Retirees gathered around the Wii. Mothers playing a few rounds of Angry Birds on their smartphones. In the last two decades, games have emerged from a small curiosity to a billion-dollar industry that attracts nearly everyone, even (perhaps especially) those who don’t consider themselves gamers. As this new media has slowly emerged from its childhood, we see more of its full-grown potential. Games don’t simply amaze us with technological wonders. They stimulate our intellect, creativity and emotions. Our hobby has just as much artistic potential as any film or novel, perhaps more. Being interactive, games have many artistic opportunities that simply can’t exist in traditional media. For all of their unique strengths, games are still thought of like any older art form. We talk about stunning visuals, immersive sound design and amazing storylines, but we ignore the meaning the game mechanics themselves carry.

The confusion is understandable. Games are media collages. It takes huge teams of artists from many disciplines to release a AAA title. Often the writing, music or visual art of a game will outshine all other elements. But when it comes to gameplay, we rarely grace it with more than a “fun” rubber stamp. If games truly are an art form, then they must have some element that makes them unique. Gameplay itself must be more than fun. It must be meaningful.

Take the classic BioWare RPG Baldur’s Gate, for example. It tells a classic epic fantasy story of a young man thrust into an adventure of noble friends, vile foes, and a dangerous world to explore. If you remove all gameplay and turn it into a series of cutscenes and dialogue, what’s left? We’ve reduced a dynamic classic to a generic fantasy story. Without a choice in the storytelling, the player doesn’t identify with the hero as much and is more distant from the story. Without leveling up and character building, the journey lacks the same feeling of epic progress. Without the possibility of failure, every success lacks meaning.

There’s a reason that most RPGs are story-centric. The standard mechanics of gaining experience and slowly leveling up a character from a weakling to a powerful hero are well suited to mirroring conflict and growth in a story. Just like in a real adventure, they are comprised of many mundane, repetitive tasks that are given meaning by their larger narrative. It’s fun to read the conclusion of an epic adventure, but it’s even better when you’ve had a hand in it. That final confrontation with Sephiroth/Sauron/Darth Vader is much more rewarding when you have to fight tooth-and-nail to get there.

Similarly, there’s a reason that first-person shooters are sometimes called Ego Shooters. While a third-person perspective identifies with a character, the first-person perspective is instantly self-identifying. Furthermore, the primary way the player interacts with the world is through a weapon. FPSs inherently communicate individualism, power and conflict.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments

A few months ago I reviewed the casual-focused Microsoft Flight. Apparently I was the only gamer who didn’t view it as a personal assault against all of sim culture. If even reading its name tortures your ulcer, just get yourself a license for Xplane and never want again. I was a believer in the concept of a small free-to-play flight sim that focused on VFR flights. The aerocash hunts, missions and unlocks were a great idea and made a genuinely fun flight sim. But for all of MS Flight‘s inventiveness, it seems that most of the creativity went into making the DLC a rip-off in new and exciting ways.

The first warning should’ve been the Hawaiian Adventures expansion. It opened up the game to all the islands, new missions, and even a new plane. Not too bad for $20, right? There’s a good bit of content to keep you busy, and the powerful Vans is fun to fly. However, if you want to try any of the medic evac or cargo-hauling missions, you’ll need to purchase the Maule, which is available for a staggering $14.99.

It’s not the prices that are the problem, though. This is pretty standard in Sim Land. Just look at Railworks, whose catalog features thousands of dollars worth of DLC. Microsoft Flight Sim X scenery packs regularly sell for much more than what Flight charges. Simming is an expensive hobby, even casual ones like Flight.

The problem is that if you actually want to try the new stuff in your expansion pack, you’ll have to buy even more DLC. Hawaiian Adventures doesn’t cost $20, it costs $35, but you’d never know that until you’ve spent yourself more than halfway there. It’s like buying a used car and realizing later it doesn’t just need an oil change, but a new radiator too. Surprise!

