'Visual' Novels and Oddities of Design...

Some trends are strangely cyclical. The earliest computer games were heavily based on table-top games, and tended to be open-ended and expansive. In the late 80s and early 90s, new technology led the industry to 'chase' Hollywood, and openness was frequently dropped in favor of linear titles with elaborate live or animated cutscene driven stories. In many ways, this last generation of hardware has seen the open world return, with a few merciful lessons learned about respecting player's time.

Japan seems to be the only place that's still making games that are chasing films. I was recently exposed to a game, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (999, Chunsoft, 2009, Nintendo DS), that's part of a genre that epitomizes this: the 'visual novel'. Think of classic PC adventure games (e.g., King's Quest or Maniac Mansion) with even less interactivity. Basically, you watch long stretches of non-interactive text or video, broken up with choose-your-adventure style choices. Eventually the story presents you with puzzles whose completion begins the cycle anew.

The pay-off is that your choices influence the course of the linear narrative leading you to a series of different endings. The encouragement to play through all of the various paths is the acquisition of different pieces of information about the game's overall plot (mercifully you can quickly page through sections that you've completed in a previous play through).

Based solely on my personal gaming preferences - including my stated hatred of cutscenes - I should have hated 999. And yet, when I pulled it out during some long flights, I ended up playing through the entire thing.

It's difficult to explain 999's plot, especially without 'spoilers'. The titular nine people awake to find themselves trapped in an ocean liner that's been outfitted with all manner of weird puzzles. Each member of the group wears a bracelet with a different numeral and is told that they've swallowed a bomb. If they don't follow the rules of a 'Saw' style game based around the numerology of their bracelets, they will be killed. The rules dictate how they can move through the ship and provides their only means to escape.

999's success stems from its plot being surprisingly well-written. Everything about your circumstances is continuously thrown on its head: it's revealed quite early that one of the 9 persons is the master-mind behind the maze... but whom? By the end, (almost) everything you thought was a plot-hole is explained and even the need to play through 4 'bad' endings to get the 'true end' is explained as part of the plot. It's all stupid Japanese thriller nonsense, but I still enjoyed it.

I suppose that my appreciation for the game, despite its cutscene driven nature, is its use of the medium to do something that couldn't be done well in film or book. As I've said before, if I wanted non-interactive movies, I'd watch a movie, and if I wanted to read reams of text, I'd get a book. It's not perfect, but because of its branching paths, multiple endings, and how they're all integrated into the mind-bending plot, it ends up being something that neither book nor movie could accomplish.

However, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some of the game's glaring imperfections - almost all of which seem to plague Japanese games despite endless volleys of criticism. Why, oh why must the text scroll so slowly? I can read much faster than this, so why not just let me tap along at my own pace? Thankfully you can 'fast-forward' through sections that you've already seen in subsequent play throughs, but why should I have to waste time replaying those sections at all? Why not just let me go back to a previous branch-point in the story and play from there?

In order to see the 'true' ending, you must encounter all of the 'bad' endings (this requires at least 5 play throughs). Thankfully, the endings you've seen and the choices you've made are highlighted, so it's pretty straightforward to try something else. Now, some of the choices are only cosmetic - they lead to different dialogue options with the other captives, but don't influence the ending. However, this is not true of the 'true' ending. In this final play through, choices that were previously cosmetic now matter, but nowhere does the game tell you this. Without the aid of a walkthrough (which I highly recommend), you may be playing the 'true' path several times in order to figure out what arbitrary choices you need to make in order to survive. This isn't good design - it would've been considered stupidly frustrating in classic adventure games, and given how much the medium has progressed, it's unacceptable now.

Somewhat shockingly given 999's ending, they've made a sequel: Virtue's Last Reward (yay ridiculous Japanese naming). I've heard that it fixes some of the issues I have (such as the ability to 'warp' back to previous branch points so I'm looking forward to playing through. I just hope that the writers are able to craft such an interesting tale again. 

Deus Ex: Human Revolutions (PC)...

The original Deus Ex (2000) is one of those classic PC games considered sacrosanct by the community. Many 'Top 100 Games of All Times' lists put it at #1 and a lot of PC gamers evangelize it at every opportunity. I admire Deus Ex for what it accomplished - It was arguably the first game to successfully pull off a blend first-person shooter and deep RPG mechanics - but I wasn't ga ga over it myself. Deus Ex tought me that when it comes to action games, quite a bit more care has to be put into how the RPG elements are handled than in turn-based games. Action games have to be fun to play before skill points and level-ups are awarded; and yet so many begin as a chore to play.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DEHR; 2011; Eidos Montreal) is a prequel, set in a near-future where cybernetic technology is becoming available to the general public. While the medical benefits of replacement limbs and organs are clear, many people fear a future in which wealthy people will gain even more of a competitive edge over plebes by implanting 'neural-stimulator chips' or synthetic muscles, etc. You take the role of the chief of security for one of the major manufacturers of cybernetic technologies when, on the eve of a major government hearing on cybernetic regulation, your company is attacked by terrorists. What follows is a quest to get to the bottom of who the terrorists were, and what they thought that they would accomplish (hint: it's a Deus Ex game, which means that it's going to be filled with conspiracy theories).

