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

NDS_Game_Cover

Finally! A New Co-Op Critics Podcast!

After much too long of an absence, Co-Op Critics has returned!

In this episode, our good friend Max Saltonstall stopped by to talk AnonyCon and a bunch of games both he and I have been playing. We also have two interviews–the first with Fernando Bustamante of D3 about the new Adventure Time game, and the second with our good friend Antony Johnston, writer of the upcoming WiiU launch title ZombiU. Here’s the show notes for the episode:

Games Rundown with Brian and Max

AnonyCon (www.anonycon.com)
Niantic Project (www.nianticproject.com)
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn
Silent Hill: Book of Memories
Knights of Pen & Paper
Team Fortress 2 / Left 4 Dead 2
Angry Birds Star Wars

Interview: Fernando Bustamante–D3 Publisher
Brian spoke with the Senior Marketing Manager of D3 about the upcoming 3DS game Adventure Time: Hey Ice King, Why’d You Steal Our Garbage? The game arrives on November 20, 2012, and you can find out more about it at www.d3p.us.

Interview: Antony Johnston (www.antonyjohnston.com)
Brian spoke with the writer of ZombiU at NYCC 2012. ZombiU will launch alongside the new WiiU on November 18, 2012. You can find out more about the game at zombiu.ubi.com.

You can find the episode here, or just click on the player for the episode on the right sidebar of the page.

Enjoy!

TwoScarabs3

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.
Halo4forwarduntodawn

‘Forward Unto Dawn’ Brought Me Back to Halo

As I write this, it’s Halo 4 launch day, and I just picked up my copy of the game. Two days ago however, I hadn’t even planned on picking up Halo 4 at launch, as I was only planning on picking up one shooter this holiday season, and had made the decision that I’d be getting Call of Duty: Black Ops II instead.

But a funny thing happened over the past couple of days–I came to realize that the Halo franchise is really the only first-person shooter series I’ve been consistently interested in this console generation (and the one prior). Watching the excellent Forward Unto Dawn web series drove home that realization, and after watching the first couple episodes, I preordered the game in the eleventh hour.

When I say that I’ve been consistently interested in the franchise, what I mean is that I’ve played all of the Halo games, and I’ve completed the campaigns in each one. As I thought about it, I realized that the Halo series is the only FPS series that I have completed all of the campaigns in. In Call of Duty, the last campaign I finished was World at War. For Resistance, I didn’t even play the third game. Same for Gears of War. But the combination of story and setting in the Halo games kept me interested in the universe enough to complete all of the games, and it’s what’s brought me back for the latest installment.

I realize that for a lot of people, this is the opposite of why they play Halo. For many, it’s the multiplayer component that brings them back each time. And while multiplayer has always been executed very well in the Halo series, I’ve never been a big fan of it (probably because I’m not very good at it). I usually a handful of hours with the multiplayer of each game, and then move on to other shooters I fare better at. The last time I played a Halo game, it was the multiplayer mode for Reach, and my apathy for that part of the game is why I wasn’t overly excited about Halo 4. So much of the media coverage dedicated to the game is focused on multiplayer, that it’s easy to forget about the campaign.

But the campaigns have always been great in my mind (even Halo 2), and Reach’s was fantastic. The last moments of that campaign provided one of the most emotionally powerful experiences that I’ve ever had in a game. Seeing Forward unto Dawn made me realize that I am excited about the return of Master Chief, and I want to learn more about the Forerunners, and what happens to Cortana’s sanity as the end of her life draws closer.

My interest in Halo over other shooters makes sense to me when I think about my gaming preferences as a whole. I’m an RPG nerd–I need a world I can get immersed in. Story, setting and characters trump gameplay for me. When compared to other shooter series, there’s a lot more to explore in the Halo universe.

So, while Forward Unto Dawn was primarily designed to introduce new players to the series, it has served to bring me back and remind me why I became of fan of the universe in the first place.

CaptainN

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.

Spec-Ops-The-Line

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.  

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.

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My Long Road to Finishing inFamous (Part 2 of 2)–I’m An Unfocused Gamer

The older I get, the less interested I become in actually reviewing games, and the more interested I become in discussing my experiences with them, and what I learn about myself when I play them.

As I talked about in my last post, it took me three years to finish the first inFamous game. Had I not gotten a copy of inFamous 2, I probably never would have gone back to finish the first game. But I did, and I really liked the game, and that got me thinking. How many other games have I walked away from early on, and missed out on an interesting experience? What does that say about me as a gamer? Is finishing a game the exception rather than the rule for me?

