Game Play: Modern Warfare 2 Single Player

I've blogged and tweeted on this quite a bit, so this will be the last word on it. I've been holding out until I could actually play the entire single player campaign and judge it as whole. After all, when the "No Russian" level was first leaked, Activision and Infinity Ward cried foul on the blogosphere because the scene wasn't being placed in context.

So now I have the context.

Let's get a few things out of the way. The single player campaign is fun in a virtual shooting gallery kind of way and has some of the best graphics put to pixels to date. Mechanics are pretty solid, though honestly the game's concept of cover is starting to feel quite dated.

Whether the single player is worth the price of admission is another story. The bottom line is that the game is a multiplayer game and if you aren't buying it for the online experience, don't buy it. Not only is the single player game incredibly short (less than a weekend easily), but it is deeply flawed. Without the multiplayer - which I can't even debate - this would be a rental at best.

The main problem is that Modern Warfare 2 is a product of Valve style storytelling - but it fails completely in actually telling a story (key problems I had with Half Life 2 I might add). It's like watching a bad Hollywood popcorn flick - you better be paying the ticket only to see the pretty explosions, because as a movie there's nothing really to see here.

Spoilers. Many of them. Beginning in ...

The rationale of every scene in the single player game is not to create a cohesive story, but to shove some kind of action sequence in front of the player. You've seen many of these by now - the vehicle chase scene, vehicle escape scene, run the gauntlet, protect the position, etc., etc., etc.

The controversial "No Russian" scene is actually quite a lynch pin moment in just how horrible the so-called storytelling of the game plays out. Army Ranger Allen is plucked from his normal duty and sent undercover to infiltrate Russian terrorist Makarov. Most readers know by now, but almost the entire mission is just watching (or participating) in a massive slaughter of civilian casualties. In the end, Makarov knew the player was a plant and shoots them for dead.

The "context" of this scene exists pretty much solely in the voice over introduction where it's explained that "you don't want to know what it took" to get the player close to Makarov. That's it. Before that, the character was in Afghanistan - and then bam ... you're shooting civilians in an airport.

What follows next is even more ridiculous. Russia invades the United States. How do people know that the shooter was an American? Nobody knows. How is it that Makarov himself isn't fingered even if the American in question was investigating him? Uh, we don't really know. What was the diplomacy following this attack? How is it the entire United States gets implicated for the actions of one guy? Never shown. How does Russia launch a massive surprise attack and becomes the first country to successfully invade U.S. soil since the Revolutionary War?

Oh, that they explain. They stole a chip.

Yeah.

A chip.

The thing is - No Russian is so emotionally draining that all of this nonsense weighs on the rest of the game. If Infinity Ward is going to have a plot where you watch a lot of innocent people get brutally murdered and then shoot you in the head ... is it really too much to ask to make it make sense? There's a lot of crap out there about how "emotionally powerful" or "deeply impactful" the scene is ... ignoring that if I snuck up behind you and beat you with a cricket bat that it would also be "emotionally powerful" and "deeply impactful" but I'm not exactly laying down a good narrative here.

Infinity Ward has a bizarre taste for the morbid, actually. I don't mean in that "Saving Private Ryan" way of showing that yes, Virginia, in a war people really do get their heads blown off. They kill off the player character not once, but twice - the second time is even more gruesome than the first. The game ends with what is a way way overwrought near death scene between three characters. The directing is very into the concept that death is edgy that much of it plays out like a film school dropout's last bad edit.

Bottom line: if you remove your frontal lobe, you might consider what happens in Modern Warfare 2 a story.

I could probably get away with this without a lobotomy if it weren't for the No Russian mission. It's not that the mission is simply offensive, which it is, rather it is that the mission is the reason for all the action that follows. So a big WTF echoes through the entire single player campaign. You can decide to not play the mission, but as I've mentioned before - this is a massive cop out on Infinity Ward's behalf. You can't have it both ways, where a scene sets up the reason for the plot and also have it be optional. Basically in an attempt to be controversial, Infinity Ward ruins what was already a pretty bad plot and in the process hangs such a large sign on how bad the plot is that it makes it pretty hard to ignore.