Recently, a pack containing the entire Alaskan wilderness was released in the same $20 format. The pack comes with a Carbon Cub to fly and lots of tiny airstrips at which to land. Yet the Cub doesn’t even come with a cockpit. That’s right, you can only fly the Carbon Cub in third-person mode. The devs say that a virtual cockpit is on the way, but I have a bad tingling feeling that it’ll cost me. Oh, and it still requires the Maule.

F2P can work; just ask Turbine. Heck, if anything, F2P made their games better. This isn’t Day 1 DLC outrage or overpriced garbage (Saints Row the Third, I’m looking at you), but a whole new way to get screwed. When you start holding back content from DLC packs to sell as other DLC packs, you find yourself three-layers deep into the Russian nesting doll of shame.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments

Wine, like golf and good scotch, remains a pursuit of the elite. Connoisseurs sit around sipping $50 bottles of wine, smacking their lips and debating the difference between “aged oak” and “corky” flavors. Of course, the joke’s on them. You see, we humans suffer from something called “confirmation bias,” which means that we’re more likely to see (and taste) what we expect instead of what’s actually there. It’s been fairly well documented that the more a person thinks a bottle of wine costs, they more they like it. No doubt this phenomenon exists in gaming as well. I like a masterpiece as much as anyone, but I have to admit: sometimes I want a thoroughly mediocre game.

My guilty pleasure is the middling FPS. Not the bad ones; they’re too frustrating or broken to enjoy. However, a “just ok” shooter, the kind made on a shoestring budget, using “customizable controls” as a bullet point on the box, and attached to a license, is buttery popcorn to my soul. It’s a genre that has calcified into concrete corridors and chest-high walls. You don’t have to design an FPS anymore; you just take the Ur-FPS and pick the shade of brown you want. It’s like Build-A-Bear for emotionally-stunted adolescents.

Yet, I love it. It’s the joys of pulp genre fiction; you know exactly what you’re going to get. You know every line before its spoken and how to beat every boss. If it feels as if you’ve experienced this before, its because you have, many, many times. But there’s comfort in that repetition. The detective is always betrayed, the young hero always finds the McGuffin and gets the girl, the Space Marines always make everything go boom. These games don’t innovate or win awards. They won’t make you think deeply afterward. But that’s why you came here in the first place: to rest from all the thinking and worrying that plagues our big brains.

Of course, the trick is finding these gems for the right price. Garage sales, thrift stores, and discount shops such as Biglots can often be treasure troves of yesterday’s lemons. Even Ebay and Amazon can offer so-so games for a few bucks. However, each of these leaves some sort of physical residue in your life. You might pitch that Area 51: Blacksite box as soon as you get home, but the disc will wedge itself into your library, a beating tell-tale heart of your dark secret. For this reason, I prefer more discrete outlets such as Gametap or OnLive. These buffet services are full of games such as these and allow you to gorge yourself on as much crap as you can find (just like a real buffet!).

Whatever your niche, I urge you to find one. Can’t get enough European RPGs based on obscure tabletop games? Great! Copy-and-paste tower defense clones? Go for it! Adventure games? Whatever, man. Abandon tradition and best-of lists and find something new in the wide world of gaming. Break away from the mainstream opinions and try what they left behind. Shoot for something with a Metacritic score in the mid 50s and work your way down from there. I’m not promising that you’ll come away satisfied, but maybe (just maybe) you’ll expand your gaming menu and discover tastes you never thought you had.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments

Retired baseball pitcher Curt Schilling has a thing for MMOs. Having lots of time and piles of money lying around, he started his own game company, 38 Studios. He brought in all the big names. R.A. Salvadore is the Director of Creative Content. Todd McFarlane is the Executive Art Director. They even hired Travis McGeathy, the lead designer of Everquest. Schilling wasn’t messing around.

Since their founding in 2006, they’ve been working on a big, expensive MMO. We don’t know anything about it, only that it’s been in the works for six years. Investors tend to like seeing MMO development. After all, World of Warcraft makes more money annually than some small nations, so they have to be profitable, right? Right?

