Insult Swordfighting

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-11-06T13:00:00.004-05:00

Week one of National Novel Writing Month seems to be going well, at least where word count is concerned. Quality, not so much. That's the point! But with Dragon Age on the docket, week two promises to be much more challenging. Fortunately, there's always time for links.

-Paste posted their list of the 20 best games of the decade, to which I contributed both a ballot and a blurb for the #5 pick. For the most part it's an unsurprising list, though Guitar Hero III at number 10 strikes me as a disgrace. Otherwise there are a bunch of games I loved (Portal, BioShock, Shadow of the Colossus), and a bunch of games I didn't love but can't quibble with their inclusion (Halo, Grand Theft Auto, even Metal Gear Solid 2). People love to bitch about lists, but not as much as publishers love publishing them.

-I didn't see the video before it got pulled, but apparently Infinity Ward released a promotional video for Modern Warfare 2 in which Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels warned players against being grenade-throwing pussies, in a mock PSA brought to you by "Fight Against Grenade Spam." Har, har. There have been several decent reactions to the promo from around the web, but I think Denis's gets the closest to the root of the problem.

People seem to think that if stuff like this isn't "intended" to be hateful, then it isn't. There is some strange logic by which people convince themselves that if they call somebody a fag meaning that the person is an asshole, and not a homosexual, that somehow drains the word of bigotry. But of course that's silly. That's exactly where its power comes from. We have to be responsible about things like this, in the same way that we wouldn't walk around carelessly brandishing a weapon.

(Regarding the somewhat bizarre objection I've seen in a few comments threads that people should also be complaining about the violence in the game: That's irrelevant to the subject. Obviously everybody is welcome to criticize violence as entertainment, if they so choose, but it's really not the same thing. Besides which, conflict through violence is one of the oldest forms of drama, and I, for one, am not comfortable criticizing a game's portrayal of violence until I have the full context. I'd be happy to know of any extenuating context for a commercial that employs anti-gay slurs to sell a game. By the same token, I'd have no problem playing a game with homophobic characters in it, but I'd have a problem playing a game with homophobic depictions of characters. That's the difference.)

-The Boston Globe ran an article about computer and game addiction earlier this week, and while it's obviously an interesting subject, it's kind of weird to distinguish this from any other addiction. If you do anything to excess, it's a problem, whether that means drinking yourself into oblivion or being the crazy cat lady I saw on an episode of A&E's Hoarders. Still, it is of course helpful to be aware of the signs of compulsive behavior.

-It's a little late for Halloween, but I wanted to spotlight the Phoenix's new geek-lifestyle blog, Laser Orgy. Last week they ran a list of the 10 games that shouldn't have scared them, but did. I tried to suggest some things, but it was a lot harder to do than you might have expected.

-You know, I think I need to rep some new and different gaming blogs in my reader. Anybody have any suggestions?

No rest for the wicked awesome

2009-11-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

My review of Borderlands is up now at thephoenix.com. As you've ascertained by now, I really liked this game. I can't seem to stop playing it. I have vague memories of grumbling my way through the first few hours, making mental notes of everything to complain about. Not that there's nothing to complain about -- is that ever the case? But this game gives so much and asks so little in return that it'd feel tacky to run down a list of problems.

Actually, here's one major complaint: I haven't reached level 50 yet. Damn you, Gearbox!

Gamestop.com User-Submitted Previews: Modern Warfare 2

2009-11-03T09:00:00.003-05:00

Above: This week's best game ever made.

With only one week to go until the release of Modern Warfare 2, many charming folks are clamoring to join the fight against grenade spam. They've gathered on the MW2 "user buzz page" on Gamestop.com, where comments generally fall into four categories.

1) Sales Potential

SPARTAN B15:

Anyone who doesn't reserve is going to have to wait a couple weeks to buy it because this game is going to be sold out! There are going to be people fighting over this game.

christophermaster1:

Call of Duty MW 2 will be a big hit mostly half of u.s will potentalliy buy it and i also will look forward to it

king balla:

over half the world is probably gona buy this.

2) Quality Assurance

pizzaboycool:

This game is gonna be 10 times better than COD 4 and 100 times better than COD 5.

EPiCMATT:

Theres no way this game will not be GAME OF THE YEAR!!!

P.J The beast:

COD: MW2 is the best firts person shooter of the century.

Renegade0528:

This is going to be the best shooter 2 date.

Kilr Stud:

There is a very good chance that this will be the best game ever.

Forster:

Personally, I think this is going to be the greatest game ever created for any game console.

AIRO:

This will be the best game ever created.

RE fan!:

this an 11 outa 10 game without a doubt

3) Sickness Quotient

UberBerger:

This game however looks sicker than anything I have ever seen.

AIRO:

The graphics look sick and the gameplay looks sick. Everything about this game will be sick

king balla:

man this game looks siiiiiiiiiik.

4) Cries for Help

Kristoph44:

you can say i'm preety much pumped for it and you can be sure i'm picking it up at midnight and playing it for about 3 months straight without sleep even tho it is impossible i'll still try to attempt it!!!

A Customer:

im not going to get it right away not sure why i think im going to get borderlands first. o and to answer friar's question operation flashpoint: dragon rising blew cod 4 out of the water o and next time dont sound like a 3rd grader when righting your preview thing.

Dawn of war fan:

This game is going to be infested with little kids. Oh god i seriously mean it. I wont be able to enjoy this game because of all the little children bantering about nothing. Talking everyone ears off.

OzCueball:

I'm just afraid that it will be too over hyped and not deliver on the expectations that the hype and ads are making it out to be. I'm praying i'm wrong and it blows everyones minds and is the best selling game of all time, but if i were Infinity Ward i'd be shaking in my shoes right now in fear. Who ever reads this pray with me that i'm wrong. Just pray.

Your level best

2009-11-02T09:00:00.004-05:00

Above: Friends forever / Always we'll be friends

It's amazing what a powerful motivator leveling up can be. In any game with roleplaying elements, the promise of dinging the next level is what keeps you grinding through repetitive and, let's be honest, often un-fun gameplay. You know your hard work now will pay off later. (Sometimes much later.)

Borderlands does a better job than most of keeping you focused on this goal. Your XP progress bar is always shown on your HUD, right in the center of the screen. When it's nearly full, you'll do almost anything to push it over the top. When it's nearly empty, it's so shameful that you need to redeem yourself by taking on as many missions as you can.

But Borderlands also discourages grinding in the traditional sense. The difference in XP awarded is enormous, depending on whether you're killing garden-variety enemies or completing missions. My soldier character is at level 34 now, and I'd guess that I've only leveled up in the ordinary run of play once or twice. Every other time, it's either been upon killing a boss, or turning in missions.

The way the missions are stacked is pretty clever. They're not clever quests on their own -- almost all of the "go here and get this" variety. You can accept several missions at a time, though, and you don't earn your XP at the moment you've completed the objective. You have to turn in, which usually means returning to the place where you picked up the assignment. This is often very far away. As a result, it's easier to complete multiple mission objectives at the same time, and have several quests in your mission log marked as ready to turn in. Then you'll turn them all in at once for 40 or 50 thousand XP.