If you can manage to do this bit of cognitive dissonance, than yes - as I started with ... the single player is fun in a shooting gallery kind of way. It's sad that a game with a profile like this one couldn't even manage the poor storytelling which is industry standard, but rather steps all over itself just for the sake of being sensational.

Why I've made such a big deal out of this is because by largely giving Infinity Ward a pass on the single player, the gaming media has rubber stamped the myth that games can't be effective storytellers. Modern Warfare 2 embraces this notions, extends it and makes its own. Basically becoming the Microsoft of bad narratives - they've just lowered the bar for the entire genre.

Facebook's New Game Dashboard

Via VentureBeat:

Facebook is in the midst of redesigning how users find, interact with, and keep track of games on the social network. Called the “Game Dashboard,” the new feature is Facebook’s attempt to play nice with social game developers, serve the interests of gamers, and at the same time stop games from ruining the experience for everybody else.

The company is reining in the worst abuses of Facebook game companies, which have polluted the network’s communications with spam-like messages that general users have begun to ignore, such as “Joe Smith wants to thank you for chasing crows out of his pumpkin patch.” Facebook has announced that these “push notifications” will no longer be put into the stream of updates that you see on your main Facebook page, the news feed.

Hoo freakin's way. The Girl just showed me that you can specifically hide apps from the news feed, and I've been knocking them down left and right all morning. If I read about one more animal that stumbled into someone's something - I might scream.

How Stargate Universe Fails

We tried, we really tried to like the latest installment of Stargate, but they just make it so darn hard.

And look, if you're going to respond to this post with "but its all about the characters" or "the show is people!" then - well, just don't bother. I get that. In fact - that's the problem with the show. SGU is more about people than it is about science fiction. Or, sadly, storytelling in general.

Problem number one - the people just aren't very interesting. There's a very slim line between two basic types - slightly angry military types who are deeply burdened with a sense of responsibility and slightly neurotic civilians deeply burdened with a sense that they are all going to die. Tack on singular traits (geeky, cute, nervous, gay) and you have a pretty smooth curve when it comes to making characters distinct.

Which might actually work, in a slasher film kind of way, if the show had any guts about putting characters at risk. As mentioned previously, for a show about the horrible risks of venturing off into deep space - the show has about the same body count as Voyager, and so for all of the handheld camera shots ... comes off as about as vanilla and safe.

I'm still an episode behind, but let's take 'Time' as a perfect example of how the show stumbles on itself.

Spoiler alert.

So, you have this really decent sci fi premise: a time loop allowing characters to see their possible future. OK, great. However, it takes way too long to set this up because the show can't resist melodrama when melodrama might be portrayed, so we watch Eli getting annoyed with people and people getting annoyed with Eli, and all sorts of moaning and groaning shot via handycam until we get to the good stuff. Then, armed with this knowledge - we .... watch a lot more moaning and groaning until we finally get to step B of this plan which, if you take the hypothesis that the show is unwilling to risk getting its hands dirty - ends with a very predictable conclusion.

Next week? More moaning and groaning. This isn't Stargate Universe so much as it is Stargate Bitching About Space. It's the The View with teleporters.

For the show to succeed, it needs a real sense of dread - something the show it really wants to be, Battlestar Galactica managed quite well (though arguably lost it off and on).

Fans will say it is a "more human" show, which it is and if you enjoy these particular humans than this is the show for you. We'll be waiting for a show with less cliche, more dimensional and less predictable humans though.

2010 - you can do better sci fi than this.

Movie Watch: Ink

Ink is one of those rare gems of an indie movie. While it is very clearly done on a low budget, the constraints of the budget don't inject themselves into what is a fairly solid fantasy plot and manages to deliver some decent visuals as well. Many an indie film may use minimalistic sets as a bit of a crutch, but Ink seems to acknowledge its roots and make up for it with some very solid storytelling.

The plot follows opposing forces between the world of the waking and the world of dreaming as they are focused on a man and his daughter. The worlds and characters collide, there's some decent twists to it and a few quite honestly cool as hell scenes. I'd really, really like to blab about them here - but they work best when you see them and realize that some of the effects, while cheap, make a lot of sense in the frame of the story and work very, very well to deliver the movie. This is a movie that is probably better to not describe in great detail - because it is often the details that make it works so well.

