Scrolls, the upcoming collectible-card-based strategy game from Minecraft developer Mojang, enters its open beta phase today. Essentially, this means you can buy the not-quite-finished game for less than its full price and start playing early while they work out the bugs and make improvements. Some part of me wants to partake in this, because the game looks pretty interesting (and because we all know how playing Minecraft quickly became the most popular thing since breathing), but the rest of me doesn't want to touch this game with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole. It looks fun, but I'm conflicted.
Collectible card games are an interesting thing. I want to love them, because I think they're so cool in theory. I wanted to love Magic: The Gathering, the original trading card game published by Wizards of the Coast back in 1993. The concept of such a card game is ingenious, both for its unique gameplay and — let's be honest — for its potential to rake in huge wads of cash for the owners.
Over the past 20 years, new sets of Magic cards have been released on a regular basis, and the total number of different cards seems to have surpassed 13,000, yet the game still remains accessible to newcomers. New rules are introduced all the time, and the balance is tweaked with each new expansion, but the earliest cards can still be used (outside of certain tournaments) together with the ones printed today. The number of possible combinations in a 60-card deck isn't even worth counting.
The ability of each player to create his or her own customized deck of cards, drawing from a collection unlike that of any opponent, is what makes this type of game so fun to play. Unfortunately, this makes the gameplay inherently imbalanced, unless we consider the start of the collection process to be the true beginning of any given match (and that's a stretch). Even then, a game like Magic too often requires continual monetary investment if you want to remain competitive, and this feature (while I'd like to call it a flaw) is by design. I played Magic for a brief period of time, several years ago, and my cards might have been only half-decent back then, but they're total garbage now. More powerful cards and better gameplay mechanics are created with each expansion to keep players spending their money. Of course.
There's also a certain threshold of monetary investment required in order to become competitive in the first place, and that threshold is probably going to scale in proportion to the size of your opponent's paycheck. Things might be balanced within a group if everyone involved cares enough to go on eBay to buy selectively the individual cards they need for one of a few strategies deemed viable at the expert level, but this isn't always affordable. Meanwhile, for more casual play in which most cards are obtained from random packs, the guy who wins most often is going to be the guy who spent the most money on his collection. The three pillars of succeeding in Magic: The Gathering are building a good deck, making the right in-game decisions, and (perhaps most importantly) owning better cards than the other guy (which is where the "collectible" aspect comes in).
When a video game affords even the smallest advantage to a player who spends extra money (e.g., through micro-transactions), we call it "pay-to-win" (even if this isn't literally true) and we hate it because it feels so wrong. It is wrong, because the delicate balance of the game in question is either compromised or completely destroyed. Being at a disadvantage sucks, and if you give in and buy your way to the top then the challenge is gone and the game quickly becomes pointless. (In the most extreme cases, you've essentially just paid to see the words "you win" on your screen, so congratulations on doing that.)
A lesser form of pay-to-win merely allows players to spend some extra money to skip past a seemingly endless grind, as is the case in many so-called "free-to-play" games. This doesn't necessarily destroy the game's balance of power (because the advantages being bought can also be earned through dozens of hours of play), but it does highlight the major flaws already present in the game. If a person wants to pay more money simply to get less gameplay, the game probably sucks (and the person playing it probably hasn't realized there's nothing left to do if you're not grinding).
In the video game world, all of this is positively awful, but most collectible card games are pay-to-win by nature. Sure, they're fun to play if you're up against someone whose skill level and deck quality are in the same league as yours, but if you play against a guy whose collection of cards is twice as big (and twice as expensive) then it's completely unfair.
When I first heard of Magic: The Gathering Online prior to its release in 2002, I thought it might be a little more fair (and affordable) than its tabletop equivalent. I assumed (or at least hoped) that each player would be given access to the same pool of cards, or perhaps that better cards might be unlocked by winning matches, or something. At the very least, I naively believed that players wouldn't have to buy all of their virtual cards at the same price as physical ones because... well, you know, because they're not real cards. Unfortunately, Magic: The Gathering Online is identical to the original card game except that the cards aren't made of card stock and ink.
Duels of the Planeswalkers looks like a nice alternative, even with its relatively small number of cards, until you realize that you can't even build your own deck. This is no surprise, though, since Wizards of the Coast doesn't want this game to be a viable alternative. Duels of the Planeswalkers is meant to draw in new players and get them hooked, so they become frustrated by the lack of deck-building options and graduate to buying packs of cards, be they physical or digital. The virtual cards in Magic: The Gathering Online, despite being virtual, have monetary value because Wizards of the Coast doesn't let you do whatever you want with them. Artificial scarcity makes them seem as rare as the physical cards printed in limited runs on actual paper.
Digital game distributor Steam recently unveiled its own trading card meta-game,
which is still in beta, and it's proving to be a nice example of how
such artificial scarcity can make something desirable even if it has no real value, no purpose,
and no practical function.
Players
with access to the beta test can earn virtual trading cards for their
Steam Community accounts by logging play time in certain Steam games. These currently
include Borderlands 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Don't Starve, Half-Life 2, and Portal 2, as well as the free-to-play games Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2
(but only if you spend money on them). You can get up to four cards per
game just by playing, while eight cards from a single game comprise a complete set. The fact
that you can only earn half of any set on your own means
that trading (or buying from other players) is a necessity.
Once you get a complete set, those eight cards can be turned into a badge and some other items. The badge is good for nothing at all, while the other goodies that
come with it are mostly vanity items, like emoticons and
points to "level up" your Steam Community account. (There's also a
chance of getting a coupon, but my experience with Steam coupons is that
the discounts they offer are less impressive than the ones you see
during a typical sale.) The whole thing seems pretty dumb, but you can
already see cards for sale on the Steam marketplace, and that doesn't usually happen unless people are buying. There's also a demand for those vanity items. Apparently, some users even made a profit by buying lots of cards and then selling the goodies that
come with each badge.
In general, things that were specifically made to be collected usually don't have a lot of real value to collectors. However, if you turn that collection process into a game — even if it's a stupid one — people go nuts. If people are willing to spend real money on virtual trading cards just so they can earn virtual badges and virtual emoticons and level up their Steam accounts for virtual bragging rights, it should be no surprise if the same people are willing to spend money on virtual trading cards that give them an actual advantage in an online game. I can't really blame Wizards of the Coast for taking advantage of this kind of behavior. But when the game is a competitive one, I just don't like the idea of buying victories, even if it's done in an indirect and convoluted way.
A true trading card game, even if its entirely virtual, is going to have some level of imbalance. If each player draws cards from a unique collection, it's never going to be completely fair. All of this might be okay, however, if everything were unlockable through in-game actions and accomplishments. Naturally, I was hopeful when I first saw Scrolls; the official website tells us items at the in-game store can be bought with the gold earned by playing matches, and this presumably includes new cards (called "scrolls" because it sounds so much cooler). However, a "small selection" of items can also be bought with "shards" — a so-called "secondary currency" which you can buy with your real-life credit card.
So how significant is this "small selection" of in-game items? How much of an advantage can you gain by immediately purchasing everything that shards can buy? I can only assume the advantage is pretty significant; otherwise there would be no point. The real question is of whether a person who paid $10 more than you (and doesn't deserve the advantage) is distinguishable from someone who played 20 hours longer than you (and earned the advantage). As long as it's possible to unlock everything that matters through gameplay alone, and as long as doing so is feasible (i.e., not a 500-hour grind), there's some hope for this game.
Mojang has claimed that Scrolls won't become a pay-to-win game despite its purchasable items, but developers say a lot of things before their games are released. The only reason to believe them is that the game does in fact have an initial cost — in other words, it's not "free-to-play" so the developers don't need to rely on in-game purchases to turn a profit.
The cost of access to the open beta is $20, which isn't so bad when you consider the average cost of a modern video game, which tends to be around $50 or $60 regardless of quality. (While
this high cost applies mostly to console games, high-profile PC releases
tend to follow the same model with some notable exceptions. Runic
Games, for example, earned some praise for selling Torchlight II at $20, which gave the action role-playing game a significant advantage over its controversial $60 competitor Diablo III.) Assuming that Scrolls turns out to be a decent game, this discounted price for early access is a pretty good deal.
Unfortunately for Mojang, I've been trained by Steam sales and Humble Bundle events
to refrain from buying anything unless or until it's dirt cheap. With some patience and good timing, I could buy a handful of older games for the same $20 and I'd be sure to enjoy at least one of them. It
doesn't take long for the price of a game to drop, and this is
especially true of PC games now that developers are realizing they need
to compete with piracy instead of trying in vain to stamp it out. As a
result, people who play PC games — or the "PC gaming community"
for those of you who can say such a thing with a straight face — have
come to expect their games to be inexpensive. $20 is a good deal, but it's not great.
I certainly don't mean to imply, of
course, that we should all wait a few years to pick up Mojang's new
release. After all, we don't even know if it will ever be subjected to
such brutal price-slashing. Furthermore, Scrolls is a multiplayer
game which might only be fun for as long as the number of players
remains high, so the time to buy is now, if you want it. The problem is
that the game is a risky investment and my spending limit for such a
risk is so low.
That limit — the point below which a risky investment becomes a risk worth taking and any potential buyer's remorse becomes bearable — is different for everyone. For me, it's about $5. That might seem like a ridiculously small figure, but it's what I paid for BioShock a few years ago. It's what I paid for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. It's also what I paid for the first two Max Payne games combined. I almost bought Metro 2033 for $5, but I waited and got it for even less. I got Killing Floor for $5, a few years ago, and I've put more hours into that game than anything else I can remember. None of these games were new when I bought them, but I still enjoyed each of them at least as much as any $20 game I ever bought.
None of this is really a complaint about Scrolls or the open beta price tag in particular. But I might be more willing to spend four times what I paid for Killing Floor if I actually knew Scrolls would be a worthwhile purchase. Isn't there some way of trying out a game before its release without paying $20 for access to a beta version? Oh, yes, a free demo certainly would be nice. Maybe we'll get one of those later on... but we probably won't.