In June 2010, Rhode Island guaranteed a $75 million loan to 38 Studios if they would relocate there, and bring 450 jobs with them. That’s right, Rhode Island paid $167,000 per job. Oh, but they’d get their loan money back, right? Because MMOs never flop and always make lots of money, right?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, reports are saying that 38 Studios isn’t making payroll. When (not if) the studio implodes on itself, Rhode Island taxpayers will be on the hook for the initial loan, plus interest, making this move to manually develop the state’s economy a $100 million bungle.

The problem isn’t the loss of the studio (as much as we liked Amalur), but that the governor of Rhode Island thought it was a good idea to gamble with $100 million of taxpayer money. What makes this even worse is this loan was made after 38 Studios had four years of development without a title or screenshot to show for it. It’s one thing if private investors take risks: it’s their money. But this is playing poker with other people’s money, and despite all the good intentions in the world, you’ll always play a little more loose when your wad isn’t on the line.

There are many things that government shouldn’t do. Picking winners and losers is one of them. This is why. Folks, don’t let your government gamble on MMO developers.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | One comment

Syndicate (360, PS3, PC) – 2/21

The last time a classic franchise was rebooted into a new genre, it didn’t turn out too well. While the classic Syndicate was a top-down tactical shooter that took place in real time, the new version is a four-player co-op FPS. It sounds like cause for concern, but everything we’ve seen about it is reassuring, nay, exciting. With various biochip implants and a co-op design from the ground up, Syndicate might actually have a chance to win angry fanboys back. Anyway, what with the corporate control chips they’ve been implanting at E3, it’s not like they have any sort of choice about it.

Mass Effect 3 (360, PS3, PC) – 3/06

BioWare is set to release the final part of their epic space opera trilogy this March. We’re pretty stoked for this one here at Avault, and for good reason. We’ll finally witness the end of this massive story and see the consequences of choices we made way back in 2007. It’s also set to feature competitive multiplayer, which seems like peanut butter and syrup (a lot better then it sounds). BioWare has already hinted that you should keep your ME3 save files around, so it sounds like the franchise isn’t going away anytime soon.

Kid Icarus: Uprising (3DS) – 3/23

Those of you who’ve been trying to swallow the regret of purchasing a 3DS will soon have another reason other than the Vita to feel better about your life decisions. Pit, a character from the NES days who would’ve been entirely forgotten if it wasn’t for his inclusion in Smash Bros., is getting his first game in two decades. Fans who’ve been clamoring for a resurrection of this neglected property will get their wish granted this March in pretty 3D-o-vision.

Max Payne 3 (360, PS3, PC) – 5/15

While the first two Max Payne games are ironclad classics of the genre, the third installment has been late to the party. After years of being beaten with delays, Max Payne 3 will finally shoot its way out of the Rockstar dev labs, muttering noir narrative to itself while gunning down hapless QA testers. Oh Max, you’re so gritty.

WiiU – Late 2012

After everyone got over making puerile jokes about their last console’s name, Nintendo decided to make their next one completely unpronounceable by the Western tongue. Featuring a massive touchscreen controller (with actual buttons and thumbsticks), the WiiU seems to be taking its cues from the rapidly developing iPad sector. There’s a lot of creative potential packed into touch gaming, and Nintendo wants to unleash it like a biological contaminant upon your entire extended family (pets as well). To facilitate their entertainment conquest, The Big N has also made a point to sign up big third-party developers, so WiiU players can also play the same games as everybody else, which is nice of them. Look for it sometime this year.

Bioshock Infinite (360, PS3, PC) – Fall 2012

Here at Avault, we’re definitely looking forward to Bioshock Infinite. St. Levine and his team are back in control and branching out into fresh and creative territories for the next game in the Bioshock series. In response to criticism of the original Bioshock, a hidden “1999 mode” aims to make the game more like the classic System Shock 2 and less like a handholding grandma who doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. I’m looking forward to letting Bioshock Infinite hurt all my feelings this fall.

Halo 4 (360) – Fall 2012

Halo returns for a fourth installment, developed by 343 Industries this time. At this point, the vague release date of “this fall” is all we know about it. We’ll see how the series fares outside of Bungie’s protective care.

