Co-Op Critics | Kim Wong

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 6, 2012 In Uncategorized

The Year With No New Games-Part 8: The New Game Masters

I am a child of the 1980s and 1990s, the heady days when there would still be cartoons on our local Fox affiliate (WNYW-NY), the independent channel (WPIX-NY), and the unaffiliated channel (WWOR-TV) during the ungodly early weekday hours, weekday afternoons after school, Saturday mornings, and early Sunday mornings. These included Captain N: The Game Master on NBC, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, and eventually more questionable shows like Double Dragon and Mutant League. During the weekend, after the cartoons finished, there would be live action shows like WMAC Masters (which I rediscovered through a Google search for “martial arts tournament fake”). There was one show that I dimly remembered until a multi-pronged Wikipedia, Google, and YouTube search unearthed it and triggered warm memories of admiration and jealousy. It was Video Power, and the show I remember was apparently the show’s second incarnation, but what could be more memorable to a child than a game show where kids competed against each other in video game score attacks and video game trivia quizzes?

At the end of each Video Power, the winner would have a chance to run a prize gauntlet to attach as many games to his or her head and torso as could remaining attached through Velcro. This was the climax of the show, the apotheosis of these gaming idols. I was fascinated by each player’s run and broke them down in my imagination to find strategies for balancing time, the unreliability of the Velcro, and the critical path through the maze to come out with as many games as possible.

This was before the Evo Championship Series, before I discovered Twin Galaxies through The King of Kong, before I found out about the Nintendo World Championships, and definitely before speed-running games was a filmed and shared experience. I didn’t see The Wizard until long after Video Power‘s run ended, so the children I saw on Video Power were my childhood standard-bearers for gaming prowess. They had unlocked the games’ secrets. Maybe they discovered them through the Worlds of Power tie-in novels, so I read them, indirectly inspiring a lifelong love of books. (I know I keep looking for gaming tips in Neal Stephenson’s novels.) Maybe they consulted the tomes of cheats and hints, like Tricks of the Nintendo Masters, which always had the worst cover designs. While I could try to match the show’s scores on Super Mario Bros., I just didn’t have access to games like Double Dragon III: The Gem Masters, Mega Man, or Super Glove Ball.

Since then, I’ve learned about things like critical path method for project management and how that applies to high level video game speed-running, counter-intuitive methods to enemy encounters in single player games like letting them hit you so you can exploit the invincibility flicker, and the meta-game that goes on behind competitive multiplayer games. I’ve become an adult, so I don’t hold people who are great at games with the same adulation that I did as a child. And gaming expertise has seemingly fragmented. For example, while winners of the Evo Championship Series may compete in a number of games (Justin Wong, most famous for dominating Evo for years and for the single greatest counter series in Evo history, for instance, competed in Evo 2009 in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Street Fighter IV, Street Fighter III: Third Strike), the games will often share a system (which is why players like Justin Wong may stick to only Capcom fighting games in competitions and not compete in other two-dimensional games with different systems and timing like Mortal Kombat, much less three-dimensional games like Tekken or Soulcalibur). It makes sense; become a jack of all trades and risk also becoming a master of none or concentrate on a few games that are similar so skills can transfer from one to another.

In a way, the spirit of mastery of all games has diminished since the Video Power and Nintendo World Championship Series days, when players had to be ready to compete in a variety of games with different systems. The spirit is kept alive at the Penny Arcade Expo’s Omegathon, but I contend that the spirit is also kept alive by those who are derisively called “achievement whores.”

Consider Ray Cox, also known as “Stallion83,” the current Guinness World Record holder for highest gamerscore, who is on a quest to reach 1 million gamerscore points. According to his profile on TrueAchievements.com, he’s played 1,254 total games, ranging from Kinectimals to Ratatouille to Too Human. He’s achieved nearly 82% of all possible achievements, including the DLC that he owns for the games that he’s played, of these 1,254 games. By necessity, he’s had to plays games in all the genres currently available on the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone and acquire as many of the achievements in them as quickly as possible.

Cox, by the nature of his quest, is an extreme outlier example, but his peers all have had to dip into a variety of genres in order to accrue their gamerscore. To me, Cox and his peers carry the spirit of masterful play, adaptability, and comfort with any number of systems that I believe is in the spirit of Video Power and Nintendo World Championship Series players. One might sneer at their quest or treat achievements and gamerscore as Microsoft’s cynical attempts to hook players into the Xbox 360’s ecosystem. One might even question how achievements and gamerscore are negatively affecting game development. But I appreciate the spirit of what they do. They strive for mastery, for finding the most efficient ways to deconstruct a game to its core components, and then they move on. They are, to me, the new game masters.