Missions are categorized by difficulty, according to level. If you're at level 25, a level 25 mission will be designated as "normal" difficulty, while a level 27 mission will be "difficult" and level 23 will be "trivial." These are often correct, and it's astounding what a difference a level makes. When the League of Extraordinarily Gentle Men first broached Old Haven, one of the best designed "dungeons" in Borderlands, we were ripped to shreds. Our first encounter ended with several deaths, a couple of revivals, and a hasty retreat. Two levels later, a couple of us went back in, and although it was still challenging, we accomplished our objective without ever risking failure.

Gearbox dangles one more carrot in front of you during the course of play. It's not uncommon to find weapons that can't be used until you've reached a certain level. Your inventory is pretty small in this game, even as it can be expanded over the course of play, yet it's impossible not to allocate one crucial spot to the bitchin-est sniper rifle you've ever seen, which sets dudes on fire and never needs to be reloaded, knowing that it will all have been worth it in eight hours or so when you've finally leveled up enough to use it.

With each level boost, your character grows appreciably stronger. Your bullets do more damage. Enemy attacks hurt less. The action points that you assign become exponentially more useful. My ammo-regenerating turret still isn't very useful for supplying my teammates, but no longer is it a wimpy sidekick. It fires in five-shot bursts, with my choice of elemental power. And with a much reduced cooldown, I can toss it onto the field numerous times per battle. I finally agree with Roland when he exclaims, "I love this damn thing!"

A few times before, I've mentioned that games are often more like work than they are like play, and Borderlands is a great example. Much of it is about putting your head down and taking care of business. Gearbox did such a good job of spacing out the rewards, and making sure that one is always visible around the corner, that it rarely falls into the trap of feeling like a simple grind. Sure, it's like work, but payday is every day.

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-10-30T13:00:00.003-04:00

Going to be an interesting weekend. I made the mistake of signing up for National Novel Writing Month, which starts on Sunday. There goes my November.

-Brinstar wrote an interesting and all-encompassing look at Uncharted 2. Her comments on the game's portrayal of its female characters are right on. Despite the hyper-sexualized appearance of Chloe, both of the female leads are given actual personalities and motivations. Even better, they act like adults. They're not catty broads who fight over our bashful hero. Brinstar says that "[creative director] Amy Hennig stood her ground on gender issues like this many times over," which certainly wouldn't surprise me, and goes to show how much your game can be improved when you have a diversity of voices onboard.

-Torchlight seems to be dominating a lot of people's time right now. Elysium at Gamers with Jobs writes about the joy of being surprised by a game, which is something I couldn't agree with more. There's some fun in anticipating things, yes, but it always seems like you're setting yourself up for disappointment if you get too excited. Much better to be gobsmacked by something out of nowhere. (Re: Torchlight, it sounds interesting, but I can only accommodate one soul-consuming dungeon crawler at a time, and there's this game called Borderlands.)

-Shawn Elliott (him again?) predicts the upcoming controversy about Modern Warfare 2. I've not yet watched the opening sequence of the game, and in fact wish I didn't know anything about it before playing the game (thanks, Twitter!). Still, I respected the way that Call of Duty 4 coldly regarded the devastating impact of modern military technology, and I would expect its sequel to similarly pull no punches. The notion of killing civilians is, of course, shocking. I suspect that is the intent. Without context, it's impossible for us to say yet whether this serves a greater philosophical point, or, at least, a compelling narrative.

-Congratulations to Ben and the gang at Critical Distance, whose "Week in Game Criticism" roundups are now being syndicated at GSW and Gamasutra. Here's hoping this means a whole new audience for all the great writers Ben spotlights each week. And that he starts including Insult Swordfighting more often!

Aquaman, you go... talk to some fish!

2009-10-29T09:00:00.005-04:00

Above: Borderlands characters arranged in ascending order of usefulness to the team (l-r).

Every heroic alliance has a weak link. The Justice League has Aquaman. The Avengers had Ant-Man. And the League of Extraordinarily Gentle Men has me.

Oh, you don't know that last one? That's the name we've given to our trio of Borderlands players. Except for a short single-player session the first day I had the game, I've played almost exclusively with the LXGM. Without going too deeply into detail, since I've still got a review to write, it's clear that Borderlands is an entirely different beast when you're playing with others. By yourself, it's a grind whose occasional rewards are overshadowed by lots of problems. With a group, not only do those problems go away, but character building starts to matter much more. Your skills affect those of your teammates, both in combat and character development. You may equip a class mod that boosts everybody's EXP by 20%, or grants everybody ammo regeneration.

Your skill trees also become more important. Each class can develop along three different tracks, so you can mix and match a few abilities, or specialize. Because the LXGM had two Soldiers, me and Bob, we decided to spend our action points developing unique tracks. Bob has been upgrading his medic skills; I've been going the support route. We're around level 30 now, and the stuff Bob can do is impressive. His turret casts a healing aura that quickly regenerates teammates' health. It has a chance to instantly revive downed players.

The best thing Bob can do is shoot healing bullets. He simply blasts away at teammates, and their health increases with the damage his gun deals. The ability doesn't require specific weapons or rare ammo. He can damage enemies and heal teammates in the same burst. It's helpful during firefights and after -- when the medic is playing, you don't even need to carry around medkits. This might be the most useful skill I've ever seen in a game of this type.

As the support gunner, I've felt a little bit less indispensable. My turret regenerates team ammo instead of health. Here's a little secret about Borderlands: you will never run out of ammo. Enemies drop it in spades. It's the most common thing you find in chests. It's cheap to buy at stores. And some teammates don't even need it.

The third member of the LXGM, Greg, has been doing yeoman's work as two different characters. At first he mostly used the Berserker, whose special skill is not using guns. His fists can pummel enemies into goo. It wasn't uncommon to follow Greg into an area and see his character standing there, screaming, on top of a pile of crushed corpses. All that without firing a single shot. Then he started playing as a Hunter, who probably would need ammo if he hadn't found a legendary revolver that drops most enemies in one shot, and, oh yeah, regenerates bullets.

Borderlands does let you respec, for a fee. You can buy back all your action points and redistribute them as you see fit. We certainly don't need a second medic. I could pump up my guy's firearm abilities on the infantry track, if I wanted to. But I think I'll keep him the way he is. There's dignity in making your choices and sticking to them. My Roland is a support gunner. He was born to provide ammo to people who don't need it. Damn it, that's what he's going to do.

Besides, every team of great heroes needs its useless character. That's one thing I know I can excel at.

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-10-23T13:00:00.003-04:00

Busy weekend ahead, highlighted by a (hopefully) long Borderlands session. The jump in fun factor between single-player and co-op is enormous with this game. Single player has its rewards, but they're tough to appreciate amid some problems. In multiplayer, the joy rains down from the heavens, and there is no shelter. Excellent game. And not the kind of thing I'd have expected to like so much.

To the links!