Off the top of my head, here’s a quick list of games that I started but walked away from in the past year or so:

Uncharted: Golden Abyss (Vita)
Resistance: Retribution (Vita)
Section 8: Prejudice (Xbox Live)
MLB ‘12 The Show (Vita)
Mortal Kombat (Vita)
Metal Gear Solid 3D: Snake Eater (3DS)
LEGO Batman 2 (DS)
Bit.Trip Saga (3DS)
Battlefield 3 (XBox 360)
Cthulhu Saves the World (XBox Live)
Dead Island (Xbox 360)
Shank 2 (PSN)
Super Stardust Delta (Vita)
Shadows of the Damned (PS3)
Two Worlds II (Xbox 360)

Here are the games I bought, never started, and traded in for something else:

Gears of War 3 (XBox 360)
Uncharted 3 (PS3)

Here are the games I actually played through to completion, or am actually engrossed in:

inFamous (PS3)–completed
Dark Souls (PS3)–completed 100-hour campaign and am 20 hours into second playthrough
Saints Row: The Third (XBox 360)–completed
Mass Effect 3 (XBox 360)–completed and played the last 3 hours again for the “Extended Cut”
Deus Ex: Human Revolution (PS3)
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (PS3)
The Walking Dead: Episode One–completed, but it was short
Minecraft (XBox Live)–at least 15 hours in and completely addicted
Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational–easily my most-played Vita game
Marvel Pinball (PSN)–I’ve put several hours into this one
Sound Shapes (PS3)–about halfway through and loving it

So, judging from that list, I actually finish very few games. In fact, most of the time, I start a game and play for a few hours, then walk away. That’s my most frequent pattern of behavior as a gamer, which is kind of disturbing to me. Most of those games on the first list I bought brand new at retail for $60 (or $40 for the Vita/3DS games). That’s a whole lot of money I threw away on games I didn’t spend a lot of time with. With Gears 3 and Uncharted 3, I probably got $40-50 in trade for $120 worth of games I didn’t play. Not a good return on my investment.

So what else do these lists tell me? Well, I can see that I certainly like RPGs and games with heavy RPG-like elements. Really, Marvel Pinball and Sound Shapes are the only one on the “finished/engrossed” list that don’t fit that description (yes, even Hot Shots has RPG elements). Many of those games on my “finished/engrossed” list also either have a strong story (Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Enslaved) or let you create one for yourself (Dark Souls, Minecraft). They also have immersive worlds to explore an, in some cases, get lost in (inFamous, Saints Row, Dark Souls, Mass Effect, Deus Ex, Minecraft).

My takeaway from all this is that I tend to enjoy the games I can get lost in, but that I frequently leave a game before giving myself enough time to get lost in it, which is counter-intuitive. One way to fix this is to not get caught up in the idea of needing to get a game when it first comes out, but rather getting it when I actually have time to give it a fair shake. Also, instead of juggling fifteen games at the same time, I can focus in on one or two, and really devote some time into completing them, or at least spending enough time with them to make an informed judgment.

I’ll post in the future about how well I’m actually sticking to this strategy. My first order of business will be to revisit a couple of games on that first list and see if I can get back into them. I think Dead Island will be my first challenge, as I had a lot of fun with it before walking away.

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.

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The Cold Stream Update for Left 4 Dead 2 Brings Team Zombie Out of Hiding

There is a group of us on XBox Live (including Co-Op Critics Dan Evans and Kim Wong) that have gamed together for the better part of five years now. We initially came together around Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2007, but the group really jelled with the arrival of the original Left 4 Dead in 2008. In fact, we put so much time into playing that game together, that we dubbed our gaming group ‘Team Zombie.’ To this day, whenever the call goes out over Twitter for some co-op gaming, the Team Zombie signal is shown in the sky, no matter what game we’re actually playing.

Outside of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 though, our group doesn’t game together as much anymore. Part of the issue is shooter fatigue, which gets worse with each new iteration of CoD or Battlefield. But part of it is also that no games can quite match the Left 4 Dead series in terms of co-op fun.

So when Valve finally brought he long-awaited Cold Stream update to Xbox on July 24th, it was a pretty big deal for our little group. And since its release, Team Zombie has been back in action, having as much fun as we’ve ever had with the game.

Cold Stream is great because not only does it bring a new level to L4D2, but it brings the rest of the maps from the original game into L4D2, and they’ve all been updated. Many of the ways we used to beat the old maps are no longer possible, as the levels themselves have been tweaked. This has made all of the maps feel new again, and it’s resulted in the laugh out loud, screaming and yelling sessions that brought the group together in the first place.

So I’d like to thank Valve for Cold Stream, because it got the band back together. It was a long wait, but well worth it to be fighting for my life with Team Zombie again.