Flipside

A review will eventually go up at GameCritics.com, but because Fallout: New Vegas is such a large game I couldn't cover everything I wanted to in the detail it deserved. The shorthand for this game has been that it is "more Fallout 3", which is, in a limited sense, a fair assessment. Obsidian doesn't revolutionize anything about the way the game plays, except for the superior hardcore mode. What I would say instead is that New Vegas is more of a complement to Fallout 3 than a supplement. Bethesda's version of Fallout was one in which the environmental storytelling was very strong and the traditional storytelling was fairly weak. What I'd hoped was that Obsidian's talent would combine with Bethesda's in a productive way and produce a more cohesive whole. But instead it was more like two ships passing in the night. Fallout: New Vegas has a very strong story in the traditional sense, but the way exploration plays out makes it seem like Obsidian didn't really get what made Fallout 3 compelling.

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Cinematic Action Games: A Brief Critical Assessment

Many of the games I named in my previous post about the cinematic action genre have been criticized for their lack of value. Because these games are short and linear, and rarely have life-extending multiplayer modes, the validity of charging full price for them has been questioned. Simplistic gameplay and action-movie inspired plots have led some critics to call these games shallow. Yet, several games that belong in this genre — Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and Sands of Time — are regularly trotted out as examples of the best that the medium can achieve. To categorize cinematic action games as intrinsically shallow or lacking in value would be the worst sort of genre-as-pejorative thinking. Their approach to game storytelling has produced many strengths, but one central characteristic of the genre is also a critical weakness. The great artistic limitations of cinematic action games come from their disinterest in the player as a creative force.

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Values and Characteristics of the Cinematic Action Genre

In his review of Enslaved, my colleague Brad Gallaway makes an argument for placing that game in a new genre, one that he feels has arisen fairly recently. Using the traditional naming conventions for narrow genres, the proper term would be "Uncharted clones", but I don't feel that description is quite adequate. While Uncharted is certainly the most identifiable game in the class, I believe the genre itself pre-dates that game. Uncharted represents not a new kind of game unto itself but an exemplary actualization of certain values in game design. Here I intend to put a name to those values and show how they relate to the characteristics of games in this group, which I think of as "Cinematic Action" games.

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You won't be scared if you're angry

As I have mentioned before, I think Fatal Frame II is the scariest anything ever made by anyone. I'm unashamed to admit that the game terrified me, and literally gave me nightmares, as a full-grown adult. So, it was with some degree of trepidation that I picked up the disc for Fatal Frame III and placed it in my wheezing old PS2. True to form, I found a lot of the game to be genuinely frightening, but a funny thing happened on the way to the dark, decrepit mansion haunted by the tormented souls of the damned. I found that I was more annoyed by Fatal Frame III than scared by it.

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Starting on the wrong foot

If you're going to make an episodic game, you need to put your best foot forward in part one. That's tough to do with a game, because the workaday business of teaching the player how to play often gets in the way of the really cool stuff you want to include. But, it's critical to show off your best design early on. The memory of a really awesome opening segment can propel a player through some mid-game doldrums, but a lame beginning means you'll never sell part two. Decay, an XBox Live Indie Game in the adventure-horror mode, begins strongly, with a suicide that immediately cultivates an atmosphere of despair. Unfortunately, this first episode just wasn't very good, which is a shame because the second episode shows real promise.

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How soon you forget

If you played the demo for Enslaved, you have already been through the sequence. On a flying prison ship of some kind, a young woman, Trip, breaks out of her cell. She sets off an explosion that accidentally frees the player's avatar, a man named Monkey. She flees through the ship, cutting off Monkey at every turn, until he finally encounters her again just as the vehicle is about to crash. He clings to an escape pod as she ejects it, falling unconscious when they crash. While he is knocked out, Trip fits him with a headband that will kill him if he disobeys her. The sequence is exciting, visually memorable, and pretty fun to play. It is also at war with the story Enslaved seems to be trying to tell.

I haven't used a reminder like this in some time, but the game has only been out for a few days. So, look up at the title of the blog and carefully read the two words underneath it before you proceed.

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Costridium virulence: What's essential?

Clostridium difficile is an intestinal pathogen that causes diarrhea in hospitals and other healthcare settings (including nursing homes). Present as a commensal bacterium in a significant fraction of the population, C. difficile is usually rather harmless, its numbers suppressed by competition with the intestinal flora. When its competitors are decimated by antibiotics, however, C. difficile flourishes, releasing toxins that cause inflammation and diarrhea, which can be dangerous because the individuals suffering these effects are often already ill. There has been conflicting information, however, as to which of C. difficile's toxins are necessary to cause disease. A paper in the recent Nature (1) aims to resolve the question.

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From Masyaf to Firenze

If you believe Metacritic, Assassin's Creed II is a major improvement over its predecessor. The Metascore jumped 10 points between games, which would seem to suggest it solves a major problem, or at least a good number of smaller ones. I played the games out of order, going through Ezio Auditore's adventures in the sequel before I experienced Altaïr's adventure in the original Assassin's Creed. I can clearly see some areas where the latter game improved on the former, but I wouldn't say that the quality was dramatically greater. In some ways, it felt like the series lost as much as it gained going from one game to the other.

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Capsule: BioHack

Status: Complete, most challenges met.

Put this on your (nonexistent) box: Play Biochemistry 101!

Most intriguing idea: Modeling a puzzle game after natural regulatory systems.

Best design decision: Keeping things simple in these complex systems.

Worst design decision: The visually confusing quantitative and rainbow modes.


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Capsule: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future

Status: Complete

Put this on your box: Walk with the Professor! Feel the burn!

Most intriguing idea: Sorry, fresh out.

Best design decision: The super hint for times when you just can't figure out what the puzzle wants you to do.

Worst design decision: The world is much too large and the subway doesn't have nearly enough stops.

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Crime isn't just shooting people

Mafia II borrows so much from GoodFellas that 2K Czech probably ought to give Scorcese and Pileggi co-writing credits. Direct references to the film appear in a couple of specific scenes, but the real influence is more fundamental. GoodFellas depicts the mafia as a group of buddies, and Mafia II is built around the same idea. Although family matters motivate the game's protagonist, Vito, when it's convenient for the plot, the real impetus for his journey through the Empire Bay underworld comes from his friends. Unfortunately, the game's vision of mafia life falls apart because of its ill-considered adherence to gaming convention. Mafia II devolves into a series of increasingly ludicrous and bloody shootouts, even though a realist mob drama in the vein of GoodFellas would be an amazing game.

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Capsule: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Status: Completed X360 version.

Put this on your box: In Persia, no pot is safe.

Most intriguing idea: Allowing the player to change, rather than just use, the environment in the course of a platform run.

Best design decision: Requiring precision timing with the environmental powers.

Worst design decision: Putting the rewind and combat powers on the same magic gauge.


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