-Clink Hocking's Click Nothing Tour hits the road this Sunday. He'll be in my neck of the woods on Wednesday at MIT. Sadly, it's at 4 in the afternoon, which makes it difficult if not impossible for me to attend. I will try.

-Brandon Sheffield intervewed Suda 51 for Gamasutra. Suda is a fascinating guy whose games are always singular creations, and he has some interesting things to say here. Still, I don't know if it's the language barrier or what, but he's also a little curt. You get exchanges like this.

Honestly, I think that that's kind of what art is about, when you just create something and other people put their own meaning into it. I can see that as a critique of voyeurism, while to you, it's just something you made.

GS: Art? Mmm...

Thanks for showing up, Suda.

-Via Game|Life, tickets are now available for PAX East! It'll be held in Boston from March 26-28, 2010. I've never been to an expo like this before, but I suppose there's no way I can duck one taking place in my backyard. I'm still hoping there's some way I can get in for free, maybe by sneaking in through the vents.

-Two interesting takes on the evolution of difficulty in games. Michael Abbott compares the Wii remake of A Boy and His Blob to the original, while C.T. Hutt revisits Earthworm Jim and finds it more challenging than he remembers. User experience is a big reason why games are easier nowadays, but I think there's an even more prosaic explanation.

In the past, games were so short that they had to be incredibly difficult in order to be worth playing. Once you know how to beat a game like Contra, you can blow through it in about 20 minutes. If you could do that on your first or second playthrough, it wouldn't seem like much of a game at all. Even though we often complain about the length of 8-10 hour games today, most of them are significantly longer than comparable titles of 20 years ago. Even a game like Super Metroid, whose gameworld seemed massive at the time, today takes about 4 hours to beat. That's nothing.

(One more example: It took me 12 years to beat Super Mario Bros. We got the Nintendo when I was 6, and I finally beat it when I was 18. Shortly thereafter, I played through the first three Super Mario Bros. games in about an hour.)

-Not related to video games, but I need to thank Kyle Orland for linking the "Eye On Springfield" tumblog in his Twitter feed. This site has improved my life in ways I cannot possibly quantify.

All right, screw this "reading" thing. Pandora awaits!

Chart-topper

2009-10-21T09:00:00.005-04:00

Above: There's always a guy with a riot shield.

My review of Uncharted 2 is up at thephoenix.com. (No, that post on Monday wasn't a review.) To add to the chorus: It's great. Really great. This game doesn't step wrong. Like Metroid Prime and the Half-Life games, it's so confident and assured that you may forget you're playing a game for long stretches of time.

Frankly, I think people are overusing the "cinematic" descriptor for this game. I get why they say that, but if anything Uncharted 2 shows some of the ways in which games can be superior to movies for delivering action-adventure entertainment. As for the storyline and characters, okay, those are almost good enough to be called movie-like.

And now your note of caution (okay, cynicism). Uncharted 2 is the kind of game that is tailor-made for the reviewing experience. It's not terribly long, it's linear, and it doesn't repeat itself. That's where my tastes run anyway, but it's worth mentioning. Ordinarily this isn't something I'd stop to consider, but having moved on to the more professionally challenging Borderlands, I long for the halcyon days of last week, when I could sit down and blow through a game in one sitting, reasonably certain that I hadn't missed anything important.

There will, of course, be more about Borderlands to come.

The minimalism of Uncharted 2

2009-10-19T09:00:00.005-04:00

Above: You have to listen to the notes they aren't playing.

By now, you may have heard about a little game called Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. You've heard how cinematic it is, how lifelike the graphics are, and how large-scale the action sequences are. It's all true. Sony's VP of Big Action Scenes is not lying to you.

Nobody seems to have put their finger on the true reason for the success of this game, though, which is what isn't there. Lots of games have great production values, with shiny graphics and booming audio bespeaking a massive budget. Yet most of them never achieve greatness, and while the reasons are different in every case, often it comes down to one or two root causes. Either the interface is overly complicated or unsuited to the in-game tasks (like Killzone 2, say), or the designers are reluctant to cut things they've worked so hard on even if it would improve the whole product (a good example of this is Prototype).* Naughty Dog nailed both of those things.

The interface would probably still be hard for a gaming neophyte to pick up, but for veterans of 3D action-adventures, it's remarkably elegant. For some reason, other developers force players to hold down a button to make their character run. Not only does that miss the entire point of having analog control sticks, but it also commits one of the buttons to an unnecessary function. Even with all the buttons on gamepads today, they're still a limited resource. By using the analog stick to make Nathan run, Naughty Dog frees up the face buttons for more important uses.

Another thing Nathan can't do is crouch -- at least, not on his own. If the player presses the button to take cover, and the nearest bit of cover is low, he will duck behind that. Again, it's a sensible solution, based on a realistic accounting of how players will want and need Nathan to move. I was a little surprised at first that I couldn't press a button to make him crouch, but after about an hour of gameplay I realized that it wasn't actually necessary. I was grateful to be able to clear that out of my brainspace while I was playing.

Nathan does a lot of climbing, swinging, and shimmying, which always has the potential to be a bear. Some games have done this stuff better than others. Although a lot of people liked the magnetic approach of inFamous, I thought it was intrusive. Uncharted 2 has a little bit of auto-assist too, but it's much more subtle. Nathan will turn and grab a ledge if you walk off it, but not if you run or jump off. Instead of being sucked toward grabbable objects in mid-air, most of Nathan's jumps are directed in such a way that you can't help but move in the right direction to begin with. This is the advantage of the linear, scripted approach over a more open world.

Those are some of the smaller things that Uncharted 2 does right, and they have an outsized impact on the experience. For the most part, you can forget you're even holding a controller while you're playing this game. But Naughty Dog made more brave choices with the gameplay, and I don't think they're getting credit for how much they left out.

I can only imagine how hard it must be to design video games. Imagine that some members of your team are working solely on your game's water. It needs to look right: it should reflect the light, be capable of different levels of transparency, maybe have some sand swirling around. The fluid dynamics need to be programmed just right, too, because you have a fantastic idea for a boat level. So your artists and programmers bust their asses for months, and they create the best water ever seen in a video game. What do you do?

You put water freaking everywhere.

After all, you can't let their hard work go to waste! Sure, it doesn't make sense to have water mains bursting in every single level, and that boat chase you had in mind didn't really work out, but you'll be damned if you don't share this wonderful water with the world!

That's all wild speculation on my part, but surely you've noticed things like this. Yes, it can be very hard to let go of things you've done. Unfortunately, this mindset often results in games repeating themselves. Things that are fun at first get old. Things that aren't fun at first become obnoxious. And things that don't belong in the final product are still there, because nobody had the courage to let them go.

There's not an ounce of fat in Uncharted 2. Most interesting things only happen once. Sure, there are your standard rooms full of crates to duck behind while shooting at dudes, but the shootouts never last very long, and they're often a waypoint en route to something more interesting. You hurtle forward, never getting bogged down. Enough wrinkles are introduced that the vanilla gunfights really do feel different from the ones on the train, which again are different from the ones in the trucks. The same is true of climbing sequences. Some are slower paced, allowing you to enjoy the environments, while some are more about racing against crumbling infrastructure. You don't typically repeat anything.