September 18, 2012 In Uncategorized

The Year With No New Games-Part 6: “This is all your fault”

[SPOILER WARNING NOW FOR SPEC OPS: THE LINE. But you really, really should play the game. Tour the content on the easiest difficulty level if you have to.]

Part of playing to 100% completion and unlocking all achievements in a game often means beating games at the highest difficulty level. Sometimes, my memories of beating games at their respective highest difficulty levels are fond. For example, finishing the last campaign in Left 4 Dead on “Expert” difficulty is still one of my favorite gaming memories, while beating Crysis 2 on “Supersoldier” mode with a fully powered Nanosuit and complete awareness of how to approach the game’s combat puzzles fulfilled my power fantasy. Other times, my memories are less kind, such as the sour aftertaste of using an exploit to progress through Bayonetta on “Non-Stop Climax” mode or how rote the experience felt beating Resident Evil 5 on its highest difficulty level. I like to think that I’ve now played enough games that I can beat most games, no matter how hard. After all, I’m part of the Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare “Mile High Club.” I’ve beaten Halo: Reach on “Legendary” difficulty by myself. No game should be beyond my ability to complete.

Behind my imaginary achievement trophy case is my box of secret shame, the games I abandoned for any number of reasons. I couldn’t beat John Woo Presents Stranglehold on hard difficulty? I couldn’t finish Prince of Persia (2008), SSX, Burnout Revenge, Split/Second at all? But no game should be beyond my ability to complete!

Over the past month, I’ve immersed myself in Spec Ops: The Line to the exclusion of all other games. Other reviewers have described the game a 4-5 hour affair, and that might be the case if they played it on the easy or normal difficulty level. But on the second highest difficulty level, “Suicide Mission,” I needed about 15-20 hours in total to complete the game and unlocked the gaming feat, morality decision, and collection achievements. Only one achievement awaited me: beating the game on its highest difficulty level, “FUBAR.” And so I thought to myself, “I’ve beaten all three Gears of War games on ‘Insane.’ I’ve beaten Army of Two: The 40th Day on ‘Contractor’ difficulty. I can beat Spec Ops: The Line on ‘FUBAR’ mode, even if it will take me a while.”

Ultimately, I realized that trying to grind my way from checkpoint to checkpoint in Spec Ops: The Line on “FUBAR” might actually eliminate, rather than enhance, my appreciation for the game. So I did something I wished I had done when I passed a climactic moment in the game: I stopped playing, placed the disc back in its case, and moved on.

Let me explain.

There was a point in Spec Ops: The Line where I didn’t want to play the game any longer. I was sickened by what I had done. I could have blamed the programmers for putting me in this position, but that would ignore my choice to not only pull the trigger but also continue to play. I had to assume responsibility for my virtual actions; anything else would be a lie to myself. I then rationalized my decision to continue to play by telling myself that I had to keep playing because there was no way I could let what I had just done be the last thing I would let my character do in the game. I was playing an American soldier. There had to be a moment of redemption. Other games, movies, and books had taught me that.

This is where I lay out the spoiler warning again.

I had encountered moral quandaries in the game before this moment of decision and rationalization. Earlier in the game, I had to choose between saving a CIA operative and two civilians from a group of US soldiers. I chose to save the CIA operative, and then I felt like a fool when he succumbed to his injuries by the next cut scene. Three lives lost over nothing.

Not long after, I came upon an enemy encampment that seemed no different than other enemy encampments that I had already encountered. Since I had a scoped weapon, I tried to snipe some soldiers first to thin them out. But they seemed to keep respawning, which violated the rules of limited enemy spawns that the game had previously established. Then, I was gunned by snipers. All the while, my AI teammates debated the use of a nearby mortar cannon. I couldn’t find a way down to the encampment; unlike other similar positions in the game, I was not given a choice to climb down from my platform. I respawned and tried to snipe the encamped enemies again, marked the snipers for my AI teammate to counter-snipe, and sought refuge in the little cover that platform provided. I was gunned down again. I wanted to solve the combat puzzle without using the extreme measures to which the game was steering me. After all, I was an armed American soldier in a video game. I had already killed scores of enemies. Every time I died, I respawned, and the enemies would appear in the same places as before. Effectively, as I was in other modern military shooters like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, I was a god with the ability to choose who lived and died with a simple finger movement. I was mighty; therefore, I was right.

