TV Watch: Lost, Sundown

This might have been my favorite episode this season so far.

First, the sidestory didn't suck or bore. It was a great Sayid short, and in some ways reflect on Sayid's on-Island story as well. I do openly wonder where the writers are going with Mr. Parallel Universe. There something keenly false about it (Jack not remember his appendectomy, Desmond's appearance and disappearance on the plane) and seemingly overly interconnected (Oh, Hi Jin). Will the sidestory Losties realize this? Easy money is that no matter what, MPU is going way for the "real" world - but will the real world send them a note at some point? Will the two realities ever get along? Or at least acknowledge each other?

On-Island is where the action is at, though - at like we've seen on previous moments of Lost goodness ... two sides are reaching a boiling point. Anti-Jacob tearing through the temple while various Losties are still figuring out what the hell is going on ... ok, I guess it's more like a toppling point at the moment. One big question I have is: why does Bad Jacob need an army? He's invulnerable, can morph into a killing cloud, and seems to know nearly everything about everybody. And he seems very keen to get people off the island.

If we divide out the stakeholders and big bads over the seasons, they always seem to have one of three goals: keep everyone on the island, get off the island or kill everyone on the island. Bad Jacob for some reason is picking the second two. Clearly if you want to join his escape, he has a use for you ... otherwise you're just a potential obstacle.

Another Lostie I know brought up the notion that Dogen's speech about how everyone has two parts to him might explain Jacob and Anti-Jacob quite well. They're two sides of the same entity, which is why it may have specific rules about who can kill what and where it can be when. Or something.

On a side note - why was Dogen the protective factor of the Temple? That seemed way convenient. On a side, side note ... notice how Illana calls everyone by their last (candidate) names?

I am, however, off the sci fi theory at this point. Old gods, perhaps, but anything E.T. is feeling more and more like a departure from the continuing themes.

Can't wait for next week. I wouldn't want to be in Kate's shoes.

For Friday: OK Go, "This Too Shall Pass"

If there's an unspoken rule the Rube Goldberg contraptions should be not just elaborate, but overly so ... OK Go may have just constructed on of the best ones ever:



I don't quite remember the last time I saw one that complex, but I'm pretty certain it was on the Internet.

Heavy Rain: The Spoiler Free Review

I'll be releasing two different Heavy Rain reviews. This one will be quick, and be 100% spoiler free. Later I'll publish a spoiler heavy review which is for people who have played the game but want to see how opinions might fare on Rain's actual storyline and execution.

Non-spoiler summary: Heavy Rain is an interesting evolution of interactive fiction. It bears a heavy resemblance to adventure games of the past, but uses the relatively modern concept of Quick Time Events (QTE's) to have the player keep their hand on the wheel, so to speak, of the story's plotline. I'm sure 99.9999% of readers know the idea - but for clarity, players are given an alloted time to match an input presented on the screen. Succeed and you move to one branch in the game, fail and you move to another branch.

QTE's have a mixed audience. Game designers have a love affair with them as it allows them to introduce cinematic moments which would normally have very little interactivity and give the player a hand in them. Depending on how narrowly you define the concept, you can blame Bluth for the entirety of Dragon's Lair's game mechanic or as recently as God of War for popularizing the notion.

David Cage first utilized this blend with the PS2 title, Fahrenheit (called Indigo Prophecy here in the States). Cage's take on QTE's is different than most - there is a real effort to match the motion being presented to the player to the one being portrayed on the screen. This was true in Fahrenheit and is extended in Heavy Rain. There's a large percentage of interatctions which aren't narrative as much as they are immersive. Quantic Dreams wants you to feel closer the protagonist on the screen, so when they open a car door ... you'll pull the controller stick to the left.

Dialogue is handled by options floating around the currently controlled character, as are the character's own thoughts to provide the player with insight and the occasional hint. The end result of all this is a character with their own brain that can be nudged, at times harshly, in one direction or another.

This is an important distinction. The characters in Heavy Rain are not avatars. You cannot go anywhere and do anything, you can move around, succeed, fail, have conversations and make basic choices. But you can't play someone like they are a jackass if the character isn't one. This is what places the game apart from most games - Heavy Rain is actively constructing a narrative for you - with real characters who are in conflict with each other, a plot which puts most any game plot to utter shame, and consequences which may not be apparent while you're playing out a scene.

The question of whether Heavy Rain is good relies a lot on the story - and in this spoiler free edition I'll just say: the story is good. If you're playing for the story, you'll get your money's worth.

The real question is whether Heavy Rain is for you ... because it certainly isn't for everyone. Even if it handles QTE's better than most every other game, they are still QTE's. Also, this isn't Max Payne ... you aren't going to run around shooting everything while occasionally getting punctuated with the storyline. The game is a essentially a 9-10 hour long movie with you pushing buttons.

And I think that's the bottom line: Heavy Rain isn't a game in the traditional sense. Or rather, it's a game in the sense of some very specific traditions - but more Zork or King's Quest than Halo or Final Fantasy. If that's intriguing, go play it. If it isn't, God of War III is due out next month.

Lockergate: Hurt Locker Producer Goes On Email Tear

The e-mails by Nicolas Chartier, one of four nominated producers for "The Hurt Locker" and who put up the financing to make the front-running film, violated the academy's rule against sending mailings that "attempt to promote any film or achievement by casting a negative light on a competing film or achievement," according to academy spokeswoman Leslie Unger.

The initial e-mail was sent Feb. 19 and obtained by The Associated Press. Subsequent e-mails, posted by the Los Angeles Times, showed Chartier giving more specific instructions, asking Oscar voters to rank "The Hurt Locker" at No. 1 and "Avatar" at No. 10 on this year's preferential ballot for the newly expanded best-picture category.

-- 'Lockergate'?: Producer apologizes for e-mails

They're considering taking away Chartier's Oscar tickets or (more unlikely) removing Hurt Locker from the ballot. I can only imagine the tension behind the now expanded Best Movie category, with small productions like Locker going up against blockbusters like Avatar, but Nick needs to learn one of the golden rules of Internet decorum: everyone involved in a flame war looks like an ass.

How Heavy Rain Shows Ebert Is Wrong

I'm leaning at this point to write a couple of Heavy Rain reviews, ranging in their spoiler-ness - but this isn't one of them. This is a response to the Destructiod column Why Heavy Rain proves Ebert right There won't be much in the way of spoilers (no more so than the original article), but probably some. Well, one.

To get to the crux of it, let's quote the Ebert man himself:

Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

-- Roger Ebert's answer man

There are lots and lots and lots of issues with Ebert's stance, not the least of which that art is less meaningful is it is participatory. More specifically, though, I'm taking issue with the examples the Desctructoid column uses to give strength to the stance. I will agree - Heavy Rain speaks to the heart of Ebert's argument. The player, as intruder to the narrative, as the potential to derail the storytelling intended by the original storyteller (in this case, the makers of the game and more specifically, David Cage).

I just don't think player derails the story in the way Anthony portrays. This is his evidence (here be spoilers):

Even ignoring the fact that Ethan specifically tells Madison nothing matters apart from saving Shaun -- he doesn't say "nothing, apart from me getting my freak on" -- this is a guy who has gone through immeasurable mental and physical trauma to save his son (unless you made Ethan refuse to complete any of the trials, in which case I'd have to ask why you're even playing the game). This is a guy who knows that every wasted second brings his son closer and closer to death. Under no circumstances would it make any sense for this guy to have sex with Madison.

But if you're curious about how the sex scene will play out, or if you have some personal interest in getting these two characters to screw regardless of their motivations, you can force Ethan to have sex with her. Congrats: you get to watch a sex scene and a murder at the same time, as Ethan's true character is obliterated before your eyes. Ebert proves himself right: your ability to control the story has resulted in a bad story.

And I disagree because I, in playing the game, arrived at the exact opposite conclusion in this scene. Ethan, having been rather brutalized at this point and presented with an attractive woman in his hotel room who has been helping and now clearly willing ... what straight man wouldn't get his freak on, as Anthony puts it. The Girl and I were on the couch while this was unfolding and it was pretty clear to both of us that Ethan would go for it.

So the ensuing scene for us didn't seem jarring or narrative breaking in the least. Now - here's the counterpoint I'm trying to make ... Anthony has his opinion on Ethan's character, I have mine. If Anthony chooses to have Ethan get it on, even if he feels it would make for a bad story - well, that would be because Anthony is choosing a sex scene over story. Heavy Rain provides the tools, Anthony has simply made his bed and then proceeded to complain about it.

But if we go back towards the days of gaming and media originally colliding, when DVD's were king and a notion like Tender Loving Care seemed like a good idea, this sort of "player as director" notion was exactly the goal. Maybe a senseless sex scene, to that player-director's opinion, doesn't make the most sense ... but it's there because that is the story the player-director wanted to have.

Which seem to put gaming in pretty even keel with movies. If the director feels a sex scene will increase the entertainment value, story be damned ... there is a good chance there will be one. And how many movies have sex scenes in them?

Anthony's version of the story was bad to Anthony, but because of the choices Anthony made. His premise is founded on the concept that the sex scene makes for a bad story under any circumstances and hence the lack of an authorial dictatorship makes for art which is less than what a movie might provide. And yet in my viewing of the same scene, I could see Ethan being too weary for the old beast with two backs, but for the most part I just assumed he wasn't gay.

Long time readers of Cathode Tan will know this next section of the article got my ire:

"But," you might say, "what about a game like Half-Life 2? That's a linear story, but you still have the freedom to dramatically sabotage it. You can spend the entire prologue throwing milk cartons at the residents of City 17, if you really want to. How is that any different?"

You can definitely sabotage Half-Life 2 if you wish, but the alternative to "sabotage the story" is not "get bored and feel useless." While you don't have any input over the direction of HL2's story, you still have a personal reason to keep playing: the action sections that comprise the majority of the game are fun enough that even if you don't give two shits about Alyx Vance, your input still feels relevant.

If you wanna sabotage HL2's story, you can, but you'll still have some fun with the shooty-shooty stuff. If you don't sabotage HL2's story, then the shooty-shooty stuff just feels more meaningful. It's an imperfect combination of story and gameplay, but the failure of one part doesn't destroy the entire experience. As Heavy Rain consists of nothing beyond some QTEs and a boatload of story decisions, it's got nothing to fall back on if the player decides to ruin the story by screwing with the characters.

Ah, yes. Let's recap Half-Life 2's story one more time. Gordon Freeman is transported to the future where the guy responsible for ruining the Earth is running it, and he runs around a lot, meets a few people, blows up a few more, then decides to trap himself to watch a few cut scenes and then blow the whole thing up.

The story sucked. And Gordon was a horrible protoganist. In fact, he isn't really a protaganist as much as he is a reader surrogate. Alyx is far more of a central protagonist to even the paper thin HL2 plot than Gordon, who is mostly a voyeur with a gun.

Anthony has it backwards, I think. You can't screw with HL2's story, partially because there isn't much of a story to begin with and also partially because you have no real control over the story. You can play (shooty-shooty stuff) or not play (throwing milk cartons), but can't shoot Alyx or side with the Combine or make any real impactful decisions. Heck, you can't even speak.

Heavy Rain's "boatload of story decisions" offers the player control, but largely it still the story the player decides on. And while the end result may or may not be a story the player likes will differ from player to player, at least Heavy Rain had the bravery to try and tell a story with real characters in real conflict that have real interactions. Ethan alone goes through more of a development arc than probably nearly every character in every game produced last year combined.

Now, I did have my own issues with Rain's storytelling - but I think blaming it because the player wanted to see some nookie is a pretty weak addition to Ebert's notion. And don't even begin to use Half-Life 2 as a counter-example, unless you really want to frame what storytelling is in the first place.

First Person Evolution

I've been playing first person shooters since ... well, there have been first person shooters. Possibly even before, depending on how you define the concept versus the coined genre (I once coded a 3D maze program that was in the back of a computer magazine).

OK, I'm old. Let's move on.

Doom inspired more than a few clones, and Quake practically created the concept of similar games being called a Whatever killer. Quake killer, Half-Life killer, Halo killer (this trend in the media may have died with Haze ... or at least it should have). During this generation, most of the feature changes were similar across titles: level design and weapon design. Duke at least gave us a funny character, which was a step up from the generic marine.

Eventually we got better controls, better AI, a horde of graphical improvements so technical that you'd need a degree in Carmackology to grasp, and well, more improvements to level and weapon design. Valve gave us scripted sequences, and various developers have tacked on new multiplayer modes. Eventually, someone added vehicles.

But for a moment - let's look at what is the same. In Borderlands, I shoot barrels to explode around enemies. I did that in Doom. The zombies in Doom dropped ammo when they were killed ... as did the necromorphs of Dead Space. Bioshock 2 is a landscape devoid of life but full of crates. The E2M2 level of Doom was a crate maze.

Before the crate maze? Lots of barrels. Let's dwell for a moment on the fact that Halo was revolutionary simply because you could only carry two guns. Crazy! And yet it helped give the game immersion, slimmer control requirements and added mechanics about weapon balance. And sure, there have been peaks and valleys of innovation. Deus Ex was earth-shatteringly brilliant, giving us a branching narrative, RPG-like stats and inventory control and a richly interactive world.

And then we had Deus Ex II.

Clearly I'm being intentionally myopic here. Dead Space may have had old school ammo drops and weapon control - but it also had a HUD-less design and really well done third/first person hybrid perspective. Bioshock 2 was not only carrying on traditional design concepts from Deus Ex and System Shock (two of the best shooters ever made), but introduced a highly original world concept and exceptional production design. These aren't things to scoff at, and I haven't even gotten to games like Thief or Mirror's Edge which challenge the very concept of "first person" and "shooter" being a strict relationship.

But this isn't about giving the love, it's about nudging an aging genre that a few pushes in a few directions won't suffice for the future. Borderlands and Bioshock 2 represent the outskirts of acceptablity to me now. I'd like to pose a few challenges to the genre.


Continue to mash with other genres
Some of the most notable examples in FPS gaming have relied on blending in action adventure (like branching narratives) and RPG elements (like upgradeable characters). Even MAG, which is in its heart a straight up military shooter, tracks skill points you can use to enhance your solider.

Great, but the genre could do more. id's upcoming Rage well bring in racing elements. There have been various attempts to bring RTS style action - but I actually think many of these have somewhat failed. The basic mechanics of the shooter have been done, and done, and done again. When I was modding Unreal, I had planned out a partial conversion which would have a static map with specific resources needing control, upgradeable characters (with a dynamic list of team members). It was actually supposed to be a mix of Unreal and X-Com. Like so many projects, I never finished it - only had a core pieces of working code. But that was for UT2004 - so I know the technology is there, it's just that nobody is designing it.

Drop the cliches
I was half-tempted to call these out individually, but let's lump them together: barrels, crates, unrealistic inventory drops, ghostly women whispering in your...

Actually, wait. I'm calling this one out for a moment. I think Halo started the trend, but I'm not entirely sure ... but I'm pretty certain not every game needs an attractive, spectral, female voice commanding the player. That most shooter games rely on messages being broadcasted directly to the player's ear is bad enough, but the majority of them being computerized/ghostly/holographic women brings it close to a bad Monty Python joke.

But continuing on: unrealistic inventory control, "find that key" style map control, monster closets, trap rooms, uberweapons ... need I go on? I'll give Bioshock 2 credit ... it riffs off many of these cliches so effortlessly they don't feel annoying, but not every shooter will be Bioshock 2. Games like GoldenEye and Halo made what were in actuality small mechanical changes to the core gameplay of the shooter, but in doing so have become classics in their own right.

Open worlds, sandbox gameplay
There needs to be a better distinction between the concept of open world design and sandbox gameplay - as shooters could do with a dose of both. Open world simply means a non-linear layout, where you aren't forced to wander in between point A and B to progress through the game. Sandbox gameplay means the player isn't required to do a specific task to progress, but can devise their own solution to the problem. Bioshock 2 dipped into the latter, allowing the player to setup their own style of defense for the Little Sisters (or not defend them at all). But again, this is a toe in the water. This was another subject myself and some fellow modders used to toy with. Once concept I never got down was "Unreal City", where all the games took place on the same map, and players would choose objectives from job boards ... including opposing objectives (so you might be tasked to kill player A, while I'm tasked with keeping them alive).

More Social Multiplayer
I frequently avoid online games because I find so many random people online to be total asshats. Whether it's the guy playing his guitar over his mic, or the one complaining endless about how unfair the game is, to griefers and PKers, to the racists and the children ... there's a good subsection of the online population I'd rather not associate with.

But hey, it's there and it might as well be tapped. Recently shooters have trended towards better and better coop play - which is excellent. Also, better squad mechanics are starting to arise, also excellent. But what about truly complicated social interactions? Deathmatch mechanics have pushed towards this at times - but why can't I have a nemesis? Or a sidekick? Roles in shooters are an all or nothing deal.

Another mod concept: One player, unknown to the rest of the server, was a killer. They had enhanced abilities. But, they could could easily be overwhelmed in numbers - so that one player would score for kills, but the rest would score more if they could keep a majority of the people alive before killing the killer. It was a little bit werewolf, little bit The Thing.

Now I know the issue - for more role related play, people need to know their roles. A classic gametype which has gone the way of the dodo is a VP mode where one player was an unarmed VP and the rest of the team had to ferry them forward. Which was an awesome gametype, unless the guy being VP was a moron or simply had never played before. Then it lasted about ten seconds.

Hey, I didn't say it would be easy - that's why it's a challenge. Considering we live in an age where most players don't even crack open

Or even off the game field: better player marketplaces, lobbies, hubs. Sony Home is a moving towards failed experiment area, but doesn't mean it isn't an interesting idea.

Interface with more than a trigger
In many military shooters right now, there is the magic wrench/buffer/sparkle gun/hypo which magically repairs vehicles or people. While this mechanically fits easily with the rest of the game (especially the healing), it does make me want for more. id showed with Doom III that shooters can have richer interfaces (though that was more designed for mouse users, true...) - and yet for the most part we're left with just pointing and pulling the trigger.

Obviously single player could benefit the most out of this, and we've seen this in some instances with the Bioshock and Thief series, for example.

Another point is deeper interactions with the player and the player's inventory itself. Since Deus Ex, there has been a stripping down of this - simpler RPG elements with fewer options. In Deus Ex I could fiddle with my assault rifle until it was a semi-automatic sniper rifle. In Bioshock 2, I can tack a bigger barrel on another barrel, and that is about that.


OK, I think that's enough ranting for the moment. I gotta go find a cat playing a piano to rebalance the internets now.

For Friday: Bo Peep Bo Peep

Via Topless Robot, who refers to it as possibly the worst pop song ever written.

You can hate me later. Or now, your choice.

TV Watch: Lost, The Lighthouse

There's this scene in a relatively bad Buffy episode where Xander notes how funny it is that nobody ever noticed a Transylvanian castle in the middle of Sunnydale before. It was good humor and hung a lantern, so to speak, on how the show continually added locations to an otherwise vanilla California suburb.

In The Lighthouse, Jack wonders out loud how it is that nobody noticed a tall stone building before. Hurley responds with a rather deadpan, "Maybe we weren't looking for it."

Like Buffy, Lost has continually added new locations and for the most part has used the jungle foilage as a rationale for characters stumbling onto them. What I can't tell is if Hurley's response is the direct opposite of the intent in Buffy - not to dismiss the oddness by giving it a bit of recognition, but to specifically call it out. The island has been home to a lot of oddy placed things, some with potential explanations (genetically altered polar bears to survive the tropical climate) and some without (Kate's horse). Did people not see The Lighthouse because they just weren't looking, or was it actually not there because they just weren't looking?

The episode also pointedly reminded us of two important season one plot points - that Jack's dad wasn't in the coffin, and the corpses Adam & Eve. Hurley brings up the fan theory that Adam & Eve are, in fact, Losties ... which could be simply a fan nod or near confirmation. Either way, it's good to know the writers haven't forgotten about these points.

The end result of the episode seems to be a line in the sand and opposing teams. Anti-Jacob has Sawyer, Claire and possibly Jin and/or Sayid. Jacob has Jack and Hurley. The Temple is stuck in the middle, though Jacob doesn't seem capable of defending it any more (possibly because of his being dead and all). Winner seems to get control of the island, and hence be a protector or He Who Runneth Amoks (assumingly).

All in all I though this was a pretty good episode, but I do have one point of order I can't quite figure out (I know, how weird for this show). Claire disappears after seeing Christian Shepherd and leaves Aaron behind. She isn't seen again until she appears mysteriously in Jacob's Cabin, and hence we can't be sure if that was her or an apparition. Now she's CFL following SmokeLocke around, knowing that it is SmokeLocke ( or at least not Locke ). She thinks The Others have Aaron and threatens to kill Kate if she is the one who took her.

But - let's track that backwards. If Claire is in the company of SmokeLocke, then does that mean Christian's appearances signify SmokeLocke? And if Aaron was left behind after Claire followed him - why does she think The Others have Aaron?

I bring this up as an example of when Lost fans might have to take a deep breath and realize - that probably isn't going to get sorted out. It's chaff in a long and complicated storyline with a lot of noise in the signal. I'll be happy if the final explanation even keeps the Smoke Monster / dead people sightings marginally consistent.

Anyway, good episode.

New MAG Patch (v1.03)

Zipper is issuing a rather large patch to their online shooter MAG, here are some highlights:

• Improved speed of weapon and gear swapping by approximately 500 milliseconds.
  
  I'm hoping this will be huzzah. I've been killed many times while juggling gear, annoyingly and especially switching to grenades.
  
  
• Changed resuscitated player’s camera orientation to match the last camera direction used while incapacitated instead of the pre-harm camera.
  
  Nice. I've noticed this more recently, where I get revived and am facing an unexpected direction. Bad when the enemy is baring down on you.
  
  
• Players no longer lose XP if a teammate is killed by an objective explosion caused by a charge they planted.
  
  Big, big freaking yay! Here. I doubt anyone was ever trying to grief that random guy running past a charge. I'm hoping (and have asked Zipper) this includes if you were a turret gunner, and someone gets killed when the turret explodes.
  
  
• Respec Point requirements in Barracks have been changed from 3K, 5K, 10K, 17K, 26K, and 26K-Repeat to 1K, 2K, 3K, and 3K-Repeat.
  
  I'm not sure what they are now, but that almost sounds like a larger gap for respecs. If so: Boo. If not: - but it looks like cheaper respecs so ... yay! I still vote for a free respec off that bat, and the ability to more frequent respecs in general.
  
  

Now the really interesting stuff. They're rebalancing weapons. Check the link at the bottom for specifics - but short version is that you shouldn't be able to snipe with non-sniper rifles any more (remember when I said the LMG could do anything plus the tango, apparently not so much now), shotties and SMG are more fixed to medium range, from the hip recoil increased and the battle rifles and rockets launchers are made more effective.

Or short short version: weapons are going to behave more like one might originally expect. From the description, I give the whole range of updates a thumbs up ... and congrats to Zipper for doing it. But I wish them well in not having a subset of players who get really annoyed with the fact that they can't do everything with their LMG builds anymore. I kept a solid LMG build in hand myself, just because it is so versatile. Maybe the assault rifle will become the better middle ground now?

Full details over at the MAG Blog, and the patch is due out this Thursday.

Update: It's out, and it is good. Very solid balancing without feeling like nerfing. Weapons feel more "proper" now, the other tweaks make for a more solid experience. Thumbs up, Zipper.

Game Play: Bioshock 2

Personally, the Bioshock franchise is an odd measure of the change in my gaming habits. The first game was one of the last games I played on the PC, that my PC at the time could handle well and yet I still spent a lot of time trying to fiddle with the resolution on the damn thing to make sure I was getting the prettiest darn experience possible.

This game - I just popped it into the PlayStation 3 and moved on. Not only did getting the PC not occur to me, I don't even have a PC to play it on anymore. This isn't really meant to be yet another nudge at the PC market, just a footnote that whether the genre is dying or not, it's somewhat dead to me.

Anyway - the game itself. Bioshock 2 takes the player back to Rapture. If you haven't played the first one, you won't be totally lost ... but you will be missing out on a quite a bit of detail as the story of the second game builds heavily on the first. And once again, Bioshock 2 succeeds in storytelling to a point well past most shooter's benchmarks. There are very few non-interactive cut scenes, and far better character interaction than most games. This goes well past "hey, aren't you Gordon Freeman" to - "I just totally tried to kill you, what are you going to do about it?". While it's not exactly deep character development, it does allow players to literally go past the "glass wall", such as the ones Matt and I noted in our Dead Space conversation.

Mechanically speaking, the game is nearly identical to the first game, which is good - we're talking about a shooter with a rich heritage here and it shows. My favorite addition is the more free-form moments where you need to defend a little sister. Some of the fights got very dynamic and fluid, which is getting more and more rare in the shooter world, as the "virtual shooting gallery" has become more common. There are scenes which are clearly staged, but much of the world of Rapture feels organic and connected, not a series of artificial scenes stitched together.

Finally, I think the ending is much, much improved over the original. Oh sure, there are logical inconsistencies you can drive a truck through - but at least it felt like a consistent, coherent narrative ... and not a end animation tacked on to be done with it. This time I was careful to save every little sister ... so I don't know if the "harvest one, and you get the bad ending" rule is still in effect.

I have not tried the multiplayer yet, I'll give it a go this week and report later. The total game play was probably about 20 or so hours ... you can finish it in a week or so without too much trouble. The summation is what one would expect - if any game similar to Bioshock (Bioshock itself, System Shock, Deus Ex, etc.) has ever entertainted you, Bioshock 2 will not dissapoint. All in all, well recommended.

I will have an upcoming post, though, about how the shooter genre needs to evolve. This is a footnote on the genre, not on Bioshock 2, but in the same way this game book ends my PC gaming experience, I think it also bookends - along with many other titles like Modern Warfare 2, my welcome mat for some tired and true FPS concepts.

But, that's for another time.

MAG: What Isn't A Kickable Offense

MAG's large scale combat relies heavily on leaders communicating with each other, setting objectives, trying to move the game forward, etc. Without solid objectives, players lose out on experience and have a tendency to just wander off trying to kill things.

If you're not a squad leader, you chances of getting kicked off the squad are pretty slim. You'd need to gack the hell out of people repeatedly, and honestly people are pretty understanding of getting shot accidentally in the back (though if you can revive them shortly thereafter, it helps a lot).

If you are a squad leader - congratulations! You're chances of getting kicked off the squad just went up considerably. Well, not too considerably because it still takes a majority vote to kick you off and most players don't know where the kick vote button is hidden (start button, select player, vote to kick, btw). However - you're uniform just arrived with a bullseye on your back.

So far my track record as squad leader is fairly even and I can say we've won a few hard matches we probably would not have without the proper coordination. My collateral damage rate is pretty low, and I will admit that I really, really enjoy raining fiery death on the enemy.

What I don't enjoy is repeated attempts to be kicked. If I deserve it, fine. But here is a quick list of things that don't deserve it.

You don't like the sound of my voice
I haven't had this happen yet, although I nearly harassed a random squad leader last night who found the voice changer setting on the PS3 a bit too useful. In reading around the forums, though, this seem to be a common complaint. To which I can only say ... really? If you're that sensitive about online gaming - you might stay offline.

You don't like my FRAGO
Most experienced players have specific routes/order of objectives that they like to take down. Which is fine, but if you aren't squad leader then well, um, stuff it. Speak up by all means if you think there's a better objective, but if the squad leader disagrees - then well, um. Yeah, stuff it and get running. I've been in many matches with players yelling objectives which would have easily lost the match (usually retreating to the back flank too soon or ignoring key points like anti-air). This could also be summed up as:

You didn't get squad leader
You know what: boo freakin' hoo. Stop with the backseat general crap and fight. When kick votes occur as soon as the game starts, it's a pretty good sign that it isn't about job performance. Though that brings up...

We're losing
Guess what - we're not going to win every match. And sometimes there is only so much that the squad leader can do. Last night we had 11 minutes to get one letter on Domination, but we just couldn't through the defense. I was trying to bomb their back flank, get people to rush, etc. The opposing team just had a hardened group with a lot LMG's. Two clan members kept voting to kick. If you think about it, this is pretty stupid - because you're taking a squad already down and reducing the number. Oh, except they probably had a clan member waiting to join. Which brings me to:

I'm not in your clan
This is the biggest FU one on the list, I think, though it seems to usually go hand in hand with "You didn't get squad leader". If I'm squad leader and there are more than a couple people in the same clan who spend most of the time talking to each other, I know I'm trouble - no matter how well we're doing. There are plenty of posts on the forums about how a clan with a majority number in a squad will just eject the other players to get their clan members in - but most also take the leader role. It's pretty loathsome behavior, and makes players simply not want to be squad leaders so that they can avoid being targets.

I don't have a mic
This one, I'll admit, is a bit of a grey zone. If a squad leader can't communicate with the squad, they might get in trouble - and there are occasions (like when the CNI is jammed or calling out secondary goals) that the only way to coordinate is via a mic. But honestly, if a squad leader is setting FRAGOs and using their command abilities - the squad is often most of the way there. Plus, you can't be sure you're kicking one squad leader off to get one *with* a mic, or will even do any better. Short version - a mic-less leader might not be the best, but it doesn't mean they'll be bad.

I didn't bomb something when you wanted me to
Um, squad leaders can't bomb everything all the time. Sorry. If we could, we would never move. We'd just sit there bombing everything.

So what is a kickable offense? There are really two big ones: not using the CNI (setting goals, using command abilities) and bombing your own team. One match last night started with the squad leader bombing our own bunker ... and then doing nothing else for the rest of the game. That, my friends, is a squad leader you should kick.

The related note here is that the kick system doesn't really work so well. This is only a minor rant because I've never been successfully kicked (I suspect, though, that this is usually because there haven't been enough of the same clan on at one time). And I've actually not seen truly bad squad leaders kicked, including Mr. Bombs Our Bunker there. Zipper would do better to institute a grief/demotion system for squad leaders - some kind of automatic penalty/reward system based on performance, and not the whim of the mob.

On the flip side, I'd love it if squad leaders could see who was voting to kick them. Many of these are silent votes, and last night on the Domination match my requests to tell me what we should do different were ignored.

Like I said on the recent posts, if you don't like the squad leader - leave. Or at the very least be vocal in a constructive way. But just repeatedly trying to oust the leader is pointless and annoying.

TV Watch: Lost, The Substitute

I think a rule for this season will be: we need Evil Locke in it. Last episode was mostly Locke-less and mostly boiled down to a "getting to know Kate" concept and didn't move much of the island mythology forward, with the possible exception of a few pointed facts towards Sayid and Claire, who may know be called Crazy French Claire or Claire French Lady or Claire Rosseau if one likes.

So this was a pretty Locke related episode, though technically it was half Locke and half SmokeLocke. Locke's sidestory continues along an odd theme: without the island, everyone seems like they're doing all right. Locke is getting hitched to Helen, is becoming comfortable in his own (broken) skin, and can even roll with the punches when he gets fired (thanks to his other would-be Losties). So the theme seems to be: this is a group of people who would have made each other's lives all right.

And then Jacob comes along, crashes their plane and they start dying. Or time travelling. Or whatnot. SmokeLocke confirms for us that Jacob has slowly weaved events off-island to bring them all to "candidates" of some kind, though we can't be sure what that really means with Jacob currently a pile of ash in Ilana's pocket.

Or perhaps he is a bloodied blonde hair kid? Wait - what? OK, one sec - is this really the best time for Lost to get weirder? The proverbial Swan clock is ticking down here, and this is the most tantalizing tidbit we got:

4 - Locke
8 - Reyes
15 - Ford
16 - Jarrah
23 - Shephard
42 - Kwon

Written on a cave wall. It's been noted that Kate is not among the names, though it should be pointed out that Sun might not be either - as Kwon could well mean Jin. Is being a candidate a male exclusive recruitment option?

SmokeLocke mentions that "Jacob had a thing for numbers". Let's hope that isn't the complete explanation for one of the first mysteries the show offered up. Honestly, Lost Writers - we get the "black and white" thing. Honestly, I was hoping for something more like a ... spaceship? Less like a ... mysterious cave? If you were Sawyer - would you buy SmokeLocke's speech as a reasonable history of being plane wrecked? Before they go jaunting off together and selecting floral arrangements, shouldn't Sawyer try to figure out just what SmokeLocke is?.

We seem to be teetering towards something of a conclusion, but it remains to be seen if there is a Grand Unified Theory to explain all the loose ends Lost's rambling plot has left in its wake. So far little is know about the next episode "Lighthouse" (Lost producers have said that even a single screenshot from episodes this season will reveal too much) - but hopefully we keep following the smoke trail down the old rabbit hole.

Crazy theory time: Evil Locke put a bit of a damper on the alien theory, claiming he was once just a man like Sawyer. I'm not thrown off the scent quite that easily. Smoke Monster can clearly resemble dead people, complete with emotions and memories. Evil Locke used to look like someone completely different. "I was a man once" might mean, "I took that dead guy's appearance." We're still dealing with an entity that can resemble dead people, cure cancer, regenerate broken legs, and manipulate world events (somehow to the point where people can't even die).

OK, now that I put it that way, maybe even aliens doesn't cover it. It may be time to start wondering just how much into the supernatural Lost will be willing to go.

More on MAG

I've been playing a pretty silly amount of Zipper's MAG since I last posted on it, and I need to preface this with the note that I'm still pretty wildly positive about the game. It's impressive how much the size of the maps and teams helps insure that you've got consistent gaming available to you - and usually pretty decent matches.

Take the recent Aliens Vs. Predator demo as a counter-example. The matchmaking is loose and seems to have troubles getting more than four people into a game together. The end result is long wait times to try the gameplay out and very uneven results in the long run.

But while MAG is something of a technical achievement, especially for the console, there is quite a bit left to be desired. Here's my short list.

Shoulder Controls
Right lower shoulder cycles weapons, left lower shoulder cycles gear, left top shoulder aims, right top shoulder fires. If that sounds like a strange mental crossword puzzle, it is - and it is complicated further by slow animations which can't keep up with what you need. Not to mention my rocket launcher (a weapon) is cycled as a gear, at the end of my gears - so if I miscount the number of shoulder clicks to pull it up ... that APC may have just driven past. You do get used to it, to a point, but even after clocking several hours I'll mess it up in the heat of battle.

Weapon Balance
While weapons across the three major factions feel balanced, the individual genres of weapons seems off. When threatened by a sniper, I don't go get a sniper rifle - I put my large machine gun on a bipod. I may not get the advantage of the best scope, but I do a lot of damage and can fire 100 bullets before having to reload. And should I need to get up and close, the LMG is still the one of the better options. It can spray, target shoot and tango - once you can respec to the LMG I don't see any reason to use any other gun in the game.

It's not that the sniper rifle or the assault rifle or poorly designed, both are good in certain situations. It's just that the LMG, properly equipped, is handy in nearly any situation. It's a little too Rambo for a modern shooter.

On the flip side, the RPG's feel wildly underpowered. OK, I get that bunker turrets should be difficult targets and it makes sense that they can take more than 3 rockets. But when I'm point blank to an APC and they don't even bother to pick me off with that big turret - and I have to go run for more rockets just to finish them off ... why did I bring it in the first place again? Not to mention that it doesn't seem you get assist points for helping finish off vehicles.

Skill / Equip Options
MAG works on experience. If you do stuff, especially, stuff your squad leader wants, you get XP. XP can be traded for better guns, gear, abilities and options. For the most part, this works really pretty well. Some of the choices, like before mentioned placement of a rocket launcher as a piece of "gear", and that it occupies a slot in and of itself ... so in other words your near future soldier can slap an RPG on his back, but not - say, another grenade.

Mostly, though, it would be nice to see the upgrade tree allow for more flexibility and versatility. It's almost, but not quite, RPGish. If you could, say, tweak the LMG to have better range by foresaking rate of fire, you would allow players to toy with their builds much more as well as potentially balance out weapons better.

Also, I would recommend a free respec for new characters. Especially with the balance issues, it is hard to know what works and what doesn't until you've tossed some XP at the problem.

Squad Leader Mechanics
OK, now we get into some real split hairs - because the squad, and the squad leader, mechanics really help MAG work as an online shooter. It's not that the system is broken, the system usually works extremely well. But there's a few faults.

First, no tutorial. So many new squad leaders just have no idea what they are doing. It is really, really not that complicated and Zipper would be well served to add a tutorial level for setting fraggos and using command abilities. It's as easy as hitting select, panning the map and clicking a few buttons. But so many start without really understanding what a fraggo even is.

Second, a better waypoint system. Many assaults would work better if the squad had a "meet point" which was secondary to the fraggo itself. It would even be nice to be able to set secondary fraggos (guard the bunker, but if someone could repair that AA...).

Third, some kind of demerit/demotion system. Some squad leaders just don't actually want to be squad leaders, or have so little clue as to what to do that the squad quickly devolves into a wandering band of mercenaries. Right now, if you say ... have a squad leader who continually drops cluster bombs on his own squad, the squad can only kick the leader off the server completely. If there was firstly some kind of auto-grief system for leaders, and secondly a way to demote a leader out of office without kicking them completely - bad leaders could be handled without much harm to the team in general (there are often situations a squad should rather not be a man down).

On a side note, though, some MAG players need to freaking cool it. I've seen perfectly good squad leaders go through kick vote after kick vote. One even kept asking what the squad thought he was doing wrong, and he never got a response. I was just on the receiving end of a similar vote recently. I was setting my fraggos, trying to move the squad up the map, and using command abilities but two players apparently didn't like my lack of cluster bombing (which I didn't actually have much control over) and decided to ignore the fraggos and constantly vote to kick me.

We ended up winning the match, not really thanks to our squad since they kept dying in random places on the map. But we did win, and I ended up on the MVP list at the of the game. If I had had my squad with me, I probably would have done even better. So to MAG players - if your leader isn't setting goals, or keeps carpet bombing you ... fine. Kick them.

If you just don't like the goals - kick yourself. Seriously, just go home. Directives might bring in some other player who isn't an asshole about it.


That's about that for now. I'm hopeful that Zipper will update the game with DLC - certainly more maps would help, and if they could add more upgrades/weapons/etc, that would be grand. I won't hold my breath for a control remapping (or at least the ability to remap individually) ... but some additions to the squad leadership concept would go a long way.

Demo Play: Heavy Rain

I was pretty iffy on the game play of Indigo Prophecy / Fahrenheit back on the PS2. One part of me wants anything which is trying to push the interactive adventure genre forward, since any game should be a bit weary about a world where we're only getting the next shooter, or next third person platformer, or the next rendition of a franchise, etc. While I mostly enjoyed the game, I felt the story kinda whimpered towards the end and the control system got to be a rather insane exercise in quick-time events.

QTE's are oddly controversial. In case the term is unfamiliar, this is where the "press button now" interface is displayed and the player generally has a pre-determined amount of time to respond. It was basically the only gameplay mechanic in Dragon's Lair and got a refresh in Shenmue and became widespread with God Of War. Many game developers and critics bemoan them, but players seem quite willing to devour them until they get truly abusive. Heavy Rain accepts this reality and moves forward in two ways - one: turn nearly every action in the game, from opening a door to swinging a punch, into a kind of QTE. And two, lessen the penalty for failing them.

I can't tell how the story will be from the demo, but it looks like at least a decent noir detective tale in the making. The graphics are good, the advantages of a controlled camera view clearly being put to use here. Sound and other production elements seem pretty high value, and even if the characters are somewhat stuck in the Uncanny Valley, the developers should get some credit for trying to add a layer of emotion to their performances.

But back to the QTE's. The first portion of the level will introduce you to the concept and partially because of the fact that it is being a tutorial, becomes instant overkill of the concept. It feels like a burden to literally move and breath in the beginning, but once the commands have all been put through their paces, the game feels more rational. I actually thought the fight scene was pretty impressive - it felt fluid and engaging, which is pretty rare for a QTE based game.

And yet during the investigation, I wonder when I have to perform a QTE and wait for animation to perform every time I want to switch between the cool cyberglasses (which, are actually pretty cool) and normal vision ... if the game isn't going to have components where it continues to lay it on too thick.

Heavy Rain is a difficult game to measure on the basis of the demo, simply because it hold a unique place in Sony's library. It's not like it can be recommended simply because it's a shooter, or based on a franchise or if "you like X" kind of thing. I would say it should be recommended because it is trying to do just that - be unique, but that's hardly enough for the average gamer. I can say I'm tempted by the game, but not sold - so my suggestion is that if you're a fan of the old adventure games or interactive fiction, certainly give the demo a try. I'll be keeping an eye out when the title comes out and may pick it up if I'm past my Bioshock 2/Assassin's Creed 2/Brutal Legend glut.

For Friday: Brief History Of Everything

Via Geekologie, which notes:

This is the final piece for my AS art course, a flipbook made entirely out of biro pens. It's something like 2100 pages long, and about 50 jotter books. I'd say I worked on and off it for roughly 3 weeks.