Co-Op Critics | Gaming Stories

November 27, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Aliens Versus Humans

When all of my friends were firmly entrenched in the world of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, I found that I was intensely jealous that I could not participate in the conversation because I couldn’t buy the game. So far this year, I’ve been relatively firm on not buying new games; the only moments of weakness were when Borderlands 2, SSX, and Spec Ops: The Line were released and when I bought Episode 1 of Telltale Games’s The Walking Dead on my iPad so I could play with my wife. This means that I can’t help but feel like I’ve been left out of the larger gaming conversation of the year. I can’t very well comment on whether Halo 4‘s Spartan Ops mode matches the greatness of Halo 3: ODST‘s Firefight mode, whether Binary Domain‘s supposed experiments in storytelling worked, or why it seems like many of this year’s spate of sequels (Darksiders II, Max Payne 3, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Resident Evil 6, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, Prototype 2, Ninja Gaiden 3, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, even Halo 4) seemed to have underwhelmed.

Let the cleansing fire do its work.

Gripped by this jealousy and looking for an inexpensive alternative, I settled on Aliens Versus Humans for iOS. Reviews, such as Owen Faraday’s for PocketTactics, described Aliens Versus Humans as a clone of the original X-COM: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense. Though Julian Gollop, one of the creators behind the original X-COM game, touted Hunters 2 as the tactical turn-based RPG that gets many of the elements crucial to such a game right, the aesthetic similarity of Aliens Versus Humans to the original X-COM game drew me to it.

Though Aliens Versus Humans brought the same sense of masochism and vulnerability that anecdotes about XCOM: Enemy Unknown conveyed, the way that the game is stacked against the player began to wear on me. Aliens could shoot at my soldiers from shadow without revealing themselves, which meant that I had to recruit sacrificial scouts for every mission to scout the map in order to find the enemies for my better armed and more experienced soldiers to kill. There were no costs associated with recruiting these sacrificial scouts, Once I solved the game’s core combat challenge in a way that made combat seem rote, a lot of the game’s appeal was lost.

The enemy variety never really seemed to change. Though there were hopping green blobs, skinny grey aliens in blue suits, skinny grey aliens in red suits, and alien cyborgs, they all seemed to use the same weapon and had the same reactions to my soldiers: shoot on sight regardless of how exposed they were. This only added to how rote the game seemed.

I think it was a night mission that broke me and forced my hand to try to break the game. I took a group of relative veteran soldiers into town to find some aliens to shoot. I lost four soldiers to an ambush that I couldn’t see. I tried to send my six remaining soldiers into a building; three of them made it. One climbed to the second floor to try to at least find the shooters; he was shot through the window before he could find the aliens. I tried to wait out the enemy in the building; they shot out the walls and eventually killed me. I quit the game and couldn’t think of it without getting angry for a few weeks. I finally beat that mission by abusing the game’s save and load functions to maximize my soldiers’ opportunities.

I have to acknowledge that I only played the original game’s missions, which were called the Training Missions, and I haven’t tried the new Onslaught mode yet. I’ve read enough about the game know to convince me to at least give the Onslaught mode a try.

November 26, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Video Game Championship Wrestling

The last professional wrestling video game I bought was 2007’s Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for the PlayStation 2, but the last one that I played obsessively was 2004’s WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw. The Create-A-Wrestler function in that game was limited, so I created some wrestlers who were not in the game’s roster and mentally replaced existing wrestlers with other characters to get the roster that I wanted. Thus, lesser wrestlers like Mark Jindrak substituted for 2004’s popular independent wrestler in my head. Every weekend, I would spend a couple of hours copying an independent professional wrestling company’s shows and simulating them, taking control of the simulation whenever it didn’t match what actually happened at the independent company’s show. This may explain many questions about my social life in 2004 and 2005.

Just give him the cookie, John Cena.

When professional wrestling is done well, it can be the perfect intersection of the sublime and the absurd, the blatantly obvious overtones and all kinds of undertones. My favorite professional wrestling memories usually involve wrestlers embracing the absurd, such as when the wrestlers slow down because an invisible hand grenade has been lobbed at a group of man-sized ants, or when a man-sized ice cream is foisted on his petard as he’s bodyslammed onto the very deadly sprinkles that he himself spread on the mat, or when a table beats a stepladder in a match that lasted almost ten minutes, or when a miniature Dachshund pins a metal ladder to become the Ironman Heavyweight Champion. It’s the juxtaposition of the deadly serious with the incredibly stupid that gives professional wrestling the unique flavor that no other performance art can quite match.