Showing posts with label killing floor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label killing floor. Show all posts
Monday, June 3, 2013
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sandy & Steam Sale
While a deadly hurricane named Sandy lays waste to the east coast of the United States, threatening to rain all over my favorite holiday (which is now only two days away), Steam has begun its Halloween Sale. Sadly, it lasts only from now until Wednesday, and surely many affected by the storm will be without power for the entirety of the event. I'm still fortunate enough to have power where I am, but the weather has been getting steadily worse since late last night, so that might not last.
For those who can shop online this week, there are some nice discounts. I'm seeing a lot of "-75%" tags. The games currently "featured," however, don't seem to have greater discounts than the other five dozen games on sale. Perhaps the word "featured" just means new or popular, or maybe the featured games are chosen randomly and cycled throughout the sale. After all, the games on the "featured" list make up about a third of the games that are marked down for the duration of this three-day sale.
In any case, you'll want to make sure you check out the "All Halloween Games on Sale" list, located just below the "Featured Games on Sale" list on this page. Otherwise you might miss out something good.
While I'm here, I might as well come up with my own list of noteworthy games, based on my own crazy and possibly worthless opinions. First, I'd like to point out that some of the games on sale are those I mentioned in my last post on Wednesday:
For those who can shop online this week, there are some nice discounts. I'm seeing a lot of "-75%" tags. The games currently "featured," however, don't seem to have greater discounts than the other five dozen games on sale. Perhaps the word "featured" just means new or popular, or maybe the featured games are chosen randomly and cycled throughout the sale. After all, the games on the "featured" list make up about a third of the games that are marked down for the duration of this three-day sale.
In any case, you'll want to make sure you check out the "All Halloween Games on Sale" list, located just below the "Featured Games on Sale" list on this page. Otherwise you might miss out something good.
While I'm here, I might as well come up with my own list of noteworthy games, based on my own crazy and possibly worthless opinions. First, I'd like to point out that some of the games on sale are those I mentioned in my last post on Wednesday:
- F.E.A.R. (with its two expansion packs included) is only $2.49, which is just painful for me to look at, since I paid $50 for the game back in 2005, and then bought the expansions separately for at least $30 each. Still, I loved the game so much that I have no buyer's remorse, not even after seeing it go for two bucks and change. Needless to say, I'd argue that F.E.A.R. is worth buying right now, if you're into paranormal first-person shooters. (The rest of the F.E.A.R. series is on sale as well, but I'm not so crazy about those sequels.)
- The Painkiller Complete Pack is going for $7.49. That's a bit more than I paid for the Complete Pack a year ago, but there were fewer games included at the time.) Strangely, only a couple of the games — Resurrection and Recurring Evil — are on sale individually. The result is that buying the whole pack is actually cheaper than buying the first game, Painkiller: Black Edition, alone.
Update: Scratch that. It looks like all of the individual Painkiller games are now 75% off, which means Painkiller: Black Edition is only $2.49. I still think the bundle is a fair price, but if you're unsure of how you feel about this particular brand of first-person shooter, I'd recommend buying only the original game, since most of the sequels are mediocre at best.
- Killing Floor is $4.99, which is normal during any Steam sale, so I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it to get much cheaper. It's also in the middle of its Hillbilly Horror Event for Halloween, which goes until November 6, so all of the zombies are dressed up like... well, hillbillies. It's a lot of fun, especially if you have some friends with whom to team up and play.
- Alan Wake is marked down to $14.99, and Alan Wake's American Nightmare is only $7.49. I've seen them go for cheaper, but you might have to wait until the winter sale for that to happen again.
- The Walking Dead is down to $14.99. It's not a huge discount, but I've only heard good things about this game, and I've been seriously thinking about adding it to my collection.
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent is currently $4.99, while each of the Penumbra games are $2.49. (Oddly, the Penumbra Collector Pack is $4.99, which is one cent more than the combined cost of the two included Penumbra games.)
- Magicka is $2.49. It's a hilarious game and I love it. I just wish it were better optimized. It tends to run like crap on my computer while much prettier games work perfectly.
- Zombie Driver HD is marked down to $4.99 after a 50% discount. The original Zombie Driver, which I got for $2.49 a while ago, is a lot of fun, and I can only assume that this updated version is at least as good. Unfortunately, it really is just an updated version of the original — not a sequel — so you might want to think twice about getting it if you already have the standard edition. Owners of the original game are supposed to get a 50% discount, but that doesn't seem to stack with the Halloween Sale discount, which is really a shame.
- I wanted to buy Rage, but even with the current discount, it's still $9.99. I'll be waiting a little longer for the price to drop below $5, but I don't expect everyone to be as stingy as I am.
- Each of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games — which are fantastic if you have a decent computer and don't mind installing a couple of bug-fixing mods — are on sale as well: Shadow of Chernobyl for $9.99, Clear Sky for $4.99, and Call of Pripyat for $7.49. (As with the Penumbra series, there seems to be a bug in the pricing of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Bundle, which costs one cent more than the price of the included games, Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat.)
- I've been waiting for the Overlord Complete Pack to go on sale for a while, so I just might pick it up now for $4.99. (I've never played it, but it kinda reminds me of a more diabolic Pikmin.)
- The Dead Space games are each $4.99, which seems pretty cool. I've never played them, but you can't go horribly wrong for five bucks. Just make sure you don't buy the Dead Space Pack, since, again, it costs one cent more than the combined price of the individual games. At first I thought this was a bug, but now I think it's just plain carelessness.
- Predictably, the Left 4 Dead series is on sale, as is just about every game with the word "zombie" in the title — and there are far too many to name. Some of them look cute, others look like shovelware. Just beware the deceptive power of tempting discounts on awful products.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Games to Play on Halloween
The best holiday is coming up in only a week, and if you're looking to get hyped for Halloween, the only thing better than a cheesy horror movie is a spooky video game. I'm going to list a few of my favorites here, in no particular order.
Of course, the most obvious can go first.
I'm not sure what to say about the series as a whole. The franchise itself is nothing short of legendary, but I wasn't fond of the prequel Resident Evil Zero, and I've heard bad things about both of the most recent releases, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and Resident Evil 6. This shouldn't be a surprise; any series that stays around as long as this one has is bound to go sour at some point. I did, however, enjoy the hell out of the GameCube remake of the original. It was the first Resident Evil game I ever owned, and on my first playthrough, it scared the crap out of me.
The controls were awful, as they were in every installment in the series prior to Resident Evil 4. The pairing of character-relative controls and fixed camera angles is truly one of the worst things ever to happen to video games — but I have to say that it did, in a pretty stupid way, make the game scarier. Avoiding or shooting a small number of slow-moving zombies probably doesn't sound like a frightening ordeal to anyone who plays the likes of Left 4 Dead, but with such clumsy controls, what would be a walk in the park becomes a nightmare. The character turns too slowly, and aiming for the head involves more luck than skill. The camera angles are uniformly bad, as well. It's frustrating, but effective at making the player feel helpless even with a gun.
What makes Resident Evil most effective, however, is that it doesn't rely on cheap "jump scares" to startle the player. The game is scary because of its expert control of suspense, because you don't know what's around the next corner, and because you don't know how much ammunition you can spare. It's the definitive survival horror, and it does almost everything right. As far as horror games on the GameCube go, the Resident Evil remake is second only to...
I've already written quite a lot about Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, another GameCube masterpiece. It's not the scariest game I've ever played — not even close — but it's got a creepy atmosphere, a fantastic story, and some clever gameplay mechanics.
Eternal Darkness is a psychological horror, so it's a bit more subtle and slow-paced than most other horror games, which tend rely on sudden, loud noises and simple shock value to scare the player. It's only going to startle you in a couple of places, and there isn't a lot of blood and gore, but the sanity system will do its best to freak you out in a variety of (occasionally hilarious) ways. More importantly, the game doesn't do a bad job of creating an overwhelming sense of impending doom.
Overall, it's a nice game to get you in the Halloween spirit, especially if you're a big fan of H. P. Lovecraft. And speaking of Lovecraft...
I almost didn't include this game on the list, but alas, the power of nostalgia is too great. It's been years since I played it, and I must admit that I never quite got to the end. Maybe I got stuck, maybe it was too hard, or maybe I was so creeped out by my first survival horror experience that I couldn't bear to go on. In any case, I was a lot younger at the time, and I wasn't as enthusiastic about PC games as I am now.
The New Nightmare is the 2001 sequel to the Lovecraft-inspired Alone in the Dark trilogy from the early 1990s — which, unfortunately, I've never had the pleasure of playing. (Or maybe it's more of a spin-off, since another sequel in 2008 apparently retcons The New Nightmare out of existence.) My memory of the plot is somewhat fuzzy, but what I do remember is that the game creeped me out more than a little. While I'm sure the graphics have aged poorly, I'd like to give the game another try, if I can ever find the discs.
The New Nightmare suffered from the same clunky controls that plagued the early Resident Evil games. And, like Resident Evil, it has two protagonists, takes place in a mansion, and involves a lot of puzzles. The similarities are hard to ignore, but there are some differences, namely the replacement of zombies, zombie-dogs, zombie-snakes, zombie-sharks, and zombie-birds with a slightly more creative variety of creepy crawlies, as well as the use of a flashlight to fend off the baddies. Actually, that last part kind of reminds me of...
I wrote more than enough about Alan Wake in my earlier post on cinematic games, so if you're no stranger to this blog, you're probably aware that I enjoyed the game immensely. The transparently Stephen King-inspired psychological horror/action game earns its place on this list with a spooky atmosphere and a superb story. The two short DLC expansions, truth be told, were a bit weird, and I can't say I really enjoyed the sequel, Alan Wake's American Nightmare (of which the only redeeming quality, in the absence of a decent story, is the intense arcade mode), but the original game is definitely worth a try.