For all that might, for all the enemies who have died because I pulled the trigger, I chose poorly. Frustrated, I selected to use the mortar and rained fire on my enemies. From a computer display similar to the “Death From Above” sequence on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, I burned my enemies with white phosphorus. As the white dots on my screen stopped moving a pull of the trigger at a time, the camera panned to one more group of white dots that I had to eliminate. They moved differently than the other white dots, and they were penned in what looked like a holding area. The game wouldn’t let me continue until they too fell, so I pulled the trigger until those white dots disappeared too.

Those particular white dots were civilians, and I had just massacred them.

Once the cutscene that laid out in gruesome detail what exactly I had done ended, I faced a choice. I could stop playing altogether, accept that I had committed an atrocity in a video game, and move on. Or, I could refuse to take responsibility for what I had done, just as my avatar, Captain Martin Walker, had done. I could shift my blame to someone else, declare that I had no choice because I was forced to do this, designate someone as more evil than me, and focus on killing that person to redeem myself. I could tell myself that I was a mighty armed American soldier, that I had massacred these people for a reason, and that I would be redeemed and shown to be in the right by the game’s end. I might now be a compromised hero, but I’ll finish the game a hero nonetheless.

So I plowed on, believing that I would find redemption in the game. I tried to save a civilian, but he was killed in the crossfire between my soldiers and the enemies. I tried to ally myself with the CIA-led insurgency, but that ended up dooming anyone left alive to dying by dehydration. There would be no redemption for my avatar or me. Sometimes, the moral taint is just too great.

Only one challenge remained. I still had to beat the game on “FUBAR” so I could claim 100% completion and physically and mentally archive the game. I paused to wonder if this was psychopathic; why would I play the game again knowing that I had to burn those civilians again to progress? I put the thought aside and tried to solve each combat puzzle with great patience, moving from checkpoint to checkpoint. The game itself tried to deter me by making my avatar and AI teammates much more feeble while increasing my enemies’ might. On the second playthrough, it seemed that I was no longer mighty because I was no longer right. I couldn’t even pretend to be right.

After a particularly challenging firefight last night, I gave up. Knowing what challenges laid ahead was demoralizing, but not as much as the knowledge that the easiest combat puzzle ahead would be killing those civilians again. As frustrating as the experience would be, I could have probably broken the game into one combat puzzle a night until I finished them all. I was already skipping cutscenes in my “FUBAR” playthrough; in effect, I had already started reducing the game just to its combat components, which are not the strongest parts of the game. But that would drag Spec Ops: The Line down from an interesting experience to the tedium of play, and I appreciated what the game had tried to do too much to do that.

I’ve quit on games before, either because I couldn’t grasp the controls of the game (SSX) or the tedium of play took hold, and I couldn’t be bothered to play anymore (Prince of Persia). This was the first time I’ve stopped playing because I appreciated the game too much to reduce it into its component puzzles to be solved.

I’m still reflecting on the game, its themes, and how well the mechanics tied into them. I still need to process how the game drops its verisimilitude and how the lead writer’s comments about the story now tie the game to Silent Hill 2 and The Dark Tower series of books in my head.

September 4, 2012 In Uncategorized

The Year With No New Games-Part 5: “Mastery”

This weekend, I relaxed and didn’t play a game at all. I didn’t load up 10000000 on my iPad. I didn’t play Spec Ops: The Line on my 360. I didn’t charge up the DS Lite in order to play yet another game of Civilization Revolution. Instead, I just sat back and watched as some of the best speedrunners in the world plied their craft for the
Kings of Poverty’s speedrun marathon to raise funds for RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).

Last time, I discussed briefly the idea of tedium of play that comes with 100% completion. Watching these players break down games by pixel movements with perfect timing, like some of the jumps in cyghfer‘s run of Bucky O’Hare on Hard mode, where the player loses a life with just one hit, or exploit game glitches like dram55‘s use of ceiling sticking in Super Mario World and cyghfer’s use of a glitch that allowed him to enter walls and teleport up a screen in Mega Man 2 showed that mastery of a game inside and out can come with “tedium of play.”

One of my secret sources of gamer pride is the fact that, once upon a time, I could complete Streets of Rage 2 in less than 50 minutes on hard mode using Axel. Because I only owned 4 games for the Sega Genesis (or the Sega Mega Drive, if you’re so inclined), I would say that I mastered Streets of Rage 2. I knew combos for each character, the timing and placement for weapons dropped by enemies or found in the stage, and most importantly, a certain standard for quickly I could finish the game and how high my score should be.

