Stoic Loners and playing as people we'd hate.

You've seen them before. You've played as one before, or, they were a supporting character somewhere along the way. And, if you're lucky enough (or not), you've seen them in real life (hint: they're probably wearing black, because they do so almost exclusively). What I mean by "Stoic Loners" is, of course, the people who keep to themselves, are usually pretty quiet, supposedly hate everything and everyone, are usually angered easily, don't easily cooperate, are usually in any given situation for themselves, but occasionally say or do things that are worthwhile.

Think about the qualities that I've just described; if you met this person in real life, what would think of them? You would think they are selfish, arrogant posers. These are, for the most part, bad qualities. They're certainly not going to get you anywhere in the real world. Job interviews would suffer from them not answering any questions and saying how much they hate the person. When someone asks you to get a report filed in or to clean up your area, the last thing you want to do is tell them to go die (especially in a bad economy). Long story short, being a dick in the real world just doesn't cut it.

Then you look at games. Playing second fiddle to the effeminate hero in JRPG's, the Stoic Loner is usually one of your most valuable party members, and usually gets all the cool-looking powers and equipment. They're usually also invaluable to the story, because for whatever reason, someone has given someone who hates everything one of the most important jobs. They get lots of respect for supposedly being cool, and sometimes act as a guide for the hero, giving them life lessons to live by, and of course the hero listens, for whatever reason.

These people don't usually make good role models. When you don't talk to someone because you don't like them, that's fine. It's natural to do so. But when you hate everyone, and don't talk to anyone, that's a problem. These types of people are looked down upon and generally considered either insane or lame by everyone. Except in games, where not only are they glorified by the games themselves, but are also lavished by fanboys/girls to no end, which begets developers to create more of these characters, who are in turn again lavished, and so on, creating a never-ending cycle of "cool".

And this extends even beyond the imagined cliche-riddled world of JRPG's; Niko Belic is certainly not a person most people could get along with, and certainly not someone like Kratos. Marcus Fenix might also not like you very much. But here we are, playing as these people, admiring these characters' ability to kill and maim, even knowing they'd probably hate us for doing so.

And it's not like that's all that gaming has to offer. Plenty of games have positive role models to get behind. Link, while the epitome of the quiet hero, is a very kind person who helps out townspeople in need (even if he's mostly doing it for some reward). Nathan Drake is also someone that you could get along with in an everyday sense, even if he might annoy you at times. Professor Layton is definitely someone whom I'd like to hang out with.

So why do we happily play as people who we'd avoid in any other circumstance? Is this part of our desire to play into a "power fantasy" experience, where we play roles that are so outlandish that we could never take them on in real life? Why is it that the Stoic Loner character is such a fan-favorite? What sorts of characters would you and would you not hang out with? I'm sure the answers will surprise me.

Backlog trackback #2 - Playing Rambo

Continuing my trek through my backlog, I'm beginning to think I may be doing this too quickly. Sure, there are some games that may warrant a look in the summer months, so maybe that will help me, but even then I'm hoping that I don't have a gaping hole of time where my time is spent being productive, or, someone forbid, reading something. There are some games in that pile that reward extended periods of play, the time that one would only have, say, now. Other games, though, you could blow through in an afternoon, assuming you're dedicated to it. So over two weekends, I played:

MadWorld: You wouldn't even have to dedicate most of an afternoon to MadWorld; my first run through the game took me about 3 and a half hours. That alone does not make it bad, though. The game has a pretty unique story (which is the equivalent of a "B" movie), presented in stylish comic book style. The entire game is in black and white, (save for a few instances of other colors like blood and sound effects) which definitely separates it from the crowd of vibrant and rainbow-puking colors that dominate the Wii library. The voice actors all do their jobs pretty well, and they all are all certainly believable, even if some of them overdue it sometimes.

Hamming it up is appropriate for MadWorld, though; the whole game seems to be doing so. The main character has a chainsaw for an arm, enemies come in spades and spew double their body weight in blood when you slice through them with said chainsaw, and the bosses are equally extravagant characters. The setting is a game called DeathWatch, where sponsored fighters kill each other for the title of champion among killers. Also, there's a character who calls himself the Black Baron, who is as stereotypical as they come, and most of the women in the game are equally objectified. It's really hard to tell whether Platinum Games is being ironic or not (though I presume it's the former. I hope.)