We found this on Netflix Instant, highly, highly recommend.

Game Play: Braid (really wanted to love it...)

When I heard that Braid was making its way to PSN, I was rather excited to see what all the fuss was about. Blow's platformer has become something of an indie darling - and for good reasons being both artistic and financially successful.

I just can't bring myself to keep playing it. Don't get me wrong, it is a very pretty little game with an excellent sound track. The time mechanic is interesting, although not quite as intrinsic as I had originally imagined it would be. The story looks like a great mash-up of old school and new invention, but I didn't really quite get into the "row of books" delivery method. When I first jumped into the game, there seemed to be a lot of that - a good thing tinged with a slight annoyance.

That's not why I can't keep playing it, though. Braid is clearly a well constructed game. It's clearly a good game. I just, as a baseline, hate platformers. And the more old school the gameplay is - the more likely I am to hate them, and for all it's lovely graphics and music and twists to the concept - is pretty darn old school at the core. I had numerous Mario flashbacks.

I can't entirely explain why I've logged several hours of Little Big Planet but can't continue on with Braid, it may in fact be rather subconscious ... but I'm not going to go into a lengthy comparison of the two games to prove what is a completely personal opinion anyway.

However, I would offer that just because Braid has been very well reviewed - I wouldn't assume it is for everyone. If you're iffy about the genre in general, you might hold out for a demo.

Roku adding a bunch of new channels (none being Hulu)

Roku is adding a slew of 10 new channels to their lineup, notably Pandora, Flickr, Facebook photos and blip.tv. It's this kind of value add that makes me thankful we went ahead with this route rather than wait for Sony to match Microsoft's Netflix offerings. We still use the Netflix channel pretty exclusively - but this new selection looks pretty interesting.

Not that I was expecting it - but Hulu would be such a perfect marriage for the Roku device. Hulu would instantly crank up their viewership and Roku would get a swath of decent material. It would be what The Office would refer to as a win-win-win. We won't get it, of course, because the TV industry doesn't want me watching Hulu on my TV and will go to absurd lengths to stop me from doing just that.

Even though, as previously mentioned, there is absolutely no way they can stop me from doing just that. It's like stupid was raised stupid, had a kid, and that kid was really stupid and then that kid married stupid and had a stupid child. Hulu is like stupid's grandfather.

Anyway, we'll be checking out the new channels when we get a chance.

For Sunday: Muppets Bohemian Rhapsody

Because nothing really matters...

Game Play: Why Uncharted 2 Is Just So Damn Good

I feel a bit guilty that a lot of my online posts about Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 have been complaining about matchmaking in an otherwise pretty solid online offering. So let me make a mea culpa and rave about the single player.

Because honestly, this is one of the best games ever made.

Let's start with the mechanics. Already solid in the original Uncharted, Uncharted 2 takes the whole thing up a notch. The platforming aspects are tight and you'll rarely feel out of control with Nathan's movements. Cover is well managed and manages not to feel forced on the player (comparisons to Gears of War could fit a whole other post). You sometimes wish Nathan could do a little more, like crouch, crawl or lean ... but there's a balance of complexity that works quite well.

The weapon design is impressive. As I mentioned in comments about the multiplayer, even the starting AK clone is quite a versatile bullet tosser once you get used to it. There's nothing that feels underpowered and the range of tools at Nathan's disposal keep the gunplay from getting bland. Grenade tossing is far simpler than most games offer (much to the chagrin of many an online player...)

I don't know how much I need to talk about graphics. You've probably seen them. The game is gorgeous. You'll stop and gape. Don't feel bad.

But all of that pieces together create a brilliant framework for what is essentially a working model of strong interactive storytelling. On the surface, this is an elongated action movie plot with some predictable twists and turns and plenty of explosions. If this was a movie, there would be a lot that would be pretty average. As a game, however, works just so damn well.

Remember cut-scenes? Remember when Valve fanatics were declaring them dead? Not worth the time, no real emotional value for the player, a skip button waiting to happen. Naughty Dog writes brilliant scenes with great dialogue and they do it all with the existing engine - making a near seamless experience for the player between watching and interacting. Many developers have forgotten that cut-scenes were once used as rewards, not fillers - but not these guys.