I don't doubt that Naughty Dog had to leave some stuff on the cutting room floor, some of it probably quite good. Somebody there must have had a laser-like focus on the final product. They took out all the right things.

*I should clarify that I liked both Killzone 2 and Prototype, the latter quite a bit. That's why they're instructive comparisons to Uncharted 2: They're well made, big-budget games that are fun to play, but are flawed in ways that could have, and should have, been addressed early in the process.

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-10-16T13:00:00.002-04:00

Don't know what it's like for folks in the rest of the country and the world, but here in New England we're having a spell of winter-like weather. It even snowed a bit last night. People are weeping and wailing about it, but as the proud owner of a brand-new snowboard, I couldn't be happier. If you haven't been able to tell from my Twitter feed, I'm itching to hit the slopes. It's been 7 months at this point! No man should have to suffer so.

Let's get to some links.

-Ben Richardson wrote a great article about Tim Schafer in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and I'm not just saying that because he quoted me in it. Although I didn't like Brütal Legend, Schafer is an awesome guy with some fascinating insights and a real love for metal. In some ways, I'm happy to see the wide-ranging reactions to this game. I feel like truly interesting and inspiring games will divide people. They will challenge us to think about them, both while we're playing and afterwards. Brütal Legend seems to do that.

-The Boston Globe reports on new research that indicates that playing games may be good for your brain. In the same way that lifting weights and running laps can improve your body's physical abilities, the challenges of interpreting virtual space can help your brain with a variety of tasks: "Fast-paced, action-packed video games have been shown, in separate studies, to boost visual acuity, spatial perception, and the ability to pick out objects in a scene. Complex, strategy-based games can improve other cognitive skills, including working memory and reasoning." This won't surprise many gamers, nor does it put to rest arguments about the effects of violent games on kids, but it's heartening nonetheless.

By the way, Steven Johnson covered similar ground, more readably but less scientifically, in his book Everything Bad is Good for You.

-Shawn Elliott appears, Bigfoot-like, to share with us the one and only right review. It's an aggregation of all the inane, venomous comments that readers like to post on game reviews. I love this line in particular: "Now the credibility I never had is as good as gone. "

I've been fortunate not to have to deal too much with this stuff. It's always surprising the tone that such comments take when they do show up. Disagreement is a healthy thing, but often commenters will ignore the substance of the review entirely and just slam the reviewer. The commenter acts as though he is in possession of some divine truth, and therefore it's not even worth engaging actual arguments to the contrary. (Do reviewers sometimes do this to games? Probably.)

It's kind of like the abortion issue.

-Today, October 16, is National Bosses Day, so it's appropriate to once again revisit a feature that Ryan Stewart and I collaborated on for the Phoenix: The 20 Greatest Bosses in Video Game History. It's not a particularly surprising list, but I was happy with the blurbs we wrote about each boss. Reading them now, I still am.

We wrote this in 2006, and I wonder if anyone has shown up since then who deserves a spot. No one immediately springs to mind. Maybe GLaDOS, or maybe the Joker in Arkham Asylum. Not sure. Many of the best games I've played over the past few years have not been distinguished by their bosses. Many don't even have bosses as we used to know them.

Quiz: The year in swooning

2009-10-15T09:00:00.000-04:00

Match each of these games with the breathless excerpt from its review.

1. The Beatles: Rock Band
2. Batman: Arkham Asylum
3. Killzone 2
4. Resident Evil 5
5. Red Faction: Guerrilla
6. Street Fighter IV
7. inFamous
8. Brütal Legend
9. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

A. "...one of the most memorable video games ever created. Not because it is particularly innovative, but because the mixture of shooting, climbing, creeping, thinking, laughing and simple astonishment works perfectly."

B. "There are very, very few games which truly make me sit back and go 'wow'. Among the slew of games that I’ve reviewed this year, there are only a couple that I really enjoyed playing, and continue to do so. [This] is one such game – even though I aced my Public Speaking and English Literature classes, words only slur together when I try to describe this game."

C. "This is simply a superb genre defining experience with two unforgettable endings."

D. "This action-adventure is so smart, so well-written, and delivered with such an obvious love for its source material, I daresay it is both the best licensed game ever made, and arguably the best game of its kind in our current console generation."

E. "...provides a transformative entertainment experience. In that sense it may be the most important video game yet made."

F. "The gorgeous graphics, the superb sound, the great (if sometimes twitchy) AI of your partner and the jaw-dropping gameplay take everything that was brilliant about [its predecessor] and ramp it up to the next level, making for one of the best gaming experiences ever!"

G. "This game deserves a place on everyone's shelf, from the most casual fan... to the most hardcore. No matter your personal skill level, you owe it to yourself to buy this game. [Its] incredible art style, rock solid gameplay, and infinitely compelling multiplayer make it stand out as one of best games of this generation."

H. "A fantastic game that sucks you in and doesn't let go... a seamless merger of technology and story telling that raises the bar for the industry."

I. "...the best console first person shooter ever. It will be bested one day, and that is as it should be, but this game has set the proverbial bar so high we reckon it'll be the king for a good long while... Hail to the king, baby."

1. E (New York Times)
2. D (Gamespy)
3. I (Playstation Official Magazine Australia)
4. F (AceGamez)
5. H (Gaming Nexus)
6. G (ZTGameDomain)
7. C (Play)
8. B (MEGamers)
9. A (Cynamite)

Brutal Legend shreds

2009-10-14T09:00:00.004-04:00

Above: A common screenshot from Brütal Legend.

My review of Brütal Legend is up now at thephoenix.com. Now that I've read several other reviews, it seems like everybody's on the same page with this one. For me, that means a two-star rating, or 5.0/10 in the paper, although many other people thought the story and dialogue redeemed the lackluster gameplay. I just can't agree with that. Maybe if you spent more time with the story and dialogue than you do with the gameplay, it'd make sense. Not the case.

Writing negative reviews bums me out. I get no joy from it. Sure, there's a part of me that delights in coming up with a wicked burn, but that's the writer and not the gamer talking. I want every game to be good. I especially want a game by Tim Schafer to be good. I am not thankful for the opportunity to rip somebody else's hard work. But what choice do I have? This game is not good. There are lots of little things wrong with it; there are lots of big things wrong with it.

No time to dwell on it. We're in the thick of things now. Why, I've got a copy of Uncharted 2 right here. Onward!

Scribblenauts? More like scribble not.

2009-10-08T09:00:00.005-04:00

Above: Exploring scribbles.

I have a review of Scribblenauts up at thephoenix.com. Innovative or not, it is not a very good game. It's fun to mess around with, and my wife wants me to tell everyone that she really liked it. (That's not as minor a footnote as it may sound -- this may be the first time that's ever happened. You wouldn't believe the number of supposedly casual-friendly Wii games she hasn't liked. The list of games she likes now stands at two: this, and Rock Band.) But there's little more here than promise that a later game might be better.

