Spike TV's Video Game Awards are a Travesty

That's right, the Spike TV Video Game Awards. They're just terrible. Today the nominees were announced for the annual award show, and it just doesn't bode well. Let's take a look, shall we?

Best Independent Game Fueled by Mountain Dew (Not a Judge Category)
World of Goo
PixelJunk Eden
Braid
Audio Surf

This category is purely a sponsored award, meaning it's basically useless. I'm all for representing more indie games, but I know Audiosurf wasn't "fueled by Mountain Dew". Next.

Best Original Score
Fallout 3
Spore
Metal Gear Solid 4
LittleBigPlanet

I think this is kind of funny because the music in Spore was either nonexistent or mostly ambiance.

Best PC Game
Spore
Crysis Warhead
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
Left 4 Dead

So I guess this is only "best PC EXCLUSIVE game"? There's no Fallout 3 on there (a nominee for Game of the Year). Oh wait, Left 4 Dead isn't PC exclusive. So I guess it's just kind of a lame category?

Best PS3 Game
Metal Gear Solid 4
Resistance 2
LittleBigPlanet
Grant Theft Auto IV

Best Xbox 360 Game
Fable II
Gears of War 2
Grand Theft Auto IV
Fallout 3

Note the discrepency? Once again, Fallout 3 is the odd one out, for some reason. It's a nominee on the 360 but not on the PS3? If you were listening to this stupid nominee list, you'd think Fallout 3 never even came out for PS3 or PC. I haven't even played the game (yet) and can't speak to how good it is, but this is just a weird discrepancy. Seems the 360 is being treated a bit differently, doesn't it? Any game that is a nominee for game of the year (as you'll see in a moment) should be a nominee for each platform it's actually released on, shouldn't it?

Best Graphics
Gears of War 2
Fallout 3
LittleBigPlanet
Metal Gear Solid 4

This category represents what is wrong with the gaming industry. This category should not exist. Graphics don't matter. Also, Crysis Warhead looks far better than any of these games, but god forbid they put a PC exclusive into a list with mixed console games.

Game of the Year
Grand Theft Auto IV
LittleBigPlanet
Fallout 3
Metal Gear Solid 4
Gears of War 2

No Smash Bros. Brawl? I didn't mention it but it was on the list for best Wii game. Why isn't it on the list for best overall game? Where's Spore, or Left 4 Dead? Or Crysis Warhead? Also, Far Cry 2 is on the nominee list for best shooter. Where is it compared to these other shooters on the GOTY list? It's potentially a better shooter than GoW2, but it's not GOTY material? How does that make any sense?

The whole thing is just ridiculous.

What Half-Life 2 can Teach us About Game Design

Half-Life 2, as well as its episodic sequels Episode 1 and Episode 2, are as close to perfection as any game has ever gotten. If any game deserves a 10/10 score, these games do. In designing the games, Valve made every right decision it is possible to make. Basically, I LOVE HALF-LIFE 2. What's so good about it, though? What makes Valve such a master of the art of game design? Why, if you haven't played Half-Life 2 yet, are you still reading this?! GO PLAY IT!

Half-Life 2 is so amazing because it adheres perfectly to the Golden Rules of Game Design. Let's run through them, and see examples of when they work and when they don't.

Rule 1: Never Screw the Player
This one is first because it's the foundation of a solid gaming experience. Simply put, this rule means that the player should have a way to deal with any possible situation in the game. A player should never be in a situation where they are simply trapped and must re-load the level. A player should never be in a situation where they are attacked by an enemy and have no possible way to defend themselves. Basically, the player shouldn't feel like the game is unfair.

Good Examples:
If you do this one right, the player probably won't even notice. Take, for example, the practice of giving the player a backup melee weapon or melee attack. If the player is snuck up on, or runs out of ammo, they still need to be able to defend themselves. Another example found often in HL2: often there will be enemies that require certain weapons to deal with. Hunter-choppers require rockets; turrets often require grenades or antlion minions, and so forth. Valve makes sure to place crates with infinitely replenishing ammo for those specific weapons in just the right spot. This ensures you're never screwed when you reach a hunter-chopper, because you always have the ammo to deal with it.