Even with such over-the-top action as its main attraction it can't help but be bad in bad ways (and not in the ironic sense that it's trying to be). The animations for characters are on par with some of the early-to-mid PS2 games, with characters simply moving their hands over keyboards quickly to simulate typing, heads bobbing and mouths moving for talking, and a general sense of underproduction. This could all be on purpose, in which case the joke is on me, but it doesn't exactly make it a better product. And while it's presented very nicely, the story is pretty basic Game of Death stuff with some government conspiracy thrown in. The production issues killed some of the joy for me, but it was still a pretty nice thrill, even if it was brief.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: Another game with lots of enemies to kill. The difference this time, though, is that there is also other stuff to do. Namely, platforming. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Assassin's Creed, with its all-natural and enjoyable landscapes, but by comparison, Uncharted feels phony. Every ledge you can climb on feels fabricated, you know where they all are, you know which ones will fall off and when you need to turn the camera around to look at where you're supposed to go. It's very straightforward stuff, so, for the most part, you know where you're going. However, even it is phony and linear, it's still fun; it's always a good feeling when you jump a gap on the side of a wall to get to the next protruding rock. The puzzles are pretty rudimentary, but they do some interesting stuff towards the end and, should you ever get stuck, Drake has a handy guidebook to help you out. As a "my first platformer", it does its job well.

If you're also looking for action, there are the aforementioned people to kill. And well, Uncharted simplifies that as well. You have two weapons, grenades, the targeting is really simple (THERE IS A CIRCLE SHOOT THE BAD GUYS WITH IT), you have a simple cover mechanic, and your health is indicated by how faded the colors on the screen are (black and white means you're about to die). So, if there's a sense of trying to reach a wide audience, why is actually killing these people so frustrating? You'll usually encounter no less than 5 of them at a time, and their aim is usually dead on (especially with grenades). You can change the difficulty on the fly, and I did so to put the odds in my favor (as one usually does), but as far as I could see, this had only the minor effect of changing my health and theirs. The shooting itself is pretty satisfying, I would've just preferred that there was less than half a pueblo to fight throughout the course of the game.

The really interesting part about the game, though, is mostly everything else. The tropical island of wherever they are looks fantastic, the characters and facial expressions are realistic, and there's very little to distract you from that. The story wreaks of Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider, but it makes good use of it. Drake himself is a very well-written character, with some snarky dialogue that makes him a likeable guy without making him feel marketed and idealistic. Over the course of my 8-and-a-half hour run through the game, I found myself playing the game just hear Drake talk some more. The game itself is pretty ordinary as something you play, but with just enough interesting narrative factors, it feels like it's much better than that.

Backlog trackback: #1 - Preferred Templates.

I haven't been writing as much as I should be, and I won't be using the "life is getting really busy" defense because it isn't (and I wouldn't lie to you, readers!). It's mostly because I haven't found much worth writing about, and writing about business deals and NPD numbers doesn't appeal to me, and it seem pointless to write about news, because let's face it, this isn't likely your primary news source. There also isn't much in news that I'm interested in writing about, with one exception. I've been spending most of my time plowing through my backlog, and it's building up for a pretty good while, so I'm spending the lull between Resident Evil 5 and Infamous to see if I can't wring some good times out of these things I've been ignoring for some time. And hey, It gives me an excuse to write (even if they are old games you're all most likely tired of hearing about by now). So yeah:

Penny Arcade: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode Two: Episodic gaming seems like an idea still in its infancy, even though it's been around for a pretty long time, probably because high-profile episodic games are few and far between. And when they do happen, they often don't see the end of their plans, mostly because funding dries up for a variety of reasons, and then the developers are unable to finish the games. That said, I really hope PA: OTRSPOD gets to wrap up its dev cycle, because I'm really enjoying the series. The first episode had some really good ideas, but got a little bogged down towards the middle, when you had to go around chasing down questlines that go a little hard to follow. Episode Two does a lot of cleaning up, and in tidying up makes the game more fun to play. Blocks are now more easily executed, or at least more easily visible, which becomes inconsequential when I'm not paying attention. There's still backtracking, but it usually occurs only when you're headed back there with a purpose, not looking for something you've overlooked.