Like many horror games, it's not so scary once you get the hang of killing the bad guys, nor is it as thrilling once you know every plot twist and the location of every precious box of ammunition, but the first playthrough will have its share of potentially unnerving moments.
And those bad guys — whom, in the beginning of the game, consist largely of possessed, axe-wielding lumberjacks in the woods at night — can be really frightening. I think it's mostly in the way they move. Even when you dodge their attacks, you can almost feel the power behind every swing. The way they stumble when they miss, and the way Alan ducks out of the way just in time... there's a real sense of momentum that's absent in the awkwardly animated combat of a lot of video games.
Now just wait until you're surrounded by those guys, low on bullets, with a long way to run to the next safe haven. As in any good horror game, simply running away isn't an option. The bad guys are faster than you, and you can only escape them for as long as you can successfully dodge their attacks without running into a corner. At some point, you'll need to turn around and fight. The same is true of...
Unlike every other game I've mentioned, Killing Floor is primarily a multiplayer game. In fact, you might say it's exclusively multiplayer, since playing the solo mode is essentially the same as going online and joining an empty server, and since playing alone isn't nearly as fun.
Generally, I prefer single-player games, but Killing Floor — a stand-alone game based on a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 — has become one of my all-time favorites, for two reasons. The first is that it's cooperative. Up to six players team up against a horde of computer-controlled zombies, so unless someone makes a boneheaded move that inadvertently gets the whole team killed, there are no hard feelings between human players. For the most part, everyone you'll meet online is rather friendly. The second reason is that, unlike most multiplayer games, Killing Floor requires a lot of coordinated teamwork.
Forget about spooky ambiance and creepy music. Killing Floor is scary because it's hard. The easiest setting is a joke, but anything above that can be a serious challenge, depending on the collective skills of the team. And with the number of zombies in each wave increasing as more players join, there's little room for weak links. You need to be able to count on your team, and you need to keep them alive, because there's no worse feeling than being the last guy alive with a bunch of monsters chasing after you. Killing Floor is one of the least forgiving video games I've played in recent memory, and it's not for the faint of heart. But I love it. The only first-person shooter I've spent more hours playing is...
Some would argue that F.E.A.R. falls flat on its face as a genuine horror game. It's got a somewhat spooky story, and occasionally you'll hear voices or see the ghost of a little dead girl, but there aren't a whole lot of monsters that jump out at you... at least, not for most of the game. But as a first-person shooter, F.E.A.R. excels and exceeds expectations. A horror-themed game doesn't need to make you crap your pants in order to be fun, and F.E.A.R. certainly is a lot of fun.
The enemy AI is very good; while the bad guys occasionally show their stupidity, they do attempt to flank you, and they're pretty good at flushing you out of hiding with grenades if they know where you are. The way they talk to each other while attempting to take you down also adds a lot of realism. The slow-motion feature, while a bit gimmicky, does add a little something extra to the gameplay, and is genuinely useful (perhaps too useful) even in the most dire of circumstances. The "scary parts" are all scripted, but if you're playing on the highest difficulty, the fear of being shot to death should keep you on the edge of your seat through most of the game.
There are two expansion packs and a couple of sequels, if you want more, but I don't have anything good to say about those. The story stopped making sense in the expansions (which were later retconned), and it became downright silly by the end of the first sequel. Also, be advised that the second sequel is meant to be played with two people. While there is a single-player campaign, it's really just cooperative mode without the second character, who mysteriously and nonsensically shows up nonetheless during cutscenes. If you just want to shoot things, go ahead and play the whole series, but don't expect any of the unanswered questions leftover from the first game to be adequately resolved. Speaking of great games with mediocre sequels...
A moderately fast-paced shooter with a demonic theme and an old-school style, Painkiller is easily one of the most solid purchases I ever made on Steam. The "Complete Pack" (which, at the time, included fewer games than it does now) was marked down to $4.99, and the first game alone is worth at least that much to me. The story is truly awful, and the voice acting is atrocious, but the gameplay is good enough to make up for that. Painkiller is pure; it's a first-person shooter without all the pointless fluff. It's nonstop carnage. It's all you could ask from a first-person shooter unless you really care about character development, and I know you don't.
If you're a fan of classic shooters like Doom, and more modern throwbacks like Serious Sam, this game is highly recommended. I enjoyed the first installment so much that I played through a couple of times before moving onto the others. Unfortunately, I soon came to realize that none of the other games in the series, thus far, were nearly as good — but by then I had already gotten my money's worth.
As of one week from today, there will be half a dozen standalone games in the Painkiller series, plus one expansion to the original, but there still hasn't been a Painkiller 2, or anything which might resemble a proper sequel. Worse yet, none of the continuations I've played have been worthwhile. Painkiller Overdose, apparently a fan-made mod that eventually became an official stand-alone expansion, was decent, but a step down from the original. Painkiller: Resurrection, which attempted a more open-world experience, was sloppy, buggy, and generally awful. Painkiller: Redemption, another fan-made mod that was turned into an official release, more closely followed the style of the previous titles, and was more enjoyable, but it was more of the same, at best. This is also what I expect of Painkiller: Recurring Evil, which I have yet to play. Then there's Painkiller: Hell & Damnation, which comes out on Halloween day, and while it looks promising, it seems mostly to be a (much prettier) remake of the original game.
To make a long story short, I highly recommend getting the first Painkiller, usually sold with its expansion as Painkiller: Black Edition, as soon as it goes on sale. The rest of the series is questionable. You might want to buy the Complete Pack, if you really love old-school shooters, but if you're not sure, you should probably stick with the first one for now. It's a great game to play on Halloween, and while it's easy to pick up and play, it requires some serious practice to master. (You'll want to learn how to bunny-hop, constantly, at all times, forever. The alternative is frustration and death.)
Of course, the most obvious can go first.
Resident Evil
The controls were awful, as they were in every installment in the series prior to Resident Evil 4. The pairing of character-relative controls and fixed camera angles is truly one of the worst things ever to happen to video games — but I have to say that it did, in a pretty stupid way, make the game scarier. Avoiding or shooting a small number of slow-moving zombies probably doesn't sound like a frightening ordeal to anyone who plays the likes of Left 4 Dead, but with such clumsy controls, what would be a walk in the park becomes a nightmare. The character turns too slowly, and aiming for the head involves more luck than skill. The camera angles are uniformly bad, as well. It's frustrating, but effective at making the player feel helpless even with a gun.
What makes Resident Evil most effective, however, is that it doesn't rely on cheap "jump scares" to startle the player. The game is scary because of its expert control of suspense, because you don't know what's around the next corner, and because you don't know how much ammunition you can spare. It's the definitive survival horror, and it does almost everything right. As far as horror games on the GameCube go, the Resident Evil remake is second only to...
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Eternal Darkness is a psychological horror, so it's a bit more subtle and slow-paced than most other horror games, which tend rely on sudden, loud noises and simple shock value to scare the player. It's only going to startle you in a couple of places, and there isn't a lot of blood and gore, but the sanity system will do its best to freak you out in a variety of (occasionally hilarious) ways. More importantly, the game doesn't do a bad job of creating an overwhelming sense of impending doom.
Overall, it's a nice game to get you in the Halloween spirit, especially if you're a big fan of H. P. Lovecraft. And speaking of Lovecraft...
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
The New Nightmare is the 2001 sequel to the Lovecraft-inspired Alone in the Dark trilogy from the early 1990s — which, unfortunately, I've never had the pleasure of playing. (Or maybe it's more of a spin-off, since another sequel in 2008 apparently retcons The New Nightmare out of existence.) My memory of the plot is somewhat fuzzy, but what I do remember is that the game creeped me out more than a little. While I'm sure the graphics have aged poorly, I'd like to give the game another try, if I can ever find the discs.
The New Nightmare suffered from the same clunky controls that plagued the early Resident Evil games. And, like Resident Evil, it has two protagonists, takes place in a mansion, and involves a lot of puzzles. The similarities are hard to ignore, but there are some differences, namely the replacement of zombies, zombie-dogs, zombie-snakes, zombie-sharks, and zombie-birds with a slightly more creative variety of creepy crawlies, as well as the use of a flashlight to fend off the baddies. Actually, that last part kind of reminds me of...
Alan Wake
Like many horror games, it's not so scary once you get the hang of killing the bad guys, nor is it as thrilling once you know every plot twist and the location of every precious box of ammunition, but the first playthrough will have its share of potentially unnerving moments.
And those bad guys — whom, in the beginning of the game, consist largely of possessed, axe-wielding lumberjacks in the woods at night — can be really frightening. I think it's mostly in the way they move. Even when you dodge their attacks, you can almost feel the power behind every swing. The way they stumble when they miss, and the way Alan ducks out of the way just in time... there's a real sense of momentum that's absent in the awkwardly animated combat of a lot of video games.
Now just wait until you're surrounded by those guys, low on bullets, with a long way to run to the next safe haven. As in any good horror game, simply running away isn't an option. The bad guys are faster than you, and you can only escape them for as long as you can successfully dodge their attacks without running into a corner. At some point, you'll need to turn around and fight. The same is true of...
Killing Floor
Unlike every other game I've mentioned, Killing Floor is primarily a multiplayer game. In fact, you might say it's exclusively multiplayer, since playing the solo mode is essentially the same as going online and joining an empty server, and since playing alone isn't nearly as fun.Generally, I prefer single-player games, but Killing Floor — a stand-alone game based on a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 — has become one of my all-time favorites, for two reasons. The first is that it's cooperative. Up to six players team up against a horde of computer-controlled zombies, so unless someone makes a boneheaded move that inadvertently gets the whole team killed, there are no hard feelings between human players. For the most part, everyone you'll meet online is rather friendly. The second reason is that, unlike most multiplayer games, Killing Floor requires a lot of coordinated teamwork.