Recently, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Gerstmann showed off WWE ’13‘s Create-A-Story function in their Quick Look of the game and really showed what that function is capable of by creating the website’s weekly content preview video within the game’s Create-A-Story function. Since then, I’ve been fascinated by WWE ’13‘s Create-A-Story function and the silly things that one could create within it. On the one hand, a wrestler getting run over by a car is a very serious dramatic moment. However, if you recreate that moment in a wrestling video game, that level of separation from reality, combined with sheer repetition and the limitations of a wrestling game’s Create-A-Story function, makes it very, very funny (skip to 24 minutes in that video).

Over the weekend, I discovered someone else who appreciated the inherent absurdity of professional wrestling and who combined it with the silliness that WWE ’13 is capable of rendering through its Create-A-Story mode. This person ran a TwitchTV stream, and I was delighted to see this on his stream’s static placeholder image:

Indeed, he was simulating a wrestling pay-per-view show in WWE ’13, only he substituted Internet celebrities like Egoraptor, JonTron, and the Angry Video Game Nerd, Gamecenter CX’s host Shinya Arino, video game characters like Phoenix Wright and Mega Man, and Dragon Ball characters like Nappa and Vegeta for the actual wrestlers. (For the lack of a better name, I’m going to call him “Bazza87,” since that’s the username on his TwitchTV account.) Last night was, so to speak, the grand finale to Bazza87’s weekend of simulation. Bowser had won a shot at Ganondorf’s championship in an over-the-top-rope battle royale, while the Angry Video Game Nerd and JonTron faced off against Guile and Donkey Kong, each character’s respective nemesis whose rivalries were ignited during a single-elimination tournament earlier during the extended holiday weekend.

Of course I watched the entire show, which seems ridiculous in hindsight. There were no stakes in any of the matches except those that the viewing community imposed onto the matches through collective force of will, as if we agreed to suspend reason and disbelief and chose to accept that these characters were real. We projected emotions and motivations onto them. So, when Donkey Kong faced JonTron, we remembered that JonTron had supposedly injured Donkey Kong during an earlier show and could tell each other that Donkey Knog sought revenge from JonTron. We were collectively creating stories, and it was almost magical.

This felt dramatic even though the game’s AI controlled all four characters. Perhaps that was the key to the experience; because human skill was removed entirely, the storylines worked themselves out on their own. Bazza87 supplemented the visual appeal of watching these ridiculous pairings with strong musical choices. For example, Charles Barkley’s entrance music is a reference to Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, while Nappa’s music is a reference to Team Four Star‘s DBZ Abridged series of videos and Ghostbusters.

Ghost Nappa!

Bazza87 was also able to replicate the exciting spontaneity that professional wrestling is capable of , even though we know that nothing happens in professional wrestling without at least the wrestlers’ and promoter’s knowledge, just as nothing can happen in Bazza87’s simulation without his intent. That’s why the impromptu backstage brawl between Nappa and Zangief after Nappa pinned Zangief in the opening match felt perfect. Because all matches were simulated by the game’s AI, the show balanced unpredictability and planning beautifully.

In effect, watching these fictional characters fight was not as removed from watching actual professional wrestling as it would appear. We entrusted our time with Bazza87, just as we would entrust it with actual wrestlers and promoters if we attended a show or watched a pay-per-view event. Bazza87’s simulations straddled the line between undeniably real and serious and surreal and absurd as well as the best professional wrestling show.

