Tunnels of Doom

Kyle Orland of Games For Lunch likes to say, when presented with a cinematic or cut scene that depicts action, how much he would rather be playing such an exhilarating sequence as opposed to just observing it. It’s a valid point. Ostensibly we—the game players—are here to simulate action-packed sequences via inpt methods, somehow a game that has to show you something cool because it cannot allow you to perform it seems like it missed a key point somewhere. I think the rule of thumb is that you can get away with pulling players out of the driver’s seat for short periods if you need exposition because even games that specifically set out to include conversational elements into the mechanics often struggle with a decent implementation, but if there is something that needs doing, you’d better find a way for the players to get involved.

I’m obviously thinking about this because I’ve been playing Metal Gear Solid 4 this week and as such I have a lot of downtime to think about the nature of cut scenes and non-interactive sequences considering I’ve put about 10 hours into the title and I’d be surprised to find that a full half of that actually required me to have my hands on the controller. Oh, and giving me a couple of buttons to push to change the camera angle or to flash some indistinguishable memory jog from a previous game now and then doesn’t count, Kojima. Just saying. There are times when these mental exercises are all I have to sustain me as the game I’m supposed to be relaxing with wallows self-indulgently in its own cleverness and awkward drama. During the game’s many interminable loading screens it anachronistically directs the player to make sure to take a 15-minute break once every hour. I find this amusing as the game itself has made quite sure to enforce this policy strictly.

But back to cinematics. I’m beginning to really appreciate the storytelling devices employed by games like Dead Space and BioShock where the story takes place via essentially the same mechanism which is like a radio drama acted out over the top of the essential game action. Sure it necessitates solid voice acting but honestly it really shouldn’t be as hard to come by as it seems from a lot of the PS1 era games that gave voiceover work in games its bad rep. Meanwhile you can avoid a lot of unnecessary game resources spent on elaborate animation renders, the player doesn’t get bored. There are two wins in this situation and no losses.

Please don’t think I’m one of these gameplay purists who disdains cut scenes on their basic premise thinking story is the unwelcome nuts in my oatmeal cookie of a game. Quite the contrary. But like films that have to stop everything and grind to a halt for 15 minutes so they can spell out to the audience what’s happened and what’s about to transpire, the premise of narrative entertainment has been butchered in the execution, and there are few patrons sufficiently famished to buy those awkward cuts.

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For the second time since I acquired one, my Xbox 360 flashed the well-known Red Ring of Death. I had been playing The Force Unleashed and for the last few sessions there had been some sort of static in the graphics output. Initially I chalked it up to a crummy game or a weird issue with the disc but didn’t worry about it too much since the game was still playable.

The screen did lock several times which was a bummer but it wasn’t until after one of these locks and I kicked the power button to restart it that the boot up logo sequence had the static glitching that I became concerned. After all, one game being messed up is hardly unexpected considering 90% of all my games have come second hand. But there is something more going on when a system-level operation exhibits some sort of aberrant behavior.

Sure enough I finally got a lock and when I went to reboot it I saw the E 74 error message. I went immediately to Microsoft’s Xbox support site and followed their gimpy troubleshooting steps which included restarting the console (again) and disconnecting peripherals. After doing that I got several instances of the memetic Ring followed by a couple more E 74s and finally I had to accept that it was going to need to be replaced.

So I’m lacking a 360 for the next month or so while I get mine replaced; the biggest drag about the whole thing is that all the games I’ve picked up that I’ve had backlogged for a few weeks now were 360 titles. I had nothing waiting in the wings for DS, PSP or PS3 that hadn’t been back burnered for months or more. So for now I’ll have to try to get back into Jeanne D’Arc or Disgaea or Etrian Odyssey II, but I did head fairly quickly over to Goozex and put a few PS3 titles on there, hoping they would be enough to keep me distracted until I can get what I must now fully concede is my platform of choice back in working order.

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I don’t want to oversell anything, so let’s get the caveats out of the way: Pregnant women can and will cry at the drop of the hat. The principal tear-jerkers for the last seven months in my corner of the world has been menu planning and food acquisition. Also, commercials. Still, in most cases I can evaluate the scenario and say, you know, if I were to amplify my emotional response threshold to, say, seventy weepowatts, I could totally understand getting worked up over these things. So I mean it in the most sincere fashion when I say that it is a testament to the resonance felt by soul-bearing humans that this video game trailer made my wife cry.

I’ve never finished Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, to my great shame. I own them both. They’re sitting here in my nightstand and across the room is a connected PS2 with a memory card containing partially completed save games. My lack of follow-through in finishing them is largely a product of my endless fascination with new and shinier things which is why I’m playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and not these modern classics. Honestly I could take or leave Ico. I fully grasp the enthusiasm it elicits but in terms of playing a game, I prefer Shadow.

E3 was last week, so I probably followed gaming news more closely than I typically do. I listened to the daily Listen UP podcasts and was happy to hear most of the positive buzz about games (largely sequels) that I’m interested in. Assassin’s Creed II, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Uncharted 2, Mass Effect 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Modern Warfare 2, God of War III, Brutal Legend, Scribblenauts and Alan Wake all sounded like they were shaping up very nicely. Of that list I think I’m probably the most excited about Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin’s Creed II because I feel like I never got quite enough of L4D with the first title but had more or less exhausted the content it had. I griped last week about the very un-Valve like iteration but honestly I’m hanging onto the original now for nostalgia which is something I try very hard not to do, in the past seven days I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m actually ready for a full new game but the truth is I’m never excited about the prospect of spending $60. Meanwhile Assassin’s Creed was one of my surprise favorites from that wash of high quality titles a couple years ago which included the original Mass Effect, Halo 3, Orange Box, BioShock and others. I recognized its faults without allowing them to interfere with my enjoyment, I can very honestly say I’m ready for more.

Contrast that with Mass Effect which I pre-ordered and practically begged myself to love, but found it to be good but not actually fantastic. I’ll play the sequel because I have enough invested to want to know what they do with the story and I think Bioware has earned a bit of patience on my part. But while I dove into the original with my mind prepared to revel in hyperbolic praise, I’m approaching this one more cautiously, as if the rabies of disappointment might surge again through my blood.

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Gaming this week was sparse, especially following the mania that was KublaCon week. I didn’t exactly burn myself out of gaming but we’re getting toward crunch time with the baby preparations plus I’ve felt in some ways like a lot of my entertainment gaming has been disappointing in a narrative sense lately so I went back and read a few books to try and scratch the itch for good storytelling.

Frankly I like getting story from games more than I maybe should. It’s pretty self-evident that game stories are well behind the sophistication curve from other media formats, but honestly my imagination can be really well served even in a mediocre story as long as I can insert myself into the plot. Games provide that dynamic element that I crave, but sometimes yeah I get burnt out on Saturday Morning Cartoon quality writing. It usually doesn’t last too long and it only takes one decent game to make me believe in interactive storytelling again, but after Prince of Persia (see this week’s Spoiler Alert for a rundown of how bad that one got), Fable II, Kane & Lynch, Resident Evil 5 and Half-Life 2, I just had to get a decent story into my head.

The good news is that so far Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is tolerable plot-wise and we’re planning on starting a short series of Traveller RPG adventures on Monday nights which should give me that interactive fiction boost I’m looking for. In the meantime you probably aren’t going to have 6500 words to read this week. I’m all about the “everybody wins” scenario.

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