I find I'm losing patience with games that don't work well to begin with. Everybody made so much out of how everything you summon in Scribblenauts acts correctly -- bears are hungry, helicopters fly, and so on -- but I found that not to be the case. Things rarely did what I expected them to. Maxwell hardly ever went where I wanted him to. And perfectly logical solutions didn't pan out, because the governing logic naturally can't be all that different from one type of thing to another.

There was a time when I'd put up with a game's foibles, because it was the only one I had on hand, and what the hell else was I supposed to do? These days I feel more like I can't be bothered with a game that hasn't put in the effort to smooth out the edges. I love the idea of Scribblenauts. I really do. I also love the idea of world peace. Sometimes you bump up against reality.

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-10-02T13:00:00.002-04:00

I'm looking forward to playing the new Left 4 Dead campaign tonight. I also intend to play more Dead Space: Extraction this weekend, after being pleasantly surprised by the first two chapters. Will report back!

-A while back, I posted a list of songs I'd like to see in Rock Band. In that post, I predicted a zero-percent chance of one of those songs ever being released. Shows what I know: "Gay Bar" by Electric Six will be released as DLC next Tuesday. This is very exciting. And it's also another reason why I'll take the open Rock Band platform over the more hermetic Beatles installment. You're just not gonna get surprises like this from the Beatles game.

-In this week's Experience Points podcast, Jorge and Scott talk about downer endings in games, or, more specifically, a lack of them (inspired by Manveer's post on the subject). I think the issue really isn't one of "happy" or "sad" endings, it's one of thoughtful, mature endings that carry a character's arc through to a conclusion, or that contain elements of both happiness and sadness. I mentioned The Darkness in comments as a game that gets it right. The final sequence is viewable on YouTube, although I'm not sure it would make much sense if you hadn't played the rest of the game. The point is that it provokes conflicting emotions, while completing the protagonist's fall. It's brilliant.

-At Press Pause to Reflect, C.T. Hutt weighs in on something that's one of my pet peeves: overly helpful helper characters. Navi is the worst, and Issun clearly wasn't much better. Having an NPC partner isn't inherently a bad idea -- it's been done well in Half-Life 2, for example. It's when the partner is overbearing and impossible to ignore that you get into trouble. How hard would it have been to have to ask Navi for hints when you wanted them? Or better still, design the game in such a way that her particular brand of help isn't needed? Just more reasons why Ocarina is the Most Overrated Game of All Time.

-This one's a little older, but I didn't do a links post last week so I'll write it now. Michael Abbott wondered whether we praise innovation at the expense of execution, specifically talking about the difference in critical buzz between Scribblenauts and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. I recall that last year Leigh Alexander observed an opposite problem -- that we condemn innovation when the execution isn't quite there. They can't both be right, and I'd venture to say that it's not so simple as either of those formulations makes it seem.

Innovation is useful for a great many things, but it is not the endpoint. It's the beginning. Gaming history is littered with examples of games that innovated and failed, but whose ideas were subsequently improved upon. In his next post, Michael praised the value of iteration, which is a point I fully agree with. But if you trace these refinements back far enough, you'll eventually get to something that was brand-new, and which didn't work as well. You can't really separate innovation and execution.

As for why so many writers in the brainysphere are talking about Scribblenauts, it might be as simple as this: it's a game about words. We're the target audience!

Current events

2009-10-01T09:00:00.002-04:00

Hello, Insult Swordfighting readers! You may have noticed that things have been quiet on the ranch lately. This is for three reasons, two of them mundane and one fairly exciting. I'll give them to you in that order.

1. I haven't been playing anything for the past couple weeks.

These days, when I don't have to review anything, I find myself playing nothing at all. And when you're not playing anything, it's hard to write much. This should be changing in the weeks to come. Look for a Scribblenauts review soon, plus stuff about Dead Space: Extraction and, in all likelihood, Uncharted 2.

2. I got sick for a bit.

God that is so boring. You don't care. I don't care either.

3. Starting next week, I'll be contributing to a more professional-looking blog.

Yes! I'll be publishing reviews and other game-related posts at tor.com, a sci-fi/fantasy blog owned by Macmillan publishers. The site mostly focuses on fiction, but its bloggers also cover comics, movies, anime, and lots of other great stuff. It's a very cool site. I'm excited to get started.

How will that impact this blog? In all likelihood, it won't. I've never really published straight reviews here, anyway, and given that InSword's primary purpose has always been to give me a place to talk about stuff I find interesting without having to worry about playing to an audience, it's likely to stay that way. I have also found that writing begets more writing -- it's possible that blogging for tor.com will only spur me to write more for this site.

That's the scoop. Thank you for reading.

What video games have in common with fantasy sports

2009-09-29T09:00:00.004-04:00

Above: The new high-score list. And also some straight-up bragging on my part.

Two video game genres I've never gotten into are sports and strategy. The finer details of sports sims elude me (unlike, say, Bill Harris, who times his virtual running backs with a stopwatch). I can't tell if a sports game is realistic or not, and even if it were, that wouldn't help me play it. In a strategy game, or a strategy-heavy RPG, the top-level thinking -- resource management, planning ahead, multi-tasking -- doesn't track with the way my mind works. Yet for several years now, I've been hooked on a game that combines the most challenging traits of both of these genres: fantasy baseball.

We don't tend to think of fantasy sports as video games, not even as a part of the increasingly misnamed "casual" realm. Yet it's hard to imagine how else you could classify them. In the same way that pen-and-paper role-playing games have informed generations of electronic RPGs, old-time rotisserie baseball provides the basis for an electronic version that millions of people play. All the complicated stuff is automated, like updating players' statistics and trips to the disabled list, just as Final Fantasy keeps track of hit points and status ailments. The player needs only to set his lineups, and give himself the most favorable matchups possible.

Creating a balanced fantasy baseball team is a lot like putting together a successful party in an RPG. You can't overload your roster with too much of one kind of player. Imagine trying to plug through the first Final Fantasy with four fighters and no mages. It would be impossible. The same is true of fantasy baseball. If you load up on beefy sluggers with high strikeout rates, you might lead the league in homeruns, but you'll almost certainly be near the bottom in batting average and stolen bases. Both the player draft that starts the season, and later roster moves and trades, require this sort of give-and-take.

As with video games, you can put as much or as little effort into fantasy sports as you want, and still have a good time. There are the obsessives, who are intimately familiar with their pitchers' splits. (You may have a pitcher who throws well during the day and in his home park, for example, but serves up meatballs during nighttime away games.) There are the active players, who make sure all the spots in their lineups are filled each night, and none of their starters are spending any time on the DL. And then there are the people who check in once in awhile, just to make sure their team still exists. Everyone can do it their own way -- though it's generally more fun to play with people of similar ability.

Fantasy baseball has a little more in common with games. If you enlarge the graphic atop this post, you won't just see the stats from my historically dominant season, although I certainly encourage you to look at those. You'll also see several offensive team names. If you were to visit the main league page, you'd also find reams of trash talk, an area in which, again, I have had an historically dominant season. In that respect, fantasy baseball is not so different from Halo.

(And, yes, Penny Arcade did tackle this subject last week.)