The dialogue is still Holkinsic (Holkins-esque?), with the worldplay and characters still up to par from what we've come to expect from Penny Arcade. Between the adventure game template and the RPG-lite gameplay, this is something that I was at first interested in, and am now genuinely in love with. The writing only marginally trumps the combat as the primary reason I enjoy this game, and with that I'm saying that both aspects are good. The final boss battle is nowhere near as much of a setpiece as it was in Epiosode One, but the rest of the game is fundamentally better. It just troubles me that there is no word yet on Episode Three, (just like with Half-Life 2...) because I fear that this series won't be able to reach its natural conclusion.

Shadow of the Colussus: I am very late to the party on this one, and perhaps that will tamper with my appreciation for the then-astounding graphics that it presented. The new format which it uses, though, isn’t affected by the fragile passage of graphics over time. This is often cited as a poster boy for the “games are art” argument, but regardless of whether you believe in the merits of interactivity to be something that is “subject to aesthetic criteria”, what it does is definitely different. It has something that many games today lack: a sense of calm. This calm comes between often exhilarating boss battles, to be sure, but this alone is rare. There aren’t any filler enemies that are just a nuisance. Focusing on only the 16 bosses as your enemies of the game likely gave team ICO more time not only make them better, but also evokes a feeling of isolation not found in many games (Portal comes to mind when trying to think of other examples).

The Colossi themselves are very well designed, each of their bodies acting like a puzzle rather than an object to mash B on until death occurs. They are their own levels, and finding out how to beat them is a bigger part of the battle then hitting them (which also feels good to do, after a 30 minute session of “how do I get on this guy?”). The bosses-only format is something I think other games could benefit from (No More Heroes could’ve been a much better game if it had stuck to something like this).

I could go on listing merits of such a format, but it’s important to point out that I do have some problems with the game. For all the intents to make it feel like a real horse, the horse controls like utter crap. The many times this stallion prevented me from getting where I wanted to go didn’t add to the sense of immersion; it made it feel more like a game. I could’ve steered that horse much better in real life (and don’t ride horses at all). The camera suffers in small areas, to say the least. These sound like minor complaints, but the moments where they affected play are strewn about the game, and it ultimately lead to a lot of frustration.

The game is still fantastic, though. And in this first segment of making my rounds through games I’ve missed, I’m glad that I’m still finding games that do something new, even in this far into games as a form of creative expression. I’d use the word art, but I grow less and less fond of that word the more we compare it to games.

That Unfresh Feeling.

I am not "In the Industry", nor do I claim to be. For the purposes of this blog, "In the Industry" means that you or your company receive letters or invites or games from the publishers without asking for them (which barely qualifies Gamestop employees). So, for people who don't get these notices to go events or be part of panels, or receive preview or review codes of games to play on coveted debug kits, demos are the primary source of play time with games before they are released to the public. It does not quell our envy, it in fact makes us wish we could receive the honor more often; it does, however, give us a brief sense of empowerment that at least lets us feel that we are privy to something that others (either those who do not have the online access or those who don't have the hard disk space for such things) aren't. So when I see demos that I am interested in trying out, it makes me feel as if, however briefly, I'm somebody (and an undeserved sense of pride follows). This is far too long an introduction to a Red Faction: Guerilla demo.

Long story short, what I played of the game ran me through a small gambit of emotions: laughter, slight frustration, and embarrasment. Joy was also among these emotions, before I forget. Between smashing up various camps (both opposing and friendly sides) using both trucks and "walkers", killing things with weapons, and a turret sequence in which trucks turned into kites when hit (normally this would repremandable, but the lower gravity of Mars gives them an acceptable amount of wiggle room in this area), I did enjoy myself, though the trailers the demo was snuggled between and the slight awkwardness of the controls did dampen the mood some. Rolling with laughter as a truck flew over me after I hit it (which should theoretically push it backwards, but again Mars has a tendency to make weird things happen), I started thinking this amount of destructibilty, and the joy you get out of doing it, should be a standard set forth in all titles like this.

In other news, I have a large backlog to get through, and it's mostly old stuff, so I'll write about that bridge when I get there.