Four days ago, Bazza87’s TwitchTV channel had about 1,300 viewers in its history. At current count, the channel has had about 150,410 viewers. This explosive growth can be partially accounted for by the fact that we like to see video game characters from different franchises fight, which would explain the popularity of the Super Smash Brothers series and the motivation to create PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale. I also believe that the success this weekend of the Video Game Championship Wrestling series was due to Bazza87, who applied an understanding of how professional wrestling works and achieved the crucial balance between drama and absurdity in his shows. The next Video Game Championship Wrestling show has not been scheduled yet, but I am undoubtedly anticipating it. After all, I need to see if Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘s Adam Jensen’s challenge to Ganondorf for the VGCW championship will succeed, whether Mega Man can shed his status of “Canceled Man,” where the feud between Nappa and Zangief will go next, and whether Link, who debuted in a surprise match, will redeem himself after his upset loss to Waliugi. (Does a loss to Waliugi only seem like an upset because we’re applying outside information to this? Link is the Hero of Time and Waliugi is a second-rate villain, but none of that really matters in the Video Game Championship Wrestling world.) Perhaps Link can conquer a few dungeons so he can become the hero the VGCW league needs to unseat Ganondorf.

256px-Star_Wars_X-Wing_vs._Tie_Fighter_box_art

November 20, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter

“Transfer laser power to shields and double rear shields. I’m going to take the one behind us out, and then I’m going to try to hit the other one with missiles.”

“Wait, damn it, don’t close the S-foils! Power to shields, not power from shields! Argh! I am never letting you co-pilot again!”

All things considered, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter was a victim of expectations. My friends and I jumped became attached to LucasArts’ series of space sims with TIE Fighter when we passed a set of floppy disks around to install onto our computers. Then one of us got the CD-ROM edition of TIE Fighter, and we passed that around too. We still talk fondly about TIE Fighter and wonder why no one’s produced another Star Wars space sim like TIE Fighter.

At some point, one of us will inevitably remember that X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter came out and that we played it together one summer. Only one of us had a joystick and an air-conditioned room, so we would get together at his place. One of us would prefer to use keyboard and mouse, while another would prefer joystick. My preference was always keyboard and joystick, but that’s a lot of buttons to manage. So, I would normally ask one of friends to act as co-pilot. My reasoning was that Luke Skywalker had R2-D2; why couldn’t I have someone to help me pilot this fighter?

Of course, I didn’t take into account then was that my friends wouldn’t always follow directions or even act in our mutual best interest.

In vanilla X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, our options were limited to arena battles, called “Furballs,” and we would compete to see who could down the most enemy fighters in a given amount of time. So, we would pass the keyboard, joystick, or mouse to each other and try to pull off the best and flashiest kills. The details escape me, but my lasting memory was cursing my friend’s name after he sabotaged our fighter as my round was running out. My friends couldn’t stop laughing; I couldn’t start laughing until weeks later when I got my revenge by shutting his fighter’s engines down so the computer-controlled fighters could easily pick him off. Good times.

November 19, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Civilization Revolution

December 31, 2076

And with my last move, I nuked Calcutta and wiped Gandhi from the planet, completing our absolute domination of this world. That is justice for all the little nagging wars that Gandhi would start beginning when we first encountered his envoys in 111 A.D. or the several times he tried to hold our settlers hostage, forcing us to pay exorbitant fees to have them safely returned. Before we conquered Athens and subjugated Alexander and his Greek nation to the unstoppable American way of life, we had paid them to occupy the Gandhi’s attention by starting a border war. Unfortunately, like other previous allies, Alexander did nothing with the funds we supplied him. And in an ultimate show of disrespect and what would ultimately prove to be his undoing, three turns after we gave him money to start the war with Gandhi, Alexander turns around and declares war on me because my economy is booming. So we had to steer a portion of my forces away from the Indian/American border so we can bring the Greeks to an understanding, rebuild their cities, occupy their lands so that we may resume our good war with Gandhi.

The history of the world started out so well too. I founded Washington, my capital, on an ocean coastline with access to bountiful plains and productive mountains. I built the first buildings in Washington with my bare hands. We sent my warriors to survey the land, and they encountered friendly peoples who supplied our fledgling nation with soldiers, trade caravans, and persons with unique intelligence skills. Some of them even offered to join our nation, which brought pride and, more importantly, resources. We encountered some barbarian nations and clarified to them that the new world order had no place for them. As they fell, they gifted us gold and a ship with which we could begin to explore this world.

Let us remember the brave Pikemen who defended Boston.