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-09-18T13:00:00.002-04:00

I haven't played any video games this week, and I've had no problem falling asleep at night. I hope these two facts are not related.

-Some very smart people are trying to get a new gaming magazine called Kill Screen off the ground. They're trying to raise $3,500 to publish the thing. As of this writing, they're over halfway there. Take a look and see what you think.

-Congratulations to Denis Farr of Vorpal Bunny Ranch, who is the newest writer for GayGamer.net. Here's his first article, "NieR's Gender Confusion."

-Michael Abbott says it's time we paid more attention to the Sims. It's a point he also made persuasively about sports games: lots of non-"core" games actually have incredibly deep role-playing and storytelling elements, if we'd bother to look for them.

I don't know, though. All I ever did when I played the Sims was make a bathroom with glass walls, and then I named two Sims after my friends and got them to kiss.

-This is only marginally related to video games: (former?) NBA player Paul Shirley writes in his ESPN.com column that the Beatles don't hold up. I am glad to see somebody make the anti-Beatles case in this ham-handed a fashion, because it deflects attention from my much milder criticisms of the band. Among Shirley's silly, self-evidently false statements are things like "We were not around for The Beatles. Therefore, we cannot judge their impact on popular music," and "The arrangements used by Oasis are more complex, the sound is denser, the production is better."

Shirley also claims that Dean Koontz is superior to Bram Stoker.

-Hey, since we're not even talking about video games at this point, why not also take a look at Dan Brown's 20 worst sentences? Sometimes I think that I should read one of Brown's books before declaring him a shitty writer, but I really don't think it's necessary.

Fall games preview

2009-09-16T09:00:00.003-04:00

Above: A game whose promotion you are already sick of.

It's September, so it must be time for my fall video games preview in the Phoenix. Given that you use the Internet, I imagine there is not much news in this piece for you. It's a snapshot of the biggest games coming out this fall, at least as I interpret them from looking at Gamespot's "new releases" section. That means it's tilted more toward big-budgeted titles whose art will look good in the paper. I'm not passing any kind of value judgment here; I'm just telling you what it is.

The fun for me is finding out which game gets delayed immediately after the preview goes to press. One year it was Bully, and one year it was Super Paper Mario. It's also enjoyable to see what game I overlook that ends up knocking my socks off. In 2007, I failed to mention Call of Duty 4; last year, I couldn't spare the column inches for Far Cry 2.

There's no doubt that this year is lighter on big names than some past years, but I've been doing these previews since... 2005, I think, and only in 2007 was I genuinely enthused about the selections. (With good cause, as it turned out.) I still think it's a blessing in disguise that so many games have been delayed, giving us more time with the games that do come out this fall. There's plenty to be excited about, too. I'm always up for first-party Sony titles, Valve has never stepped wrong, and it's an Infinity Ward Call of Duty. I mean, come on.

Still, I look forward to the real work, which will be playing and reviewing these games. That'll be much more fun.

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-09-11T13:00:00.006-04:00

It's hard to believe it's been 8 years since 9/11. I don't have any commentary, sincere or snarky, nor do I want to say anything about it in relation to video games. Not even, "Really puts it all in perspective!" Just a terrible anniversary to have to mark every year.

-I mentioned in my review of The Beatles: Rock Band that the future of the franchise lies with the Rock Band Network, and not tributes to past bands. Why do I think so? Because of things like this: local rockers the Bon Savants are beta testing the RBN, and video-blogging their efforts. Tell me this isn't going to be an incredible way to hear new music.

The Bon Savants, by the way, are very good and you should listen to them.

-I also really enjoyed Ian Bogost's trenchant, contrarian take on Beatles Rock Band. The comments show what can happen when you take aim at a sacred cow (though it should be said that most are thoughtful in their own right, which is what happens when you've got dudes like Iroquois Pliskin calling you out). I think a lot of people disagreed with the broad brush Ian used to paint the older generation, which is fair, but his point was sound: it is precisely this older generation that pivoted from peace and love to grabbing everything for themselves at the expense of others (giving us gems such as "Get your government hands off my Medicare!"). Is it everybody in that generation? Of course not. But who else is highjacking social progress in this country?

Okay, so the argument does pertain only slightly to the Beatles. Fair enough.

-Two last links about The Beatles: Rock Band. First, John Teti's perceptive takedown of Seth Schiesel's New York Times review. I am very happy to see game reviews getting column inches in the Times, but I am less happy when they are as silly as Seth's was. He means well, I know, but Teti correctly notes that the tack he took in this review was to denigrate the entire medium of video games in order to convince his readers that this one really is good.

Beyond which, whenever I find myself typing in a review that a game is "one of the most," "one of the best," or "important," I delete it and write something else. That way lies madness, not to mention looking like an idiot in retrospect. Sean Sands at Gamers with Jobs notes that, at the time, no one predicted the impact that Guitar Hero would have: "...in November of 2005... No one in our forums was even talking about this odd and expensive game full of cover bands and fairly simplistic gameplay. On the cusp of a cultural phenomenon, no one saw it coming."

And now that everybody knows how important and popular music games are, now we're going to anoint the 800th music game as the most important of all time? It's never that easy. This is selling low and buying high.

-Although she doesn't mention me, I'd like to think I had something to do with moving the gears that resulted in Meghan Watt weighing in on Game Informer's Metacritic article. For the record, although I didn't contact Meghan for comment when I wrote my piece, I did ask OXM editor-in-chief Francesca Reyes to respond. Though she agreed to get back to me, it never happened, and ultimately I felt I had to run the piece as it was, especially after Kevin Gifford's "Game Mag Weaseling" column remarked positively upon the same GI piece.

-In Crispy Gamer, Kyle Orland answers a question I've had for a long time: how PR companies decide what outlets get which games to review. It explains quite a lot about the difficulties we've had in the past getting some companies to respond. PR people from Boston, or with Boston ties, are almost always excited to get covered in the Phoenix. Others may need some convincing.

There does seem to be a quid pro quo involved, too. I understand not wanting to send a first-person shooter to a reviewer who's previously said he hates the genre, sure, but it's infuriating that PR companies may decide to punish reviewers who run negative reviews. I've said it before and I'll say it again: ultimately everybody is better served with honest and tough reviews. If an outlet has a reputation for being hard on games, then wouldn't a positive review from them mean that much more? Won't the median quality of games go up if critics and gamers are demanding more of them? It seems basic to me.

Of course, it takes just one influential publication to trade scores for early access to throw that out the window. And there's more than one.

Hey, that was the longest links post ever. Maybe I should start cutting these into individual posts.

It's not called "Rock Band: The Beatles" for a reason

2009-09-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

My review of The Beatles: Rock Band is up now at thephoenix.com. This is probably Harmonix's strongest work in terms of presentation, and I understand that the music of the Beatles is highly regarded in some circles.

Still, it seems like there's no way to talk in a measured way about this game, or the band, without coming off like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. When I say on Twitter that I'm not a huge fan of the Beatles, I mean exactly that. I'm not taking a veiled dig. I have a couple of their CDs. I find many of their songs to be terrific. And yet I don't make an emotional connection with almost anything they've done, not like I do with my very favorite bands. Therefore I say I like the Beatles. But I am not totally sold on a music game that features only them.