Forget about spooky ambiance and creepy music. Killing Floor is scary because it's hard. The easiest setting is a joke, but anything above that can be a serious challenge, depending on the collective skills of the team. And with the number of zombies in each wave increasing as more players join, there's little room for weak links. You need to be able to count on your team, and you need to keep them alive, because there's no worse feeling than being the last guy alive with a bunch of monsters chasing after you. Killing Floor is one of the least forgiving video games I've played in recent memory, and it's not for the faint of heart. But I love it. The only first-person shooter I've spent more hours playing is...
F.E.A.R.
The enemy AI is very good; while the bad guys occasionally show their stupidity, they do attempt to flank you, and they're pretty good at flushing you out of hiding with grenades if they know where you are. The way they talk to each other while attempting to take you down also adds a lot of realism. The slow-motion feature, while a bit gimmicky, does add a little something extra to the gameplay, and is genuinely useful (perhaps too useful) even in the most dire of circumstances. The "scary parts" are all scripted, but if you're playing on the highest difficulty, the fear of being shot to death should keep you on the edge of your seat through most of the game.
There are two expansion packs and a couple of sequels, if you want more, but I don't have anything good to say about those. The story stopped making sense in the expansions (which were later retconned), and it became downright silly by the end of the first sequel. Also, be advised that the second sequel is meant to be played with two people. While there is a single-player campaign, it's really just cooperative mode without the second character, who mysteriously and nonsensically shows up nonetheless during cutscenes. If you just want to shoot things, go ahead and play the whole series, but don't expect any of the unanswered questions leftover from the first game to be adequately resolved. Speaking of great games with mediocre sequels...
Painkiller
If you're a fan of classic shooters like Doom, and more modern throwbacks like Serious Sam, this game is highly recommended. I enjoyed the first installment so much that I played through a couple of times before moving onto the others. Unfortunately, I soon came to realize that none of the other games in the series, thus far, were nearly as good — but by then I had already gotten my money's worth.
As of one week from today, there will be half a dozen standalone games in the Painkiller series, plus one expansion to the original, but there still hasn't been a Painkiller 2, or anything which might resemble a proper sequel. Worse yet, none of the continuations I've played have been worthwhile. Painkiller Overdose, apparently a fan-made mod that eventually became an official stand-alone expansion, was decent, but a step down from the original. Painkiller: Resurrection, which attempted a more open-world experience, was sloppy, buggy, and generally awful. Painkiller: Redemption, another fan-made mod that was turned into an official release, more closely followed the style of the previous titles, and was more enjoyable, but it was more of the same, at best. This is also what I expect of Painkiller: Recurring Evil, which I have yet to play. Then there's Painkiller: Hell & Damnation, which comes out on Halloween day, and while it looks promising, it seems mostly to be a (much prettier) remake of the original game.
To make a long story short, I highly recommend getting the first Painkiller, usually sold with its expansion as Painkiller: Black Edition, as soon as it goes on sale. The rest of the series is questionable. You might want to buy the Complete Pack, if you really love old-school shooters, but if you're not sure, you should probably stick with the first one for now. It's a great game to play on Halloween, and while it's easy to pick up and play, it requires some serious practice to master. (You'll want to learn how to bunny-hop, constantly, at all times, forever. The alternative is frustration and death.)
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Stop Pre-Ordering Games
I've mentioned before, in passing, my deep loathing — shared by many — for day-one DLC and pre-order bonuses.
I'm not going to pretend that the downloadable content of today is fundamentally different from the expansion packs of old; in theory, they're very similar. Expansion packs would either add content to an existing game, or act as a continuation of the game in the form of additional levels, but they were typically not as "big" (or as expensive) as the game itself. DLC almost always follows this example, albeit with a different delivery method and, thus, fewer constraints. With no discs and no shipping, selling everything in smaller pieces is no inconvenience to the publisher, which is why we're seeing ever smaller DLC "expansions" with (ideally) smaller prices than those of traditional expansion packs.
But there's another difference. While the traditional expansion pack was typically released some time after the base game, DLC is often available immediately. No doubt the industry believes this is a great thing, but not everyone agrees.
When DLC is released concurrently with the base game, people inevitably jump to the conclusion that this "extra" content belongs in the game itself, but that it was removed, and sold separately, for the sake of squeezing more money out of customers... like a car salesman selling you everything but the steering wheel and then demanding extra cash for the "extra" part. Of course, "day-one DLC" doesn't really mean that the publisher took a finished game from the developer and broke it up to be sold in pieces. It's likely that most games with DLC additions were meant to be sold this way from the very beginning, and were developed with this in mind. However, developing a game with DLC in mind still means to many that the base game will be inherently incomplete. I think we can all admit that this isn't necessarily true — a lot of these games still feel "complete" even without all the (mostly useless) add-ons — but appearances and first impressions, whether or not they're accurate, are pretty important.
Personally, I don't mind if a developer or publisher wants to sell a game in pieces. I usually ignore DLC unless I'm absolutely in love with a game and feel a compulsive need to experience every bit of it. Furthermore, most DLC consists of strictly non-essential content. Sometimes, this means purely cosmetic changes to a game, such as the character packs in Killing Floor, and I think this is a pretty harmless way for the developer to earn a few extra bucks from anyone actually willing to throw away their money for such a frivolous thing. I certainly don't feel compelled to buy this stuff, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
However, the same can't be said of DLC that would, for example, add extra weapons to a first-person shooter, or extra levels to the campaign mode of a story-driven game. I suspect a lot of players — completionists especially — feel that, when they buy a game, they need to own the whole game, and this drives them to pay for half a dozen little expansions that can add up to a lot of cash.
Ultimately, each of us is responsible for how we spend our own money; nobody is shoving extra content down our throats and forcing us to buy it. But when this so-called "DLC" is available on release day — and sometimes even included on the game disc, just awaiting authorization — it's typically seen as a part of the game for which we thought we already paid, not as an optional expansion to it, and uninformed customers tend to get pretty upset when they find out. While this is the source of a lot of controversy, I think it's also exactly what the publishers want. The idea that an integral part of the original game has been taken away to be sold separately is what makes us hate day-one DLC... but it's also what makes us buy it. It's a shame that the average consumer doesn't have the willpower to boycott a product.
While it wouldn't be completely crazy for me to say that DLC itself is downright evil, I don't think that's a very constructive thing to do. First of all, DLC itself isn't the problem. We're the problem. If the game industry is doing something wrong, it's partly because we reinforced that behavior with our purchases. Second of all, it's not DLC that we should hate, but rather the host of generally evil business practices that come along with it. For example, so-called day-one DLC is often used as an incentive for pre-ordering a game, or even for pre-ordering the game from a specific retail outlet. And instead of buying a game, and then buying an expansion if we really liked the game, we're encouraged to buy a game and all of its additional content at once — before the game is even released.
Welcome to the wonderful world of pre-orders and pre-order bonuses. No, don't think, just hand over your wallets.
Some DLC was just announced for Assassin's Creed III — a game which, by the way, hasn't yet been released — and all five of the upcoming DLC packs can be purchased with a $30 season pass. Add that to the usual price tag of $60 for the base game, and you've got quite a large purchase. Yes, the Gold Edition of the game (which includes this season pass) is a whopping $90. Of course, there's a benefit to buying this season pass; it's significantly cheaper than buying each DLC pack separately, for a total of $40. But I'd much rather wait until a year after release — when the game and its DLC are cheaper, and when I know whether the game is worth playing — before I spend any money.
You've probably guessed that I think pre-ordering is a horrible idea and that anyone who pre-orders anything is a mindless sheep. You guessed right. Naturally, the whole concept of a "season pass" for DLC is, to me, a bit absurd. It's essentially a pre-order for DLC which, like the game itself, might not even be good. The fact that the game is a sequel makes it all slightly less crazy — fans of the series have a pretty good idea of what the game will be like — but it doesn't seem like a great investment either way. When you pre-order not only a $60 game but also $30 worth of DLC on top of it, you're betting a whole lot of money that the game won't suck. Why not wait until after it's released so you can read some reviews and get maybe a better price? What's the benefit of pre-ordering?
In the old days, the only reason for pre-ordering was to reserve a copy of a highly anticipated game for which supply was expected to fall short of demand. It guaranteed that you'd get your game on release day instead of waiting for the next shipment while all your friends played the game without you. But the industry likes pre-ordering for another reason. It makes their sales figures look better. They get to say they sold a hundred thousand copies of their game on the first day. They get to say their game went gold before it was even released.
In the context of modern PC gaming, the word "supply" is meaningless. Just about every PC game can be downloaded; there are no shipments, and copies of a game are unlimited. So why should anyone pre-order a downloadable game? I think the industry asked itself this question and came up with an answer: pre-order bonuses. Not only do they make the absurdity of pre-purchasing a downloadable game seem a bit less absurd; they also make the foolish act of pre-ordering physical copies even more tempting.
The fact that developers would spend their time making DLC exclusively for those who pre-purchase the game — content which the rest of their fans may or may not be able to access at a later date — says a lot about the industry, namely how much value they place in those pre-orders. Could it really be all about inflating those first-day sales figures? Or could it be that they desperately want us to buy their games before anyone gets to find out if those games are worth playing? Why anyone would pay $60 for a game that hasn't even been reviewed yet is beyond me, but the industry has put a lot of effort into convincing people to do it.
Meanwhile, very few demos are being released these days, and I can't help but wonder if this is because developers are afraid that fewer people will spend money if they see what their games are like first-hand. Clearly, at the very least, they don't believe that releasing a demo has any benefit anymore, since they've already figured out how to convince millions of consumers to buy their product without even waiting for the critics to have their say.
What I'm really getting at, here, is that people who pre-purchase games are irresponsible and reckless. They're also harming the industry, and the industry is helping them do it. As consumers, we communicate with developers and publishers primarily through our purchases. No doubt the people who make video games occasionally hear our opinions, if we're loud enough, but what they really care about is where our money goes. If you hate a game after you buy it, they still have your money, and your opinion isn't going to hurt them unless you convince others not to buy the game.
So stop pre-ordering games you've never played. Stop telling developers "yes, this game is great" before you know it to be true.
I'd like to tell you all to stop buying new games entirely, since paying $60 for a new game is just a waste of money if it's going to be 75% off on Steam or Amazon less than a year after its release. Of course, there's always the argument that multiplayer games are most fun during the height of their popularity (i.e., before the community moves on to better things) and that waiting too long to play them means missing out on the fun. But if an online community dies so fast that you need to buy the game on day one to get in on the action, the game is probably terrible anyway.
Maybe if we all think a little more carefully about our purchases, developers will focus more on making games enjoyable and worthwhile, instead of coming up with a thousand other ways to get our money more quickly and more often.
I'm not going to pretend that the downloadable content of today is fundamentally different from the expansion packs of old; in theory, they're very similar. Expansion packs would either add content to an existing game, or act as a continuation of the game in the form of additional levels, but they were typically not as "big" (or as expensive) as the game itself. DLC almost always follows this example, albeit with a different delivery method and, thus, fewer constraints. With no discs and no shipping, selling everything in smaller pieces is no inconvenience to the publisher, which is why we're seeing ever smaller DLC "expansions" with (ideally) smaller prices than those of traditional expansion packs.
But there's another difference. While the traditional expansion pack was typically released some time after the base game, DLC is often available immediately. No doubt the industry believes this is a great thing, but not everyone agrees.
When DLC is released concurrently with the base game, people inevitably jump to the conclusion that this "extra" content belongs in the game itself, but that it was removed, and sold separately, for the sake of squeezing more money out of customers... like a car salesman selling you everything but the steering wheel and then demanding extra cash for the "extra" part. Of course, "day-one DLC" doesn't really mean that the publisher took a finished game from the developer and broke it up to be sold in pieces. It's likely that most games with DLC additions were meant to be sold this way from the very beginning, and were developed with this in mind. However, developing a game with DLC in mind still means to many that the base game will be inherently incomplete. I think we can all admit that this isn't necessarily true — a lot of these games still feel "complete" even without all the (mostly useless) add-ons — but appearances and first impressions, whether or not they're accurate, are pretty important.
Personally, I don't mind if a developer or publisher wants to sell a game in pieces. I usually ignore DLC unless I'm absolutely in love with a game and feel a compulsive need to experience every bit of it. Furthermore, most DLC consists of strictly non-essential content. Sometimes, this means purely cosmetic changes to a game, such as the character packs in Killing Floor, and I think this is a pretty harmless way for the developer to earn a few extra bucks from anyone actually willing to throw away their money for such a frivolous thing. I certainly don't feel compelled to buy this stuff, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.
However, the same can't be said of DLC that would, for example, add extra weapons to a first-person shooter, or extra levels to the campaign mode of a story-driven game. I suspect a lot of players — completionists especially — feel that, when they buy a game, they need to own the whole game, and this drives them to pay for half a dozen little expansions that can add up to a lot of cash.
Ultimately, each of us is responsible for how we spend our own money; nobody is shoving extra content down our throats and forcing us to buy it. But when this so-called "DLC" is available on release day — and sometimes even included on the game disc, just awaiting authorization — it's typically seen as a part of the game for which we thought we already paid, not as an optional expansion to it, and uninformed customers tend to get pretty upset when they find out. While this is the source of a lot of controversy, I think it's also exactly what the publishers want. The idea that an integral part of the original game has been taken away to be sold separately is what makes us hate day-one DLC... but it's also what makes us buy it. It's a shame that the average consumer doesn't have the willpower to boycott a product.
While it wouldn't be completely crazy for me to say that DLC itself is downright evil, I don't think that's a very constructive thing to do. First of all, DLC itself isn't the problem. We're the problem. If the game industry is doing something wrong, it's partly because we reinforced that behavior with our purchases. Second of all, it's not DLC that we should hate, but rather the host of generally evil business practices that come along with it. For example, so-called day-one DLC is often used as an incentive for pre-ordering a game, or even for pre-ordering the game from a specific retail outlet. And instead of buying a game, and then buying an expansion if we really liked the game, we're encouraged to buy a game and all of its additional content at once — before the game is even released.
Welcome to the wonderful world of pre-orders and pre-order bonuses. No, don't think, just hand over your wallets.
Some DLC was just announced for Assassin's Creed III — a game which, by the way, hasn't yet been released — and all five of the upcoming DLC packs can be purchased with a $30 season pass. Add that to the usual price tag of $60 for the base game, and you've got quite a large purchase. Yes, the Gold Edition of the game (which includes this season pass) is a whopping $90. Of course, there's a benefit to buying this season pass; it's significantly cheaper than buying each DLC pack separately, for a total of $40. But I'd much rather wait until a year after release — when the game and its DLC are cheaper, and when I know whether the game is worth playing — before I spend any money.
You've probably guessed that I think pre-ordering is a horrible idea and that anyone who pre-orders anything is a mindless sheep. You guessed right. Naturally, the whole concept of a "season pass" for DLC is, to me, a bit absurd. It's essentially a pre-order for DLC which, like the game itself, might not even be good. The fact that the game is a sequel makes it all slightly less crazy — fans of the series have a pretty good idea of what the game will be like — but it doesn't seem like a great investment either way. When you pre-order not only a $60 game but also $30 worth of DLC on top of it, you're betting a whole lot of money that the game won't suck. Why not wait until after it's released so you can read some reviews and get maybe a better price? What's the benefit of pre-ordering?
In the old days, the only reason for pre-ordering was to reserve a copy of a highly anticipated game for which supply was expected to fall short of demand. It guaranteed that you'd get your game on release day instead of waiting for the next shipment while all your friends played the game without you. But the industry likes pre-ordering for another reason. It makes their sales figures look better. They get to say they sold a hundred thousand copies of their game on the first day. They get to say their game went gold before it was even released.
In the context of modern PC gaming, the word "supply" is meaningless. Just about every PC game can be downloaded; there are no shipments, and copies of a game are unlimited. So why should anyone pre-order a downloadable game? I think the industry asked itself this question and came up with an answer: pre-order bonuses. Not only do they make the absurdity of pre-purchasing a downloadable game seem a bit less absurd; they also make the foolish act of pre-ordering physical copies even more tempting.
The fact that developers would spend their time making DLC exclusively for those who pre-purchase the game — content which the rest of their fans may or may not be able to access at a later date — says a lot about the industry, namely how much value they place in those pre-orders. Could it really be all about inflating those first-day sales figures? Or could it be that they desperately want us to buy their games before anyone gets to find out if those games are worth playing? Why anyone would pay $60 for a game that hasn't even been reviewed yet is beyond me, but the industry has put a lot of effort into convincing people to do it.
Meanwhile, very few demos are being released these days, and I can't help but wonder if this is because developers are afraid that fewer people will spend money if they see what their games are like first-hand. Clearly, at the very least, they don't believe that releasing a demo has any benefit anymore, since they've already figured out how to convince millions of consumers to buy their product without even waiting for the critics to have their say.
What I'm really getting at, here, is that people who pre-purchase games are irresponsible and reckless. They're also harming the industry, and the industry is helping them do it. As consumers, we communicate with developers and publishers primarily through our purchases. No doubt the people who make video games occasionally hear our opinions, if we're loud enough, but what they really care about is where our money goes. If you hate a game after you buy it, they still have your money, and your opinion isn't going to hurt them unless you convince others not to buy the game.
So stop pre-ordering games you've never played. Stop telling developers "yes, this game is great" before you know it to be true.
I'd like to tell you all to stop buying new games entirely, since paying $60 for a new game is just a waste of money if it's going to be 75% off on Steam or Amazon less than a year after its release. Of course, there's always the argument that multiplayer games are most fun during the height of their popularity (i.e., before the community moves on to better things) and that waiting too long to play them means missing out on the fun. But if an online community dies so fast that you need to buy the game on day one to get in on the action, the game is probably terrible anyway.
Maybe if we all think a little more carefully about our purchases, developers will focus more on making games enjoyable and worthwhile, instead of coming up with a thousand other ways to get our money more quickly and more often.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Alan Wake & Cinematic Games
A few days ago, I finished playing Alan Wake. I'd previously mentioned the game in an earlier post about movies based on video games; although I hadn't yet owned the game at the time, I had heard it was very story-driven, and perhaps, therefore, an ideal candidate for a film adaptation. Then again, as I pointed out before, such a movie serves no real purpose if the game already functions as an interactive movie by itself. Alan Wake is, in fact, what you might call a very cinematic game; while the term "cinematic" has often been used as a meaningless buzzword by the industry in recent years, it's fitting in this case. Not surprisingly, there has been some (wishful) expectation of an Alan Wake feature film. Though nothing has been announced, it almost seems bound to happen.
Much like the Assassin's Creed franchise (which spawned the short films Lineage, Ascendance, and Embers), Alan Wake has already branched out into the realm of live-action entertainment, and this is pretty easy to do when so many of the game's characters are modeled on the actors who play them. Bright Falls, the promotional web series that serves as a prequel to Alan Wake, somehow manages to be worth watching, and I have to say it's considerably more unsettling than the actual game.
For the moment, however, I'd like to forget about the predictable attempts to push the franchise into other media, such as movies and books, and focus instead on the game itself. Don't wait for a score at the end, though, since it's not my intention to write a proper review. I don't really see the point, since the game is already old enough that I'd surely be the millionth guy reviewing it. While it's still relevant enough to have its place in a more general discussion cinematic games (and I'll get to that shortly), it's not unfair to say that Alan Wake is yesterday's news. This is usually what happens by the time I get around to playing a game, since I'm strongly opposed to paying full price for anything.
