unnecessary; in games, important parts of the story can be cut because they're not fit for interactivity (perhaps why there are so many novels based on games these days), or because that part of the game was just left out. This is a big part of what hinders games' ability to tell the powerful stories that Movies and Books can tell.

So when we present games that have compelling stories in arguments about the artistic value of games, it's not surprising that naysayers scoff at our attempts to compel emotionally. It is indeed possible for a game to illicit strong emotional reactions from the player, as anyone who's played Passage will point out, but presenting that example seems to concede to their point: Games must become less like games and more "interactive art" to be culturally relevant.

Instead, I suggest that we fearlessly flaunt the games with the most captivating gameplay rather than the most compelling story. Sure, the writing in Gears of War will never win any sort of awards (unless they're dubious), but it has received awards for its refined and strategic gameplay. This is how games will makes themselves relevant; by mastering their own domains, not by mimicking the traits of others.

Flower, Sun, and Rain - What is a game with both pleasure and pain?

Forgetting our small grievances with games is something we as players do often; it's easily done when we find the rest of the game so enjoyable. Flower, Sun, and Rain, however, is a game whose many flaws are not only numerous and glaring, but might also be intentional.

This should be no surprise to anyone who's ever played a game developed by the ever-eccentric Suda 51. His games often straddle a line between uniquely interesting and needlessly frustrating. Flower, Sun, and Rain doesn't stray too far from most his other games, either; There is hardly any "playing" to speak of, and the majority of your interaction with it comes from walking to a destination, and solving puzzles.

My inherent problem with it isn't with the adventure game mechanics it employs (it would be difficult the convey the story otherwise), it's that it doesn't do it well. All of the puzzles are literally reduced to numbers by your suitcase, Catherine, which at first will illicit one of two reactions from the player - either, that this game will be too easy because any answer can be deduced with enough guessing, or that it's creative to have the player learn to distill every clue they get into numbers in some way.

The answer, for me, lies somewhere in between. Of course, if you get a puzzle in which the answer is only one number (the game gives the number of digits for each solution), you're going to guess, but even still I found the puzzles had only two difficulties: Too easy (almost each and every answer is found in a page of the in-game guidebook), and too hard (ones that require you to make unreasonable leaps of logic and offer no clues as to what frame of mind you should even be in). For those that are worried about the game being too hard, though, most of the harder puzzles are optional (they give you extras and unlockables), so if you're only looking to breeze through the story, it's likely that you won't need a FAQ.


But whether or not the story is worth playing through (and ultimately whether or not you should buy the game), depends on both how much you're willing to put up with both the flaws in the game and the nature of the game's story. As you run around, getting from one puzzle to the next (which, because the game's Groundhog Day premise, involves a lot of backtracking early on and a long fits of running through desolate areas later on), the game will try as hard as possible to get you to stop playing, and I don't think this was unintentional.

For example, the game makes frequent mention of how dumb it thinks your character, Sumio Mondo (and you by proxy), not only when you fail to solve puzzles, but also when you don't apparently "get" what's going on (which, to their defense, was often the case for me).

It's also self-aware in a very direct way; aside from some obvious "this is a game" metaphors in dialogue, a few characters knowingly acknowledge the existence of the player, as well as some inconsistencies with the game ("Our 3-D models look nothing like our character art!"). The
characters are all pretty oddball caricatures of video game template characters in a very off-putting way, spouting nonsense then preaching to you about how you shouldn't be helping them. All of these things lead to a vibe of "Why are you playing this game? Go do something else!", which, in hindsight, seems to fit Suda's profile quite well.

All of these off-putting details, on top of some irksome mechanical things (exhaustive menu backtracking, the fact that it's impossible to walk straight for too long, which means that you have to pay attention to what you're doing on long stretches of walking), are made further frustrating by the fact that the game hints at some bigger mysteries, but never delivers. It has some interesting scenes here and there, but even when it goes off the deep end, the ending doesn't really amount to anything. This could have perhaps been another intentional quirk, but it doesn't make it any less maddening to know that all of your patience was met with little reward.

With as many problems as there are with the game, it's hard to recommend it to anyone who isn't already a huge fan of both adventure games and Suda 51, which is why it's odd say that despite all the stuff it had me put up with, I ultimately enjoyed it. It has something of mischievous charm; I gritted my teeth through my frustration, but was eager to continue the game time and again. I became particularly attached to Sumio, not only because of his role as my avatar, but because his reactions to situations were pretty spot-on with mine.

Though the game has a purposefully confusing ending, the moments in which the mystery is being unraveled are all done with a perfect balance between revealing too much and avoiding progress, and for the most part, the individual days on the island are all very distinct scenarios, if a bit formulaic. It's best to play the game in short bursts rather than longer stretches so that you don't become too frustrated with either the story or the game itself.