A digression. Unlike review sites, I tend to pay only the most lip service to video game stories. As I've said before, this is because most of them don't hold up to comparisons with any other type of media. Let me reiterate this: With only a few exceptions, the best that the vast majority of game stories can claim is that they're comparable to the pulpiest of pulp fantasy/sci fi novels or cheaply produced television shows. Some people get really offended when I say this, but I'd challenge them to go out there and read some books, watch some great classic movies, and then come back and tell me about how 'original' this or that game's story really was. Here's a paragraph from PC Gamer's review of DEHR:

The full story is vast and complex, crammed into every corner of Human Revolution’s world. Every apartment you break into, every secret room you find, every rooftop you clamber across has little scraps of personality and history to read and interpret. It’s a story-junky’s blissful overdose.

While I agree that there's a lot of fluff to read in the game (too much), we have very different definitions of 'vast and complex'. If you were legitimately surprised by the 'twists' in this game, I'm sorry for you. The foreshadowing is so clumsily heavy-handed that some characters may as well enter the stage for the first time wearing devil-horns1.

The game's dialog system is quite good, with one caveat: There's an absolute must-buy ability (it should be your first upgrade) that allows you to sense the NPC's mood, determine whether you're pursuing the right conversation choices, and ultimately influence their behavior. Given how important influencing others is to this game (it gives you massive xp rewards and perks), it's a bit ridiculous that you can actually accidentally ignore this upgrade.

With that out of the way, I was genuinely impressed by how much DEHR stuck to the formula and feel of the original. The layout of the worlds feels very similar in style, and the way that you can approach challenges from various angles (sneaking, shooting, hacking, etc.) cleaves very close to the best intentions of the first title. I say 'intentions' because I think that many reviewers forget that there's a huge difference between intention and execution, and it's in the latter that the game stumbles.

DEHR is perhaps the worst-balanced game that I've ever played - at least when it comes to titles published by professional studios. What a mess. Where to begin?

Take the upgrade system - it's terrible. For starters, at least in the early game, upgrades are very expensive (all upgrades have the same point 'cost'), and you're given a surfeit of uninterpretable choices: This upgrade protects me from poisonous gas... Is there a lot of gas in the game? (no). To make matters worse, there are entire upgrade trees that are completely useless. Seriously, go and read upgrade guides to see how they spell out why this or that 'feature' provides no benefit in the context of how the game actually works. When points are scarce, accidentally wasting them on useless upgrades is a massive drag.

Another problematic feature is the combat balancing: the main character is very, very weak, whereas some of the enemies are quite strong. Looking broadly at the skill trees, it's pretty clear that the game really wants you to lean towards stealth (annoyingly, you also get more experience for non-lethal takedowns so there goes that whole 'play any character you want to' thing). Inexplicably, however, the game forces ~4-5 'boss' encounters where you absolutely have to fight. Every review agrees that these fights are handled terribly, and even more so if you've invested all of your points in stealthy abilities. The developpers seem to have realized this as well, so they included a very cheap upgrade that gives you a limited-use instant-kill attack called the 'Typhoon'. Realistically, you may only find about 40 cartriges for this thing in the game, but it kills anything in 1-2 hits, including major bosses. I only used the ability about 8 times in the whole game, but 4 of those times were to instantly skip the awful boss fights.

I'm not a big graphics person, but given how terribly this game runs - with frequent frame-rate drops - I'd expect it to be a lot better looking than this. The character models are particularly stiff and bland, with flat textures. For comparison's sake, I can run Skyrim, a contemporary title, with all options maxed and no frame-rate issues at all. I've seen a lot of complaints about this on the forums, so I know it's not 'just me'. 

Finally, I want to point out that this is yet another example of a game where you have to upgrade your character a number of times before it's actually fun to play. The basic character can only run for 2.5 seconds (some super-soldier, hunh?), dies from a single shotgun blast, and sneaks like he's trailing a dozen empty tin-cans behind him on a string. You're constantly presented with alternative routes that you'll need this or that upgrade to take, so the game world feels like an endless series of limitations rather than 'opportunities'. I wish that more devs would make the basic game fun to play and use upgrades as 'perks' rather than necessities.  