Remember when nearly every game announced had some kind of "open world" or "sandbox" concept? Or at least some kind of "morality choice"? Uncharted 2 is a strict linear path. There's no good path or bad path, there's only Nathan's path. But that is OK, because Nathan's path is fun and littered with bullets.

This is why the game is so damn good - it takes a solid game engine, adds characters with depth, lines them down a plot full of action and packs it with some of the best dialogue ever written for a game. It's completely awesome.

Get it, unless you don't have a PS3. Then get a PS3. Then get it.

Movie Watch: Battlestar Galactica, The Plan

Battlestar isn't necessarily a show which is it a love it or leave it kind of affair - there's plenty of elements to go around, though they might not always create the grand cohesive goodness Battlestar fans had found.

One element was the relatively mysterious backstory. You have a race of robots evolved well past their original specs, seemingly hell-bent on the destruction of humankind, but with a lot of religious overtones and several (including the opening scene) references to "a plan."

You can imagine the desire fans might have to see an entire movie devoted to said plan. Sadly, the movie serves more of side story, weaving various points of the previous plot (in particular the first couple of seasons) with added, more Cylon heavily, perspectives. It serves as one part swan song, another part prologue, to an already decent story.

The problem is that if you aren't a Battlestar fan, there is nothing here for you. You'll be lost as there is a lot of assumed knowledge about the show, you're missing many, many salient points and quite honestly, the production is at its highest when it reuses previously shot material.

If you are a fan, you'll probably find a good deal of entertainment, even if it is short in actual information. The backstories on the Cylons makes for good fodder, especially the machinations of Cavil. It's kind of like one good drive around the block before leaving the house for good.

Very, very slight spoilers ahead.

My only real complaint, as one who watched the whole series, is that "the plan" is really just "genocide" which doesn't do anything to explain the particulars of the Cylons, their relationship with God(s), their true history, or any higher motives to sending many, many, many nuclear warheads humanity's way.

So kinda recommended, but mostly just for fans.

For Sunday: Parkour Fail

EMBED-Epic Parkour Fail Compilation - Watch more free videos

If anyone was seriously injured, I'll feel bad for laughing. Otherwise har, freakin' har.

Fun Fact: Parkour has origins with the athletic feats of World War One tribals in Africa. Clearly, it's changed quite a bit.

Bad Movie Showdown - Transformers 2 Vs. GI Joe

As stated elsewhere, when I travel I often dig up movies which I know The Girl won't object to me watching without her. This often requires lowering the quality bar to nearly subterranean heights. This last week saw Transformers 2 pitted against GI Joe.

Both flicks are derived from Hasbro toy lines, both were once long running cartoons which resulted in movie length features. They have established plots, backstories, and characters - all, of course, being pretty hokey and shallow ... but naturally the whole thing could use a touch up for modern audiences.

And to be fair, one of these is a sequel.

GI Joe
I had a huge Joe collection as a kid. It was about the only thing that rivaled Star Wars in terms of pure action figure goodness. These were toys with serious backstories, an arsenal of weapons - and thumbs that mysteriously broke off quite a bit.

The movie can be somewhat excused for tossing out the majority of the ensemble, I suppose - especially if you take the stance that people might not have a voluminous set of toys to instantly know the characters. Even the characters that are spotlighted, though, undergo rather drastic changes to serve the plot. It's nothing earth shattering considering we're talking source material based on a toy line, not Tolkien - but still somewhat sad that even basic outlines can't be followed.

Then there are the toys. Somehow the movie takes a franchise which already had some pretty hokey concepts and just makes them big screen hokey - the well noted "accelerator suits" (AKA - CGI Battle Warriors) as a perfect example.

And poor Dennis Quaid -I don't think he's been this out of place since Dragonheart. He seems to have problems with characters who are supposed to have growly accents.

So it's bad - not over the top bad (usually) - but pretty bad. It has some fun moments, the plot isn't so absurd that you'll hate all of it - and mostly is criminal for butchering an otherwise simple concept. It's bad, and there is better movies to watch well before getting to this one.

But it's just not nearly as bad as...

Transformers 2
Wow. Just wow.

