Gaming Weekend: Villains Edition
I spent most of the weekend playing games where you control either a villain or, at best, an antihero type. My three primary focuses were Grand Theft Auto IV, God of War: Chains of Olympus and Overlord. I found it interesting that each game had the same basic premise of casting the player as a less than heroic fellow, but all three go about it in completely different ways.
GTA, for example, casts you as a reluctant sociopath. Niko Bellic spends a lot of time bemoaning his lot in life, guilt-tripping his way through abhorrent actions and self-destructive behaviors but the freedom permitted by the game’s design dictates that it is a sort of phony-feeling character device. One review of the game I read questioned the way that Niko will, in one moment, berate himself for being a hired killer and in the next moment he’ll be offering to whack someone because they scammed a guy he’s just met. You can appreciate Rockstar trying to put a conscience on their protagonist, but in a game like GTA you end up having to suspend some disbelief in the character himself because the way he’s written and the way he acts under the player’s control is rarely consistent.
It’s actually a sort of characterization that works better in God of War. Since Kratos is such a bloodthirsty savage by design, his combat tells you most of what you need to know about the character: Anyone who jams a blade onto an opponent’s neck and yanks the body away is not the kind of guy you take to prom. But the story portions of the game is where his hint of humanity is revealed and the internal struggles that he endures through each game are highlighted precisely because they provide a startling contrast between what you come to understand about him through waves and waves of dismembered, brutalized foes. Where GTA tries to get the player to experience the turmoil inherent in the character through several remarks and a number of either-or scenarios (kill this person or let them live) and allows you to behave in a fairly responsible manner for a time, eventually you’ll encounter a mission where you have no choice but to bump off someone who may not exactly deserve it.
The difference is simply in the fact that while God of War is on a rail and can therefore manipulate the experience, GTA has to balance the open, almost role-playing elements with a scripted narrative and the two don’t always mesh cleanly together. And then there is Overlord, where the whole “you are the bad guy” thing is a device used primarily for comedic effect. Overlord is, at root, a sort of strategic fantasy action puzzle game (hi, adjectives!) but while it is often compared to a game I didn’t play, Pikmin, the whole conceit in this case works because it serves to complete the theme which is mostly a light send-up of your typical fantasy tropes. And in truth you aren’t exactly the nefarious boot-stomping psycho you might expect: You’re essentially the malevolent racist dictator who enslaves humans to free them from the influence of the other fantasy races like Halflings and Elves. I’m not far enough in to be sure but I imagine that there is some opportunity for subtext here that is missed, perhaps intentionally, just to keep things breezy. It would be pretty easy for the game to descend into the kind of darkness that would have made it even less accessible than it already is.
Since games are so good at wish fulfillment and fantasy exploration it makes sense for them to occasionally cast the player as the antihero. Even some characters in games who are true heroes at their core are at least presented on the surface level as, at best, chaotic neutral types (Marcus Fenix from Gears of War springs to mind). It is interesting though to watch as developers who may already struggle somewhat with the perceptions of their industry try to find the right tone to take with games where you ask the player to be something less than the classic “good guy.”
I’m trying a slightly altered layout this week. In addition to the short essay I usually write above the fold, I’m including play notes from all the games I enjoyed over the last week (including those mentioned above). I’m also trying out a new “Parting Shot” wrap-up to the column. If you have feedback, please leave a comment or send mail to ironsoap@tunnelsofdoom.org.
This Week’s Games
- Grand Theft Auto IV – I played through several more campaign missions but I’ve now reached the point where the missions are longer and often end with a police pursuit of three or more stars. These are the points where I begin to struggle with GTA games because lacking a decent checkpoint system I get frustrated replaying things over and over. Fortunately I have enough missions opened up at the moment to not feel like I’m stuck yet, but for all the improvements Rockstar made to this iteration of their franchise, this is the one I wanted the most and that will likely cause me to stop playing eventually. It’s kind of a shame.