Our view of the world expanded when we encountered envoys of Bismark of the Germans. There was some tension when our settlers founded Boston near the German border, but we ignored their demands for technology. Providence ensured that we found an advanced war machine, called a Sherman Tank, and we used it to smite the warriors and catapults that the Germans sent to conquer Boston. Sufficiently impressed with American might, Bismark sued for peace, which I gladly gave them. To ensure Boston’s continued success, we settled Plato there. I will never forget the look on Bismark’s face when his people in the city of Hannover chose to join the American nation. This was the sweetest victory of all, an act of self-determination made because of how appealing the American culture and the booming American economy were, not at the tip of a spear or the receiving end of a big rock. Perhaps that is why the German declaration of war in 1970 A.D. seemed so half-hearted; after Hannover defected, they knew that they had already lost. I gladly accepted the German nation into the American melting pot in 1993 A.D., when they joined the English and Japanese nations under the American banner.

Because of Boston’s location, the Germans were effectively bottled in their archipelago, which allowed me to continue to expand. American cities are, by design, founded on coasts to utilize economic and military advantages. This was critical when our little ship, which was a prize won from barbarians, was sunk without provocation by the Japanese navy in 1780 A.D. That steered our powerful research and development academies to uncover the secrets of steam power. Cruisers carried our riflemen and cannons to the Japanese islands, and we engaged in a protracted island-hopping campaign that led us to their capital, Kyoto. Emperor Tokugawa sued us for a ceasefire, and our government faced a moment of crisis when Congress vetoed my rejection of this plea. I argued that to stop now would mean that the Japanese nation would have an opportunity to rebuild and threaten our nation once more. Furthermore, the continued existence of a separate Japanese sovereignty would trouble the Japanese citizens who already voluntarily joined the American nation as they recognized and approved of America’s Manifest Destiny. With a heavy heart, I suspended that Congressional session, dismissed the Senators and Representatives, and continued the campaign to ensure American safety against future Japanese aggression. I continue to intend to restore Congress; I take no joy from claims that I am the Mad King Lincoln. As always, I work to better the American nation and its dependent peoples. This is why I build aqueducts and granaries in every city to ensure that my people are fed. This is why I install courthouses in every city to ensure that justice is not forgotten. This is why I limit the production of arms to only certain cities.

Though I regret the crisis that the war against Japan brought us to, I believe that we are stronger for it. That crucible forged the American nation into a nation capable of facing all obstacles, particularly those presented by the insidious English culture. Their religious fundamentalism threatened modernity, and I was not surprised that they violently opposed the values that we projected. We tried to engage them in trade, but they seized our trade caravans at every opportunity. There were moments when I thought the English people would reject their trajectory; I had high hopes when they threw down the religious fanatics from power and chose to create a democracy. I regret that we did not do enough to support their blossoming democracy before it fell to religious fanatics again. For the safety of the American people, I had no choice but to take them under the American banner. It was a humanitarian act.

America’s greatest minds led to our victory.

Our nation faced its greatest trial when Gandhi uncovered a trove of advanced technology and threatened us with tanks and advanced artillery. I marshaled our resources to uncover these secrets as well, constructing the Oxford University in order to gather our finest minds to lead the way. Providence again guided us; for all of the Indian nation’s might, they could not break through the stalwart defense posed by our veteran riflemen. They were the rock, and the Indian tanks and artillery were the wave. Eventually, we were able to unleash the full power of the American economy and manufactured tanks, artillery, and bombers. We also discovered Leonardo’s Workshop, which allowed us to quickly upgrade our existing soldiers’ equipment. The unconquerable veteran riflemen replaced their rifles with machine guns. That was the turning point of this protracted war.

Our hope for the future.

But I am tired of war. Now that Gandhi has joined Bismark, Elizabeth, Tokugawa, and petty barbarian lords in the realm of the unenlightened, we have a chance to ensure to improve our world. With global safety assured, I believe that unrest in the former Japanese, English, German, Indian cities will be relieved by expanding education, by building more universities, by ensuring that they have easy access to food and good jobs. One day, we will be able to disband our rapid reaction force and send those veterans home to the heroes’ welcome that they have earned. But most of all, I hope that our colony ship successfully finds a new world where we could start fresh and leave the mistakes of this world and its history behind.

America’s humble servant,
Abraham Lincoln

November 16, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Spelunky

Six hundred and twenty-one plays, six hundred and twenty-one deaths, zero wins. I’ve never been so happy with such futility.

I’ve been poking at Spelunky since about 2010, but I didn’t make a concerted effort to finish the game until this summer after the Xbox Live Arcade port was released. To this day, I still haven’t played that version. Instead, I’ve continued to try to conquer the original freeware PC version, where, despite my futility so far, I feel like I’m near a breakthrough.

I wonder how many of those deaths are intentional suicides after I took an early hit in first couple of stages. If I can feel the game going poorly, I’ll find the nearest enemy, spikes, or large fall, kill my avatar, and start again.

The pressure for a perfect run used to define my explorations of Spelunky, but for now, I just want to make it from the first stage to the fourth stage in one piece so I can unlock the tunnel to the fourth stage. When I pursued the perfect run, I would rage at the cheap hits from bats and snakes, curse the spiders, and curse myself for walking into yet another arrow trap that knocked me off a cliff, taking me from full life to death in a matter of seconds. I would boil because I was too close to an exploding space ship in the third stage or because I was caught in a damage loop from the snow monsters in the third stage. I would curse the spiders and frogs who seemed to be able to impossibly adjust their jumps so they land right on my head.

Try again.

I tend not to play many video games around my toddler, but Spelunky, for whatever reason, is one of the first video games to which I’ve exposed him. He calls it the “try again” game. In a way, I guess it’s teaching him good-nature perseverance.

Update: while finishing this post, I gave it another try. Six hundred and twenty-two plays, six hundred and twenty-two deaths, zero wins. Let’s try it again.

November 15, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Game Gear)

I’ve mentioned that I was on Sega’s side during the great 16-bit console war. That’s not to say that my backpack was emblazoned with a patch declaring Genesis does what Nintendon’t or that I declared my schoolmates who had Game Boys to be heretics that needed to be smitten. However, I did own a Sega Game Gear, rather proudly at the time, and that’s probably a heavier burden than carrying a great crusade against Captain N and the N Team because the Game Gear was a bulky, battery-consuming handheld gaming device.

The size and weight of the Game Gear doesn’t strike you until you compare it against something more familiar. Maybe that’s why I was partial to the PlayStation Portable for so long; it reminded me of the Game Gear.

Of course, the Game Gear always felt like a paper tiger. For all its size and hunger for electricity, it always felt strangely fragile. The black plastic casing never felt like it could withstand a fall of more than a foot, and the screen didn’t seem that much bigger than a Game Boy’s screen, even if it could show color.

The Game Gear’s need for power meant that I rarely played it during long childhood car rides. I didn’t have a car adapter, so I couldn’t rely on the Game Gear lasting the duration of those car rides. And if the Game Gear died, my entertainment options were limited to staring at passing scenery and traffic. This meant that I usually played the Game Gear at home, where it could be comfortably hooked to a wall outlet via AC adapter, an ignoble fate for an intriguing device.

My enduring memory of the Game Gear is directly connected to one of the most infuriating gaming experiences from my childhood: Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I loved the cases for Game Gear cartridges, and the cartridges had a nice little grip for ease of entry and removal.

To this day, I have not finished Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Game Gear. I’ve watched Let’s Play walkthrough videos on YouTube, so I know what lay beyond stage 2, the Sky High Zone, but I can’t claim the satisfaction of beating the game. Sometimes, I would get stuck at the first boss. Sometimes I wouldn’t make it through that damned hang-gliding section in Sky High Zone’s second act, at which point I would have to stop myself from (spin)dashing the Game Gear upon the floor in anger. It was particularly galling to discover that stage 3 was called the Green Hill Zone. Why would they name the third stage of the game after the first stage of every other Sonic the Hedgehog game? Why couldn’t I handle the hang-glider well enough to make it through that section? The system for operating that hang-glider made no sense to me when I was a child, and the gusts of wind that would have carried me upward from the oblivion of the screen’s bottom never seemed to come in time to save me.

I’ve been tempted to hunt down a secondhand Game Gear and a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I’ve even been tempted to just download an emulator and the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ROM. But what would I gain from beating it now? What would happen if my gaming skills have eroded to the point where I can’t beat it? The cost of the possibility of failure might outweigh the possible gain of shedding this anchor to childhood memories. For now, Sonic and Tails still stand unconquered, sometimes wagging his index finger at me, sometimes giving me a thumbs up sign.

November 14, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Streets of Rage 2

Pounding electronica is playing. Enter stage left, but I’m facing right. Turn around and walk left. Pick up the hidden extra life behind the mailbox. Punk in blue jeans and blue vest approaches. Jab-jab-vertical kick. Three more punks approach. Jab-jab-Grand Uppercut/Bare Knuckle. Two more punks approach from behind. Backfist. Punk with mohawk and a yellow jacket approaches. Knee press-jab-jab-Grand Uppercut/Bare Knuckle. The punks have now gathered into a tight group. Knee press-jab-jab-grapple-knee flurry 1-knee flurry 2-back throw. Knee press-jab-jab-grapple-knee flurry 1-knee flurry 2-vault over opponent-body slam. Surrounded by punks. Dragon Wing. Go straight.

When all else fails, spam Grand Uppercut/Bare Knuckle.

That might seem like gibberish to you, but that’s how I think of the very beginning of Streets of Rage 2. When I close my eyes, I can see the first punk in blue approach. I can play out exactly how I would attack him and remember how long I had before his comrades joined him. I know the exact timing window for each attack sequence and how each enemy would react to my attacks. Don’t jump against the bald, shirtless enemies because they’ll uppercut me unless they’re holding lead pipes. Don’t get in too close against the enemies with the mohawk and the brightly colored jackets because they’ll find an opening to throw me.

Every time I play Streets of Rage 2, I react to the same sequence of enemies with the same moves. It’s like our actions are scripted for us. I walk left to pick up the hidden extra life. The first group of punks try to ambush me from the right. I turn around and hit B-B-C-B on the Genesis controller to chain jab-jab-vertical kick. I press the advantage and hit B-B-double tap right on the directional pad-B to chain jab-jab-Grand Uppercut. The second group of punks try to ambush me from the left this time. Hit C-B simultaneously to use the backfist. The punk in the yellow jacket is here, so I hit C-down-B to make Axel yell something incoherent and jump into the punk in the yellow jacket to start the combo. Time passes, but the attack sequence at the beginning of Streets of Rage 2 is eternal.

This box survived multiple moves.

In the grand 16-bit console war, I was on the Sega Genesis side. One Christmas, my parents unveiled a brand new Sega Genesis Fighting System, which had Streets of Rage 2 as the pack-in game. I delicately removed every piece from the box (for a while, I still had the exterior cardboard box, the interior Styrofoam casing, and all the twist ties and plastic bags that came in the package) and hooked it up to the TV. I would get a few other games over the years (Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Columns and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine for my mother), but Streets of Rage 2 was my faithful companion for years.

There are four playable characters in Streets of Rage 2, but my memory is only attached to Axel, and it’s probably for an almost trivial reason: the first player’s selection defaults to Axel in the character selection screen.

There are multiple ports of Streets of Rage 2, but my muscle memory needs the original three-button Genesis gamepad to realize its full potential. The round directional pad would click in just right, and the B-button was ground into just the right groove from my presses. I’ve tried the XBLA version and the version included in Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, but they don’t feel right to me. Maybe it’s controller latency or how the directional pad on the Xbox 360 controller feels. Or maybe my muscle memory is so strongly tied to the Genesis controller that my hands refuse to recognize any other way of interacting with Streets of Rage 2.

One final thought: Streets of Rage 2 rules, Final Fight drools. Only one of the two games allows the player to build combos like the ones I described above, and it’s not the game by Capcom.

November 13, 2012 In Uncategorized

Gaming Stories: Halo 3

We all have anecdotes about our games, and the power of single-player video games lies in the games’ ability to bind us with shared moments. If I know that you’ve also played Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, I can reasonably assume that you too faced the disappointing final boss in an empty and anti-climactic mansion. It’s a common touchpoint, and communities are built on sharing our experiences.

So, from now until the end of the year, I’m going to try to share one of my gaming stories a day. The goal is not to recap the game’s events but to tell my story of that moment, almost like building my personal gaming memoir.

Since Halo 4 was released last week, let’s revisit my favorite moment from Halo 3, which I’ve titled “The Taking of Scarabs 1, 2, Boom.”

For as large the scope of the Halo series has been, it’s a surprisingly solitary experience. Humanity is losing an intergalactic war, but the chapter “The Covenant” in Halo 3 was the first time that I felt like I was a part of a great war. The fiction places the Master Chief as a monumental figure, the demon of death feared by humanity’s enemies, but he is usually a solitary operator in the field. The space battle taking place above Earth outside Cairo Station at the beginning of Halo 2 was nice to observe, but ships blowing up in the distance didn’t convey to me the feeling of being part of something grander. So, when cutscene that opened “The Covenant” showed seven dropships in formation ready to conduct a coordinated strike on enemy bases, I sensed that this chapter would be different.

Once the combat started, however, the game’s scope narrowed again. With our forces divided to hit the enemy in three simultaneous blows, I was alone to face the opposition in my tower. I remained alone even when I flew over to another tower to rectify the botched mission there.

Once the three towers were under friendly control, and I boarded a Scorpion tank in silence. As part of the metagame between the developers and the player, I knew that I would not have been given control of a tank unless I was going to face a challenge that required it. We moved from a vibrant and sunny shore through a tunnel to snowy mountains that were lit by a weak sun. The lonely piano at the beginning of “One Final Effort” is almost wistful, one set of notes repeating the other in a different octave, and I saw the snowy plain where the battle would take place. The strings have joined the piano, but I’ve lost a passenger on my Scorpion tank. The strings are have become more energetic, and I’m struggling to navigate the snowy cliffs in my unwieldy tank while fighting a combination of enemy Ghosts, Wraiths, Prowlers, and turrets.

“Hornets in-bound!”

Even the piano had picked up the pace by now to join the strings’ energy. A Scorpion tank and Hornets? Something wasn’t right. We used the Hornet earlier in the chapter to escort a dropship and engaged in dogfights against Banshees, but we’ve been on the ground since then. The passengers on my tank have all perished, and the tank itself is on fire.

Two Scarabs! Repeat, two Scarabs!

“I count two Scarabs. Repeat, two Scarabs!”

Well, now I knew why the developers have given me all this firepower.

The air started swarming with Hornets and Banshees, joined by the pounding music. I had to choose how to solve this combat puzzle. We had taken out a Scarab in Halo 2 on foot and a Scarab earlier in Halo 3‘s chapter, “The Storm,” on a Mongoose. Should I use the Scorpion or the Gauss Warthog to knock the Scarab down so I can board it to destroy it? Should I just use the Scorpion’s cannon to fire directly on the Scarabs’ engines to trigger their destruction? I could, but enemy Ghosts scampered to and fro, almost vibrating in their enthusiasm to stop me. Should I use the Hornet to destroy the Scarabs from the air? I could, but enemy Banshees vied with friendly Hornets and a friendly Pelican dropship for air superiority.

I made my choice. I would take to the skies. I weaved in between enemy fire, and I was methodical in my assault. I destroyed the enemy Banshees. I wrecked the Scarabs’ main guns and bombarded the troops who dared to show themselves on the Scarabs’ decks. I stripped the Scarabs’ of their armor. And then I directed those rockets into the Scarabs’ engines to trigger their destruction. I had felt like the god of death and destruction that the Covenant’s Grunts ran in fear from before, but this was on a greater scale than ever before. The music swelled, the Scarabs’ engines finally went critical, and there was a satisfying “Boom.”

“Both Scarabs down. Well done.”

Thanks, Cortana. I like to take pride in my work.

“Kill the stragglers.”

Oh. That’s a bit bloodthirsty of you, but what’s a few aliens more? The music is positively triumphant, almost inspirational, as I did what Cortana asked.

“Calamity! If we only had more time.”

As I crossed the bridge to my next mission objective, the strings faded away to one sustained note, and the melancholy piano returned. I agreed with 343 Guilty Spark. That was the series’s finest moment, the perfect melding of music and player control in a combat puzzle, and this was the closest the Halo games came to matching the scope that it tried to present. This near perfect moment was all too brief, and replaying the section would be nothing more than chasing that high to diminishing returns. I secured that memory and moved on to slay some more aliens.