If you choose to endure the game's many problems you'll likely be upset by the ending, but, as an experiment in storytelling game design almost from beginning to end, Flower, Sun and Rain may be a case where the ride is more important than the destination.

Audio Story - His Room.

I decided to do something with a more narrative focus. Some thoughts about games are still strewn about, but for the most part, this is pure fiction.

A boy sits alone in his room, the events of the day still lingering in his head. At the time, he wasn't too sure of the outcome, but now the outcome seems nothing but absolute.

For the most part, arguments do anything but solve problems. For him, it stopped him from correcting one. This particular argument was about whether or not he could be part of a club at school. Or if the club could exist at all.

He looks around his room, observing and noting all of the things he's accumulated over the years. Where they once bestowed upon him a sense of pride and accomplishment, now they did nothing but depress him further. He see his toys, his cases of things, the objects that have defined him throughout his life, and he sighs.

He had tried on several occasions to get a "Gaming Club" started at his school, but there had not been much progress. His biggest roadblock was that for any club to get started at all, it had to have a teacher sponsoring it. So of course, no one would indulge him. He had tried almost every member of the faculty, and was met with nothing short of complete apathy.

He looks down at the floor, where all of this controllers are. He holds one of them up, looking it over in careful detail. Its every facet is familiar to him; the smooth texture, the flat, squishy buttons. He plays around with the joysticks, their rough textures now soft from his chronic touch. Holding it in his hands as he normally would now, the feel seems perfect. How do they not understand?

What bothered him most wasn't that no one would sponsor his club, it was the fact that most teachers with clubs didn't care about them anyway. While the students built models of planes and cars, the teacher would be grading papers or other teacher work, never getting involved, as if the club was something they had to live with, not something they were a part of. Why could no one just do that for him?

He wanders around his room now, pacing back and forth, looking for something that he knows isn't there. Stopping at the shelves full of hundreds of plastic cases, he begins to think that what he's looking for might actually be hidden among them. As he runs his finger through the plastic blocks, he gives up and sits back down. What can make them understand?

His current issue, though, was proving to be a larger roadblock than the last. After he'd convinced a teacher to have the club take place in her room (on the condition that she was under no circumstances going to have it interrupt her work), the board in charge of clubs and such still wouldn't validate it. What struck him as odd was that the "board" was made up of student council members, which were essentially his peers. This made the fact that they wouldn't just let him have a video game club even more frustrating. Shouldn't they empathize with him?

He continues to stare it his shelves. All of his games, movies, and music lie there, together. The cases all look the same, and from where he's sitting, it's hard to tell them all apart. They all are one thing: entertainment. The cases don't fight each other, they don't look down on one another, because they're all working towards the same goal. Why can't people be more like cases?

The member of the board who most passionately opposed him told him he did so because there was "no point to a game club", and then continued to point out that a club must have some sort of "educational value" to students, and that video games had no potential to have any. The movie club had a "strict regiment" that analyzed and expanded on the roles of the respective films being watched and discussed in class, and often had discussions about a movie's impact on culture. A game club would be "nothing but a bunch idiots drinking Mountain Dew and using the school's televisions to play Halo or something."

He begins to think about what he should've said to him. He sees himself being able to readily argue about the cultural significance of games today, how much more mentally stimulating than movies games can be, and how games can teach while also being fun. He goes on to say how he could design a course that would both chronicle the history of interactive entertainment and show his fellow members how powerful a form of expression video games can be, to creators and players alike. With members that are willing to cooperate and learn from each other, their club would be just as valuable as any other, and if they gave him enough time, he could show them that he wasn't lying, either.

None of this ever really happened, of course. Instead, after the board member mentioned that his club would be a waste of time for everyone involved, the boy proceeded to berate his opponent's club, which inevitably lead to a shouting match. The end result was that the teacher involved revoked her sponsorship of the club, saying that the shouting match proved the board member's point; if the leader of the club was this prone to fits of immaturity, then there was no way the club would work out. Furious, the boy stormed home.

He is now furious with himself. He sits in his room, full of frustration that he had let the board member get to him. It was exactly what he wanted him to do. Now he couldn't get a game club organized, so he would never be able to show everyone the value of his hobby; people would continue to treat his hobby in contempt, dismissing it as the pastime of idiots.

Arguments never solve anything.

The "Fan Tax".

After seeing that Sony is basically charging extra money to early PSP Go buyers, I was a bit dejected about actually buying one. I'd been meaning to get a PSP for a while, and now that this new one has the promise of easily downloadable software, it seemed like the right time to jump in. Now, though, I still want to buy it, but if I go ahead and plop down the $250 for it, then I'll just be proving the theory that fans will always pay extra for products that could be sold for less.

The fault, however, doesn't necessarily lie with Sony (although they're not exactly the hero); they're only charging extra for it because they know they can, because people are probably going to buy it. So why is it that fans are always so readily willing (and somehow able) to spend so much cash on things that they know are superfluous?

The biggest offender we seem to have in the game industry is the special edition. Affix whatever "limited" or "collector" tag you like, it's hard to argue that they're anything more than a marketing ploy. Companies will ask focus groups for what sorts of swag they'd be willing to pay for in addition to the game, figure out how to mass produce those things, then charge as much money as most people are willing to pay. It stinks of exploitation, sure, but as mentioned before, we as consumers are at fault, because we've let the market come to this. But before I revile the buyers any longer, I think it's important to note the trends of which the not-so-savvy buyers are the biggest contributors, so that there's no question of what it is I'm trying to fix.

Brand Attachment: This is probably the reason there are even special editions at all. Companies (and fans) usually won't sink so much money into something that doesn't seem to deserve it. The most ridiculous and shameful extras usually come from the biggest and most well-known franchises, because they're obviously the ones that are going to sell, but special editions also show us when a company really wants to push a new IP; we all remember when EA was pushing Mirror's Edge and Dead Space with outlandish versions of those games. They had huge faith in those games, and the results, while not disappointing, were a little under EA's expectations.

The kicker here is that they don't even have to be any good. Even the most expensive and ridiculous things don't even have to be mass produced. They just have to exist. This is because when they're announced, they tend to pop up on all of the various news sites, people do write-ups about whether or not they're going to get it, and all in all do exactly what the publisher wants them to do: promote the game for what is basically free. Even if it's for the wrong reasons, this gets word out about the game, and gets fans excited (if for only the extras themselves), which leads me to my second point.

All-too-eager Fans: No less important than pimping brands are the fans who'll eat these things up. Gamers have shown themselves to be very capable of spending their money on the things that companies are willing provide. There hardly ever seems to be a price cap. People will complain about the excessive price of a collectible, sure, but rarely will that affect the sales of a collectible; If you're not going to buy it, someone else will undoubtedly will.

And when you look at it that way, it's a pretty lopsided seller's market. Collectibles are usually in low quantities because the manufacturer doesn't really want to have a surplus or lost money, so they tout the product as a rarity, which inevitably drives people to want to buy it so that they won't miss out on it. We've seen times when the production lines far outweigh demand (i.e. the Halo 3 Legendary Edition), but for the most part, demand outweighs supply. And of course, if a company sells all of their inventory, that's a big percentage gain for them.

So when this happens all the time, it infuses a "get it now, before it's gone!" mentality in any fan of a franchise. Even when there is plenty of a product to go around, buyers often feel as if their time to own something is short, and that if they don't act quickly, something important may be lost forever. This is what incurs the buying frenzy on all things collectible, be it video games or otherwise.

The Triple Take: This one is pretty simple. When you buy a game at full retail price, the retailer gets a cut, the console manufacturer gets a cut, and the people who brought you that game get a cut, and out of that cut, the publisher and developer each get a cut. This is a pretty segmented deal, and the best way for all sides to make money is to charge more for the product.

But they can't just inexplicably up the price, because that would lead to outrage. So by adding some extra trinkets to sweeten deal, they can justifiably charge more for a game, and because you can control what consumers are getting extra, you can come up with all sorts of ways to get back more money from your investment. Shady indeed, but from a business standpoint, one can certainly see a why somewhere.

We can see the infrastructure of exploitation here, but if you know anything about business at all, none of this is new to you. So then, what is the problem? Several points are in favor of this practice, in fact. There's nothing wrong wrong with promoting a brand, especially a new one; these enhanced offerings can put new IP's in the same breath as established franchises, and can feed the existing frenzy of "AAA" titles.

Additionally, not everyone uses collectibles to abuse a big name; Atlus is famous for always providing free stuff with their games, included with a game's initial run. This is nothing but good promotion. Atlus wants you to buy the game, and if you're sucker for soundtracks and plush toys, chances are you've at least been tempted to buy a game for the extra swag when you otherwise would've ignored it.

Besides, the people buying these sorts of things don't seem to be bothered at all. When looking at these products in sheer numbers, getting something extra with a game doesn't come around as often as you'd think. Fans want as many of these things as they can get their hands on. They want something to strengthen their bond to the product they're buying, to assure themselves of their fandom, and to be able to say "I am better than the average fan". I don't say that with a negative inflection, because with as brief as the impact of the average game is nowadays (how many people will be talking about Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood or BlazBlue a year or two from now?), it's understandable that fans want a sense of attachment to their favorite titles.

No amount of longing for possessiveness to our favorite games can account for credulity, however. The reason that we should be cautious towards these sorts of things is that it leaves a bad impression. For most of people do buy these things, that's fine, because to them, this sort of loyalty is what separates the "hardcore*" from the "casual*" crowds, and they wouldn't have it any other way.

But from the perspective of the people who campaign for video games as something more than a collector's hobby, the fact that fans will so blindly get behind these sorts of things makes it seem like "gamers*" are an easy marketing group, to be exploited by collector's editions and swag again and again, because they honestly don't know better.

And sure, other industries do this (movies, music, etc.), but they're not trying to prove themselves. People already know that those things are important to our culture. Most people don't care to take games as seriously, so we have to show them that not only are the games we covet are as important as any album or movie, but that their fans aren't to be taken lightly, either.

I don't mean to be cruel or cynical towards special editions, but instead I'm asking that when you see an amped-up version of a game you're already buying or an inflatable whatever, that you be more careful with your dollar instead of yelling "DO WANT*" and buying recklessly. Whether you care about it or not, you're both voting and expressing how you want people to see you every time you spend that dollar, so use it wisely.

*Asterisk denotes hatred for term.

Backlog Trackback #4 - Both Creeping and Crawling.

Taking a mostly understood concept and adding a spin to it is commonplace - working on making something that is already good could be called the industry standard. However, there's a good lot to be said of making that spin really unique. In the case of both of these games, that unique twist accounts for a lot of its charm.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena: There were too many factors against the original game (Escape From Butcher Bay, which also happens to be included here) for anyone to be not be surprised by how good it was. What made that game so great was that it changed up the emphasis of the game constantly (segments where you were fetch-questing for prisoners and closterphobic stealth-action segments segeued into each other quite well), and all of it was fun to play. It was a good game while also adding back story to the movie on which it was based (and let's face it, that wasn't too good.)

But now that there's a good game in the franchise, expectations are bound to arise for the sequel. The smart thing that developers Starbreeze/Tigon Studios did was bank on the success of the first one to the extent that that this new release had a remake of Butcher Bay in it, which of course ended up being the most interesting part of the product.

Beyond the graphical makeover, though, Dark Athena presents something of an expansion pack. It's much shorter than Butcher Bay, yes, but that might be because it feels like a more streamlined version of it; the story moves along much more quickly, there's very little fetch-questing, and while there's still a huge element of stealth, in Dark Athena, gunning your way through a given room instead of using trial-and-error tactics may actually give you a win.

When both games are put together in one package, though, it's really a win for both. Butcher Bay gets to be played by more people with new hi-res textures, and Dark Athena gets to be played by more people who want to see the upgraded Butcher Bay. There's a multiplayer component as well, and you'll find some people playing it, but it ulitmately isn't something we haven't seen before, and it doesn't dampen the value of the product whatsoever. For those who've played the original, the upgraded graphics and Dark Athena will probably be enough to warrant another playthrough, and for those who haven't, it's a fantastic place to dive in.

Deadly Creatures: The boxart may be the worst thing about Deadly Creatures. The lifeless picture that looks to be straight out of a National Geographic story masks a pretty decent game. Although the game itself is pretty straightforward (level, objective, boss, repeat), it has a number of hooks that wind up being novel until the end of the game (even if it is around 6 hours long). For one, developer Rainbow Studios does some pretty cool things with the "you're playing as insects" concept. The spider, for example, has some pretty nice platforming sections that involve hopping around areas using its webbing.

The other interesting thing is the story. The content itself isn't too interesting, but the it's told from the perspective of both a spider and scorpion, and most of the good parts have nothing to do with what you're doing, as you're spectating the story of two men (voiced by Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thorton, no less!) who're looking for a buried treasure in the middle of desert. It's pretty slow at the outset, but I was pretty motivated to keep playing about an hour in.

All the interesting story concepts in the world couldn't save its repititive design, however. There isn't much exploration to be had other than to find your way to the next objective (indicated by an arrow, but helps only when there's no pathfinding to be done), the boss fights aren't too unique, and while delivered in an new way, the story doesn't really amount to anything interesting. There's some pretty graphic finishers as the scorpion, but most of the fighting is button-mashing. Playing as insects was a pretty unique spin on an established forumla, but the game never really goes anywhere with it that seems to be worth the deviation.

My Missing Fear.

While browsing through Jasmine's collection, I started getting really nostalgic for Pokémon, of all things (from looking at her DS). I started thinking about how much fun I had with the original Red/Blue versions, and I was going to do a write-up about how great those games were. But as I dove deeper into my memories of those games, I started getting into some less than great memories. In fact, I found that one of my biggest fears had come from these games.

It was the Fall of 1999, and my brother and I had gotten our respective versions of Pokémon (him Blue, I red), and we were knee-deep in catching 'em all. We also had a number of cousins over for the weekend. All of us were playing different games, when one of them noticed my red cartridge and said, "Hey, do you know how to get 99 Master Balls?"

"What? How?"

He then told me the legendary process that involved talking to a trainer at Viridian City, then flying to Cinnabar Island, and using Surf in a certain area that would allow you to duplicate the sixth item in your inventory. What I didn't know was that this involved an encounter with Missing No., who was a glitchy block-shaped "Pokémon" that was essentially the block of memory where the player's name was stored.

The first time I saw him, I was a little freaked out by it, but didn't pay it much attention, and continued happily with my seedily gotten Master Balls in tow. It was only after my brother suggested that we catch Missing No. instead of just run from him that things started going wrong.

The problem was that if you caught the wrong version of it (there was a level 80 version, and a level 0 version), it essentially broke your game. My cousins told us this, and that was what made so afraid. My brother did indeed proceed to catch the right one (the level 80 version), and then leveled it up, and, to his dissapointment, turned it into a Kangaskhan, but I was still stuggling with the concept of losing all of my save data, even though it hadn't even happened. So as much as my brother badgered me to do it, I refused to catch my own.

That night, I had nightmare that involved You-know-who coming out of the Game Boy and erasing all of my memory, after which I woke up and started crying quietly like the seven-year-old I was. I went to school the next morning, but I was still haunted by that horrible, blocky strip of data that threatened to erase me. After a couple of days I forgot all about it, though.

The only other time I remembered it was when Advance Wars: Dual Strike came out. That game also had a glitch in it that lead to a blocky, mixed up figure (though the glitch itself did nothing other than give you a generic commanding officer who was a reassembled version of the character Andy). When I figured out how to do it and was shown the blocky figure, I almost dropped my DS out of fear (I had the sense to close it instead). I turned the DS off, and didn't touch if for the rest of the day.

To this day, misshapen graphics and glitches still freak me out a little when I see them (like in Castle Crashers), although it also sort of makes me laugh a little at how scared I was (am) of it.

So, has a video game ever scared you for an unintentional reason (i.e. not like Resident Evil scared you)? If so, how did you deal with it?

You Should Be Playing Knights in the Nightmare.

One of the biggest gripes people seem to have with the RPG genre is that they're not too exciting to actually play. Sure, there's a strategic element of choosing what to do when, and there's absolutely a satisfaction that comes from knowing you made the right decisions throughout the battle, but while more recent games have done a good job of making your actions look more cinematic, there isn't really a lot of "playing" going on. For those people, there are games like Knights in the Nightmare.

You could call it a Strategy RPG, but it does so many interesting things with the genre that it's almost, almost, a misnomer. For starters, its main hook is that it combines tactical combat with the rapid-fire action of shmups, of all things. The characters on the board can't take damage from enemies; instead, enemies shoot out fireballs and the like on-screen, and you must dodge them using the wisp (which essentially acts as your cursor), to avoid taking damage. At first this seemed a bit gimmicky, a way to keep you busy between actions, but the second boss proved me wrong by making sure that if I ignored its huge laser and its star-exploding attacks, that I would lose large chunks of damage, and then lose.

And damage, too, is done differently here. For any given scene (mission), you have a set turn limit, and each turn has about 60 seconds of game time, which you use up by commanding your characters (there isn't a clock ticking down constantly), but you also lose time if you're struck by bullets, which makes it imperative that you be careful with how you manage your time. Additionally, characters have a vitality gauge that decreases every time they're used, and when that runs out, they're gone for good.

But if you do lose a character during battle, it's usually not that big a deal, since you can recruit about 2 or 3 per scene (of which there are over 40), and really, a lot of the game seems to focus on a theme of impermanence. Getting so many characters means that they're easily disposable, and you can do so in a number of ways. You can exile them to get items, or you can transoul them to other characters to make them stronger. Items also have a set number of uses, and you also get a lot of those, and you can fuse duplicates to increase their uses, and can also break them down, and then use them to make other items stronger.

And what items and characters you take in battle will affect how you'll play the game. there are seven classes, and each of them has two different attack ranges, and only two of them can move, so who you place where is important. You can only take four items into battle per turn, and having items that will do that most damage to a given enemy can really help you pull through. Like most RPG's, both weapons and enemies have elemental attributes, and you'll do twice as much damage if you match a monster to its weakness. On top of that, there are two "phases", law and chaos, which affect which items you can use, what attack range your characters will use, and how many crystals enemies will drop when hit (which, in turn, lets you use items to attack in the first place).

As you can a imagine, playing this game is pretty hectic. Any given battle is a process of equipping your characters to attack, charging up your attack, waiting until an enemy moves into your attack range to strike, and dodging enemy attacks. On top of that, if you hit enemies you can sometimes commit a follow-up attack, which involves swiping the cursor over them, and you can also stop enemies from attacking by "jamming their gears", which involves spinning the cursor over an enemy a set number of times. It's a lot to do in battle, but once you get the hang of it, it's easier done than said.

But as intense as battles can get, Sting (the developer) has really put some thought into making this game portable-friendly. The battles usually won't give you more than ten turns, so you can usually beat an entire mission during your lunch break. Your setup between scenes usually won't take too long, either.

The story is also told in short bursts (hence the name "scenes"), and it does a nice job of giving short segments of the story in between rounds. Basically, you are your cursor (the wisp), and you're heading towards a castle, recruiting and reviving dead knights along the way. After a battle, you're usually shown what happened leading up to the death of those characters, and then a scene that advances the larger story arc. It's a pretty standard fantasy setting, but it becomes somewhat more interesting when you're not always being told the same story over and over, and being kept in the dark about what's happening, turns out, makes you want to keep playing the game.

That said, there are a few key issues that I've had with the game. The biggest problem is that, because of the exclusive use of the touch screen, the interface suffers from some pretty large cluttering issues. In times when I needed to quickly and continuously attack, I'd find my self hovering over a character and having them attack without weapons instead of selecting a weapon, and all because said character and said weapon were too close to each other for me to be able to choose between them effectively.

Additionally, where most games would suffer from some RPG trifles, Sting does a good job of not making the game too hard. You can go back and play any scene you want with stock characters, so you can grind for experience and items. Also, if you lose a mission by running out of turns, you can just keep going by hitting the retry button, which means if you really need to, you can go into as much overtime as you want. These things might break the difficulty for more dedicated players, but it's always nice to have an easy button at the ready. So in difficulty, too, Knights does some things to make the game more active.

Just like The World Ends With You last year, Knights throws several new concepts at once into a genre, and at first it can seem a bit intimidating to manage everything you're doing in combat at once. Once you know what you're doing, though, it's extremely rewarding to actually play. There's really a fantastic mental workout to be had here. I've actually been going back to scenes not because of any need to grind, but because I have fun just playing the game, which is something that's rare in the RPG and SRPG genre.

If you're having a hard time trying to wrap your head around this game, though, here's a tutorial that shows off some combat:

Lastly, the game, like most of Atlus' offerings, comes with a soundtrack, if you're into that sort of thing. Order now?

Five Cities Not named New York to Set Your Game In.

I've never been to NYC, but from all of the photos, videos, games, movies, coffee mugs, etc., I think I have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. It's a metropolis, filled with lots of great cultures and ideas. And with so many producers of media hailing from there or having lived there and grown to love its expansive urban jungle environment, it's understandable that many of our cultural influences come from there. Both Batman and Superman come from cities that are essentially two versions it, and Spider-man is actually from there. It's the most prolific city in the world as far as media goes, and the image of the Statue of Liberty watching over the sprawling landscape of concrete and metal was one of the most iconic images of America in my head before I moved here at the age of four (Ironically, the first city I arrived was Anaheim, CA).

That said, I think it's about time we take a break from it.

When an open-world game doesn't take place somewhere made up, it takes place in New York. Prototype takes place their, and Infamous takes place somewhere that's pretty much a fictional version of it, as does GTA IV. And I see why; NYC offers not only one of the biggest, most fleshed out cities to wreak havoc upon, but it's also one that many people are familiar with. However, I think it's safe to say that New York's been done. If you're a developer looking for somewhere else to set your fantastic new sandbox game in, here are some wonderful new places to take into account. Also, would you like to buy a timeshare?

Tokyo: Pretty much your runner up as far as familiar locations go. Most people think they know what Tokyo's like, and really, it's not too much different from that, but having all of its districts, all of its lights, and Japanese culture and all those weird walkways would make from a pretty cool place to break some shit. There's a lot of exciting places to explore in Japan, and there's also some pretty scenic stuff farther out to take advantage of. Not only that, but Tokyo inhabitants should be pretty used to the idea of having their city destroyed. Plus, there's totally a giant robot there now.

Hong Kong: You might not think that Hong Kong is too different from Tokyo, but you'd be wrong. There's a cool cross-culture of Eastern and Western culture. It's very much a business district, but all that does is make it more tempting to destroy. And if a developer can actually get interactions with water in these kinds of games, there's a lot of it here to explore. Plus, it's apparently where lots of seedy business deals go down, so if you're going to destroy a place, why not stop rotten business at the same time?

Berlin: Now, for this suggestion, think post-WWII Berlin. Assuming your character has powers like those in Infamous or Prototype, the game would involve you fighting a communist regime by hopping back and forth between the East and West, completing spy missions to help try to feed and free the citizens of the East. You could also disregard the powers altogether; an open-world stealth game sounds interesting itself. Do it late enough, and maybe you could help Reagan make his speech to tear down that wall. Using the Motion Plus to write it word for word, of course.