Maybe I buried the lede, too, because the real issue I see is that Rock Band has been the catalyst for introducing people to new bands, and new ways to experience music. This game is more about elevating the Beatles over the player. That's no small distinction. For example, I've developed a habit of delivering a drum solo at the beginning of every Rock Band track -- just a little wailing away while the song cues up. It's a way of making the songs mine. You can't do that in The Beatles. Hit a drum pad before the song starts, and nothing happens, because that sound isn't on the original recording. There goes your live performance feel. (I should say that they did a great job with the audio of shrieking teenaged girls, though.)

More important, it's the game's way of making sure that you don't dare mess with perfection! I'm not a huge fan of that attitude. Past -- and, technically, current -- Rock Band games are about engaging with the music on an equal level. This game, though, is a ball-washing of the highest order. Maybe the Beatles are more deserving of such treatment than any other band, but I don't think any band deserves that treatment. Not now that I've seen the alternatives.

There I go, sounding like I didn't like the game. I liked it a lot! I like the Beatles! I had a lot of fun with this game, and I look forward to playing it more in the future. I am just suspicious of claims of divine authority.

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-09-04T13:00:00.002-04:00

Ah, Labor Day weekend -- that special time when we celebrate the industriousness of the American worker by taking Monday off, sleeping until noon, and getting drunk before dinner. What a great holiday.

-The Beatles: Rock Band is the big story next week. CNN Money ran an interview with the founders of Harmonix, who explain how years of failure set them up for big-time success when the right opportunity arose. They could never have planned for Guitar Hero and Rock Band, but those games have allowed them to realize their original goals in an unexpected way. I'd bet many of the employees -- rockers all -- feel the same way.

-Speaking of The Beatles: Rock Band, we are not allowed to speak of The Beatles: Rock Band. There's a strict embargo in place until tomorrow night, to the point where I'm afraid to even speak the group's name out loud, as though they were Bloody Mary or something. Yet somehow the New York Times went ahead and posted their review, with a September 6 dateline. Crafty. Sadly, I can say nothing more at this point, lest you find my corpse floating in the Charles River, a microphone cord wrapped tightly around my neck.

-Two very interesting takes on Batman: Arkham Asylum from Travis Megill and Justin Keverne. Both are concerned with the game's portrayal of mental illness as something to be stigmatized, instead of the health problem it actually is. Although I did take note of the shrieking "Lunatic" enemy type, none of this occurred to me while I was playing. It's a fair point. Even though the majority of the foes are garden-variety criminals, Batman does lay a beating on a good number of inmates who've committed no crime, and may understandably be freaked out by a six-foot bat in their midst.

The argument you could make in defense of the game is this. Many writers in the Batman universe have explored the idea that Batman himself helps to foment the crime that he fights. Gotham City is often seen to be feeding on itself. Arkham, too, can be interpreted to be creating the dangerous, criminally insane element that it's ostensibly there to cure. In all likelihood, these inmates were less dangerous before they arrived there. This doesn't exactly play out in the course of the game, and I wouldn't hold it up as a bulletproof argument. But there is something to it.

-Another good critical compilation at Critical Distance, this time with a look at the strange saga of PixelVixen707. Part 1 is by L.B. Jeffries (himself writing under a pseudonym!), and part 2 is by Michel McBride-Charpentier. As an ARG, PV707 was undeniably well executed, although it was strange that this was not an opt-in game. Pen names are one thing, but misrepresenting oneself is another, even when it's not malicious. It still makes me feel a little weird. No one can deny that "Rachael Webster" was a valuable voice in the games blogosphere. Whether she was written by J.C. Hutchins or someone else, it's too bad that her contributions ran out when the marketing budget did.

-Chris Dahlen's awesome weekly Edge column continues with Dr. Demento's take on Kind of Bloop, the cover of Kind of Blue done entirely in chiptune. You read that right: Dr. Demento is still alive.

-Finally, Simon Ferrari created a very cool tool: a game bloggers search engine, which exclusively searches "independent, non-commercial game bloggers." You'll never guess who's the top result for "Fairway Solitaire."

Labor away, my friends.

Serious house on serious earth

2009-09-02T09:00:00.007-04:00

Above: More evidence that the fans love performance-enhancing drugs.

My review of Batman: Arkham Asylum is up at thephoenix.com.

Some leftover thoughts from the cutting room floor:

With the short space I have in the paper, I don't like to do token complaints when a game is great, just to prove my critical distance. Still, I do have a couple of token complaints, and I may as well get them out. The combat works quite well, with a streamlined interface and beautifully animated battles. The only problem is when enemies start to get stronger, and entire boss battles become about trapping you in a room with wave after wave of them. It's not too hard on the default setting -- it's just boring. Fortunately, this only happens two or three times.

Additionally, although the stealth aspect of the game works great, the reliance on gargoyles as your only means of escape starts to feel strange after awhile. Why do gunmen only populate rooms that have gargoyles? Why is Batman unable to hide on any other structure besides gargoyles? And why does every building in Arkham, while sharing few other common design elements, all prominently feature gargoyles? Yep, this is the level you have to stoop to in order to criticize this game.

One thought kept coming up while I was playing: "This is the game Metal Gear Solid 4 should have been." I don't say that just because of the heavy stealth element. In fact, the stealth gameplay was probably a little stronger in MGS4, although not much. There just wasn't very much of it. And whenever that game diverted from its core strength, it suffered, and sometimes badly.

Arkham Asylum, by contrast, varies its gameplay nicely, and it all feels of a piece. Stealth sequences and beat-em-ups come in equal measure, without anything silly happening like a Batmobile driving level. Sometimes Batman needs to do some light problem-solving to navigate the prison, and sometimes he needs to use his detective skills to track key NPCs.

The real reason I made the comparison, though, was one particular sequence that happens late in Arkham Asylum. At several points during the game, Batman ingests the Scarecrow's fear toxin, which leads into clever and frightening nightmare scenarios. The third of these is the kind of brilliant fourth-wall breaking that Kojima used to do so well, but only intermittently in MGS4. Granted, I'd been playing Arkham Asylum for several hours at that point and it was well past midnight, but I honestly questioned my sanity for a minute.

Oh, and Arkham is also shorter and has no filler. So there's that.

Friday afternoon tidbits

2009-08-28T13:00:00.004-04:00

I am in lovely St. Louis, MO, for the weekend. We're going to visit the Gateway Arch, catch a Cardinals game, and barbecue. Oh God, how we will barbecue. Unless my plane crashes, that is.

What a morbid way to start a links post.

-Hardcasual is always good, but every once in awhile they really knock it out of the park. Such is the case with "Professor Layton Solves Brain Teaser, Grisly Prostitute Murder." Amazing.

-Leigh Alexander makes a good point about how the leisurely exploration gameplay of Shadow Complex seems to be at odds with its ticking-timebomb storyline. There is a point, at least, at which your character determines that he's going to go back in, which I took to mean that he was planning to arm himself to the teeth before taking on the bad guys. Still, I did follow the blue line most of the time, and I was more than satisfied with how things played out.

