The story of a boy and his sledgehammer...

Anyone trying to figure out today’s modern terrorist will probably use words like “religious extremism,” “sociopath,” and the like. Were such a person to play “Red Faction: Guerrilla,” a new third person shooter in the previously unremarkable “Red Faction” series, they might see that a plausible terrorist motivation might just be that blowing up buildings is really fun.

“Guerrilla’s” big hook is that every building in the game is destructible, and not just destructible in the “Mercenaries” sense of the term, where you shoot at a building with a big rocket launcher, a few craters appear, and eventually the thing collapses in a cloud of dust (just like in real life… right?). In “Guerrilla,” when you’re throwing bombs at a structure or taking it down piece by piece with a hilariously overpowered sledgehammer, you can’t help but marvel at the exquisite detail. Everything seems to be architecturally accurate, as buildings won’t collapse unless you’ve thoroughly destroyed every inch of support holding it up or just blown the whole thing up from top to bottom.

Quick disclaimer: neither this writer nor “Guerrilla” support real life terrorism in any form. Despite the fact that you play a guerrilla insurgent, the game keeps as much distance as possible between the world’s current terrorist insurgents by putting the game on Mars in the future (although it wouldn’t take much to imagine the boring, brown, dusty badlands of Mars are really the shadier regions of the Middle East) and making the oppressive government as evil as the Third Reich.

In any case, the Red Faction rebels are far cooler and manlier than any of today’s real terrorists; rather than sneaking past military security and killing themselves to blow up hundreds of innocent civilians, the game’s protagonists practically run headfirst into enemy fire, tossing bombs to bring down menacing military structures (throwing the “Guerrilla” subtitle out the window in the process).

About half of “Guerrilla” embraces the destruction; the game is open world, meaning you drive space vehicles around massive levels doing various short missions, evoking the same gleeful feelings of freewheeling destruction as “Grand Theft Auto,” except instead of shooting NYC cops you get to shoot space-Nazis. As you progress through the game, the buildings get larger and more complex, making gameplay almost puzzle-like as you try to figure out how to bring down a structure without getting killed by a battalion of soldiers.

But the shooter part of “Guerrilla” unfortunately doesn’t fully embrace the open world gameplay. The gunplay gets pretty repetitive early on, when the only weapon worth using is the three-clip-max assault rifle, but gets more interesting as the sandbox opens up with more interesting weapons and heavy vehicles. There are lots of cookie cutter missions that involve rescuing hostages, chasing after enemy vehicles, or just destroying large buildings (the most cathartic by far), and they’re all good enough to be worth searching out, but the story missions that feature much more interesting design provide for some of “Guerrilla’s” best moments.

The story itself isn’t very interesting (you could probably guess what happens through most of it), but still helps to immerse the player in the world of Mars as all the NPC’s (of which there are many) will protest against the oppressive EDF, wish you luck on your missions, and generally keep you interested in their plight and motivated to free them. Universally good voice acting helps quite a bit to that end.

“Guerrilla” is a very good game, but can’t quite make the jump to a must-have because it doesn’t completely nail the core 30-seconds-of-fun required of any shooter. While the gunplay is solid, the enemies are too repetitive and uninteresting to make every minute of the very long campaign to free Mars as fun as it could’ve been.

Everyone's a critic...

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/lanc01_.html

This article was sent to me by my former high school English teacher Mr. Christian Talbot, a man who will no doubt frown upon that last part of the sentence for being in the passive voice. In this piece, the author John Lanchester shows himself as an anachronism as he writes about video games with the condescending tone of an over-forty-year-old in a piece that only those similarly unfamiliar with the medium (and similarly out of touch with popular culture) could really take seriously.

Lanchester opens the article with the data that in 2008 the video game industry generated more revenue than music and video combined in the UK (the same is true in the US for video games and Hollywood), and then immediately contradicts himself, somehow saying that “from the broader cultural point of view, video games barely exist.” Well, apparently they “exist” more than music and movies to consumers, if one only looks at how much people are willing to spend on them as an indicator.

He then goes on to present his opinion as a fact that is simply incorrect: “There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience … Video games have people who play them, and a wider public for whom they simply don’t exist.” Perhaps not to the staff at the London Review of Books. But here at American University alone, it has been my experience that everyone (not just us “gamers”) has at least heard of Halo, or Guitar Hero, or World of Warcraft, or Grand Theft Auto, or Wii Sports, even if they don’t actually play them. Once again, all the numbers suggest this would be the case. Are games on the whole as culturally ubiquitous as Hollywood? No, but they’re obviously (to anyone under 40) well on their way.

Lanchester correctly cites Bioshock as the best example of how video games can reach serious artistic depth (as defined by Lanchester and the rest of the English majors who determine what is in fact art). “The game was a huge hit, and I have yet to encounter anyone who has ever heard of it,” he says, again showing that he probably doesn’t talk to many people who might actually own a 360 or PS3.

To me, the most intellectually fraudulent and insulting part of the article was when Lanchester pretends to be a game critic, knocking Bioshock for containing “the whole package of conventions and codes and how-tos which become second nature to video-game players, but which strike non-gamers as arbitrary and confining and a little bit stupid,” never actually saying what these are. Perhaps I am too submerged in these conventions to be able to spot them, but the only one I could think of was the health system, which I’ll use as an example of how Lanchester doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In most shooters, you take damage from enemies by being shot or stabbed or otherwise hurt. In many games, you are able to take an unrealistic amount of damage and can be easily healed by picking up “health packs.” Yes, it is a bit silly, and games like Call of Duty that have attempted to do away with a clichéd “health meter” by sticking with visual and aural cues to tell the player they’re taking damage, and letting them heal by taking cover in an equally unrealistic manner.

The reason this convention is in place is because it works. Shooters are fun because they present a challenge; if it was easy for the player to gun down hordes of enemies, there would be no sense of excitement or tension, no sense of accomplishment with success, and no reason to play tactically in a way that maximizes the fun one has with the game. In spite of this, Lanchester criticizes video games for being “a much more resistant, frustrating medium than its cultural competitors. Older media have largely abandoned the idea that difficulty is a virtue; if I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable.” In his failure to understand the necessity of challenge in games, he fails to understand how it is in fact the interactivity of video games that primarily separate them from other media.

He goes on to talk about Shigeru Miyamoto and how the Wii strives for a simpler, more accessible experience, and does so admirably until he makes the following assertion: “Sony’s PS3 is a wonder of the world, with two astounding new technologies inside, the multi-threading Cell computer chip and the new generation Blu-Ray Disc; the Xbox 360 is a powerful computer in its own right; but the much lower-tech Nintendo Wii is a lot more fun than either of them.”

Again, a judgment like that shows that Lanchester has no clue about anything beyond the few games he probably heard about and further researched to write his article. Wii owners would probably agree with him, while PS3 and 360 owners such as myself would strongly disagree. Yet he presents that statement as if it was an undisputed fact. Personally, I find the intense action and extraordinary depth of games on the 360 (like Bioshock, Mass Effect, Oblivion, and Fallout just to name a few of the very many) to surpass the experience of waving around a controller, the most “fun” that is usually to be had on the Wii.

But how should someone like Lanchester who clearly doesn’t play games be expected to understand that? He shouldn’t, and as such he has no justification for writing as if he does.

His next major offense is his assertion that “The medium doesn’t have, and probably never will have, a sense of character to match other forms of narrative; however much it develops, it can’t match the inwardness of the novel or the sweep of film.” Critics the same of cinema in the early 20^th century, only to be proven totally wrong mere decades later, and I see no reason why this won’t be the case with video games.

I’ll skip over some of his other smaller mistakes and inconsistencies to another massive error. He claims that the gamer demographic’s desire for mindless Hollywood-esque bloodbaths is currently holding video games back from reaching their artistic potential, since the bottom line is developers’ primary concern. But the same is true of movies; most of what are considered “art” films come from indie filmmakers, and there is a similar indie scene for video games. Many PC gamers develop mods for current games that often outlive the games they’re based on (obvious examples would be Counter-Strike and Dystopia). And other independent developers create totally new experiences that often find their way into the mainstream, since many gamers are on the lookout for innovative content (meaning there’s money to be made). Braid or Flower would be good modern examples.

I’m sick of reading these articles in high magazines and other publications that attempt to tell the story of the “gamer culture” to people who aren’t aware of it simply due to the generational divide. The condescension in Lanchester’s article is exactly why people who care about the medium go online to read about games; only in the online realm is the medium treated with the level of seriousness given to everything from literature and theater to movies and TV shows in high publications. Lanchester put the nail in his intellectual coffin with his final prediction: “The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists; if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we’re going to have a whole new art form.”

As if that art form isn’t here already. Whether or not games are an art form is a serious topic for discussion and debate (and a later blog post), but not by people who barely know anything about the medium in the first place.

Halo, Goodbye

Let me get this out of the way first: last week, I received a review copy of Halo Wars from my editor. I believe OMGWTFBBQ is the only way to accurately describe how that felt.

Now, I’ve played it for about a week. And once again, I’ve got conflicted feelings. One the one hand, it’s good (look for my review in the 2/23 issue of The Eagle to find out why). On the other hand…

The original Halo added a layer of strategy to the FPS genre with shields, melee, grenades, the two-weapon limit and the like, but it was still relatively accessible (meaning it wasn’t Rainbow Six). By contrast, Halo Wars is pretty much a (slightly) stripped down RTS, simplified for the sake of fitting on a console. Now, I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing. It doesn’t change the fact that the game is fun, especially as an introduction for the (I suspect many) people who think the idea of commanding armies is cool, but are intimidated by the complexity and intense strategy of modern RTS’s.

But let me add some context. Both factions in Halo Wars have roughly ten or so unique units (give or take units unique to each commander) and eight buildings. By the standards of even some of the earliest RTS’s, that’s a bit light. And there’s a generally a limit of 30 units (while it’s more variable in multiplayer, it generally doesn’t get too much higher). That sort of kills the feeling that you’re controlling armies, or even one large army. And though many units have special attacks, there’s nothing like a cloak ability or anything that might allow for a notably different strategy. Lastly, units can only move; there are no stance options.

If that looks like being nitpicky, that’s because it is. Despite it’s lack of features, Halo Wars does require tactics and strategy. Though genre veterans might need to bump up the difficulty for the campaign (I could pretty much steamroll tanks through every mission with ease on Normal), skirmishes require more thoughtful resource management and quick thinking.

But if those criticisms are exactly what would make you not want to play an RTS, that’s unfortunately true too. The developers cut enough corners in different places to make Halo Wars feel watered down. Again, that doesn’t mean it’s not fun for the rest of us.

But I’ve played Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars on both PC and 360, and while the PC version obviously controls easier, the console controls are so refined that once you get used to them, controlling the game feels relatively natural and easy. And EA didn’t need to water down the game to achieve that. They did it before C&C 3 with Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 and after with Red Alert 3.

Does that mean the standards for the console RTS are now the same as the PC RTS? I would say yes. Does that make Halo Wars bad? I would say no. But is it inferior to its PC-centric counterparts? Not necessarily… it’s just different.

I definitely think that while Halo Wars lacks some strategic depth, it makes up for it because its streamlined controls allow for a tighter experience overall. On the PC, the game might be really flawed, as you can easily achieve the same fast pace with more complex games thanks to the keyboard and mouse. But it’s a console exclusive, and cannot be evaluated against some hypothetical other.

It’s a different kind of RTS, but it’s definitely still an RTS with a measure depth and complexity. It sacrifices some of that for the sake of a more accessible, immediately exciting experience. It works as a subgenre, just like turn-based and real-time strategy games, or tactical FPS’s like Rainbow Six and arcade-like shooters like Halo.

What I’m trying to get at with this schizophrenic post is that genre is only one paradigm one can use when looking at a game, and it’s not even totally solid ground. It’s the duty of a reviewer to say whether or not a game that brands itself as one thing lives up to that expectation, as well to judge a game on its own merits a priori. Sometimes it’s not that easy to do both.

Colors of the Rainbow

Although I can understand their popularity, I’ve never been a big fan of games with the Tom Clancy license. I’ve tried various games in Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell franchises (though I’ve yet to try EndWar… must get around to that demo soon), and with only a couple of exceptions, I’ve never had so much fun that I’ve wanted to run out and pay full price for the game. But there’ve been two exceptions so far: Ghost Recon 2 and, most recently, Rainbow Six Vegas, and realizing why I liked them more than the numerous other titles in the Tom Clancy “universe” made me realize an important point about the role of visuals in gameplay.

With few exceptions, the bulk of the games in the Tom Clancy franchise (or at least the ones I’ve played) take place in run-down third world environments or subdued industrial environments. I suppose these sorts of worlds are often chosen because it’s relatively easy to believe they would be infested with terrorists or evil mercenaries. But I find all these dark, brownish-grayish worlds to be literally painful to look at for hours on end.

I didn’t realize how much that sort of art direction really affected my gameplay experience until I picked up Ghost Recon 2 in the bargain bin a few years ago. The Ghost Recon series takes place mostly in outdoor areas, as opposed to the usually tight confines of the Rainbow Six series, though both models share the same tactical bent: while not quite one-shot-one-kill anymore, you can never survive more than a few bullets (R6: Lockdown aside). And GR2 takes place largely in wide-open forest areas, making for some tense, exciting, and relatively open-ended gameplay in some of the most beautiful environments at the time (I defy anyone to find better foliage on the original Xbox).

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter came out for 360 in 2006, and I again picked it up in the bargain bin. I was glad I did, since I didn’t like it all that much. To me, swapping lush forests for cramped, monotone (brown) city streets made the gameplay lose a lot of its luster.

And I had the exact same feeling in reverse when I got R6V as a gift recently (got to love the bargain bin). The first level takes place in a small Mexican slum (that in and of itself was sort of annoying—way to be original, Ubisoft). I thought it was ugly, and though the gameplay was fun, it didn’t blow me away. I only stuck with it (I’m the sort of leadheaded player that dies a lot in TC games) since I saw the glittering city of Las Vegas shining on the horizon.

The Las Vegas environment is the antithesis of everything I’ve seen in TC games prior. Colorful lights, shiny cars, flashy casinos abandoned only due to the threat of death, and offices straight out of F.E.A.R. minus the fear. And the same passable gameplay from the first level suddenly became a whole lot more exciting and addicting. I’m not done with the game yet, but unlike GRAW, I’m not just finishing for the sake of finishing—this game is really fun.

Clearly, the popularity of the Rainbow Six franchise before Vegas shows that I’m not with the majority on this. But to me, these games illustrate how important graphics really are to gameplay. I’m not talking about technical proficiency or horsepower; I’m talking about creating virtual worlds that the player wants to be a part of. Serious modern games are all about immersion, and immersion comes from the player both believing that the world in front of them is real and desiring to be a part of that world to the point that they’re willing to suspend their disbelief in order to get lost in the fun of the game. And it takes compelling visuals make that happen.

Most Rainbow Six fans would probably say that the core gameplay is what makes the game what it is, and that everything else is just window dressing. I’ll agree with the first part. But if the gameplay is the heart of the experience, the visuals are the soul. No one wants to play games that look particularly bad, and games with a healthy amount of technical and artistic flair turn a good game into a rich, full experience.