Mumbai: Something a little less western, but that's no less fun to roam in. A city with such fantastic architecture definitely deserves someone to roam around in. There's also a chance here to have us Westerners learn a thing or two about another culture, and learn that maybe all foreign cultures aren't out to get us. If you have the entire story take on and Indian influence (as in, having the character be Indian rather than American), you can maybe shy away from the ethnocentrism that Eastern cultures so pointedly remind us of.

Omaha, Nebraska: I have to make an argument for my current residence! Really, though, I think open-world games could use a setting that's a little less urban. For those of you who are worried about not being able to run/climb up buildings, we do have a business district here, and the buildings are made from metal and glass, just like yours. GTA San Andreas had a pretty big non-urban area, and even though people harped on it for not having anything to do there there, I think if someone tried to get the combination of huge urban areas and some more grass-infested areas, it could make for some pretty interesting stuff. For example, if you wanted to snuff a certain target without destroying half a city, why not do it where no one will see you?

Again, I don't hate New York or anything, but I think that so far they've been getting a pretty big piece of the pie (like they usually do). So if you're looking for some scenic, interesting areas to set your Triple-A title in, why not give these a shot? Or maybe you have a suggestion of your own?

We've Got Star Power?

Games have always had the stigma of being for nerds and losers. If you had a gaming console in 70's and 80's, you weren't exactly the alpha male of your school (unless you could both manage playing games and being on the varsity football team, in which case you were a better person than I), and well, you didn't really care. As much as TV shows of that era made it seems like nerds hated being nerds, and that we were pent up in our basements playing games because we were shunned by society and had no other choice, we know different, and we enjoyed our games, and our outcast status, and sometimes we also brought people over, defying all stereotypes brought forth!

Look around you (and by that I mean the internet, television, etc.), and you'll see that that stigma is much less prevalent. It's still not gone, but I like to believe that the notion is still only held today by baby-boomers and my parents (who were born in Mexico, and therefore do not qualify as "baby-boomers). Games now are one of if not the biggest part of the entertainment industry, in both terms of income and influence. And when something becomes as big as games are, people usually start to take notice. Whether it's because they stand to make a lot of money from it, or they just want to be in on the latest trend (I'd argue that to mainstream consumers now, "the video games" look like a fad), people want in, and famous people are no different.

Sure, celebrities have been a part of gaming as early as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, and maybe even earlier, and there are a few famous examples, but I think we can all assume that these early examples didn't really mean much to the celebrities who were providing their likeness; they were no different than putting your face on the front of a cereal box. They weren't trying to make the best game out there featuring them (even though it turned out that way for Tyson, and not so much for Shaq), they were trying to sell these things to kids.

And even when the stars did start taking interest in games, they weren't too excited about sitting down with a team and maybe getting one together that would or would have their likeness in it. We've seen lots of videos where celebrities profess their love of Halo, but they always seem to do it with an inflection that says that they're ashamed to do so. As if a person as highly regarded in society as themselves shouldn't be caught dead playing anything other than a Wii. Either that, or they're to the type of person so expertly portrayed in Mountain Dew commercials and sometimes in movies.

But, recent years have seen some exceptions. If you don't count movie tie-in games (which do feature celebrities, but are different from celebrity tie-in in that they're usually bound creatively to a licence), both the amount and status of actors and stars partaking in games has gotten better. Just last year we had Liam Neeson in Fallout 3, and Keifer Sutherland in Call of Duty: World at War (having trouble catching his voice? He's the guy yelling at you when you play as the Americans. And almost constantly cursing), and while these appearances are well-known, they're not exactly promoted as huge selling points. Neither appearance is promoted on the box, so most people who aren't up on these sorts of things probably won't realize until later, when they'll most likely think it's cool as something that was thrown in instead saying it was a shameless marketing ploy...

And then we have Vin Diesel. Research shows that he's played his way around a D&D board quite a lot, which is more than I can claim. He doesn't think it's embarrasing, either; and people who know better don't think he's a loser. Better yet, when he's not making blockbuster films, he's actually helping out making games, using his company, Taigon Studios, to develop games using his likeness. Sure, funding a company with the purpose of creating as many games with your likeness as possible sounds a little egotistical, but it's hard to argue with the results so far, and let's face it, Vin's not exactly a bad choice for a lead role in game.

What I'm hoping to see is actors and other celebrities taking games more seriously, and I don't mean the same way we do. I mean using video games as another outlet to expand their horizons, the same way they would use film. Not every game using someone famous has to bear their likeness, but just voice acting in a game might not only let people know they're more open to new ideas, but might also continue chipping away at both their stereotypes and ours.