CounterStrike: Global Offensive –TBA 2012

We’ve already covered this one in some detail here on Avault. New modes, new maps and a few new weapons should make for a fresh CS for the year of the apocalypse. Valve and Hidden Path are working hard to make it just as enjoyable outside of PC land. The real question will be how large of a splash it’ll make on consoles when it’s released sometime this year.

Doom 4 –TBA 2012

Developer id software has the latest installment in their classic franchise listed for a 2012 release date. With their last game, Rage, flopping like a wet fish, and nary a screenshot in sight, I wouldn’t place any hard bets on it showing its demonic head this year.

Dirt Showdown – TBA 2012

Codemasters hit paydirt with their 2008 rally racer Dirt, and they’ve been milking it hard ever since. Showdown will be the fourth entry in the series, and will focus more on destruction and chaos then precision driving. This will be felt most by the inclusion of new demo derby modes and the removal of any actual rally racing. A different take to be sure, but Codemasters’ racing division hasn’t let us down yet.

Prey 2 (360, PS3, PC) – TBA 2012

The original Prey is what would result if Portal and Quake made a baby. Instead of complaining that it never lived up to its potential, it should be lauded for getting released at all. Instead of doing the original right, Prey 2 is set to become an open-world role-playing FPS, which is as stunning a development as any. It looks like Human Head has big plans for the world of Prey, and we can all pray that it pays out.

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 9 comments

After dozens of hours in the province of Skyrim, I’ve done a lot. I’ve plundered tombs, slain dragons. I’ve picked a point in the landscape and gone there, full of manly purpose. I’ve listened to many personal stories and stuck my mailed fist of intervention into more then a few faces. Though my adventuring might someday come to an end, it will never truly find a conclusion. Yet, through all of it, I have reached one conclusion:

I like Fallout: New Vegas better.

It’s not a beautiful beast. New Vegas is a cluttered game, mechanically and aesthetically. It’s not just diverse, but outright unfocused at times. The interface, as broken as anything compromised for a controller can be, breaks under the weight of the added survival and crafting modes. Nor is the ham-fisted way the intro exposition is handled a compelling start. Sometimes it can be an outright ugly game.

At the heart of New Vegas is something that you’ll never see in an Elder Scrolls game: a real, dynamic plot. A score of forces all compete for the heart of The Strip. The NCR, the Legion, the Brotherhood, Mr. House, maybe even you. Each faction is well developed and thought provoking. The NCR isn’t the shining beacon of democracy and freedom you’d expect, nor is the Legion pure evil (well, they are, but have very good reason for being so).

Playing through the main storyline involves picking winners and losers, shaping the political dynamics to your liking. The wasteland is not for the weak. Eventually, you’ll have to step on some toes and anger (or outright kill) factions you’d rather not. Make the choice. If you don’t, someone will. In the end, you cut a swath through the wasteland, reshaping it in your own image. It’s this blending of stories that elevates it above Fallout 3, which polarized its players into Paragon or Villain story branches.

Perhaps we can forgive Skyrim for its failures in plotting; Elder Scrolls has always focused more on world-building than story. Yet, I can’t help but find its world boring. It’s far away from the bland European realm of Oblivion, but I can’t help but feel that I’ve done it all before.

Skyrim’s bandits are typical thieves and murderers, while the enemies in Fallout are shaped and broken by the nuclear-charred world in which they live. Murder and theft are necessary actions to survive, be you bandit or homesteader. Why plunder identical ancestral tombs when you can explore ancient nuclear vaults and uncover tales of experiments gone wrong? Why adventure with Illia when you can choose Lily?

I’m not ready to say that New Vegas is a better game then Skyrim. Elder Scrolls V offers far more coherent aesthetics and sensible mechanics, but New Vegas just clicked better for me. I’ve never given Obsidian much credit, but I think that they might’ve bested Bethesda by creating a huge RPG that has a sandbox and thought-provoking plot developments. I’m 30 hours into Skyrim, yet I’m already hunting down more mods to toss into New Vegas for yet another playthrough. After all, when the forgotten realms are quite explored, why not dose up and go to Gamma World?

© Ian Davis for The Adrenaline Vault, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments