Upon receiving a message with an attachment allowing the user to dial out to Bulletin Board Systems, the tale begins. Quickly things turn shady, with an illegal usage of a calling card allowing for long distance connections to strange systems which, in their amalgamation, contain a somewhat rich culture. Replying to messages intriguingly remains a simple click, followed by responses appearing in the user’s private message collection. It’s interesting that we never actually see what the messages we are sending out are, although it is relatively easy to surmise what was said by the types of responses we receive. The silent narrator approach works well, although it is initially jarring and strange. We clearly have emotional outbursts as we try to find out who the girl on the other end of the line is. What starts as a simple poem on a message board blossoms into a tale of artificial intelligences, compilers and .bat files and code, and even some old-fashioned password hacking, all backed by the growing love between our character and the poet.

Often it is necessary to find new long distance codes at The Matrix to continue calling long distance to the key message systems where users hold valuable information, which was the dynamic that stays consistent throughout the game. I must say I felt quite at home reading The Matrix’s messages, it being a comfortable resource that seemed always to be available. Quickly things go awry with many of the message systems, and ominous error messages coupled with ominous background music create a really effective ambiance throughout the game. Nabbing code files here and there from various message attachments and utilizing them near the endgame is also a neat idea, and although the game’s mechanics are simple it’s a great attempt at interactive storytelling.

The only problem I have with the game is its moderately annoying interface issues, but it’s a small complaint, and perhaps even intentional and an important part of the game. The Amie Workbench’s speed issues also come up, if one opens too many windows, which was a very nice touch. Using the interface is a pleasure, small complaints aside, and it looks great. At a small resolution reading the text is no issue, but using a full-screen setting it can become difficult on the eyes. Dialing the numbers required to access the Bulletin Board Systems can become tedious, but the way in which the game establishes its senses of urgency make the more monotonous tasks suspenseful and meaningful, and crucial to the pace of the storytelling.

The messages in the game comprise the main content, and are sufficiently well-written. Even messages that may not directly relate to the main plot provide a familiar atmosphere, while the interface takes us back thirty years to the time in our technological history which makes the plot possible. It’s a complete experience, a perfect package which accomplishes exactly what it set out to do; this is a very solid game, simple, but realized beautifully. Your real name and user name are utilized very well to provide a good level of immersion, and between the accounts you create and the accounts you steal, the level of identity that is provided for the player is pretty impressive. A great personal history is established, and seeing other users talk about the main character is a very nice touch.

I would hope to see more games like this in the future, but it’s certain there won’t be many. Even though it’s not the first, Digital is part of a great innovation in what we can do with the novel, and much like Uplink it exercises the medium with many intricate touches that create a very impressive sense of immersion, not just displaying a world for us to look at, but putting us directly into it.

Rating: Excellent

Turning on the 3DS, one is greeted with the standard time and date configuration, and an amusing introduction to 3D, complete with a timer counting down to the moment in which the 3DS logo moves off the screen and sinks back into it. Immediately I was surprised by the lack of depth in the initial demonstration, having used nVidia 3D Vision on numerous PC games. But at the same time, I also felt my eyes strain just the tiniest bit, most likely due to the effect combined with the size of the screen. I shifted my position a bit and the 3D effect disappeared, as with the technology employed by the 3DS there is a rather narrow “sweet spot” in which the handheld can be properly viewed. At times throughout my initial experience I tended to hold the handheld too close to my face, which also created problems. Tilting side to side is also a recipe for disaster, I found, which is interesting given that the 3DS has gyroscopes reading tilt for any games which wish to use such a novelty.

I moved on, trying to keep the limitations in mind. Upon playing the first Augmented Reality game I really started to feel the 3D getting in the way, as it’s pretty hard to move around and keep the 3DS in your personal “sweet spot” without losing it or playing overly cautiously. Still, between that and some erratic behavior (which is probably due to the low-quality cameras being used), the games are sufficiently impressive, but they are still not much more than tech demos. Fantastic tech demos, but another case of Wii Sports, to be sure. If the 3DS was strapped to your head, they would work as they were meant to; as it is now you have to create that sort of steadiness and alignment between your eyes, the 3DS, and the AR card(s) on your own, which is pretty distracting and difficult to do in the middle of a game.

I updated the system and an OK Go music video in 3D appeared. It was awful, and that’s coming from someone who enjoyed their treadmill video. It didn’t look fantastic either; I can’t imagine the 3D movies Nintendo has lined up are worth the effort.

The last thing I tried was seeing how 3D pictures would turn out. I ended up placing the stylus near the cameras, creating a pop-out effect that was about as intense as it could possibly be; at about the point where the thing would have been poking my eye out I was so cross-eyed my brain couldn’t take any more, and then the 3DS started switching focus dramatically, sending my eyes on a journey straight to hell. To be honest my head still feels a little weird.

Enough of the experience though; what of the hardware? The analog nub is a huge step in the right direction, feeling very good even with old DS games lacking proper analog support. The stylus is perfect, adjustable, and yet its awkward placement close to the left hand makes it hard to get at on the fly for right-handers. The system itself feels much like a DS Lite, and is nearly the same size, although sadly playing DS games on the 3DS introduces some nasty scaling due to the different screen resolutions, and turns things into a blurry mess. The D-Pad seems like a cross between the original DS pad and the Lite pad, not fantastic but certainly no real issues, and positioning somehow works, although it looks awkward. The bigger top screen is pleasing. The 3DS is the first Nintendo handheld I’ve used that actually supports WPA2, which is pathetic and of course welcomed by anyone with remotely modern wireless security. The cameras are garbage as mentioned briefly, but do indeed get the job done more than half the time. The system is a very tight unit, well optimized and far more acceptable than the DS was at its launch, and it looks nicer too.

Now hopefully we see some games for it.

The thing that Rolling Thunder does best is tightly integrated into both animations and gameplay. The player is literally forced to be cool; there’s no running in this game, but you can walk at a calm speed as though you are absolutely in control of the situation. Sometimes you’re not, but you’ll move and look like you are, with Albatross’ fluid walking animation. Your ammunition is limited, forcing you to use about the amount of bullets it actually takes to kill enemies instead of firing haphazardly. You’ll probably find yourself ducking for many of the shots you fire, at first because certain enemies require it, but later because it just feels cooler.

All movements are absolutely brilliantly animated; from walking, to walking up and down stairs, to jumping between the two main levels in most of the playing fields and grappling over rails, to a slow and painful fall to Albatross’ knees after getting shot; the game is a pleasure to look at. All of the important pieces of the action have very nice animations, and everything else is no more or less complex than it needs to be. The game’s structure is rather simple, but flawlessly executed, and gameplay feels really smooth and exciting without being overly complex.

One of the more intriguing decisions in the game is what happens when you die; there is the classic gross green alien laughing at you, but more importantly, after the player has used six credits, the arcade game will reset progress and land you in the first level to start all over. This increases the difficulty of the game dramatically, and gives you a very strict amount of lives to finish the game with. Such a design decision is far different than many street brawlers wherein enough coins will let a player see the ending regardless of skill level; here, developing one’s skills is absolutely necessary, which plays nicely with the rest of the game’s secret agent mindset. To finish the game, you must play it well, just as the game forces you to stroll through levels, it also forces you to be genuinely good at completing them. This is neat, because it makes finishing the game a challenge even today, ignoring save states and other such luxuries brought about by emulators.

Rolling Thunder is an instant classic the moment you play it. It has awesome gameplay, it’s pleasing to look at, the soundtrack is solid, and the enemies are quite varied and get much crazier as one progresses. Seeing the next innovation is excellent motivation to progress farther with the limited continues offered, as well as the inarguable challenge created by such a limitation. It’s of a much higher quality than many arcade games, while working with the same sorts of limitations.

Rating: Excellent

Dead Space has a solid atmosphere – I found myself disappointed by the environments on several occasions, but lighting and circumstances play a huge role in any horror game, and at least for lighting Dead Space nails the atmospheric tension properly; not only does light pour into the game environment from the next room, but total darkness is often experienced with nothing other than a flashlight. Many games toy with this concept, but as with many other techniques DS2 charges into complete darkness with no remorse; if you don’t use your flashlight, there are times when you may not be able to see anything. Is this a good thing? It certainly works; it’s certainly possible to use no other lighting than your flashlight to navigate a tight corridor, and yes, it’s rather stressful. But at the same time, Dead Space is better at making me “uncomfortably stressed” than it is making me afraid for my digital life. This contrasts heavily with something like even the first Silent Hill game, which had me consistently in a state of terror for much of the game relentlessly.

While much of the game is in the same types of metal corridors, there are moments in which the player gets a glimpse of something larger, and it’s always a pleasure to see. The game has moments of great visual appeal amongst some of its repetitive nature, much like it has moments of good tension amongst a lot of repetitive action. So what is the appeal? One of Dead Space‘s biggest strengths is intensity, which is a concept that I’ve brought up before. One of the reasons that Dirt 2 is so good is because of the intensity of the experience; the sounds, the crashes, the mud that flies onto your windshield, and Dead Space has a very good feel for intensity. Unfortunately, it is not as well-integrated into the standard gameplay. There are a few sequences, including the below, which have the right idea but are too scripted to let the player enjoy them on one’s own terms.

This video highlights a few important things; first, note how much Isaac is thrown around. There are a couple of big games that heavily utilize such violence toward main characters, including this game, and the Uncharted series. We see many animations dedicated to depicting painful events that the main character experiences, and the animation is of such high quality that there is some entertainment value here. It’s also a very cool sequence in general, taking us out into space in the middle of a corridor shooter, and there are many player-controlled sequences in which free movement in space is involved. In standard gameplay, exploding enemies throw Isaac backward. There are a couple of rooms that have an excellent source of danger – when the wrong windows are broken, a vacuum threatens to suck you into space and end your game immediately, throwing the player into an instant little minigame where one must shoot a switch to close the window hatch while sliding on the ground toward impending doom. The difference between such a sequence and the above video’s sequence is that it is more gameplay than cutscene. I’m disappointed to even have to bring this up, but Dead Space developers need to show… not tell.

Interface is something that the first Dead Space nailed, and Dead Space 2 continues the tradition – your entire HUD is integrated into the game, so that there is nothing taking up your screen space but your character. Videos are played through a device within the game, game-relevant menus are displayed similarly, and the immersion factor goes up immensely because of the way in which you interact with the game and its menus, text, and videos.

The main disappointment with DS2 is also the main thing one will be doing throughout the game, and the main reason why I couldn’t like it as anything more than a generic action corridor shooter. The enemies. There is only one so-called innovation to Dead Space‘s combat (aside from the weapons, which are all relatively fun to use and have neat features), and that is the ability to shoot limbs off of enemies as a main function of combat. But this is a paper-thin construct, and it’s not any more fun to do than killing enemies in any other way. Yes, you can blow off some legs and make enemies crawl, but that’s just about the extent of the possibilities. Leg, head, next enemy, leg, head, et cetera… this is the structure of the combat unless you go to lengths to spice it up, and even then it’s just not fantastic. Frankly, it’s boring, and near the end of the game when endless waves of enemies attack I got bored enough with the game to not want to play anymore.

There are a few moments in Dead Space 2 that made the game worth playing for me, but it’s a shallow action game with repetitive combat and an uninteresting story. It’s also not scary, aside from making me jump with loud noises or surprises; there is no internal terror to be found here, and with such a glorious space backdrop it would have been nice to see some more interesting developments in the horror and storytelling elements. Having the main character speak was a marginal improvement, but hearing Isaac’s generic dialog didn’t add much to the game. The developers toyed with a sanity concept, but it didn’t bring anything other than a couple of heavily scripted sequences to the table, and in standard gameplay it doesn’t manifest at all.

Here’s hoping for a real horror-in-space game in the future.

Rating: Not Worth Playing

]]> http://achrisfling.com/games/dead-space-2/feed/ 0 http://achrisfling.com/games/star-fox-64/ http://achrisfling.com/games/star-fox-64/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:22:53 +0000 Chris H. http://achrisfling.com/games/?p=200 Some of the best examples of genre-defining video games come from the Nintendo 64 era. In the realm of scrolling shooters, there are surprisingly few entries, but the games that do exist are usually somewhat critically acclaimed and always fun to play. Star Fox 64 is a nearly perfect realization of its goals as a game, and has a lot of extra merits to make things interesting.

Like Ocarina of Time, Star Fox aims to be cinematic. Many of the big Nintendo 64 games do; the birth of 3D in home consoles fostered an extremely creative environment, and even though developers were new to the format excellent direction and clever usage of the technology at hand brought ideas that were not possible earlier to life. From the moment the game starts running, the main characters of the game are shown to the player. Before the first words are spoken, the immediate familiarity of archetypes the characters are derived from makes one feel right at home, with blocky, yet effective character models.

The dialog in the game is terse, but expresses all it needs to.

The communication between different characters is one of Fox‘s greatest strengths. Falco, Peppy, and Slippy are all heroes, much as Fox is. But they’re incapable; Fox is the father figure, the babysitter, and the dynamic created from this is simple, yet extremely entertaining. Not only must the player single-handedly take on every evil force in the Lylat system; the player must also ensure that the Star Fox team survives their missions. It is impossible for them to die, but radio chatter is lost if they do have to leave the team to have ships repaired, and it becomes impossible to receive a medal for a mission if any team members are absent at the end of it. The choice is then left up to the player to decide how to manage the team; while this choice has no bearing on the ending of the game, it does change the experience to a moderate extent. And the experience is quite dynamic aside from this; Star Fox is a game that is meant to be played multiple times, with the player choosing how to execute certain game actions and thus which planet to progress to next.

The first time I completed the game I was somewhat disappointed that I had indeed completed it so quickly, but within the typical plot the content between the beginning and the end is dynamic enough to warrant multiple playthroughs. For one thing, the gameplay is very tight, and while not difficult, maximizing score is a very fun thing to do in this game, especially when balancing the needs of your allies, and when deciding which planets to visit. The scrolling shooter mechanic allows the player to have a narrow field of focus and decide how best to approach it, which introduces a neat element of strategy and makes multiple playthroughs even more interesting. The game is limited in technical complexity, but at the same time there is a large potential for the player to consider things to whatever level of complexity is desired. This goes not only for the gameplay, but the plot as well. For instance, the short and entertaining dialog and its voice acting create a nice, tight mythos to muse on during the game. Enemy interaction and philosophy are sometimes intriguing and always entertaining. The rival gang Star Wolf meets up with Star Fox at multiple points in the plot depending on the planets chosen to complete, and is always fun to fight. The voice acting for all of these characters is phenomenal; emotions are always portrayed effectively, and many of the voices and phrases spoken are hilarious. It’s the kind of dialog that never gets old, the kind that you want your allies present for so that you don’t miss anything, and it’s used very effectively to push the plot forward throughout missions.

Star Fox‘s cinematic side is present throughout the game; each level has an opening dialog/cinematic, and boss introductions and deaths are appropriately handled with as much player control as makes sense. The bosses are all excellent, and hearing their threats, tricks, and screams is always a part of the exhilaration of the fighting. The radio chatter makes even standard gameplay feel like an integral part of the story.

This is something that many games brush off; the possibility of pushing the story forward during scenes of player-controlled action. It’s important to take note of this; Star Fox does an excellent job of keeping the plot moving during levels without taking any control away from the player, while a standard game even today will have some shooting and then a cutscene, and then some more shooting. Why? One shouldn’t feel as though it’s necessary to get to a certain point after playing a portion of a game to progress the plot – the plot should be constantly progressing naturally as a piece of the gameplay. The plot is part of the game! Or at least, it should be. No one wants boring cutscenes in the middle of action, and no one wants a bunch of senseless action in the middle of a compelling tale, yet we see both problems quite often.

There really aren’t many games like Star Fox; today the scrolling shooter doesn’t see much attention. But it has timeless gameplay and visuals, and continues to provide many excellent examples of proper direction and design decisions.

Rating: Excellent

Notes

This review is based on playthroughs of Star Fox 64 using Project64 1.7 and a forced widescreen aspect ratio, using an Xbox 360 controller. Aside from very few graphical glitches, this was an excellent exercise in emulation.

Great graphics, and yet completely devoid of... anything.

A question: is Gran Turismo 5 better than 3? Perhaps in the sense that it has better graphics, but even that is up in the air, because the developers seem to have quite literally copied and pasted assets from the previous games into this new incarnation, so some of the tracks and textures don’t look any better than they did years ago. Some cars don’t even have an interior view, which I would argue would be one of the things that makes this game the least bit interesting and cool. The interface is obnoxious and slow, and even fails to load properly sometimes in my experience, making a PS3 restart necessary. It takes a long time to load, and installs data on the fly rather than letting the user install at the beginning of it’s usage, even after an optional installation that supposedly made load times shorter. But yeah, it’s better than 3, because in this game at least some sense of speed is provided.

This looks kinda cool, I guess.

Why is this game fun to play? Is it fun to play? Some people like to collect cars, and there are a lot of them. Personally, the difficulty is what gains my attention. Never in a game have milliseconds mattered to me before, and yet in this game my improving skills can see me getting consistently within 100 milliseconds of the time I require, making the absolute most minuscule nuances of the game’s engine of the utmost importance. But even learning how to drive in this game has its limits, and completing such a difficult challenge only to be faced with a harder one next (and here I refer to the license test portion of the game, although some of the racing events are like this as well) is physically and emotionally draining. The question comes up why I even bother to continue, and other than to get all those precious gold trophies I am without an answer. The sterile look and feel of the game is depressing and frankly purgatorial without the promise of anything other than the heaven a user might get a taste of by seeing the gold trophy at the end. Sometimes it’s fun to take an exciting turn well, but equally if not more as often that turn is now committed to muscle memory, and the turns before and after it require constant attention that one must race over and over again to provide. I say all this, and then I’m proud of a replay when I complete a truly challenging license test. A replay that, when someone unexperienced in Gran Turismo watches, is just kind of boring. But when I manage to get into first place at the end of a really challenging race, I don’t think any other game has made my heart pound as hard.

Of particular note to me was the artificial intelligence in this game. Now, maybe there is some, but for the most part they stick to a driving line, and refuse to not hit me. During the license tests in particular, this means that if the A.I. is being it’s usual stupid self, they can cause you a failure from out of nowhere. They also unintentionally hit your backside in just the right way as to make you spin out. It’s quite infuriating, and I really did wish that I was playing GTA IV so that I could exorcise my own will upon them at times. This brings one of my favorite nuances of the game into a similar light – it is possible to hit the A.I. just right, and not fail a license test.

Clearly there’s a love-hate relationship with this game for some of its players, and if you’re the kind of person who thinks any of the above sounds moderately interesting I would say it’s worth seeing if you like GT or not. And if you like elevator music, there’s a whole Blu-ray’s worth to be listened to throughout the games menus, and a very bad and lacking soundtrack for the race music. It currently holds my “Hardest Game Ever” award, for what that’s worth. And all in all, to me this game is pretty much a colossal failure with a few redeeming qualities that anyone who can put up with the game will find interesting or maybe even fun. There will be good races. There will be fun experiences. But the simulator misses the most important part of a good racing game, and the Dirt series got it right on the second try.

Rating: Worth Trying

But what it accomplished is a big deal in the first-person realm; it is the game that has brought me closest to the feeling that I have a virtual body which matters to the gameplay in a way other than being a target, and is the first game that has pulled off free running as a focus that I know of. It’s an excellent experiment, which although easily be looked at as a failure has pushed the first-person experience forward. I didn’t expect that I’d ever again say something like this about anything that had the EA logo on it, but here it is: it’s an admirable mostly failed experiment that has at least tried to explore a genre and do something the least bit new.

Well, it's still weird... but it's progress.

It’s an interesting concept given the core gameplay, which consists of running and maneuvering through different obstacles by running, jumping, rolling, sliding, and so forth. The gameplay is incredibly smooth for a first attempt at such a different concept. Only something like The Sands of Time beats such fluid motion, although Sands has far smoother gameplay and animations than most games in general. But the first level of Mirror’s Edge is a small masterpiece of gameplay and level design, not to mention pacing; unfortunately the game just doesn’t maintain that level of quality for the few levels that come after it.

The game’s smooth nature is not only realized through the gameplay, but through the environments as well, which are big on primary colors and simplicity and brightness. I find the game very aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time the environments give the same sort of tech demo vibe that the tacked-on later levels do.

There are scripted moments that bring exciting first-person action to the experience from time to time.

PhysX glass and other environmental effects are neat, but about as tech demo-y as the rest of the game.

I do love Edge for what it’s done as far as its core gameplay concept goes, but the game is a big disappointment overall. Still, I think the demo is worth playing to experience the fluidity and excellence of the flow of the game. It’s also a neat idea to make the environment the most important part of the experience outside of something like a skateboarding game. It’s also neat to treat weapons as disposable objects that are largely unneeded, instead of hoarding every weapon found throughout the course of the game. This inverts some key ideals normally found in the first-person world, and shifting focus like that is something that shooters need desperately.

Rating: Worth Playing (The First Level)

Like with Metroid Prime, there are too many excellent intricate touches to the engine and aesthetic choices to document here. The game is beautiful; the graphics are perfect without being insanely detailed, and the game’s performance is great, not to mention that I haven’t experienced a single crash or issue. The game’s level of polish is much, much higher than most games, including the effects and interface. The game’s cockpit views are slightly lacking in detail, but with the effects present they portray an excellent sense of driving on Dirt 2‘s rough terrain. Even something as simple as water and splashing up onto your windshield creates one of my favorite effects in a video game; it adds to the gameplay by obstructing your view, creates an admirable obstacle, and yet because the graphics are so high-quality one is able to see slightly through the mess to maintain a driving line through the courses in the short moments it takes for the windshield wipers to brush away the obstruction.

An effect like this ups the amount of excitement and intensity in this genre immensely. This is the kind of thing that scares me the most while I’m driving, but in a game it’s much easier to appreciate the absolute excitement that comes along with being unable to see where one is going. I can’t stress enough what a great touch this is to the game. I’m even disappointed when I drive poorly enough to break my windshield, because then I can see better.

A copilot reads off track information to help the player drive tracks most effectively in one of Dirt 2's modes.

The greatest thing about Dirt is its seamless experience. It’s the exact type of game I would think of when someone uses the meaningless “next-gen” nonsense to describe a game. I think when most hear that, they think “HD” or more simply “looks amazing.” But Dirt 2 uses the technology available to do far more than simply look great; the complex visual and audio effects (and even complex force feedback for certain steering wheels) add to the game in new and interesting ways, but even further the entire user interface is excellent. On loading the game, the player sees a magazine with some stats and random generic news items while their save file is loaded. From that, the player is then shown the trailer where they live, in which different areas represent different menu options, and a map laid out on a table is the interface into races in certain parts of the world as part of the “Dirt Tour” (Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie do something similar to a homey effect as well). But where BK fades to black to load up the game world, Dirt transitions from the car you picked to a snapshot of the car you picked on a map, to race information and lineup, to achievements, to a snapshot of the race environment, to the race. It’s incredibly seamless, and the audio utilization during the sequence is equally important; one can hear music in the background during race selection, and when the loading sequence begins an ideal portion of the song that could be heard in the background is played at an increased volume.

This sort of seamless ideal is also present in the gameplay, even when the player totals a car, because a rewind system lets the player select a moment to resume the race at from a few seconds before the crash. This is available on command as well, to help improve turns and times, and the interface, like the loading screen, keeps the player as present in the action as it is possible to be without actually racing thanks to the effects at work. It’s also possible to play without this mechanic, because the game is very customizable.

The HUD is almost entirely left up to the player, so that certain sections can be enabled or disabled at will, and with a game like Dirt playing with no HUD at all is quite a fun experience.

Quite simply, I haven’t played many racing games that I’ve found as exciting as Dirt 2. It’s an outstanding example of excellent user interface, which is both simple and manages to provide all of the options I wanted. It’s also an example of how great the entire experience of a game can be; some games demand one wait through terrible loading screens, but Dirt 2 keeps things interesting, and there really isn’t a dull moment. The style of the game is present at every moment in time, which while not exactly up my alley is expertly crafted with visuals and music, a perfect realization of the tone that the developers were aiming for. The lack of snow environments is glaring, and there is not as much content as one would hope, but I never felt dissatisfied; rather, I wished for more.

Rating: Excellent

Notes

Dirt 2 is also quite an experience in 3D, which I had the pleasure of trying. I’m sure that with something like a Logitech G27, appropriate cabinet, and 3D glasses, the experience would become visceral and overwhelmingly exciting.

]]> http://achrisfling.com/games/dirt-2/feed/ 0 http://achrisfling.com/games/metroid-prime/ http://achrisfling.com/games/metroid-prime/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 09:29:41 +0000 Chris H. http://achrisfling.com/games/?p=111 I’m always a little skeptical when a game is a 3D reboot of a 2D series, but there have been enough good examples of this for me to give Metroid Prime a shot. It’s a very solid entry in the metroidvania vein of games, which could be good or bad depending on your outlook. Personally, I am not a fan of that type of game unless it deviates from its roots enough to become something more than a generic room-by-generic-room exploration complete with numerous instances of backtracking.

Prime’s greatest accomplishment is its environment – the graphics are absolutely excellent without being insanely detailed – they have the sort of polish that allows for an environment which is much more than the sum of its parts. And this is a consistent trait, one that allows for excellent environments throughout the entire game. Not only are models good, but the various effects that are seen throughout the game are very aesthetically pleasing, from rain that bounces off your weapon to the world’s visual distortion that occurs when a fully-charged shot is fired. Prime has some of the best usage of effects I’ve ever seen in a game. I could list them all and how great they are, but it’s enough to mention that the various visors one uses add even more clever effects, and things like seeing Samus’ eyes in her helmet’s reflection and having her HUD momentarily disabled from electricity based attacks make environment manipulation and combat that much more fun and exciting to participate in. One problem with these effects is that while they are implemented very effectively and do not feel like they’re too much, their high quality is almost distracting. Perhaps I’m simply the type to notice such things, but they both add infinitely to the immersion factor and happen to take away from it all the same.

All of these graphical nuances are great as superficial traits, but what helps separate them from other games is their assistance in telling Metroid Prime’s story. Coupled with items to scan that tell pieces of the story through text, the true story is the complete world that the player is immersed in. It’s easy to see how anyone could potentially be bored by a such a concept, and I don’t think it would be easy to enjoy Prime without accepting and appreciating this. There is history and evidence to be found everywhere, and while there is a fair bit of combat, this is where most of the gameplay lies. For the most part, this optional part of the game is where all of the gameplay is, and it’s best experienced by reading the environment as one progresses through the game. This isn’t possible on subsequent journeys through areas that have already been explored, which is what makes going back through environments so weak. I can’t stress enough what a great concept for a game this technique is; it’s both easily ignorable and the most stimulating part of the game, and it is constantly present; it’s something that the player is immersed in from beginning to end, with every landmark another piece of a tale that can be interpreted as the explorer sees fit. The presence and locations of enemies are also a part of the environment. When first playing the game I used to annihilate most of the enemies in my path, but as I played more I grew to respect the environment more, and in turn, leave those creatures who were not immediately harmful to their business. There is no benefit to destroying the wildlife on Tallon IV other than for resources, so when not in need it seemed most appropriate to leave well enough alone. On top of this, the wildlife seemed as much a part of the environment as any static object, which is saying something; normally, one would see a moving being and look at it as an enemy or other NPC to interact with, but the wildlife did indeed seem like part of the landscapes after traversing past it more than once. This provides some benefit to the backtracking, because I wouldn’t have been able to consider any of these things if I had only gone through a room with enemies that aren’t very dangerous once.

But a Metroid game would not be complete without its backtracking, and Metroid Prime has its fair share. This can sometimes be fun, as every once in a while an unexpected event or enemy will show up, but for the most part you’ll have to look at the same exact environment and enemies on your way through to that one room you can now get into because you have the one weapon you required to do so. I can handle this once or twice, but near the end of the game I was tired of the environment, appealing though it is. I also found myself slightly disappointed with the game’s map system, although it seems fairly high quality. There are sometimes issues with perspective confusing what room you’re looking at on the map, and for a metroidvania game it can be a problem. I do think that the developers did about as good as they could have given the game’s complex environments. One thing I continually wished for was an easy way to follow an elevator between different environments while looking at the map, to get a more dynamic idea of how everything connects together at a high level, because as it stands each area is a separate map. A system to plan out a route that your in-game HUD could help you follow would be neat too, but that’s getting out there. However, to be honest, I passed my destination a couple of times unintentionally.

Metroid Prime is one of the GameCube’s finest, and it would be a shame not to give it a shot. I’ve never played another game quite like it; telling a story through an explorable environment is a concept that games in particular have the potential implement very well, and I can’t imagine Metroid Prime‘s execution being much better.

Notes

This review is based on the Wii’s Metroid Prime collection, which provides Wii-based control of Samus as opposed to the GCN controller. The game is entirely playable on the GCN, however, the Wii control makes the game much easier to maneuver, and also provides a widescreen ability that I’m not sure was present in the original. A couple of the effects are lost by the dynamic nature of the Wii controls and the usage of a different engine, which is a shame, but for the most part the game is intact and shouldn’t be disregarded on the Wii.

Thanks to Squall234 from the Video Game Box Art community for the image.

To get the technicalities out of the way, GTA IV is an absolute technical marvel from every angle. Models and textures are not exactly up to the standard set by other AAA games, but what GTA IV lacks in visual quality (which is very little) it makes up for in amount and complexity.

There's something happening nearly anywhere you visit in Liberty City. Nico sometimes stops to reconsider his life when he sees everyday workers struggling to make a living.

Almost every single place you visit in Liberty City you’ll find citizens participating in daily activities. There’s something different for everyone to notice as they traverse the land, that extra element of interaction between NPCs and environment that will make a player sit back and consider what a grandiose world has been created for the sake of stimulation and entertainment. The fact that such a composition can run fluidly on the current generation of consoles is an excellent accomplishment. And not only is the visual component of the city present, but the audio as well. Cell phones and horns honking and people arguing with mountains of dialog are just a few of the convincing and high-quality sound effects present. A day-night and weather cycle contributes even more to the environment, creating quite the masterpiece of an open-world for the player to explore. Just today I loaded up a save and was standing on a sidewalk while it was raining, and someone running while covering their head with a newspaper ran into me and fell into the street. I felt bad, and I hadn’t even done anything.

GTA IV‘s environment would be impressive on its own, but as an official entry of the series it hosts a criminal with a collection of missions to complete for various characters, and a moderately detailed backstory for its main character, Nico. I found the missions to be entertaining most of the time, but there are a few issues with the core gameplay that keep them from being excellent. Still, driving around with your NPC friends is an interesting experience, because the people in this game feel really delicate, like they actually hold life you need to protect. The Euphoria engine in the game contributes in great part to this, because the physics behind character animation has a huge element of realism that is not present in games without the technology. The only way I know how to describe its artistic effect is a very high-quality blend of animation and ragdoll effects, often very convincing, and providing a very dynamic property to all physics-based occurrences.

Driving

One of the absolute most important parts of the GTA franchise is driving various automobiles. The physics system in GTA IV is not without glitches and flaws, but for the most part driving the cars in Liberty City feels incredibly good, albeit completely different from any of the prior entries. The speed is one issue – most of the cars will feel much slower than standard cars in GTA III. This gives a good feeling of weight, but at the expense of some of the excitement of speeding through the city. I tried a couple of game tweaks, which have been lovingly created by the modding community and give unique and faster feels to each vehicle, and found that I liked the feel of them much more than the vanilla experience. However, even without tweaking, there is a lot of enjoyment to be had. That said, it does start to get old when you feel like you’re going slow and many of the missions you set out to accomplish involve driving increasingly long distances. But the crashes have extreme weight to them, and every once in a while Nico will fly out of the windshield and bounce along the ground, and hitting the right obstacles or getting hit by the very same car will kill you in one go. For me, the added danger added a lot of excitement to the driving mechanics. I was especially happy when I accidentally ran into a gas station and the whole thing exploded, killing me instantly. For a moment I didn’t even know what happened, and then I was dead.

It might be fun to get in a nice car every once in a while, but there's something about the standards that seems more appealing.

Shooting

Rockstar took a note from shooter trends a la Gears of War and implemented a cover system that players can use to hide behind walls and corners. It comes in handy during particularly crowded firefights, but I avoided using it for the most part because it’s just not my style in a game like Grand Theft Auto to play it safe. I used the “lock-on” option for shooting to play with a 360 controller, because I enjoyed that piece of the gameplay from past entries. However, it did turn out to be a bit too easy, as you’re allowed to shift your aim to different parts of the body. By memorizing the tilt required to score headshots the shooting becomes less interesting, so choosing where exactly to shoot your enemies can be a big part of the gameplay. If you need to get past cops, you can either blow their heads off or shoot a leg. With choices like these, along with the added realism, it’s safe to say that this is the most brutal GTA so far, and to such an extent that many players will feel twinges of guilt for their mass murdering rampages. If a woman is confronted on the street, she might end up cowering against a wall crying. Such detailed touches bring the consequences of player actions to the forefront of the game, driving a set of emotions that may or may not have been present for players of earlier entries in the series. This is a very positive direction for violent games, and should not be taken lightly.

Every once in a while things become a little more brutal than usual.

When starting a mission, there is always a cutscene to watch explaining the reason why you must drive to point A, then B, and kill C. Some of the cutscenes drag on uninterestingly, but every once in a while the writing quality really shines, and the voice acting is almost never disappointing. Most of the characters have something about them to like, and some of them have development that spans GTA IV and Episodes from Liberty City. More entertaining and a little closer to the kind of scripted events I can support are some of the conversations that the characters have while you drive from A to B, which can even vary so that when you fail a mission you are sometimes treated to content you otherwise wouldn’t have come across.

Nico looks down quite often in GTA IV.

The animation is also fantastic. Although slightly exaggerated from time to time, there was never a question as to what any of the characters were expressing verbally or physically (although Little Jacob and company can be hard to follow from time to time – I felt more Caucasian than usual during these sequences). There is quite a lot of unspoken dialog in the game, which is part of what makes the numerous cutscenes interesting. However, after considering the implications of what these cutscenes mean for the player, I think that GTA IV could have done with less non-interactive cutscenes and more gameplay. If Rockstar had somehow integrated communication into the gameplay it would have been far more interesting, but the route they took is one of heavily scripted linear experiences for the main campaign, while leaving the city to provide a more dynamic environment. This choice makes sense, based on how much care was taken in the design and creation of the environment, but because the campaign is what players are going to be spending the most time on, most of the experience feels more linear than it should given the scope of the city. The animation when you are in control is also spectacular – if Nico is on the phone, you get to see hand gestures as you walk the streets, which are sometimes as entertaining as a full-blown cutscene but with the added interaction.

The explosions in GTA IV look particularly good.

One of the things that I think drives GTA IV from being another generic fest of violence is the heavily satirical nature present in almost every aspect of the game. While the characters all have real issues to deal with, the environment that they are a part of does not echo the same tone. I find this dynamic between the game’s cast and environment creates quite a complex situation, although the only one able to see it is the viewer; neither actor is aware of the contrast they create together. At every turn there is a wealth of commentary on modern living. Everything from the clothing men and women wear to they way the speak and act has loads to share about our current state of communication and mannerism. Radio stations and advertisements still beat you over the head with satire, which maintains a consistent ratio of exaggeration across the entire game world. It’s the kind of criticism that has to be seen first hand to appreciate, as the only way to experience it is to be immersed in it. This is the same reason GTA IV receives such negative reputation from the media – no one from Fox News is going to play a video game to see what they’re actually reporting about.

But there’s no arguing that there’s a lot of shooting, stealing, sex, and drugs in the game. For the kind of environment that Liberty City is trying to create, that’s not a bad thing. Or is it?

Liberty City's seedy side.

The only way to find out what your opinion is on the violent nature of the environment is to play through it yourself. While many games are just about the shooting, I would argue that GTA IV is trying to say something a lot more substantial than “shooting is fun,” but sometimes even the game itself tries to disagree with me by presenting me with never-ending firefights on a consistent basis. Is it to satisfy the “shooter” urge of its core audience, or rub it in their faces until they can’t stand it anymore?

Even with its issues, GTA IV is an incredibly immersive game that I think accomplishes the goals of the series better than any of the other entries, even if I like GTA III slightly more. I think it’s worth playing for being one of the absolute best games in the sandbox genre, as well as for the enjoyment to be had from the points it makes and the excellent interactive experiences it makes possible. This is a game that is almost guaranteed to create dynamic moments worth sharing that no one else will ever see, because it truly is a world of its own.

Rating: Worth Playing