Despite the game's age, however, I'm not as far behind the times as you might assume. While the Xbox 360 version, released in May 2010, is already more than two years old, the PC version (which I recently purchased) wasn't released until February of this year. Although a PC version was originally planned at the time of the game's announcement, the game was published by Microsoft, and selfish Microsoft wanted the game to be exclusive to its own Xbox 360 console. Apparently, this changed only after lots of nagging by Alan Wake's developers at Remedy Entertainment, who still wanted to release a PC version of the game despite the juicy exclusivity deal. It took a while, but Microsoft finally agreed, and the PC version sold well even though the console version had already been around for nearly two years.
Since the personal computer is my game platform of choice — and, more importantly, since I don't even have my own Xbox 360 — I had to wait for the port. Fortunately, once the PC version was released, it didn't take long for the price to drop low enough to get my attention. During the recent "summer sale" on Steam, I picked up Alan Wake (including DLC), along with the sequel/spin-off Alan Wake's American Nightmare, for a combined $9.99. I haven't played the latter, but the first game alone was, in this writer's opinion, worth at least one crisp Alexander Hamilton, give or take a penny.
In short, the game is pretty fun. After hearing so much about its plot-driven nature and so little about its gameplay, I feared it would be disappointing as a game, and notable only as some kind of casually interactive storytelling machine. I've heard as much about several recent titles, most notably Jurassic Park: The Game and The Walking Dead, both by the (appropriately named) developer Telltale Games. To my surprise, my fears about Alan Wake were unfounded.
The combat is seemingly very simple — dodge attacks, weaken bad guys with flashlight, shoot bad guys with gun, repeat — but there is some unexpected complexity in the subtleties of managing multiple enemies at once, and in using the environment to your advantage. More importantly, there is some real challenge involved; you'll occasionally find yourself getting cornered and chopped to pieces after the simplest mistake on the easiest difficulty setting. (The gameplay isn't actually difficult, per se, once you figure out what you're doing, but you will have to learn things the hard way if you don't learn them quickly.) Additionally, whether you think this matters or not, the combat just looks so freakin' cool. It's entertaining enough, at the very least, to stave off boredom for the duration of a single play-through.
But I fear that Alan Wake's great balance of enjoyable story and exciting gameplay is an exception to the rule, and beyond that first run through the game, things can still get tedious. (I should mention, by the way, that when I say I finished Alan Wake, I mean to say I finished it completely. I beat the game on every difficulty level, found every hidden item, and unlocked every achievement. Don't ask me why I do this with every game I play; I guess I'm a masochist.) But in Alan Wake, the lack of replay value doesn't stem from repetitive combat, or even from spoiled plot twists. Playing a second time is tedious because, in its attempt to be "cinematic," Alan Wake includes a lot of dialogue and other brief but mandatory breaks in normal gameplay.
While the cutscenes can be skipped, a lot the dialogue falls outside of these cutscenes. Characters will talk (and talk and talk) to you, as you walk around and explore your surroundings during the non-combat sequences, and you're not always able to ignore them. Occasionally you'll even be instructed to follow a character, as he or she slowly plods around, revealing bits of the plot via typically one-sided conversation — which, on your second or third play-through, you won't really care to hear. The story is fantastic, but hey, it's the same story every time.
I'm using Alan Wake as an example, but these are issues that plague a lot of story-driven games, to varying degrees — even first-person shooters like Half-Life 2 and more action-oriented games like Assassin's Creed. In each case, many players will praise the plot, the characters, the acting, the soundtrack, and the aesthetics, while the rest will see these things as harmful distractions from what really matters: the challenge and the complexity of the game.
Perhaps Alan Wake in particular has some immunity to this common criticism, since it's no secret that the game aims to be as much like a TV show as possible. Divided into episodes, each ending with a theme song and beginning with a recap of prior events ("previously on Alan Wake..."), the game might as well have been a television miniseries. Take out the episodic interludes and it still might as well have been a movie. If you don't want like your games to be cinematic and movie-like, you probably wouldn't play a game like Alan Wake on purpose. The game is rather transparent about what it is, and players know what to expect, so you don't hear a lot of complaints that gameplay has, arguably, taken a back seat to plot and style and other cinematic silliness.
Ironically, one of the major problems with Alan Wake, and other similarly plot-driven games, is actually the result of misguided attempts to retain as much "game" in these shameless interactive movies as possible. All of the major plot and character development could have been confined to skippable cutscenes, but instead, we play through a lot of it. In Alan Wake, this accounts for a lot of lost replay value. Outside of the scary monster-shooting parts (i.e., during the day), you're left with little to do but walk from point A to point B, admire the scenery, listen to characters talk at you, and position the virtual "camera" at different angles while you wait for things to happen. It might make you feel more like a director than a player, and, unfortunately, this is fun exactly once.
There's something to be said for storytelling in games, but unless you're the type of person who can watch the same movie ten times in a row and love it every time, you probably won't find yourself playing Alan Wake repeatedly. When I just want to shoot things, I always go back to Killing Floor or something else with minimal character development and maximal carnage. That way, I won't have to sit through mushy romance stuff in between fights.
It's not that I have anything against story-driven games. As I said, Alan Wake was enjoyable to say the least. However, the best story-driven games are those which tell a story in a non-intrusive way. Sometimes this means condensing the heavy plot development into cutscenes which the player can opt out of watching, but this tends to cause a sharp separation between the game we play and the story we hear. An often better solution, if the developer wants the game and the story to meet seamlessly, is to have dialogue occur during normal gameplay without stopping the gameplay, or to show the player what's going on through subtle cues without having the protagonist's sidekick stop and explain everything. It's a classic case of "show versus tell" (or perhaps "let-the-player-find-it versus shove-it-in-the-player's-face").
The player shouldn't be forced to sit and listen to dialogue, or watch a ten-minute cutscene, or follow a character around at a snail's pace for the sake of plot development, because if a game is riddled with these kinds of tedious, non-gameplay moments, the best gameplay in the world can hardly make multiple replays worthwhile. I'm sure, however, that Alan Wake's developers were aware of this, for at least they gave us the ability to skip past cutscenes and rudely walk away from some of the less important conversations.
It would even seem that someone on the development team isn't too fond of excessive dialogue in games... that is, unless this in-game encounter between Alan Wake and a more-than-slightly crazy video game designer named Emerson is just an attempt at self-deprecating humor:
Emerson makes a good point, even if he's too insane to know it.
But characters (and toasters) who talk, talk, talk, all the time, aren't the only problem with games that attempt to provide some kind of cinematic experience. Bad camera angles, sluggish controls, and frequent breaks in gameplay are all symptoms, and Alan Wake suffers a little from all of them in its attempt to look cool. As far as the controls are concerned, I am grateful that the developers patched the game with a "Direct Aiming" option to make the game more suitable for mouse and keyboard controls, but there's still some delay when jumping and performing other actions, and I'm fairly sure it's not just a performance issue on my computer. It's just a consequence of the game's smooth character animations.
More natural character movements often necessitate less natural gameplay, and while Alan Wake was never meant to be a platformer, this does make the game somewhat frustrating. Once the novelty of playing such a realistic-looking game wears off, you'll wish Mr. Wake could just turn on a dime and jump at a moment's notice like your other video game heroes.
Eventually, you will get used to the controls, and even the awkward camera angle, but those frequent breaks in gameplay — which usually involve the camera moving to focus on some far-off object or event, often to show the player where to go — still make replaying familiar sections a snore-fest for impatient players such as myself.
There will come a time when video game developers will need to realize that video games are not movies. I hope they also realize that trying to imitate movies is not the only way to tell a good story. For decades, stories have been an integral part of video games. We've come to expect some kind of story, especially in horror/mystery games like Alan Wake. But the video game industry has long been unable to drop the habit of turning to movies as the inspiration for their storytelling techniques, and as developers strive to make games even more "cinematic" (and otherwise more visually impressive) with every passing year, they seem to be losing sight of what actually makes them fun.
Much like the Assassin's Creed franchise (which spawned the short films Lineage, Ascendance, and Embers), Alan Wake has already branched out into the realm of live-action entertainment, and this is pretty easy to do when so many of the game's characters are modeled on the actors who play them. Bright Falls, the promotional web series that serves as a prequel to Alan Wake, somehow manages to be worth watching, and I have to say it's considerably more unsettling than the actual game.
For the moment, however, I'd like to forget about the predictable attempts to push the franchise into other media, such as movies and books, and focus instead on the game itself. Don't wait for a score at the end, though, since it's not my intention to write a proper review. I don't really see the point, since the game is already old enough that I'd surely be the millionth guy reviewing it. While it's still relevant enough to have its place in a more general discussion cinematic games (and I'll get to that shortly), it's not unfair to say that Alan Wake is yesterday's news. This is usually what happens by the time I get around to playing a game, since I'm strongly opposed to paying full price for anything.
Despite the game's age, however, I'm not as far behind the times as you might assume. While the Xbox 360 version, released in May 2010, is already more than two years old, the PC version (which I recently purchased) wasn't released until February of this year. Although a PC version was originally planned at the time of the game's announcement, the game was published by Microsoft, and selfish Microsoft wanted the game to be exclusive to its own Xbox 360 console. Apparently, this changed only after lots of nagging by Alan Wake's developers at Remedy Entertainment, who still wanted to release a PC version of the game despite the juicy exclusivity deal. It took a while, but Microsoft finally agreed, and the PC version sold well even though the console version had already been around for nearly two years.
In short, the game is pretty fun. After hearing so much about its plot-driven nature and so little about its gameplay, I feared it would be disappointing as a game, and notable only as some kind of casually interactive storytelling machine. I've heard as much about several recent titles, most notably Jurassic Park: The Game and The Walking Dead, both by the (appropriately named) developer Telltale Games. To my surprise, my fears about Alan Wake were unfounded.
The combat is seemingly very simple — dodge attacks, weaken bad guys with flashlight, shoot bad guys with gun, repeat — but there is some unexpected complexity in the subtleties of managing multiple enemies at once, and in using the environment to your advantage. More importantly, there is some real challenge involved; you'll occasionally find yourself getting cornered and chopped to pieces after the simplest mistake on the easiest difficulty setting. (The gameplay isn't actually difficult, per se, once you figure out what you're doing, but you will have to learn things the hard way if you don't learn them quickly.) Additionally, whether you think this matters or not, the combat just looks so freakin' cool. It's entertaining enough, at the very least, to stave off boredom for the duration of a single play-through.
But I fear that Alan Wake's great balance of enjoyable story and exciting gameplay is an exception to the rule, and beyond that first run through the game, things can still get tedious. (I should mention, by the way, that when I say I finished Alan Wake, I mean to say I finished it completely. I beat the game on every difficulty level, found every hidden item, and unlocked every achievement. Don't ask me why I do this with every game I play; I guess I'm a masochist.) But in Alan Wake, the lack of replay value doesn't stem from repetitive combat, or even from spoiled plot twists. Playing a second time is tedious because, in its attempt to be "cinematic," Alan Wake includes a lot of dialogue and other brief but mandatory breaks in normal gameplay.
While the cutscenes can be skipped, a lot the dialogue falls outside of these cutscenes. Characters will talk (and talk and talk) to you, as you walk around and explore your surroundings during the non-combat sequences, and you're not always able to ignore them. Occasionally you'll even be instructed to follow a character, as he or she slowly plods around, revealing bits of the plot via typically one-sided conversation — which, on your second or third play-through, you won't really care to hear. The story is fantastic, but hey, it's the same story every time.
I'm using Alan Wake as an example, but these are issues that plague a lot of story-driven games, to varying degrees — even first-person shooters like Half-Life 2 and more action-oriented games like Assassin's Creed. In each case, many players will praise the plot, the characters, the acting, the soundtrack, and the aesthetics, while the rest will see these things as harmful distractions from what really matters: the challenge and the complexity of the game.
Perhaps Alan Wake in particular has some immunity to this common criticism, since it's no secret that the game aims to be as much like a TV show as possible. Divided into episodes, each ending with a theme song and beginning with a recap of prior events ("previously on Alan Wake..."), the game might as well have been a television miniseries. Take out the episodic interludes and it still might as well have been a movie. If you don't want like your games to be cinematic and movie-like, you probably wouldn't play a game like Alan Wake on purpose. The game is rather transparent about what it is, and players know what to expect, so you don't hear a lot of complaints that gameplay has, arguably, taken a back seat to plot and style and other cinematic silliness.
Ironically, one of the major problems with Alan Wake, and other similarly plot-driven games, is actually the result of misguided attempts to retain as much "game" in these shameless interactive movies as possible. All of the major plot and character development could have been confined to skippable cutscenes, but instead, we play through a lot of it. In Alan Wake, this accounts for a lot of lost replay value. Outside of the scary monster-shooting parts (i.e., during the day), you're left with little to do but walk from point A to point B, admire the scenery, listen to characters talk at you, and position the virtual "camera" at different angles while you wait for things to happen. It might make you feel more like a director than a player, and, unfortunately, this is fun exactly once.
There's something to be said for storytelling in games, but unless you're the type of person who can watch the same movie ten times in a row and love it every time, you probably won't find yourself playing Alan Wake repeatedly. When I just want to shoot things, I always go back to Killing Floor or something else with minimal character development and maximal carnage. That way, I won't have to sit through mushy romance stuff in between fights.
It's not that I have anything against story-driven games. As I said, Alan Wake was enjoyable to say the least. However, the best story-driven games are those which tell a story in a non-intrusive way. Sometimes this means condensing the heavy plot development into cutscenes which the player can opt out of watching, but this tends to cause a sharp separation between the game we play and the story we hear. An often better solution, if the developer wants the game and the story to meet seamlessly, is to have dialogue occur during normal gameplay without stopping the gameplay, or to show the player what's going on through subtle cues without having the protagonist's sidekick stop and explain everything. It's a classic case of "show versus tell" (or perhaps "let-the-player-find-it versus shove-it-in-the-player's-face").
The player shouldn't be forced to sit and listen to dialogue, or watch a ten-minute cutscene, or follow a character around at a snail's pace for the sake of plot development, because if a game is riddled with these kinds of tedious, non-gameplay moments, the best gameplay in the world can hardly make multiple replays worthwhile. I'm sure, however, that Alan Wake's developers were aware of this, for at least they gave us the ability to skip past cutscenes and rudely walk away from some of the less important conversations.
It would even seem that someone on the development team isn't too fond of excessive dialogue in games... that is, unless this in-game encounter between Alan Wake and a more-than-slightly crazy video game designer named Emerson is just an attempt at self-deprecating humor:
Emerson makes a good point, even if he's too insane to know it.
But characters (and toasters) who talk, talk, talk, all the time, aren't the only problem with games that attempt to provide some kind of cinematic experience. Bad camera angles, sluggish controls, and frequent breaks in gameplay are all symptoms, and Alan Wake suffers a little from all of them in its attempt to look cool. As far as the controls are concerned, I am grateful that the developers patched the game with a "Direct Aiming" option to make the game more suitable for mouse and keyboard controls, but there's still some delay when jumping and performing other actions, and I'm fairly sure it's not just a performance issue on my computer. It's just a consequence of the game's smooth character animations.
More natural character movements often necessitate less natural gameplay, and while Alan Wake was never meant to be a platformer, this does make the game somewhat frustrating. Once the novelty of playing such a realistic-looking game wears off, you'll wish Mr. Wake could just turn on a dime and jump at a moment's notice like your other video game heroes.
Eventually, you will get used to the controls, and even the awkward camera angle, but those frequent breaks in gameplay — which usually involve the camera moving to focus on some far-off object or event, often to show the player where to go — still make replaying familiar sections a snore-fest for impatient players such as myself.
There will come a time when video game developers will need to realize that video games are not movies. I hope they also realize that trying to imitate movies is not the only way to tell a good story. For decades, stories have been an integral part of video games. We've come to expect some kind of story, especially in horror/mystery games like Alan Wake. But the video game industry has long been unable to drop the habit of turning to movies as the inspiration for their storytelling techniques, and as developers strive to make games even more "cinematic" (and otherwise more visually impressive) with every passing year, they seem to be losing sight of what actually makes them fun.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Why We're Wasting Our Lives
As a twenty-something, unemployed, grad-school-dropout "gamer" (a word of which I heavily disapprove but which everyone insists on using), I'd probably make a pretty good example of why video games are bad for society. For the moment, we're going to disregard the fact that most of my wasted time is spent on other distractions, like browsing the web and watching movies with my girlfriend, and that I spend far less time playing video games than I potentially could, because my failure as of yet to find a reasonably decent job has gotten me so depressed this week that I can't enjoy them as much as I used to. For the sake of argument, I'll make things simple and tell you that I just spent all day playing Killing Floor on my computer, because playing video games for hours on end is something I've been known to do. Now, knowing only that I'm unemployed and spend a portion of my (resultantly excessive) free time playing games, how do you feel about me?
If you're more than 40 years old, you almost certainly feel that I'm a lazy punk who should stop being a parasite and get a job so that I can contribute to society instead of wasting my life shooting zombies. In my defense, it wasn't my generation that ruined the economy while I was in college, and while I could be sending job applications to every McDonald's restaurant within a 50-mile radius (which doesn't even guarantee me a position), I can afford to hold out a bit longer for a job that won't make me suicidal; my fingers are crossed.
But I think there's a valid argument on the other end, too. It's not that I should "get a job" — calm down, I'm looking for one — but that I've spent too much of my life shooting zombies instead of building lasting relationships with living people... or something. The same goes for anyone who self-identifies as a "gamer" or any synonym thereof. Are we all wasting our lives on video games? Unless your job is directly related to developing, playing, selling, or writing about them, playing them really accomplishes nothing... I mean, aside from fun. And fun is worth something, right?
Television is commonly cited in response as being just as much of a time waster, if not more, but I'm not going to use this as any kind of counter-argument, because everyone already knows it. What's interesting is that excessive TV use isn't seen as an epidemic. It's hardly even seen as a waste of time. We just accept it, most likely because so many of us are guilty of it that it seems normal, whereas newer distractions like video games and the internet have yet to earn our collective trust. (A few times in my childhood, I was told that cartoons would rot my brain, but that was a long time ago, and I hadn't done my homework.) Why does television get a free pass? Few of the people who talk bad about video games would actually turn around and defend television in the same breath, but television is rarely the primary target of such attacks. If you have something against electronic/video/digital entertainment or the act of sitting on a couch, you turn straight to video games, because that's what all the kids are doing.
Obviously, television is a very mainstream distraction. Our parents watch TV, our grandparents watch TV... it's probably been about 80 years since anyone was considered "too old" for TV, if such a time ever existed. To be without a TV in the United States is almost taboo, and — let's be honest — the majority of home-owning people who don't have TVs are just weird. They're the kind of people who don't let their children eat candy on Halloween. Screw those people. There are also the hypocrites who claim they don't watch TV even though they're downloading entire seasons of the newest TV shows on their laptops, as if that doesn't count. Screw those people too. Almost everyone watches TV at least occasionally, so it's completely understandable that avid fans of popular television shows are almost never seen as unhealthy degenerates by society. When I watched three episodes of Breaking Bad in a row at my mother's house, she didn't tell me to get a life; she went on Netflix and started watching it from the beginning to catch up with me. If I had been playing Killing Floor that whole time, she probably would have told me go to outside.
Of course, people around my mother's age are playing video games these days, as well. They're not quite as accepted as TV, but they're getting there. What bugs me is the fact that negative attitudes about so-called "gamers" persist despite the growing acceptance of video games themselves. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but there's still some undying belief in our culture that the typical video game player is an introverted outcast who lives in his mother's basement and never showers. This stereotype lives on, even as video games themselves become increasingly mainstream (and even, ironically, as the casual video game players who know nothing beyond Angry Birds try to hijack the word "gamer" in some attempt to be more "nerdy" because they want to be just like the hipsters who already hijacked the word "nerd" so they could feel different without sacrificing their popularity; I hate you guys).
So it's not really video games that are getting all the bad press, aside from the occasional accusation that they're the sole cause of school shootings. It's the people who play them — more specifically, those who play them often — who are essentially ridiculed and demonized. People like me, I suppose. But I can't pretend that I don't see an explanation for the fact that the world still loves to make fun of us. Video games as an entertainment medium are okay because they're only seen, erroneously, as casual time-wasters (for the ten-minute bus ride) and toys for children (despite the fact that the majority of popular games are allegedly too violent for children). No one cares if children waste their time on such trivial things. Any adult who plays video games for more than ten minutes at a time, on the other hand, is going against society's misinformed view of what video games are — he's playing with children's toys — so he must be a friendless, sexless, jobless man-child who never grew up. Have I mentioned the whole thing about mom's basement?
"You think you can get to level ten?"
"Detective... I'm thirty years old, I live with my mother, and I have a Captain Kirk costume in my closet."
After all, only children and losers would spend time on something that isn't a job, a car, or a vagina.
In all seriousness, what you see in the video above is completely bogus and stupidly offensive, but it's the norm. It's the typical television portrayal of a person who consumes interactive media. The average person assumes that you must be good at video games if you're a hopeless loser, and vice versa. (Okay, so the guy in the video above actually wasn't very good at the game — he's bested by a girl, which is supposed to be surprising or something — but what's happening there is still harmful enough.) Most people, even many of those who play video games casually, tend to have a low opinion of those who make a real hobby out of it. This is why it's so easy to say that video games, more than any other trivial and meaningless form of entertainment, are trivial and meaningless.
But I'm not going to war over this. I'm writing this because I think it's an interesting topic, but I don't really feel the need to justify what I do or why I do it. I shouldn't need to. Furthermore, it's not really my intention to sit here defending video games as if I'm being paid to do so, even though I might have done this inadvertently. Playing video games is just a hobby, for me, not a way of life.
Maybe we should really be talking about hobbies of all kinds. Any sufficiently enjoyable hobby is almost always a terrible time sink, even the wholesome ones like fishing and reading books. If video games had never been invented, I'm sure I would be using some other kind of entertainment to distract myself from the economy, my student loans, and the fact that every good job I can find requires an engineering or business degree that I don't have. (They were lying when they said I could be anything I wanted. I've decided that I'm forcing my future children into whatever career is most economically viable at the time, regardless of how they feel about it. You want to be an artist? You're moving out early. Happy fifth birthday, have a suitcase.)
For me (and, presumably, for many others), the act of playing video games is, in part, escapism. This alone makes video games a waste of time, in a way, but it doesn't make them unique. What makes video games unique, if they are unique, is that they're so damn good at entertaining us, which is why it's easy to get "addicted" (and, yes, that might be a legitimate problem for many). Video games are not, in fact, some esoteric "nerd thing" that only "nerds" can enjoy. Of course, everyone probably recognizes this, by now, except for the older generations who have gotten to the point of hating all the new things that they don't understand, like cell phones and the internet. But they'll be dead soon anyway, so I don't have to it to them.
Games, in general, are timeless. Games are something that humans have been using for millennia to escape from the horrors of everyday life. I'd even argue that playing games is a part of being human, and I'd like to see you try to prove me wrong. Any game, by the strictest standards, is a complete and utter waste of precious time, but that's exactly why we play them. A game whose rules are enforced by a computer really isn't so different.
If you're more than 40 years old, you almost certainly feel that I'm a lazy punk who should stop being a parasite and get a job so that I can contribute to society instead of wasting my life shooting zombies. In my defense, it wasn't my generation that ruined the economy while I was in college, and while I could be sending job applications to every McDonald's restaurant within a 50-mile radius (which doesn't even guarantee me a position), I can afford to hold out a bit longer for a job that won't make me suicidal; my fingers are crossed.
But I think there's a valid argument on the other end, too. It's not that I should "get a job" — calm down, I'm looking for one — but that I've spent too much of my life shooting zombies instead of building lasting relationships with living people... or something. The same goes for anyone who self-identifies as a "gamer" or any synonym thereof. Are we all wasting our lives on video games? Unless your job is directly related to developing, playing, selling, or writing about them, playing them really accomplishes nothing... I mean, aside from fun. And fun is worth something, right?
Television is commonly cited in response as being just as much of a time waster, if not more, but I'm not going to use this as any kind of counter-argument, because everyone already knows it. What's interesting is that excessive TV use isn't seen as an epidemic. It's hardly even seen as a waste of time. We just accept it, most likely because so many of us are guilty of it that it seems normal, whereas newer distractions like video games and the internet have yet to earn our collective trust. (A few times in my childhood, I was told that cartoons would rot my brain, but that was a long time ago, and I hadn't done my homework.) Why does television get a free pass? Few of the people who talk bad about video games would actually turn around and defend television in the same breath, but television is rarely the primary target of such attacks. If you have something against electronic/video/digital entertainment or the act of sitting on a couch, you turn straight to video games, because that's what all the kids are doing.
Obviously, television is a very mainstream distraction. Our parents watch TV, our grandparents watch TV... it's probably been about 80 years since anyone was considered "too old" for TV, if such a time ever existed. To be without a TV in the United States is almost taboo, and — let's be honest — the majority of home-owning people who don't have TVs are just weird. They're the kind of people who don't let their children eat candy on Halloween. Screw those people. There are also the hypocrites who claim they don't watch TV even though they're downloading entire seasons of the newest TV shows on their laptops, as if that doesn't count. Screw those people too. Almost everyone watches TV at least occasionally, so it's completely understandable that avid fans of popular television shows are almost never seen as unhealthy degenerates by society. When I watched three episodes of Breaking Bad in a row at my mother's house, she didn't tell me to get a life; she went on Netflix and started watching it from the beginning to catch up with me. If I had been playing Killing Floor that whole time, she probably would have told me go to outside.
Of course, people around my mother's age are playing video games these days, as well. They're not quite as accepted as TV, but they're getting there. What bugs me is the fact that negative attitudes about so-called "gamers" persist despite the growing acceptance of video games themselves. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, but there's still some undying belief in our culture that the typical video game player is an introverted outcast who lives in his mother's basement and never showers. This stereotype lives on, even as video games themselves become increasingly mainstream (and even, ironically, as the casual video game players who know nothing beyond Angry Birds try to hijack the word "gamer" in some attempt to be more "nerdy" because they want to be just like the hipsters who already hijacked the word "nerd" so they could feel different without sacrificing their popularity; I hate you guys).
So it's not really video games that are getting all the bad press, aside from the occasional accusation that they're the sole cause of school shootings. It's the people who play them — more specifically, those who play them often — who are essentially ridiculed and demonized. People like me, I suppose. But I can't pretend that I don't see an explanation for the fact that the world still loves to make fun of us. Video games as an entertainment medium are okay because they're only seen, erroneously, as casual time-wasters (for the ten-minute bus ride) and toys for children (despite the fact that the majority of popular games are allegedly too violent for children). No one cares if children waste their time on such trivial things. Any adult who plays video games for more than ten minutes at a time, on the other hand, is going against society's misinformed view of what video games are — he's playing with children's toys — so he must be a friendless, sexless, jobless man-child who never grew up. Have I mentioned the whole thing about mom's basement?
"You think you can get to level ten?"
"Detective... I'm thirty years old, I live with my mother, and I have a Captain Kirk costume in my closet."
After all, only children and losers would spend time on something that isn't a job, a car, or a vagina.
In all seriousness, what you see in the video above is completely bogus and stupidly offensive, but it's the norm. It's the typical television portrayal of a person who consumes interactive media. The average person assumes that you must be good at video games if you're a hopeless loser, and vice versa. (Okay, so the guy in the video above actually wasn't very good at the game — he's bested by a girl, which is supposed to be surprising or something — but what's happening there is still harmful enough.) Most people, even many of those who play video games casually, tend to have a low opinion of those who make a real hobby out of it. This is why it's so easy to say that video games, more than any other trivial and meaningless form of entertainment, are trivial and meaningless.
But I'm not going to war over this. I'm writing this because I think it's an interesting topic, but I don't really feel the need to justify what I do or why I do it. I shouldn't need to. Furthermore, it's not really my intention to sit here defending video games as if I'm being paid to do so, even though I might have done this inadvertently. Playing video games is just a hobby, for me, not a way of life.
Maybe we should really be talking about hobbies of all kinds. Any sufficiently enjoyable hobby is almost always a terrible time sink, even the wholesome ones like fishing and reading books. If video games had never been invented, I'm sure I would be using some other kind of entertainment to distract myself from the economy, my student loans, and the fact that every good job I can find requires an engineering or business degree that I don't have. (They were lying when they said I could be anything I wanted. I've decided that I'm forcing my future children into whatever career is most economically viable at the time, regardless of how they feel about it. You want to be an artist? You're moving out early. Happy fifth birthday, have a suitcase.)
For me (and, presumably, for many others), the act of playing video games is, in part, escapism. This alone makes video games a waste of time, in a way, but it doesn't make them unique. What makes video games unique, if they are unique, is that they're so damn good at entertaining us, which is why it's easy to get "addicted" (and, yes, that might be a legitimate problem for many). Video games are not, in fact, some esoteric "nerd thing" that only "nerds" can enjoy. Of course, everyone probably recognizes this, by now, except for the older generations who have gotten to the point of hating all the new things that they don't understand, like cell phones and the internet. But they'll be dead soon anyway, so I don't have to it to them.
Games, in general, are timeless. Games are something that humans have been using for millennia to escape from the horrors of everyday life. I'd even argue that playing games is a part of being human, and I'd like to see you try to prove me wrong. Any game, by the strictest standards, is a complete and utter waste of precious time, but that's exactly why we play them. A game whose rules are enforced by a computer really isn't so different.
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