Bad Examples:
Any time you died or got stuck in a game and felt it was just unfair, that's probably an example of a game that didn't follow this rule. Here's one off the top of my head: Killer 7. As you walk through the game on a predefined rail path, if an enemy appears, you need to switch to your gun and then shoot it in a weak spot. You can only move forward or turn around and walk in straight lines. You have no control over when you reload your gun, and enemies also tend to pop out at you in close proximity. If this happens, and you need to reload, you're simply screwed. You have no way to defend yourself properly. Another recent example is a fan-made expansion for Portal called Portal: Prelude. The opening level starts you in a small room, similar to the opening of the full game. When the portal automatically opens, allowing you to leave, you are greeted on the other side of that portal with several turrets shooting at you directly behind you. There's really not much you can do about it, and it's almost a certainty you'll die the first time you play that level. That's unfair, and it breaks the first Golden Rule.

Rule 2: Generally Follow the Pacing Steps
This rule is a little different, but it's just as fundamental as rule 1. Every good game follows this (along with all the Golden Rules) as a very general guideline to game pacing. First, most games are split into different sections. Sometimes they are split by setting, sometimes by gameplay, and sometimes they are only split by the Pacing Steps, but they all have to be split or they become repetitive. For a given section, the Pacing Steps are as follows:

A: The Establishment Step - Present the new setting, gameplay element (item, enemy, obstacle, etc.), or in some cases the game world itself, in a safe and clear way so the player sees what they'll be in for in this section of the game. Example: When you receive the gravity gun in HL2, you are presented with a small area full of objects to play around with, and Alyx gives you a small tutorial. Another example: In Episode 1, when you first see a Zombine (Combine Zombie), it is safely behind a window. You observe it grab a grenade and run at you, exploding itself. This reveals the new enemy safely, without explicitly telling you how to deal with it.



B: Basic Application Step - Here is where you have to actually deal with what was "established" in step A. You need to apply the new gameplay element, or deal with the new obstacle, or use the new item in a real situation, usually involving some element of danger (but nothing too hard yet). Example: After you get the gravity gun and play around with it, you're forced to detour into the zombie-infested village of Ravenholm. In this village, you're encouraged (not forced) to use the gravity gun to take down zombies in creative ways, including launching buzz saws to cut them in half. (bonus example! the buzz saw is introduced according to these steps too; you first see it stuck into the dismembered body of a dead zombie, hinting at its purpose - Establishment Step!)

C: Advanced Application Step - Now that you've dealt with the basic application of the new gameplay element or setting, it's time to get more complex. This step will usually demand that you use what you've just learned in concert with previous skills. This is where the game should get challenging. Some games follow the first 2 steps but fail at this one. Such games are commonly known as "not very deep." Example: When you're introduced to the buggy in HL2, you're forced to utilize the gravity gun to flip it over in order to progress. This step often lasts for an entire game, or overlaps later sections of the game. The gravity gun has new uses throughout the game, such as when you encounter turrets and must use the gravity gun to take them out. That's technically a new section, the turret section, but it includes a new advanced use of the gravity gun in dealing with the turrets.



After step C, a new section will begin for the next new gameplay element, unless of course you've reached the end of the game, or the entire game is made up of one large section. Many times these Pacing Steps aren't followed in a really cut-and-dry way, but any good game does follow them in some degree. If a game is based on only one major gameplay element (for example, Katamari Damacy), the entire game often serves as a section, but the 3 steps are still followed. When a game properly follows these steps, the pacing ought to feel good. The game will feel fresh at each section, and you'll constantly be challenged with new gameplay elements and settings.

Rule 3: Everything Should Feel Natural
This is a big one, and it deals with the little details in a game. In this case, "natural" might mean "consistent," or it might mean "realistic," but things shouldn't feel disjointed. It's hard to describe examples of this, because it really is the sum of details that make up the natural feel of a game. There are, however, examples of games that don't follow this rule. Some RPGs or adventure games, in which you encounter invisible walls, or small steps that you can't jump onto, take you out of the game. They remind you that it is, in fact, just a game, and it doesn't feel "natural." In HL2, every boundary in the game is defined by walls that clearly make sense in the context of the game world. If you reach a spot where Valve doesn't want you backtracking, you'll be forced to jump down a small cliff which will be impossible to jump back up. That feels natural and plausible. The environment is forcing you to keep moving forward, not anything arbitrary.

If a game follows these rules, it will be GOOD. If you can think of a bad game, chances are it breaks one or more of these rules, in some way.

SPORE!

Don't listen to what the reviewers are saying, or the idiots on the internet. Spore is amazing. Every part of it is awesome. Evolving your creatures and society is incredible. Everything is great.

Without further ado, here are some animated GIFs that the game AUTOMATICALLY made (I didn't even know they existed until I was looking around my spore directory). These animations show some of the creation process that went into the different stages of my creature.

First, here's me, creating a Sandworm from scratch:


And here is the creation of my space ship, the Arturan Mega-Platypus, from scratch:


And now, a selection of important evolutions of my creature (there were more, this is just a small selection):




Here you can see how radically my creature changes through its evolution. You can watch as I add legs to my small creature. After that you can see me add arms. Then I add another set of arms, which eventually turns into a set of weapons. The mouth and overall bodily structure also changes quite a bit. I made most of those changes in order to give my creature better stats and help it survive better. When something didn't work right, I removed it. When something worked well, I did more of it. The player of the game is playing the role of Natural Selection. It's awesome and educational!

Also, I want to mention that there are some people who actually think Spore is "evil" because it "promotes evolution." I have one response. Spore "promotes evolution" the same way Super Mario "promotes gravity." Thank you, that is all.

Genres and Innovation

This is probably going to be a cynical rant, but I'm just getting fed up. The emergence of "game genres" and formulaic game structures within those genres is seriously hurting innovation in the industry. This has been building for a long time, and it isn't a new problem, but I feel the situation has been thrown into sharper focus lately. To an extent, the very same thing is happening in Hollywood with the film industry, so this is not endemic to the game industry. First, I'll start at the beginning - chronologically - with the original of the game industry as it pertains to this discussion. I will then move on to the state of the gaming industry today, and the causes that have led to the stifling of innovation and "newness." Finally I will discuss what I predict for the future.

Back in the 90s, games as a medium was still new. It was evolving. Developers tried different concepts and ideas. Production costs were low so there was little risk involved. Many games were distributed as "shareware," free versions of the games which could be unlocked to the full version with payment. Think of it as an extended demo. Individuals decided to program games because they wanted to make something fun to play, and then decided to distribute it for others to enjoy. New ideas were toyed with and manipulated, and some went on to success. Among these, the concept of first-person shooters that began with Doom, and was copied so extensively that a genre of games - which had before been termed "Doom Clones" - came about called "First Person Shooters" (FPS). There was enough variation between games like Quake, Half-Life, Deus Ex, and even outlying titles in the genre like Descent, that the genre came to be known based on the one similarity all these games shared: namely, the first-person viewpoint and shooting elements made them more similar than different. This "Doom Cloning" has set a precedent that continues today, but I'll get to that in a moment.



On consoles, this trend of game "cloning" was especially prevalent. "Mario Clones" became "Platformers," for example. More recently, games that copied Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy games came to be known more generally as "Japense RPGs" (JRPG) and all share similar characteristics. This is basically how genres came about. During this time period, however, each genre had a first game which was later copied ad nauseum. There were many more genres at that period of time that have since become much less popular. Among these: adventure games, puzzle games, vehicle simulation games and flight combat games have all become scarce. Consoles experienced a major upheaval of established traditions by the advent of 3D technology with the Playstation, Saturn, and N64, but many attempted to simply "port" 2D genres to a 3D environment. This achieved limited success, as well as spurned needed innovation, but at the end of the day developers went right back to "cloning."



We see, today, the culmination of this philosophy of "cloning" successful games to the point that it stifles real innovation. Out of the innovation of the age of shareware and genre-defining games, we've shifted into an age where every game must follow some established genre rules.

Let's first look at FPSes. FPSes until around 2001 had mostly copied Quake or Half-Life with regards to many major gameplay mechanics. Health pickups or health stations were used and games had puzzles to solve. As soon as Halo came out, it stood out as the best console FPSes of its time. It featured a regenerating shield system combined with the standard health pickups, little to no puzzle solving, and a focus on extreme linearity and combat itself. It wasn't a bad game, and it did things refreshingly differently for its time. It featured drivable vehicles which was rare for FPSes, and especially the multiplayer component. I enjoyed playing the game on PC quite a bit. Things went downhill with the sequel, Halo 2.



Halo 2 was average at best and boring at worst. The game removed the health system and pickups in favor of relying entirely on a regenerating shield model. If you could avoid being hit for several seconds, your health would regenerate itself completely. If you got hit without a shield, unlike the first game, you had no "HP" to account for. You would just die in a couple of sustained hits. The game added use of a few new weapons, and the ability to "dual-wield" certain guns, but beyond that the gameplay became far more repetitive and linear. The lack of quality in the single player mode is most likely a result of the focus on multiplayer. Regardless, the massive success of Halo 2 led to the new trend of console FPSes copying many aspects of it, which in my opinion is a step backward for the genre. Let me elaborate.

Regenerative health, the ability to only carry a small number of weapons at any given time (usually 2 to 4), a dedicated button to use a melee attack, and a dedicated button to throw grenades, are all frequently copied features. You can notice many of these in the following games: The Call of Duty series; Gears of War; Portal; Mass Effect; Assassin's Creed; Timeshift; Resistance Fall of Man; Project Origin; Mirror's Edge. This is a trend that will not go away.

Another example is the "gritty" or "grey" or "colorless" appearance that I'd like to say started with Gears of War, but carries through on most games that use the Unreal 3 engine since then. Guilty games include: Gears of War (duh); Call of Duty 4; Timeshift; Mass Effect; Resistance Fall of Man; Killzone 2; Project Origin; Unreal Tournament 3; Rainbow 6 Vegas series; Army of Two; Frontlines Fuel of War; Turok (latest); Fallout 3. For some reason, making a game look grey and dirty makes it feel more "realistic." I personally think it just makes the game more "ugly."



These individual problems are just symptoms, though. Games have massive budgets these days. Making a huge game that ends up flopping can put a developer out of business. Gamers also continue to demand better graphics and physics, which increases the cost of many large game releases. For this reason, risk taking is discouraged. Developers strive to follow certain formulas that they hope will lead them to success. Modern FPSes follow the formulas I just mentioned, with very few exceptions (the most notable lately being Bioshock). JRPGs today try to follow the standard for the genre set by Square Enix's games. Even original concepts like the upcoming game Mirror's Edge, which tries to simulate the experience of a rooftop-free-running courier, will have guns you can take from enemies and then shoot, from a first-person perspective. Essentially, it will be an FPS, but with the option of carrying a gun or not, in addition to the free-running gameplay. The fact that the developers felt the need to do this saddens me.




It's simply inconceivable in this age to think of a major game release in which you don't engage in combat with something. Portal, for all its puzzle solving and fun, had enemies in the form of turrets and the final boss. This is one game convention that has not been shed lately nor will be any time soon. Think of how much more unique Mirror's Edge would be, if the game had no enemies, only platforming and free-running puzzles, perhaps time trials or hidden areas, with incentive to keep a running "flow" going to build momentum. The developers had to pigeon-hole the game into the "FPS" genre in order to appeal to the widest audiences. Genre-defining innovation has been reduced to a unique FPS title. To take the Portal example, I had my dad try the game because of the puzzles. He enjoyed the spatial thinking a lot, until he got to the turrets, where it became an action game. At this point he lost interest. Why did Portal have to move from portal-based switch puzzles and platforming to turret puzzles? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed those levels immensely, but I can't help but feel that the game could have been more unique and innovative if it had shed the common conventions of games needing to have combat in some form. The market for peaceful games, however, is just not going to appeal to the kids who crave action. In part, this can be blamed on Halo taking the focus off of tactical gameplay or puzzle solving and onto pure action. It's a step backward in game design. All the copied features I mentioned earlier, all feed into this philosophy of "more action." Mass Effect, a supposed "RPG" by the makers of the amazing Knights of the Old Republic, is literally a shooting game similar to Gears of War, with stat building, special abilities and an inventory screen. The game was praised by critics for having so much action. The most enjoyment I got out of the game was interacting with NPCs and completing side quests which each seemed to involve short self-contained stories. They offered more unique, often non-combative gameplay.

So, I guess I'll generalize and say that the current trend is copying rigidly defined genre formulas, increasing the action and decreasing the complexity. This is due in large part to Halo and the rise of the console FPS, as well as many console FPSes going multiplatform and causing PC FPSes to copy them as well. No one wants to take risks, and profit lies in doing what is known to succeed. Innovation is stifled, and new concepts are pigeonholed into known classes to appeal more. You can see this happening in the film industry, too. Hollywood has run out of new ideas, so they continue to make big-budget movies based on older movies, or TV shows, or comic books, and count on familiarity for the movies to succeed. To a large extent this does work, in both the gaming industry and film industry. This "safe blockbuster" approach generates a lot of money. We've shifted from the days of the 90s where small developers published their own shareware games, to massive megacorporations working to make the most money off the latest trends.

The most obvious counter-argument to this is indie games. They seem to embody the ideal of cheap, innovative games that defy genre conventions. The problem here, though, is they are not large commercial games. They are only experienced by small numbers of people, they're viewed as inferior games entirely because they are "independent," and often they are indeed unpolished or small games built onto interesting concepts. I sincerely hope that Valve will improve things. Audiosurf, one of the most unique and awesome indie games of last year, achieved incredible success by releasing on the Steam platform. Portal also came about because Valve saw the indie game Narbacular Drop, made by a group of Digipen graduates, and decided to turn it into a full game, employing the developers to do so. Valve has also hired developers of major mods of Half-Life, including the teams for Counterstrike, Team Fortress, and Day of Defeat, turning these mods into full-fledged games that have achieved massive success.



Another possibility is Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, and Wiiware. These give more indie gamers outlets to display new games. The problem here is that the developers have to contend with the console publishers to be featured on these services.

To summarize: I'm getting sick of grey FPSes with regenerating health. JRPGs annoy me with too many cliches. Every game feels the need to fit into a certain "genre" and is developers are afraid to leave that comfort zone. Indie games need more support from larger developers like Valve. Question the formulaic designs of almost every major game that will come out in the next year or two. This is the idea of "Clone games" taken to such an extreme that genres themselves are far too restrictive of a concept. Go play games that innovate and challenge assumptions of game design!

Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven

Who doesn't want to be a ninja? Infiltrating fortresses, sneaking past guards, slitting throats, hiding in the shadows; pretty darn cool, right? Tenchu has the unique distinction of being probably the only ninja game around where you play an actual, stealthy ninja assassin. Games like Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi are really hack-and-slash games, not stealth games, they only happen to feature ninjas doing very un-ninja-like things. Metal Gear Solid is more of a ninja game than Ninja Gaiden is; Snake does in the modern day exactly what a ninja did back in feudal japan, albeit with more modern tools. That's not to say Tenchu is a hyper-realistic depiction of ninja life, however. It's a japanese game, and as such, inevitably falls into the hole of demons and robots and magical ninja powers. It's not so bad, though, as the game uses these fantastical elements as an excuse to test your skill in sneaking, or sometimes fighting, rather than changing the gameplay into something else.

So what do you do in Tenchu? You play DEATH PERSONIFIED - ahem, excuse me, ninjas Rikimaru or Ayame - as they sneak through castles and villages and caves and cemeteries, slitting the throats of enemies. Just look in the eyes of this guard: I'm pretty sure he's wetting himself right now.


The levels vary between linearity and openness, which is awesome for pacing. Most of the levels offer multiple branching paths and maze-like layouts, but are still designed to let you get the drop on every guard. The challenge comes from the guard layout and movement patterns, as well as the actual combat. More on that in a moment. As you sneak through the level, you'll routinely be checking corners and backing along walls, waiting for a guard to turn his back so you can pounce.



The guards in this game are pretty much robots. They move along mostly straight-line patrol routes, walking one direction before turning around and walking the other way. It's not very hard to anticipate their movements. The challenge comes when there is more than one guard in a room, because you will then need to take each one out without alerting the others. If you come up to a guard before he sees you, you are awarded a stealth kill which kills him instantly, and looks awesome. If you get a certain number of stealth kills in a single mission, you're awarded a new ability, such as combat moves or wall clinging or a zoom-in camera mode. There is lots of incentive to beat each mission without being seen once. The stealth kills themselves are very rewarding. The camera will change angles to show a cinematic assassination, the animation itself depending on the angle which you approach the enemy. Each character is different, too. For Rikimaru: directly from behind results in a throat slash (and occasionally decapitation); approaching from the side results in multiple torso slices; approaching from above features a fierce stab through the top of the head, and approaching from the front results in a stab through the stomach. There are even contextual kills, such as when you jump down onto an unsuspecting enemy and stealth-kill in mid-air. The system is a lot of fun, and each character has different assassination animations.

To help you get the drop on enemies, you have a variety of tools at your disposal. The grappling hook is by far the most useful, and the most fun. It lets you quickly escape to rooftops or ledges, where you can better stalk your prey. It's also a real thrill in the middle of a battle to throw down a smoke bomb and then grapple to a nearby roof, leaving the enemy puzzled as to how you disappeared completely. There are also multiple ninja weapons and traps. Poison rice will paralyze whoever eats it, letting you kill them with ease. There are bear traps, mines, and caltrops as well, to damage anyone unwitting enough to walk over them. And, of course, there are shurikens and blow-darts to attack opponents from a distance. These won't work very well in the middle of a fight because you have to take the time to aim each one, but for dogs and other assorted enemies, these can be invaluable.

If you do get spotted, you'll have to choose between fighting it out and running away to hide. Fortunately the game sports a decent combat system which includes combos, special moves, and dodges. It's entirely possible, especially if you suck at sneaking, to beat each level dueling every enemy instead of stealth killing them, although it isn't nearly as fun. One problem I have with the fighting system, though, is that it can be unfair at times. If you take a hit, you have a hit-stun animation that is far longer than I would like. Many times opponents can rack up large, deadly combos on you after the initial hit, and you can't do anything at all. The worst offense is the demons in the cemetery who breath fire. If they catch you in the initial flame, you'll be paralyzed losing 30%-50% HP as the flame keeps hitting you, not to mention any other enemies nearby who want a piece of you. The boss battles in the game necessitate combat as well, which is unfortunate. Metal Gear bosses often let you utilize stealth as a means to help you beat them, drawing on the core gameplay for boss designs. Tenchu, however, throws out stealth as soon as a boss fight begins, and challenges you to simply win with your combat.

As I said earlier, the enemies in this game are completely stupid. They do not behave like real people whatsoever. If an enemy spots you and tries to fight you, it is possible to run around a corner and hide, and after only a few seconds the guard will look around, shrug, and resume his straight-line patrol route as if you never existed. If an enemy spots a body, he will, without fail or variation, walk in a straight line to examine the body. If there are multiple bodies in his line of sight, he will do the same to each in sequence. Furthermore, guards have very limited ranges of vision. If you are on a ledge 5 feet higher than the guard, you are effectively invisible. If you are 90 degrees to the side of an enemy, he cannot see you. In fact, it's often possible for you to move even closer toward the front of his vision without being seen. You make no sounds while running, unless you're moving through water or on a hardwood floor, making approaching guards very easy. Metal Gear Solid for the PSX came out a full five years before Wrath of Heaven for the PS2, and it still wipes the floor of Tenchu in terms of the AI as it applies to stealth gameplay.

This last paragraph may sound like I'm being critical of Tenchu. I do think the game would benefit from smarter AI, but at the same time, the stupidity of the AI and simplicity of the stealth elements give the game its personality. Unlike Metal Gear Solid, the challenge is not avoiding being seen, but rather perfecting each level. At the end of each level you are awarded based on how often you were seen and how many stealth kills you made, and this gives the game an arcade feel. It's easy in Tenchu to hide and avoid being seen when you don't want to be. It's harder to stealth kill every single enemy in the game without being spotted once. Much harder. Where Metal Gear Solid rewards you for sneaking past guards unnoticed, Tenchu rewards you for killing them in the most stylish way possible. The robotic patrol paths of guards and the layout of the levels are all designed to facilitate this. If you aren't a fan of stealth games, you still should consider trying Tenchu, because the stealth isn't all that hard, on its own. Stealth is only a tool to help you achieve the stealth kill. This is why the game succeeds so well. It's a different take on the stealth genre. It's a game about silent assassination. It's an actual ninja game.

F.E.A.R.

To complete my "horror FPS" theme - the two-post theme I started one post ago with my Doom 3 post - here's the seriously awesome game F.E.A.R. (hereafter known as FEAR because I hate those stupid periods). I beat this a few years back, but I had a hankering for it again so I'm playing through it on the hardest difficulty (which the game helpfully describes as "for masochists"). Now, I play tons of crazy hard 2D games like shmups and occasionally Contra and Metal Slug, so maybe I am a gaming masochist, but FEAR's hardest difficulty level isn't exactly all that hard as long as you abuse the time slow ability for all its worth. In fact, getting into a firefight without slowing time is usually a death wish because in hard mode your health drops FAST. Firefights devolve into leaping out of cover with time slowed down, killing as many enemies as you can, and ducking behind cover to let the ability recharge. The enemies aren't stupid enough to come round the corner single file while you blast each one with a shotgun at point-blank range, so as long as they can't flank you (and they will try) they just hang back and wait for you. The way they should have made the game harder is to slow down the recharge rate for time slow, or speed up the rate at which it is depleted while in use.

Ok, enough about the difficulty level. This game is really awesome for a variety of reasons. First, it's scary as hell. Not in the way Doom 3 is, however. This game won't make enemies pop out at you from behind while running through dark corridors. Instead, this game will make creepy little girls and sometimes ghosts or cannibalistic psychic military experiments run at you from around a corner and then disappear without hurting you, leaving you feeling freaked out. The scares are very well designed. In some parts you'll be ascending a ladder, and upon reaching the top find the girl, Alma, standing there in front of you, before she dissolves into nothing. Other times you'll come around a corner and see, in a dark corner of the room, the girl creeping along like a spider, disappearing into the shadows. And still other times, you'll approach an open door, to have it slam in your face, the lights to go off all around you, and then the hallway starts bleeding. In contrast to the cheap dumb scares of Doom 3, these are harmless, freaky scares that leave you creeped out. This culminates in the final cutscene of the game before the end credits. I won't say what it is, but if you've played the game you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you haven't, this has to be the craziest ending in all of videogame history (with the possible exception of the ending to the game Bad Dudes: "Hey dudes thanks, for rescuing me. Let's go for a burger... Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha")


As for the enemies themselves, they will sneak up behind you, but only during a firefight and because they're really smart. This game has the best AI in existence, no joke. You'll almost always know there are enemies ahead or around a corner by the sounds of radio chatter or just seeing them in front of you, but once a fight has started you just cannot predict them. The AI will take cover intelligently, will flip bookshelves or desks or chairs over to hide behind them, will lob grenades to flush you out of a hiding spot, and will take alternate routes to get behind you whenever possible. When I say they're smart, I mean they could almost pass for online opponents in a multiplayer game. On one occasion, I was concentrating on the enemies right in front of me on a scaffold, only to be surprised and killed by a soldier who had jumped off the scaffold down to my level and ran around behind a large tank in order to flank me while I was distracted. Another time, I approached a patrol, and took out one guy ahead of me without being seen. The enemy squad leader yelled "recon" and one guy ran around the corner to find me. I took him out with a shotgun. Now, in most FPSes, the rest of the AI would dutifully follow the first guy, each getting shot one after another as they rounded the corner. Not so in FEAR. They immediately stopped coming (I waited half a minute for any more to round the corner), and fanned out behind cover waiting for me. One moved to get a good angle of attack at me by taking a longer path around boxes and cover so he would remain safe. Others hid around corners of their own so that when I eventually left my hiding spot I was suddenly under attack by three guys simultaneously. I died more times than I care to remember trying to get past this part. It's not often in a game you can be outsmarted by AI, but in FEAR it's a common occurrence, and it still never feels cheap. It just feels fun. I laugh when I get killed by a soldier who had moved around behind me and shot me from behind. I laugh because I know I left that window open for him to use that tactic against me, and the next time I would try to fix that mistake. This is called immersion, folks! I don't know if I've ever seen an FPS since FEAR with even an equal level of AI. Crysis sometimes comes close, but the AI in that game is way too inconsistent. Basically, good AI like this ought to be standard in FPSes right now, but too many game studios focus on multiplayer these days to put any real effort into crafting an amazing single player experience.

So, this game is pretty much a long series of firefights in different environments and against different enemy layouts. The enemies are, for the most part, identical soldiers. There's one super-soldier enemy with a penetration gun that is hard to take down, and there's one robot thing that can be annoying to fight, but overall the enemies don't vary much. Honestly this just isn't a problem though. I don't care. The standard enemies are fun enough to fight as it is. I'll quickly touch on the time slow ability because it's an integral part of gameplay. It slows down your perception of time, allowing you to react faster. It doesn't let you actually move faster, or shoot faster, it only symbolizes fast reflexes. I love that. It's not a super-power like in some other games (Timeshift). It's also very necessary, because you can see the matrix-like trails of bullets and this can help you successfully avoid damage.

Time gets really slow, much slower than the time slow ability in Timeshift, and far slower than the abilities in Max Payne, so you can really see how it helps you deal with enemies. It also recharges pretty quickly, so you rarely feel pressured by being out of "mana". This leads to a bit of imbalance but it's not a huge deal.


So, the final element that makes this game stand out is the effects. I know, I always say I don't care about graphics, but this goes beyond graphics. When you shoot at anything at all, there are TONS of effects going on. There's dust, debris, sparks, explosions, changes in lighting, all sorts of things going on. If there's books around, shooting will result in little pieces of torn up paper floating around in the air. Shooting a wall will create 3D chunks torn into it. In the aftermath of a firefight, all that debris lingers and fills the room and looks awesome. This has nothing to do with how nice the game looks and everything to do with how visceral and fun the firefights feel. Believe me, if you play it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

The next game, Project Origin, is looking pretty good so far. It won't be out for a while, but it already promises excellent AI, good effects, the ability to knock over desks and objects to make cover for yourself, and even a pilotable mech suit. My one problem with the game so far is the regenerative health, but let's hope it doesn't detract too much from the experience.

Doom 3

This image sums up Doom 3 pretty well.

This is your basic corridor-shooter. You walk down dark (like, pitch black) hallways, and enemies pop out at you from ceilings and hidden wall compartments and floor panels, and usually right behind you. You shoot them, they die, you keep moving. In my opinion it's the worst breed of horror: the jump out and surprise you style. It's not smart, it's not actually creepy, it's just designed to surprise you from behind a lot. I can't stand movies like this and it's annoying in a game.

The enemies aren't much fun to fight either. There's zombies that walk slowly toward you and take about 5 head shots to kill. There's demons that throw fireballs at you from a distance, and you just dodge the fireballs and shoot them. If they are too close, they'll scratch you in the face like some sort of feral cat, which makes your view shake wildly and thus makes it difficult to shoot them at all, even with a shotgun at point-blank range. If you get caught against a wall, it's entirely possible that you'll be stuck taking massive damage every few seconds from a claw-swipe, until you just get lucky and pop off a shot in the right direction. The zombies do this too when they get close. There's also marines, who shoot you with guns. As far as I've seen they have perfect aim and will always hit you if they can see you. You can't dodge their shots. I've tried bunnyhopping and strafing wildly while sprinting, but I continue to take bullets. They start shooting the moment I leave cover too, so I can't pop out for a few shots before hiding again and expect to avoid damage. And any game where you cannot avoid being damaged no matter how skilled you are is not fair, in my opinion. Ok, so there's also a few faster moving dog-demons. They run at you and scratch and bit at you. If you backpedal while sprinting, and shoot at them, you'll be fine. It's not all that exciting. There are probably more enemies, but I haven't beaten the game yet. I'm not too optimistic though.

Another major problem, which is probably the most common cited about this game, is the fact that you can't turn on a flashlight while you have a gun out. You need to put away the gun and get out the flashlight to see in the dark, i.e. the entire game. Yes, you can do a flashlight bash attack in case you get surprised, but it's completely useless. I've never even noticed the attack doing damage. There are mods that fix this problem, but that doesn't change the fact that the original game has a seriously annoying flaw that could be potentially game breaking.

The old Doom style of hunting down colored key cards to progress has actually been kept, in some form. You have to find PDAs that belong to certain people in order to have access to locked doors. Unlike the original Doom games, though, getting each key card does not involve any puzzle solving. It involves finding a locked door, being told which PDA you need, and then backtracking (while having even more demons jump out at you in areas you had already cleaned of demons) long enough to see a scripted event like a demon busting down a previously closed door to scare you. And the PDA is usually somewhere back there, past even more hordes of demons that you don't see until you get hit from behind.

It sounds like I hate this game, but that's not entirely true. It's incredibly simple, it relies on the cheapest scare tactics around to keep the game exciting, and it features some really annoying or boring enemies. Sometimes, though, I just feel like playing a mindless FPS where you shoot demons in dark corridors. It hearkens back to a simpler time, where you had Quake and Doom and maybe even Serious Sam, games that just required you to shoot, shoot, shoot. Doom 3 won't keep your mind engaged or keep you interested in anything about it, but mindless fun is a nice change of pace from FPSes that challenge you to think tactically to survive, games like Crysis, Team Fortress 2, FEAR or Half-Life. There's a time for each type of game.