-Nels Anderson makes a point I often try, and fail, to make: that "fun" is the wrong word for most video games. For some people, fun clearly is the objective, and there's nothing wrong with that. But many people are seeking more meaningful interactions with games, and for those people, fun's got nothing to do with it. The more kinds of experiences games can give us, the better.

-The passage of time has enabled some more sober looks at Grand Theft Auto IV. Still a great game, but it's hard to argue with the kinds of criticisms Sparky Clarkson makes. "For me, this is the defining flaw of GTA IV — so many of the missions, cutscenes, and incidental moments actively undermine the propositions the game is trying to sell you on." Paradoxically, the more choices a game gives you, the more obvious it is when the game makes decisions for you. I've never felt constrained in a Half-Life game, for instance, even though I'm just a puppet on a string.

All right, time to party with the St. Lunatics.

In praise of shade, complexity

2009-08-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

Above: A different screenshot from Shadow Complex.

My review of Shadow Complex is up now at thephoenix.com. Despite yesterday's comments about Metacritic, you will not be surprised to learn that my score, and my sentiment, lands squarely in the mainstream. As a longtime Super Metroid fan, I'm quite happy to play a game that doesn't diverge too much -- okay, at all -- from that formula.

If this had come out between 1995 and 1999, it would have been a ripoff. If it had come out between 2000 and 2005, it would have been a relic. Today, it's retro!

Game Informer works for Gamestop, not for you

2009-08-25T09:00:00.006-04:00

I keep telling myself to quit criticizing Game Informer. There's not one person alive who's confused about this magazine's mission. For me to sit here beating the dead horse probably says more about me than it does about the publication.

Except, well, this is the most widely published video game magazine in the country, and the only one that still gets scoops with regularity. GI is going to be a part of the conversation as long as things stay the way they are. And as long as that's the case, it will continue to be necessary to point out the numerous ways in which this magazine fails to serve its readers.

Case in point, in the September 2009 issue: an unsigned "feature," which is really more of an op-ed, about the influence of Metacritic scores on game development. This is fertile ground for debate. I've said before that I think Metacritic is generally a useful tool, because it does a good job of providing a snapshot of the critical landscape. It's still incumbent upon gamers to dig deeper, of course, and in many cases I think a game that creates less of a critical consensus is likely to be more interesting than one that is universally beloved or condemned. But that's my opinion as a player.

GI's feature, titled "Critical Mass," is a look at it from the developers' perspective. It extensively quotes Glen Schofield, the executive producer of Dead Space, who is open about his company's relationship with Metacritic. As Schofield tells it, one outlying negative review was the difference between his game receiving an aggregate score of 90, and its eventual score of 89. (Oddly, the accompanying screenshot of Dead Space's Metacritic page shows it as an 88 -- turns out that the PS3 version got an 88, while the Xbox 360 version earned an 89.) We don't get any details about what the brass said, but Schofield says that the psychological difference between an 89 and a 90 makes getting the lower score "a big ass deal."

Schofield seems to have been referring to the 6.5 assigned to Dead Space by Official Xbox Magazine, under the byline of one Meghan Watt. According to the visceral comments on the review (pardon the pun), it seems Watt was not a freelancer but an intern. How this invalidates her review, nobody can quite say. Apparently, one intern can single-handedly ravage the fortunes of a well-funded software developer. That this is seen as an indictment of her work, and not Metacritic's, is beyond reason.

To be clear, I'm not condemning Schofield for being upset about the way the system works. He has every incentive to try to inflate his game's Metacritic score. But besides giving him space to dismiss Watt's work, this article is frustratingly light on how the scores impact business decisions. "Some believe there is a tight relationship between [Metacritic scores and sales]," says the copy, "but that isn't always the case."

Er, some data might have been nice there. What are some games that sold well despite poor scores? What are some games that scored highly and tanked at retail? They don't say. But it's critically important in determining the real-world impact of the Metacritic score. Either there's a causative relationship or there isn't. If there isn't, as the article implies, then all Game Informer has done is smear a competitor by proxy, while providing no actual insight into the gears of the Metacritic machine.

For his complaints, Schofield also acknowledges how satisfying it is to receive accolades. "You've been working two years or whatever on the game, and you want someone to tell you that you did a good job." I can understand this. It's why we're all in this business. We want good video games to be rewarded. Frankly, the fact that one aberrant review can sink a score from the 90s into the 80s ought to give that much more weight to the games that do score in the 90s. The point is to separate the wheat from the chaff. It's a good thing that not every game is scoring that highly.

That's not how Game Informer sees it.

Having conducted an interview with their buddy Schofield, and mindful of the need to ensure editorial access to future Visceral Games projects, they close with this tut-tutting:

With the importance of aggregate scoring a constant for the foreseeable future, perhaps all that can be done is for companies to get smarter about reading the Metacritic tea leaves, and media outlets to publish quality reviews so that the hard work of developers like Schofield is not in vain.

I had to read that twice to make sure I didn't hallucinate it. It threw everything that had come before it into new light. The thought of not feeding the beast, and discarding scores altogether, has apparently not crossed anybody's mind. A challenge to myopic executives is clearly out of the question, so the mild rebuke about "reading the Metacritic tea leaves" is immediately followed up with a condemnation of writers who don't see the world the way Game Informer does, and who obviously haven't spent enough time going out for drinks with developers.

"Quality reviews" is such a loaded term in this context, especially since it is so transparently directed at OXM's review. It was not, apparently, up to Game Informer's standards. But why? Because it was (mildly) negative? Nothing is factually incorrect, and all of Watt's points are fully supported by the gameplay. I happened to like the game more than she did. Still, she's absolutely right that the mission objectives are garden variety fetch quests, in which your character blindly obeys the orders given by characters over a radio. Dead Space can rightly be praised for its execution, and criticized for a lack of imagination. Balancing these two is what critics do, and they won't always agree on where the fulcrum is. That's what makes different critical voices valuable.

And so the question is: How are we defining a quality review? Is Game Informer advocating independent-minded criticism? Obviously not. This is a magazine whose ownership is in the retail business. They would prefer that critics march in lockstep, assigning top scores to the games most likely to draw customers into their stores. (Coincidentally, in this same issue, GI reviewers assign two separate 9.5 scores to Batman: Arkham Asylum, more than a week before most other places are allowed to post their reviews.* There's still time to pre-order your copy!)

Readers and gamers -- and, yes, developers and publishers -- are all going to be better off with honest and tough reviews. Nobody is well served when we elevate every decent game to instant-classic status. Putting too much stock in Metacritic scores is a surefire way to keep game development looking backward, and not forward. Games need room to experiment, and even to fail, if they are to progress. Gamers need to look harder for quirky, idiosyncratic games that may not please everybody. And reviewers need to be the ones who make all of this happen. If we decide that our job is to praise every game just because somebody worked hard on it, then we may as well give up now.

*Full disclosure here: I want this game to be a 9.5 so bad.