Backlog trackback #3 - Dealing with the Occult.

The Occult is a popular topic in video games. Fighting demons, summoning them, and plots that revolve around bringing things back from the dead or apocalyptic scenarios headline so many games that it's become a cliche to make the stakes of a game be the "End of the WORLD!", and it's ironic that when your plot does affect the whole world it ends up having no sense of meaning. We let those things go, though, because sometimes the games are just fun to play, even though you're stopping the world from getting blown up for the millionth time (it's a hyperbole, but I feel like I'm getting closer to that milestone everyday...). That said, if you are looking for a scenario where the fate of the world rests in your hands, and you like seeing crazy dudes and weird monsters you might want to look at these games:

Indigo Prophecy: You won't see too many demons in Indigo Prophecy, but you will be seeing some weird stuff, no doubt about it. Its hook relies on it not being so much a game as much as interactive fiction. The game has two modes: adventure game puzzles of clicking on certain things in a certain order to advance the story (it's better than it sounds, really!), and cutscenes with lots of quick-time events (also better than they sound!). The trick with those this time, though, is instead of pushing buttons that they show you on screen, you're pushing the analog sticks in the indicated directions, and you don't fail the whole sequence if you mess up just once (but if you don't do any of them, then you'll end up restarting a lot of them).

The Most interesting thing about Indigo Prophecy, though, is the way it flips common game design on its head. Most game stories are essentially the context under which you're doing the actions in a game. They're hardly ever much more than a framework. Here, it's the other way around; what you're doing in the game is based around the happenings of the story. The story drives what you're doing, not the other way around.

The story itself is a pretty good story to tie a game around. You play the role of multiple characters, on opposing sides. One is a alleged killer who's trying to prove his innocence, and the other characters are the detectives in charge of tracking him down. How your actions as one party are going to affect the other is certainly a unique game twist, and using the game medium to play you against yourself is something only games can do.

That said, there are some problems that I cam across. For one, the story gets seriously crazy towards the end of the game (I mean some real Jumping the Shark stuff), and for people looking for value, the game is a bit on the short end. There are multiple ways to end the game, but most of them feel more like game over screens then real endings, and the real "multiple endings" are decided during the last game sequence, somewhat defacing the value of the choices you've made throughout the game. Additionally, most the puzzles in the game are pretty basic adventure game fare (find object A, connect it to object B to find a clue).

That said, working with the narrative as the primary focus of the game is something I'd like to see more of, which is why I'm looking forward to Heavy Rain.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: There's an abundance of the occult to be found here, if you're looking for it. If you're doubtful, the story involves nothing short of the resurrection of Dracula, who surely can't be up to anything less than the destruction/enslavement of the world. You're enemies are pretty much every occult thing you could think of, from skeletons to devils to harpies to sentient swords. You'll also be using a lot of the occult against them (as in, dark magic), from thunder to beams of energy so summoning some of your own monsters.

And really, it's this variety that makes the game so fun to play. At first, I was a bit wary to play it when I found out that every attack you execute depletes your magic bar (and, of course, if that bar is all gone, you're left unable to do anything but jump for a bit), but that fear was quickly put to rest after seeing that the bar refills itself pretty quickly, and most attacks don't drain the bar as much as you'd think. From that point on, it was a Ten-hour love affair with the game.

I've played every one of the metroidvania games on the DS, and I have to say this is by far the best one. The story is much the same as the others, but storytelling really hasn't ever been Castlevania's strong point. What makes this game so good is really the creative level design. You have a lot of powers at your disposal, and the game makes good effort in trying to get you to use them all. Some enemies are weak against certain attacks, and resistant to others, so that alone encourages you to try out different glyphs (the way you use spells) to see what the best way of dealing with them is. If you're having trouble against an enemy and you're noticing that you're not doing much damage, try another glyph.

The bosses are also design with care. With one or two exceptions, every fight against a boss will challenge you to do new things, from climbing a tower while escaping from a giant crab boss that you can't defeat until you reach the top (with a surprise ending!), to destroying all of the crystalline joints of a centaur-knight Shadow of the Colossus style, you won't be able to rely on the same strategy to defeat any two bosses.

The theme of variety also carries into the game's environments. This time, you're not stuck in Drac's castle the whole time (though you do eventually go there), and for the first half of the game you're exploring different areas on a map, all of which are different from each other. You have your ice level, but there's also some pretty cool stuff involving man-made buildings and the like.

Order of Ecclesia is probably one the best Castlevanias to date, and also one of the best DS games period. There aren't too many things wrong with it, and even the secondary modes unlocked after beating the game can squeeze an extra couple of hours of fun (Albus mode especially), so if you're jonesing for the dark and demonic on the go, you can't do much better.