I kept playing DEHR because many people were very positive about the game and I wanted to be able to criticize it from a knowledgeable perspective. Yes, the black-and-gold cyberpunk aesthetic is cool and the Blade Runner vibe is somewhat refreshing in the sea of overused military/space marine settings (I'd argue that the original Mass Effect did an excellent job with this same vibe). But none of this elminates my feeling that the game just isn't any fun to play. Compared to other sneaking games (e.g. Metal Gear or Splinter Cell) it leaves much to be desired, and as a third-person shooter it's too clumsy2.

When a game's fundamentals fail on so many levels, I don't understand why so many people feel compelled to stick around for the setting or story. There's so much better stuff out there to waste your time on. 

1Simply understanding 'The Law of the Economy of Characters' makes it very difficult for overly simplistic 'twists' to have any impact.

2The enemy AI is absolutely abysmal. For instance, foes can spot you through glass windows, andwhile this will trigger the alarm, they'll just stand there and shout at you. No enemy will actually bother firing at you until you shatter the window yourself, allowing you to line up a great free headshot, grenade toss, or rocket strike before you're even threatened.

Puzzling...

Forgive me for the lack of updates of late, but it's funding season. I've spent so many hours thinking of different ways to describe how awesome I am that even I'm beginning to believe it... 

I don't like 'TV'1. Like not at all. I try to watch these shows that people rave about (Lost, Breaking Bad, etc.) and I just don't get it. It seems to me that once you go without cable for years and years (grad school will do that to you) the concept of trying to come up with interesting stories week after week seems ridiculous. It's all just soap operas2.  

There does seem to be one 'benefit' that TV provides, at least when it comes to managing your life: It's probably the world's best time-killer. When you're in a relationship and you frequently want to 'spend time together', sitting in front of the TV can be an easy solution. More difficult is finding alternatives that are so cheap and relaxing.

Enter jigsaw puzzles. Yes they're simple and archaic (you don't have to plug them in), but they're a lot fun. I'll do almost any puzzle as long as it doesn't contain any of the following:

a) Dolphins (I have an inexplicable hatred of seascapes).
b) Thomas Kinkaid's work
c) Jesus in any unironic setting

For some reason clearly linked to my childhood, I love puzzles involving elements of fantasy. Dragons are best, followed wizards, knights, and princesses. I recently found a puzzle that had all four, which was awesome:

This is actually a classic Larry Elmore DragonLance cover puzzle found on the internets.

Thankfully the gf enjoys puzzles and is actually in agreement with my preferences. Never again shall I have to assemble an awful toll-painting of some stupid cottage in a region that obviously doesn't get cellular data coverage (or at best can access 'edge'... ungh). 

Furthermore, we've taken it to the next level by gluing the puzzles together and mounting them on our wall. In the past, I've had a personal disdain for this practice as it just felt somewhat rural and umm... poor. But we're both postdocs, so who are we kidding on that count?

No dragons :-(

The only downside to jigsaw puzzles is that they can sometimes be more addictive than drugs, and occasionally we'll find ourselves unintentionally staying up past our bedtime because we were convinced that we could quickly finish this or that part of a design. Oh well, better this than staying up to watch one more episode of Two and a Half Men I guess (no really, why does anyone find that show funny?).

Unfortunately, I'll end on a downer by pointing out that occasionally you get a puzzle that doesn't live up to your initial expectations. I should have looked at the picture on the box more closely before getting this one:

 Clearly everyone in this painting is carrying around some extraneous chromosomes...

1I'm talking about cable here. I use my TV to watch movies and play games, of course.

2I've really come to the conclusion that this applies to pretty much everything. Almost all of the best 'media' comes from stories written with a defined arc based on a good idea. Beginning anything without a clear path through the middle and to the end just seems ripe for disappointment. 

Mortal Kombat (PS3)...

Fighting games are a genre that I've been largely avoiding since my teens. For one thing, they tend to be a very social experience - best played with buddies in the same room - and I think that I speak for many thirty-somethings when I say that I don't have a lot of time to engage in that kind of stuff. Occasionally however, a fighting game developer tries to add a bit more single-player content to their title, inspiring me to take a look. The last time I actively sought out such a game was SoulCalibur II on the GameCube (2003), so you can tell how infrequent this is.

I'd heard through the grapevine that the new Mortal Kombat (MK9; PS3; NetherRealm) went above and beyond in the single-player department. My understanding is that this isn't new for the series (this is the 9th title) as all of the MK games have included mini games and modes that encourage single-player gaming. Nevertheless, MK9 really has taken this to another level.

The game includes a rather extensive single-player 'story' mode that wraps all of your battles into a long and involved narrative that 'reboots' the overall MK 'universe'. I haven't played the MK games since the 90s, but I do remember that the overall plot was umm... dumb. And yet, somehow this 'story' actually works out quite well. The content is preposterous, of course, but the interstitial cutscenes between fights are entertaining in an 80s action movie sort-of way.