Butterfaces

I've been occupying myself in a rediscovery of sorts in recent days, engrossing myself in the mystique of various hip-hop artists. The first idea that took root was that what I was listening to was somewhat removed, at least upon first impression, from the accepted image of "Rap" music (hip-hop's synonymous term). This is a given to the connoisseur, but I think that it's safe to say that the image of hip-hop at large is that of the one seen on television and radio, one that isn't necessarily wrong, (that part of the culture does indeed exist), just not encompassing.

Beyond the wonted image of ego-driven characters lies a genuine pursuit of lyrical prowess, enhanced by rhythmic sounds (dare I say beats?), that is not present on the culture's surface. It is dejecting, then, that this part of the genre, its creamy center, is simply overlooked, as if it were an apple core (I'm done with food metaphors for today). The image presented isn't one that people are seeking to gain a deeper investment from, dismissing it for its face. These are very shallow people that I'm talking about, I hope.

What struck me immediately thereafter was just how much this mirrored video games. The accepted image is either ignored completely or taken as proof for the entire medium, again a false idea, existing as an invisible barrier, doing its barrier thing, blocking prospective consumers from exploring the medium further. There's a large emphasis on these things as consumer products, rather than art (or at least, attempts at art). The medium as a whole is not praise-worthy, to be sure, but searching for hidden gems is quickly becoming a lost practice. Dismissing the whole for the face is fairly common, but rarely recommended.

The Quitter or The Masochist?

For a video games news site, a drought in releases means focusing on the news, doing features, or coming together with whatever it can to keep the clicks coming. For the savvy consumer, the one who simply must keep up on the latest games, it means a reprieve from spending large amounts of money, mostly on games that will no doubt be put off. It could also mean going even further back than what could be deemed as "current releases", back into games we altogether missed because of either lack of interest or money. For me, it means playing Final Fantasy XII.

The RPG usual cliches aside, I was enjoying it. The MMO-style battle system is just enough of a change from the average RPG to make me throw aside the problems I was having with the game (generic characters, played out storyline, way-too-familiar setting), as well as push back the nagging feeling that I should be doing something other than undertake such a long game in such a short and unstable repose.

The feeling of elation at the unique distortion in the common RPG language was short-lived, however. The novelty of how I was playing this new game simply did not withstand an assault by the almighty grind. In a dungeon that had all of one save point, overwhelming groups of enemies (though this turned out later to be untrue, the outcome of our fight being that they were whelmed), I was defeated by a boss in such a way that echoed that, in no uncertain terms, I needed to be stronger.

This compounded frustration caused me to rage quit the game. Becoming stronger meant going in and out of rooms that I had been through previously for the purpose of killing every monster there in large amounts of repetition. This was not my idea of fun. I had other things to do, other games to play. To spend time with a game and have the general sign of progression be that numbers incrementally increase was, to me, not time well spent.

But why was I mad at having to have my numbers be higher so that I could defeat another set of numbers? I wasn't in love with the story the game was communicating to me, and the reality of the battle system was still determined by sets of numbers anyway. They just weren't in my favor. Not only that, but I had been fine doing that up until this defeat. I had been defeated in this same way before, not too long ago. So why was this moment so crucial?

Was I quitting the game because I lacked the necessary diligence to see something through to completion, or was it because I was mad at what I thought to be a poorly-designed genre of video games? Was it the game's fault, or mine? I thought long and hard (while playing another game, of course) of the folly committed and who was at fault. I've had an increasingly frequent habit of quitting games, so perhaps it was that I was more at ease with the thought of abandoning games than I used to be, because there was now always something else to do.

On the flip-side was the argument that this design philosophy of requiring a sufficiently high set of numbers, acquired by monotonous grinding, to advance was a way to lengthen games and archaic. The thought that my defeat was perhaps not caused by inability, but by lack of commitment, something that lead me to believe that I was no longer looking for a game resembling this aged structure.

Eventually, the forces in my head came to a consensus: return to this game, if only as a device into which time falls into, never to be retrieved, with the thought that while this monotony was preventing the completion of more fulfilling tasks, it was a great venue to amalgamate the various thoughts that produce blog posts.