I had no idea how bad this movie was going to be. It's not like the first one was fine cinema, but kinda like Joe it was at least somewhat fun while slashing apart the original material. There is nothing redeeming about this movie. Every scene that is supposed to be funny - isn't. Much of the human interaction in the movie comes off like bad improv.

Even the big bang special effects somewhat fizzle. For one thing, every Decepticon manages to look like nearly every other Decepticon - except for the extreme cases and Soundwave ... who is now a satellite.

Yeah. A satellite. Capable apparently of shooting plot holes to earth with alarming frequency. Trying not to spoil too much here - but a quick list ... a Decepticon Pretender shows up, though unless you are wildly familiar with the comic line ... this feels like just a bizarre violation of the "big transforming robot" concept in general, humans get swallowed whole and then transported safely half way across the world (apparently that Decepticon also transforms into a motel of sorts) and the main villain spends so much time off screen doing nothing relatively nothing except confusing you if you should be paying attention to Megatron or him ... you'll wonder why the whole thing wasn't called "Transformers 2: Revenge of the WTF were we thinking".

It's just a mess, and honestly big screen special effects aren't that hard to find these days. Sadly this movie made a ton of money, so we're likely to be burdened with "Transformers 3: Rise Of Our Massive Lack Of Editing Ability" in the near future.

Fun Fact: The Baroness was voiced by Stargate alum Teryl Rothery for a while. Also, Duke's death in the animated GI Joe movie was averted because of public outcry to Optimus dying in the animated The Transformers film, produced at the same time. Oddly, Wheeljack's death had no such impact.

Out Of This World Griefing

So my post Uncharted 2 pick up was Demon's Souls, which I'm quite enjoying and will have some more thoughts on shortly after an extended note on Uncharted 2 itself.

But I did want to call out a specific thing that I had found, and apparently am not alone. The game world in Demon's Souls is connected to other players most prominently with blazing red messages on the ground left by other players while playing. These are created by combining stock words and phrases and so will usually convey some kind of warning to other players, like "Watch Out" or "Beware of the ambush ahead". If someone finds your message helpful, they'll recommend it and your health will be refilled (though this rarely happens at truly useful moments).

However - some people will place completely false statements and at times, even harmful ones. Like saying "It's safe here" in the line of dragonfire, or trying to trick the player into jumping off a cliff, or placing the message right where a trap would be triggered.

It's griefing. Even though the griefer will never see the grief play out. I suppose they could stand around all day hoping one of the game's ghostly renditions of other players will happen to portray falling for the trap - but that could be a very long wait and I've never really known griefers to be the patient sort.

It's weird to me because I keep asking myself - what does this say about griefing and I'm really not sure. But I think it says that at the of the day, the real or at least a substantial motivation is just griefing itself. It's thinking you're just so darn clever for devising the prank, that it doesn't really matter if nobody falls for it. It's this incredible narcissism.

Fortunately, it's pretty minor in Demon's Souls. Partially because you learn to be cautious about everything you do, and partially because you get so used to dying that you're almost glad it wasn't a creepy mind flayer with a bell this time.

Not kidding. Mind flayer with a bell. Love it.

Movie Watch: Drag Me To Hell

Sam and Ivan Raimi's Drag Me To Hell almost went into the pile of movies I watch while traveling, until the first five minutes made me nostalgic of the Evil Dead series and I realized, yeah The Girl will want to watch this one too...

Drag Me To Hell is the movie Evil Dead fans have been wanting even if it doesn't feature Bruce Campbell's impressive jawline (for that, see My Name Is Bruce). It takes the same tricks used in the trilogy (more the first two movies than Army of Darkness) and implants them into a new storyline, this one featuring Alison Lohman as a loan officer cursed by a rather disgusting gypsy woman.

There are a few stumbles along the way - like Justin Long's rather deadpan rendition of a doting boyfriend, and a bit of predictability down the plot (especially for fans of the genre) - but the bottom line is that this great old school horror, and extremely refreshing in the days where Saw and Hostel benchmark the modern horror movie.

It's a lot of fun, and highly recommended.

Modern Warfare 2's "PSA" Funded By "FAGS" (Update)

I couldn't make this up if I tried, people.

As if I didn't just get done decrying Infinity Ward's poor content choices, now we have this fake PSA ad (pulled now).

The PSA portrays the Phillies' Cole Hamel warning against random grenade tossing. It's "sponsored" by the Fight Against Grenade Spam.

Get it? It's sponsored by FAGS. I'm not quite sure what the rationale from Infinity Ward's PR people to toss a homophobic slur so blatantly into what could have been a light hearted ad, but then I again I don't know the reasoning behind having American soldiers willingly partake in mass civilian slaughter is either.

Maybe I'm just not Modern Warfare's core demographic? True, the gay-bashers and the rage-players are two huge groups which make me dread playing with the random public - and since that seems to be what Infinity Ward is marketing towards, I guess I'll stick with other shooters.

Update - Ad has been pulled thanks it seems to some responses ... here and here.

I think the root of all this problem is this response from Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling:

@pkollar I think it was more of a social commentary joke of that stereotype than it was a fist-bump of acceptance to it.

[fourzerotwo twitter]

Word of advice to Infinity Ward: stop trying to make social commentaries. You seem to kinda suck at it. Whether it's commenting about gay-bashing players or sociopathic acts - it's striking derision ... not dialogue.

Modern Warfare 2's Airport Scene - A New Low?

When I first started to hear about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's airport scene, I thought - nice PR ploy. Look, we have this scene so violent that we'll make it optional. Cue forum chatter and lots of free advertising.

Yeah. Then I watched it (pulled now). And, um.

What the fsck was that?

I'm not even going to debate whether material like this should be allowed in a game. I don't condone censorship, if Activision and Infinity Ward want to make it ... let them make it. Trying to determine the finer lines of what should be legally distributed and not legally distributed when it comes to virtual violence is a futile, pointless debate.

That's not the same as me agreeing that Activision and Infinity Ward are in the right and there's nothing to discuss. This material is wrong. It's exploitation, it's grotesque sensationalism and has no place as a part of packaged entertainment. Let's get real specific here: this is not Modern Warfare this Modern Selling Games By Being Extreme.

According to Activision and Infinity Ward, I should be OK with this material partially because they make it optional. This is a total cop out. It places the obligation on the player to determine the morality of scene they haven't actually played out. This is them basically saying "We know this is over the top, but that's OK because we made it your choice."

If it's over the top, it shouldn't be part of the game. The player is not the producer here, Activision and Infinity Ward should take responsibility. If they feel so strongly that this material is acceptable - just keep it in the game, no if's and's or but's.

Worse, though, is narrative angle. This is Activision:

Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 features a deep and gripping storyline in which players face off against a terrorist threat dedicated to bringing the world to the brink of collapse. The game includes a plot involving a mission carried out by a Russian villain who wants to trigger a global war. In order to defeat him, the player infiltrates his inner circle. The scene is designed to evoke the atrocities of terrorism.

And this is Infinity Ward:

The scene establishes the depth of evil and the cold bloodedness of a rogue Russian villain and his unit. By establishing that evil, it adds to the urgency of the player’s mission to stop them...

Infinity Ward: Modern Warfare 2 Airport Scene is Real, Optional[GamerRiot]

Well, it certainly evokes terrorism. And, it certainly establishes evil. What both companies so neatly sidestep, however, is that it plants the player into a character that is a complete sociopath. That the player is, if I'm reading the description of this scene correctly, shooting innocent unarmed civilians in the back as they run screaming from them, pulling others to safety, and destroying an elevator full of people all in the name of justice and The American Way - makes absolutely no sense whatever. It doesn't "add to the urgency to stop them", it makes the player a willing participant in the atrocity. No reasonable character would go through this experience and come out the other side a military hero - there's no good side to this scene, it's just evil carried out by evil people. By playing through this scene, the player is in the role of a a cold-blooded murderer ... the very kind they're likely supposed to be fighting. This isn't narration, it's exploitation.

And let's get realistic here - this is only going forward because this is an A-list franchise with a lot of weight. If it was say, a game mod or a military shooter about Fallujah - we wouldn't be having this conversation, because the material would already be shouted down.

Activision and Infinity Ward should be ashamed and players should move on to better games.

Thanks to goodgaming for multiple tweets on the subject.