The trend in fighters it seems is to bring back the 2D, side-scrolling style (using 3D rendered characters of course). The over-sexualized female fighters, on the other hand, have laways been there. Image cred here.

The real accomplishment, however, is in how the story actually teaches you how to play the game. In typical fighters, the single-player mode involves fighting through a random series of matches with a single character. In MK9, you switch among a large diversity of characters over the course of the story, forcing you to learn how to effective use each one. Thankfully, MK is a much more simple (playable?) game than the highly technical Japanese fighters, and so while there are some sharp difficulty spikes -Shao Khan's stupid ability to shrug off hits comes to mind - it's never unreasonable (you can also change the AI difficulty at any time).

Beyond the pleasant surprise at how much fun I was having with the game, the most salient thought running through my mind during my playtime was: How in the world do other fighting games get away with charging full price for titles with so little content???

 While fighting games have always had a die-hard, niche following, one could say that the genre experienced a renaissance with the release of Capcom's Street Fighter IV on consoles in 2009. Since then, Capcom has released what feels like a hundred different variants of their game and all of the classic fighting devs (Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, etc.) have dipped back into the fray a few times themselves. Yet most of these titles (the Capcom ones in particular) are just straight fighting games. You get a translation of the arcade mode, a few different variant fighting modes, and janky online play for $60. MK9 offers all of that, plus the long, interesting story mode, other challenge single-player modes, and tons of unlockables.

Drama. Image cred here.

I realize that in 'hardcore fighting game circles' it's accepted that the bulk of the effort in making Capcom games goes into balancing the fighters such that they're cash-money tournament ready. I doubt that the majority of folks who play these games care about that at all, so I'd rather have the content (and the lack of price-gouging on $40 annual 'updates'). I feel as though the hardcore fighters hearken back to the times when gaming was subconsciously divided into people who wanted 'the arcade experience at home', vs. those like me who felt that there were fundamental differences between what made a good home game as compared to a good arcade game.

Oh well, I wonder how long it'll be before I give a dang about a fighting game again? 

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152...

It's been a few months since I read my last graphic novel, partially because I've been busy, but also because I managed to get caught up on the series that I've been following. I had to bite the bullet and replace the headlight on my bike this month, and I decided to pick up a few books as well.

One book I got was Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 (2008), which I'd heard about because the author/artist David Petersen won an Eisner Award for it. It's been described as a blend of 'Lord of the Rings and Stuart Little' - though I'd remove the former and substitute the latter for the Secret of NIMH instead.

In the world of Mouse Guard, intelligent mice live in a medieval civilization. All of their towns are hidden underground or in logs because most of their enemies (or predators) are so much larger than they. In order to facilitate trade and unity among the towns of the mouse territories, they've created the Mouse Guard - a society of elite Ranger types that chart trails and keep peace in the wilderness. The plot focuses around some of these guards who discover a plan to undermine mouse society.

The high point of the book is certainly its artwork: Petersen decided to go with a 'realistic' style for his characters with minimal anthropomorphizing, which makes for a unique effect. The downside is that there's very little detail to distinguish the various mice, other than slightly different tones of fur, making it difficult to identify characters (also see below).

Unfortunately, Mouse Guard's low point is its short and utterly pedestrian narrative. A large part of the stories of graphic novels are told via the imagery; but even so, telling any tale beyond the most perfunctory requires a certain economy of action-per-panel. The best books have panels that feel as though they 'flow' into one another, and yet find a way to keep the action moving forward at a reasonable pace. It's not enough to take a movie still every 30 seconds and snap some text bubbles onto it. Some scenes move quickly from panel to panel, while other, important moments require panels that move with deliberate slowness.

This economy of narrative is lost in this book. Panels are large by most comic's standards, which is great for the art, but not so much for the story. Very little happens in each chapter - in fact very little happens in the book in general. Ultimately, what does take place is pretty 'blah'. I'm kind-of blown away that they created an entire role-playing game around the series given how uninspired the narrative is.

I would like to finish by touching on one particular artistic point that kills the very little attempt at narrative gravitas: Petersen's choice to not anthropomorphize his characters means that none of the mice have facial expressions. I realize that it's difficult if not impossible to criticize art in in any absolute or 'objective' sense, but not allowing one's characters to emote obviates a massive benefit to using a visual medium. This has the negative impact of making all of the characters seem generic, unidimensional, and hollow.

My exposure to graphic novels has been limited (but growing), and so I've often found myself somewhat puzzled by why some people love or hate one series versus another. I find the occasional books excellent based on writing/art quality or plot (Watchmen, Y: The Last Man, Preacher), whereas many others are entertaining but don't elicit much of an emotional response. Probably because I read reviews and buy books only based on recommendations, Mouseguard has been the first graphic novel that I really didn't like very much. Unfortunately, I won't be picking up further books in the series.