A quick word about Streets of Rage 2, which I will contend was a better game than any of the Final Fight games. I’d go as far as saying that Streets of Rage 2 is the finest side-scrolling brawler of the 16-bit generation. I’d also go as far as saying that beating Streets of Rage 2 with Axel or Max on Mania mode, the highest difficulty level, is a very different experience than beating it with Blaze or Skate. Finally, while Streets of Rage 2 had no in-game achievements (until the re-releases on Xbox Live Arcade and in Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection), beating Streets of Rage 2 with Blaze and Skate on Mania mode would be as close to 100% completion as one could get. It took months of attempts to grinding the game, finding the optimal timing and strategies to handle enemies before I could beat it with Blaze. It took years of off-and-on play until I could beat it with Skate. So why didn’t I consider this tedious?

The easy answer would be that I didn’t find grinding Streets of Rage 2 until I mastered it because I had no other games to play. Another easy explanation would be that tedium looks very different to an adolescent boy with limited responsibilities than to a man with limited leisure time. But I think that the tedium comes with the artificial structure, that the implementation of achievements, trophies, and Gamer Points and my psychological acceptance lays the foundation for me to find the act of play a chore.

Grinding Streets of Rage 2 and grinding for the “Demolition Man” achievement in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are very different things, even though the same vocabulary is used to describe both. Grinding Streets of Rage 2 until I could beat it with the toughest characters to use on the hardest difficulty mode meant that I was still playing through the game, progressing through different environments, hearing different tracks, and experiencing different stimulation. Grinding for the “Demolition Man” achievement meant, as I mentioned last time, meant that I was herding other willing players into a building on a multiplayer map and blowing the building up with C4, hoping that the game would recognize those kills as mine. Grinding Streets of Rage 2 meant that I was achieving mastery; grinding for the “Demolition Man” achievement that I was filling up a bar in a game.

Seeing the speedrunners come near world record times for games like Batman (NES) and Bad Street Brawler reminded me of what mastery of a game and pride in your play looked like. Whenever you’re feeling burnt out on gaming, take a look at speedrun archives like Speed Demos Archive, a stream on SpeedRunsLive, or even a playthrough on Let’s Play Archive. Sometimes, seeing someone who really knows what he or she is doing with a game is the cure to gaming burnout.

Also, please check out Team Sp00ky‘s archive of the Kings of Poverty’s speedrun marathon (part 1 and part 2) and donate to RAINN, either through the Kings of Poverty’s collection or directly.

August 14, 2012 In Uncategorized

The Year With No New Games-Part 4: “Completion”

I wish I could say that I had been away for so long because I was fully immersed in clearing off my backlog, that my pile of shame has been leveled, and that the new games have my complete and undivided attention. But that would be a lie.

One factor I had not considered when drafting the original gaming schedule was how time consuming finishing some of them would be. Another, slightly more important factor I had not considered was how quickly I would feel burnt out on gaming in general, and achievements-oriented gaming in particular, after a few months of this project. The most important factor I had not considered was how difficult it is to balance school, work, and family, particularly raising a toddler, would be. At the end of the day, I just didn’t want to play anymore.

It turns out that once I popped (an achievement), I actually could stop.

That said, it’s the redefinition of “completion” that accelerated my burnout. Last time, I mentioned that the pursuit of 100% completion derailed this project. We normally call the act of experiencing a game’s full plot or playing a game’s last level “completion.” But there are other difficulties and other modes to conquer, other challenges (self-imposed or designed by the creators) to overcome, other collectibles to discover. And therein lies the relatively arbitrary demarcation of “100% completion,” which I defined as “all achievements earned.” And that usually means some tedious play.

“Tedious play” is a wonderful oxymoron. How can play, which is supposed to joyous, be tedious? It’s tedious when you’re leading a coordinated group effort to enter into buildings so an achievement boosting partner can demolish it, thereby scoring demolition kills in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It’s tedious when you’re playing a particular checkpoint in Gears of War 2‘s campaign again and again so you can use the Brumak to score 100,000 kills. It’s tedious when you’re caught in a cycle of dying and respawning just so you can join Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare‘s Mile High Club. And yet I’ll smile when I think about the moment when the Demolition Man, Seriously 2.0 and Mile High Club achievements popped.

May 30, 2011 In Uncategorized

The Year with No New Games–Part 3: Once You’ve Popped, You Can’t Stop

by Kim Wong

If you’ve ever played an Xbox 360 or Xbox Live Arcade game, you’ll know the sound. That addictive little pop that draws the gamer into a positive reinforcement loop that some call ruinous, while others acclaim as purpose-creating. It’s the sound of achievements unlocking, and it played a huge role in derailing my quest to complete 29 downloadable and retail games in 12 months.

Let’s take a look at that original gaming schedule again:

January 2011: Vanquish, Super Meat Boy, Battlefield: Bad Company 2-Vietnam
February: Alan Wake, Splosion Man, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
March: Dead Space, Halo Wars, Wolfenstein
April: Singularity, Conan
May: Metro 2033, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
June: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, LEGO Rock Band, The Beatles Rock Band
July: Fable II, Penny Arcade Adventures 1 and 2
August: Alpha Protocol, Modern Warfare 2 (Veteran difficulty)
September: Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4 (Veteran difficulty)
October: Saints Row 2, Prince of Persia
November: Bully: Scholarship Edition, The Secret of Monkey Island
December: Grand Theft Auto IV, Trials HD

Of those 29 games, I only managed to complete Vanquish and Battlefield: Bad Company 2-Vietnam. I unlocked all achievements in Battlefield: Bad Company 2-Vietnam, while I only have one achievement left in Vanquish. But it’s not the actual pursuit of achievements in the games on the schedule that derailed this project. Rather, it’s the pursuit of achievements in games that I had previously completed and hadn’t thought about until I started this project. Let’s take a look at some of what I’ve accomplished in 2011:

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance: started in October 2007, last previously played in June 2009, completed to 100% January 2011
Aegis Wing: started in November 2007, last previously played in February 2009, completed to 100% in January 2011
Gears of War: started in May 2008, last previously played in March 2009, completed on Insane in co-op in January 2011
Magic: The Gathering-Duels of the Planeswalkers: started in June 2009, last played in November 2009, completed to 100% in February 2011
Halo 3: started in October 2007, last played in July 2010, completed to 100% in February 2011
Alien Hominid HD: started and last played in April 2009, completed to 100% in February 2011
Ticket to Ride: started in June 2008, last played in June 2009, completed to 100% in February 2011

While attempting to complete games from my backlog, I actually dug deeper than intended and exhumed games that I had originally considered completed to my satisfaction. Instead, I tried to achievement 100% completion on as many as possible. More than anything else, this pursuit of 100% completion derailed my project. And I couldn’t be happier for it. An explanation next time.

May 18, 2011 In Uncategorized

The Year with No New Games–Part 2: Making a List, Checking it Twice

by Kim Wong

Let’s take a moment and take a look at that original gaming schedule from the first article:

In 12 months, I had aimed to complete 19 full retail games, 2 ports of classic retail games (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and The Secret of Monkey Island), 3 games that are nearly impossible to master (Super Meat Boy, Splosion Man, and Trials HD), 2 games that I wanted to master on higher difficulties (Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2), a downloadable multiplayer expansion (BF:BC2-Vietnam), and 2 downloadable RPGs. This would have been a tall task if I didn’t work full time, went to graduate school part time, and weren’t a husband and a father of a toddler. With those obligations in hand, I probably should have scaled back the scope of this project. So how did I create this schedule?

There was purpose to this madness, and it’s easier to explain if viewed in chunks.

I had dedicated January to March to atmospheric third person shooters. Vanquish, Alan Wake, Dead Space, and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West each presented a different take on how to pace third person games and give the player a different experience. Dead Space was also timed for March to be near the release of Dead Space 2, so I could at least understand the chatter about how the sequel would compare to the original. Super Meat Boy and Splosion Man were going to be compared as two takes on the modern sadistic puzzle platformer. Wolfenstein would have laid the transition to the next segment.

From April to May, the goal was to experience two first person shooters that created rich worlds for the players to explore. Singularity has been compared to BioShock in various reviews, while Metro 2033 tries to strike the middle between open world shooters like the STALKER series and Half-Life 2. Conan would have provided the mindless hack and slash, while Castlevania: Symphony of the Night would have segued to the next segment of the year.

What’s better than to immerse yourself in a full role-playing game during the summer? From June to September, I would have taken on three of the biggest role-playing games of this generation, two downloadable role-playing games, and one that’s become an underground hit. The Rock Band games would have been a palate cleanser from heavy role-playing games. The two Call of Duty games would have been also interesting contrasts to how Alpha Protocol and Mass Effect handled the mechanics of shooting. Because Modern Warfare 2 lacks infinitely respawning enemies, I scheduled it before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

The year would have ended on the great open world games of this generation, from the satirical Saints Row 2 to the beginning of Rockstar’s evolution in open world gaming design this generation with Bully: Scholarship Edition. Theoretically, I would have followed Grand Theft Auto IV with Red Dead Redemption in January 2012.

Each segment of the year focused on a theme and would have provided potential for comparison and contrast. Over the course of a year, I would also have played some of the best games of this console generation, and I would be able to participate in more conversations. But this didn’t come to pass, and the reasons for this will explored in the next article.