Keeping Them Going: Engaging Players and Difficulty

What are games if not mechanisms with challenges applied to them? While the common perception of games would have them fall in the same field as toys, more and more the assumption that games are simply childish distractions from the real world is being questioned. Games in their current state can be more easily likened to a school syllabus or formula: Learn something new, learn the ways in which it can be applied, learn to apply that knowledge in increasingly difficult questions or equations, and then give the player a test in which the player's ability to apply that knowledge withing strict parameters is evaluated.

With that template attached to them, games can sound very boring and monotonous, but applying such a plain explanation will simplify any medium: Movies are simply one to three hour narratives where a series of events takes place in a linear progression, and music is little more than a series of sounds that can affect the mood of the listener. But while all mediums can explained in such derivative terms, any person in defense of their entertainment of choice will tell you that it's about what you do with that simple premise that makes it so appealing to them.
So with games, what is it that developers do that makes them so appealing to us? Again, using derivative terms: They provide us with obstacles. Our joy comes from overcoming these obstacles, as well as from learning how do it and doing that well. If a developer understands this, then they can focus on what sort of obstacles to create and how to make overcoming them and learning how to do that can be fun.

Written out, it sounds relatively simple, but common sense will tell us that it's never that easy. Often, the challenge to developers is to engage us in what we as the player are doing, and to keep us playing. If the player is constantly involved in what's going on, and enjoying overcoming the obstacles put forth, then the game is good. If they are constantly bored, uninterested, and frustrated at the experience, then the game isn't good. So how do games keep us engaged in the action?

Games are goals
Games are only engaging when there is a goal or purpose (ironic, really, since playing the games themselves usually serves no purpose). Even games where a goal is not apparent (Noby Noby Boy), become games when a goal is created by the player, either short-term (eating that guy, then a chicken, then pooping them both out as a combined creature) or long term (getting to the moon, Mars, and beyond). While not given to player to being with, the reason many people play that particular game is to achieve those goals. This can be applied to the whole of video games. Players all looking to do something, and games give them many goals to accomplish with the worst possible outcome of failure being a loss of time, which was really the purpose of playing the game to begin with (not that losing data or having to go back to an earlier portion of the game isn't frustrating).

So what goals are fun, and, more importantly, what sort of short and long-term goals can keep a player hooked on a game and see it through to its conclusion? The balance between long term and short term goals seems to be clearly indicated by a game's story and narrative. In a game like Portal, for example, the long-term goal of the player is to escape the test facility. The short term goals are the puzzle rooms themselves. The two types of goals help the player become engaged in what is going on, and helps with giving context to these goals, and thus leads to a much more fulfilling experience once the game is complete.

The Slope
Creating goals that the player wants to accomplish is key to empowering them to complete not only the current goal, but ones proceeding them. There are a variety of ways to create goals that keep the player going. One such way is to acknowledge the completion of a goal with a spectacle; be it a cut scene or when “Ode to Joy” plays in Peggle. This gives the player a simple reason to continue playing: to keep going. “Ode to Joy” is positive reinforcement that excites the player, makes them feel better about themselves for having completed the level, and makes them want to continue. A cut scene, on the other hand, is the reward itself, and establishes and if/then bargain with the player; if the player keeps playing the game, they will see more of the story. This can backfire, however, if the player isn't motivated by cut scenes to continue playing.
The other way to engage the player is making the completion of the goal itself rewarding. Beating a boss that took four tries and over half an hour to defeat can be one of the most thrilling parts of any game. Making a challenging obstacle that the player must apply themselves in order to overcome is the mainstay of challenge in video games.

So how is it that games create challenges for us? What makes a given obstacle challenging or easy? Where is the line between challenging and frustrating? The balance that a developer must strike is giving the player enough challenge to have the player apply themselves to their fullest, and making the challenge easy enough to be able be overcome without the player having to call on outside help (by which point there is little to no thrill in the challenge itself), or worse, abandon the game altogether.

The slope of difficulty must be even with the learning curve for a given game. Player's don't want a strenuous boss battle at the beginning of the game, when they are still learning the ropes of the game. Inversely, they don't want to have a tutorial throughout the entire game, constantly learning but never really applying or evaluating. They want to learn with the game, knowing what to do when the time comes. Game like Portal and The Legend of Zelda show transparently this process. The themes of learning, applying, evaluating resonate recognizably in these games, and with great success. Knowing when and where to test a player's skill and where to teach them new ones is a vital part of keeping the player going and finishing the game. If the player is constantly challenged, but hardly frustrated, they are more likely to keep going.

How hard is that?
Testing a player's aptitude at given point can be done in any number of ways. They can be asked to solve an intricate puzzle using the skills they've been taught. They can be asked to solve a relatively easy set of puzzles in a given time limit. A mix between small obstacles that make the player feel as if they understand the system they are learning and a more challenging test lets the player know that the skills they are learning within a game aren't being wasted, however trivial the actually skills may be. So in between large scale tests of the player's comprehension, what sorts of challenges should one apply?

The trend seems to be that an series of increasingly difficult versions of the same challenge are the way to test a player's skill. Portal is an excellent example of this method of difficulty. Each of the 19 rooms in that game become increasingly difficult and complex. This sort of difficulty is much different from something like Call of Duty, where the difficulty is chosen by the player beforehand. While this may sound like a much easier solution, one where the game is as challenging as the player wants it to be, the results are hardly as ideal. With only so much time to make such things like difficulty settings, the developers usually include somewhere between 2-4 difficulty settings, ranging from much too easy to much too hard. The way the developers usually do this is also subject to criticism. While most games do tend to increase the actual challenge of the game (better enemy behavior), the difference between these settings is usually the player and enemy's respective stats: The player is more prone to failing (with things like lower health) and the enemies are less so (meaning they have more health).

This has been a seemingly tried-and-true method of delivering varying levels of challenge to in increasingly diverse audience. However, as simple stat-swapping is becoming more and more looked down upon, developers have been trying to solve this problem. The new Tomb Raider has a difficulty system that is set by the player in very fine detail. To let the player refine his or her experience with a game seems like such an obvious idea to implement, given that video games are one of the most expensive products on the market, but it seems as if developers are only now getting behind the idea that the players should be the ones in charge of how challenging a game is, not developers that seem sure that an extreme amount of difficulty is the best way to test a player's skill and keep them playing the game they've paid for.

A Rhombus to a Square.

Since its release, I've been playing a lot of Resident Evil 5. The story mode, in all of its co-op glory, is pretty rad. It isn't the long and epic journey through a creepy and foreign area as Resident Evil 4 was, but this is a different beast altogether. Whereas 4 was not only a revision of the current formula, but also an attempt at creating a completely solitary experience where the player is stranded, and it's his skills alone that will allow them to triumph. In 5, though, the templates of the familiar face fighting his way in and then out of an environment that they're not familiar with, but it takes a left turn where 4 took a right.

Instead of the isolation that was such a key role in manipulating the player in RE4, RE5's focuses on the concept of using cooperation in order to get tasks that one person couldn't do alone. This is true beyond just the addition of a partner. Throughout the whole game, most tasks above killing villagers and the like require the abilities of more than one person. Getting up to higher areas, defeating a giant in a jeep, fighting motorcycle-riding zombies, getting across areas often have you teaming up with someone other than both of the players.

This element is clear in the story as well. Your goal in the game is primarily to find your partner, and there's an underlying theme of "trusting your partner", and even the people pulling the strings have partners. Of course, in being the bad guys, there's the element of using them and betraying them, but that's an approach to a situation.

And given the theme of cooperation with others as the main objective in RE5, the game executes this in a satisfying way. The entire game is playable with another person, from the story mode to the Mercenaries mode. It stresses this point in almost every aspect of the gameplay. Limited storage space is shared between, in order to proceed to another area both of you must comply, and so on. This point is stressed so much that playing by yourself is crucially detrimental to your play experience, and there's little reason to do so, with the option to play online. Not having an Internet connection disables this option, but even in split-screen the game plays better with a friend.

Also aiding the component of co-op is the game's length. Though it has roughly the same number of chapters as RE4, the chapters themselves are shorter and feel somewhat disjointed. As an aspect of a single-player experience, this is something that hinders the immersion, but through the lens of a co-op game, it helps that they are shorter so that the game can be beaten in single sitting, if you have the conviction to see it through.

The game also tries to make up for the brevity of the campaign by adding some replay value to it. There are multiple difficulties, the game rates you on how well you did on each chapter, so you can go back and try to do better if you wish. There's medallions to hunt, figures to get, costumes to unlock and all those other sorts of treats to try to get. Additionally, the game packs the return of the Mercenaries mode, where you're dropped into a particular closed off area of the game and try to get the highest score possible.

And it was this mode in particular that made me realize that the game itself is fun to play. The complaints of restrictive controls are well-founded, with some awkward button placement issues to be addressed, but having adjusted to that, the way your character has weight, the feel of the weapons, their recoils and their impact on enemies, it all feel nice. All the aspects of playing the game, after playing it for a couple minutes, I wasn't fighting the controls, and that part as well worked in tandem with the rest of the game to make it feel just the right mount of restrictive.

Sure, it isn't RE4, and it certainly won't have the impact on the industry that 4 had, but the shift of direction towards playing with someone, while sacrificing the elements of that invoked fear in the past, instead uses the new elements of a partner to create a new sort of tension of taking a certain amount of control out of one player's hands and forcing them to rely on someone else. This is a different experience with a different template, and it's refreshing to see something other than a re-hash.

The Wheelman...can?

Browsing through the Xbox Marketplace, looking for content, blah blah blah I downloaded the demos for The Wheelman and Assault on Dark Athena. I had also downloaded the Watchmen demo, and I played them in the order that I thought I would like them, and ascending order: Wheelman, Athena, and Watchmen. Turns out, I like them in the opposite order.

I went in to The Wheelman with a sense of ironic interest. I was supposed to like it because it was awesomely bad, but after playing for a while it I actually came to like it, and that is not meant as a condescending comment along the lines of "I say, good chap, what was once rubbish is now glorious in my eyes!" I seriously like them game. Mapping the ability to crash into other cars to the flick of the right analog stick was certifiably brilliant. The fact that it's so easy to just crash into another car is something that's missing from other driving games, and just feels good. Which is a good thing, because you have do it a lot in the demo.

Aside from all the car-smashing you'll be doing, there's other stuff to do as well. You have what is essentially a special meter, and when it's full to certain point you preform special move, such as slowing down time to shoot at cars and spinning your vehicle (sometimes both at the same time!). There's also the obligatory boosting (with fire!), but when you're smashing into other cars and shooting dudes in slow-mo, boosting seems somewhat tame by comparison.

I like what The Wheelman had to offer the driving genre (a mix between Burnout and PGR), and with that and the Dark Athena on the horizon, are we at the point where celebrities care about games enough to make good ones consistently? Or is Vin Diesel simply a super-muscular version of Wil Wheaton? Time will tell.

It's New Again

I think that most people who are excited about Street Fighter 4 (or IV, if your prefer) fall primarily into three camps: Those who liked Street Fighter II, those who liked Street Fighter III and those who've heard from other people that this new one might be good. The first two camps mix often, but it should be noted that it's a separation of time, not of preference. It comes down to the question of "how long has it been since you've played Street Fighter?" The third camp, the group of players who want to get into the mix, (a group that was practically non-existent for the release of III), are the people that the game wants to market to the most this time around. So, in examining Street Fighter IV, there are two questions you should try to approach: Is the game going to satisfy the people who've played the games all along, and are people who've never touched this going to "get it?" The answer to this is that even though it doesn't exactly do a good job of enticing you keep playing it (positive reinforcement), it still somehow manages to reel in newcomers and satisfy the veterans.

I played SFII for a pretty good while back in the day, so as far as how the game "feels", it certainly does a good job of triggering that bit of nostalgia that you have for the older games. Button combos remain the same (quarter-circle forward + punch = Hadouken), and the timing of how moves flow into each other seems to be the same (though I can't exactly attest to this with complete certainty, as I'm not that much of a frame-counter). This is done extremely well despite the game moving into full 3D animations (but not a 3D plane). Some attacks, like fast punches and kicks look supernaturally fast, but I'd prefer that to having the actual moves be slowed down, and for the most part the moves look completely natural. It does a fantastic job in capturing that SFII feel.

The characters themselves are more or less just as you left them. They're all pretty distinct (even Ken manages to play somewhat differently than Ryu), and you usually can't rely on working the same strategy for every character. Additionally, the variety of characters means that you'll eventually find a characters that suits you. I can't play the charge characters to save my life, but I can do just fine with most other characters. There are a couple of characters you're probably going to see a lot of online (like Sagat), but for now the games seems to be pretty balanced in that most any character has a good chance of beating anyone in the hands of the right player.

The new characters are a hit or miss, honestly. El Fuerte and Able seems to fit in pretty well, but C. Viper and Rufus really don't look like they belong in a Street Fighter game. All of them use pretty new styles, so you'll have to learn some new tricks if you want to be good with them. But they aren't so different that you feel like you can't approach them. While not all of them fit stylistically, they all break into the mold pretty well, gameplay-wise.

But that doesn't mean that it's a re-release of the old games. It does several new things that significantly change up some strategies. The biggest gameplay addition is the Focus Attack, which more or less a punch or kick you can charge for additional damage. While this may seem like a minor addition, there are some intricacies to how you can use it. For example, while charging, you can take one hit without flinching, and while that attack still does damage, if you can keep away from your opponent, the damage will eventually heal. This makes it a great counter against projectiles, whose chip damage is quickly healed when "blocked" by a Focus attack. If you can do it consistently, it's a great alternative to blocking and taking the chip damage. You can also dash out of the Focus, and combo the that attack into a string of other moves.

The other big change is the two meter system. You have your Super Gauge, which charges when you hit your opponent, and your Revenge meter, which charges when you're hit by attacks. This system creates a great back-and-forth between the players, because if you're getting the upper hand on an opponent you're going to have to worry about them pulling of their Ultra Attack, which can seriously change the outcome of a match. And the Super Gauge can be depleted by either a Super Attack (which drains the entire meter), or by EX moves, which are more powerful versions of your special moves that drain a fourth of the meter. Keeping an eye on these two meters is a big part of SFIV, whereas in SFII you just had to make sure your meter was full and theirs wasn't.

One of the best things about the game, though, is that if you don't want to, you don't have to keep an eye on any of these things. you can play the game exactly like you would SFII, and still have a decent chance to win. Granted, people who do keep an eye on them will have an advantage, but playing the game like SFII is at least a good place to start, and then one could work on understanding these things one at a time.

However, from the point of someone who's never picked up a fighting game, the task of doing these sorts of things can be very daunting. The game's eye-catching paintbrush visual style is visually appealing enough that you like to see to see the game in action but not so much that it'll hurt your eyes. But aside from that, most of the things that SFIV does to attract new players (and it doesn't do that much) fall flat. The trial mode, in which it gives you a specific task to do, and then you try to accomplish it. The problem with this is that it never shows how the combo is supposed to look like or when to do it in regular play, which means if there's a particularly difficult one (and there are plenty), If you complete it you won't know how to do it again, and you'll likely never even try to use that combo in regular play. There are also Survival and Time Attack modes to test your skill, but I doubt that once you've beaten those you'll ever go back to them.

The arcade mode is still there, and there is a fair amount of character unlocking to do. The conditions range from basic (beat the game with Ryu to Unlock Sakura), to pretty dang difficult (Akuma and Gouken). While you'll probably spend large portion of your early hours unlocking characters, this is a pretty small complaint in the overall scheme of things. Once you've unlocked them, they're there forever.

But what's really nice about the arcade mode is the integration of the online mode. While there's a separate mode where you can just look for matches of various kinds, you can set it up so that the game is looking for matches while you play the arcade mode. This works like how the arcade machines worked back in the day. Once the game finds an online match for you, you'll get the "NEW CHALLENGER!" screen and dive right into an online match. This is probably one of the best additions to the game, since it means that your waiting time between matches, something that is a bother in most online fighting games, is rectified by keeping you in fights in between. However, I would have liked for this online system have applied to versus as well, whenever you're playing against a CPU.

There are also a smörgåsbord of unlockables to keep you playing the various modes. While most of these are icons and title for use in the online mode, there's also art and posters and the like to unlock as well, so there's definitely something to do for completists. But really, these are going to be things that you're going to be getting along the way, not things that you're going to be aiming for, since the game doesn't tell you how to unlock them.

Street Fighter 4 does what all fighting games nowadays try to do. They try to modernize themselves for newer audiences while keeping the old flame of their past alive. SFIV doesn't do it perfectly, but it definitely does it better than anyone else. Aside from a few key mishaps in trying to get new players into the game, it makes the right decisions at almost every turn. For now, Street Fighter IV is an example of modern fighting games done right.