On a different note, I did have a chance to play a little bit of the multiplayer which I thought was pretty fun but I did have two main complaints. One is that the system which I think was supposed to be seamless… isn’t exactly. It took my friend and I a while to determine what we were supposed to do and what we were able to do once we connected. We eventually played a couple of rounds of Cops n’ Crooks which was fun but for whatever reason we ended up being on a four-person team against a two-person team (why not 3-on-3?) which made both modes a little unfair. I’d like to try again with more people I know (as opposed to Random Live Dudes) but as is becoming my general opinion of GTA IV, it’s a great step in the right direction with just enough missing to think that GTA IV: The Next City is going to be where it really all comes together. - Overlord – I enjoyed the demo last summer but I think it came out around the time when BioShock was imminent so I never picked it up. I finally acquired it from Goozex and played three or four hours worth Saturday morning. I really like the game but I loathe the fact that it doesn’t have an in-game map. The level design is probably the weakest part of the entire game (and it actually isn’t that bad, it just has a lot of criss-crossing pathways that lead readily to disorientation) so something really simple like a compass or a mini-map even would have elevated this from fun and quirky niche title to must-play. But I have no intention of giving up on Overlord just for a minor oversight; it’s sense of humor is spot-on for the kind of game it wants to be and I love the way the game’s elements blend into something that feels fresh despite having clear influences from other successful titles.
- God of War: Chains of Olympus – I wish I could pinpoint why I liked this game so much more than God of War II. I wrapped it up over the weekend and came away feeling very excited for God of War III, which surprised me because I was questionable as to whether I even wanted to seek it out after I had finished II. Maybe it was the fact that Chains felt a bit more restrained, almost like the developers were more confident with the formula of the basic mechanics. The second game just seemed to be trying too hard, perhaps. I don’t know, I can’t quite put my finger on it but even though Chains was every bit as formulaic as you would expect, it just worked for me. And it may even be something as simple as the platform: God of War simply works on the PSP and I love that about it. In any case it did the trick and reminded me of why I became enamored with the world and the characters in the first place so I’ll try to forget that I was a bit disappointed with II and go back to being excited about the third installment.
- Jeanne D’Arc – Having finished Chains of Olympus, I returned to my previous PSP project and didn’t get very far because I’m still pretty much level grinding without even knowing if it’s worth it. I think the one thing the developers could have done to make Jeanne D’Arc reach that next plateau would have been to provide something more than the skill stone blending system. It’s nice, but skills aren’t as great as they seem in terms of direct influence over combat, and it’s pretty restricted (compared to, say, the Alchemy system from Dragon Quest VIII). I’d like some way to gain a significant tactical edge in combat like the ability to fuse skill stones to weapons for instance. Maybe what I’m most dissatisfied with is the fact that when it comes to equipping your characters, it’s one of the lightest RPGs I’ve run across in the last twenty years.
- Geometry Wars – I noticed something while playing a round or two while I waited for my friend to set up some GTA IV multiplayer: I did a lot better at this game before I got my new TV. I’m not saying the game is better or easier on an SD set, but I am saying that it seems like it was both for me. And I find that strange because playing GeoWars is the only—only—time I miss the old set.
- Lost Cities – I actually played two versions of this game last week: I picked up the tabletop version at a game store near my work on discount (there was some box damage but the contents are perfectly fine) and introduced it to my wife. I also played a bit more on XBLA and while I’m glad I got the tabletop version because as I suspected it is much more fun to play against a real human opponent than the AI (even though Nik beat me on her first try), it is a pretty confusing game to score by hand.
- Pikomino/Regenwormen – We stopped by a friend’s house last night for some gaming and I convinced everyone to play Regenwormen which I tried last week so people like my wife whom I’d only described the game to could have a chance to try it. I lost with zero tiles despite a fairly strong start (which is typical I’ve found) but everyone seemed to enjoy it anyway and I think it solidified my decision to pick up the game next time I find it (in English).
- Settlers of Catan Dice – After Pikomino/Regenwormen we stuck with the dice theme by trying the German version of the Catan Dice game. The original Settlers (with all the expansions and variants) is a staple in our group of gamers and my wife and I were hugely into the card game a couple of years ago, so the whole line of Settlers products gets a lot of love with us. I like the mechanics of the dice game which is about what you’d expect from a Settlers-based dice roller: Each die has a brick, a grain, a rock, a lumber, a wool and a gold side and you get three rolls (Yahtzee-like) and can keep or re-roll any of them each round. You’re trying to get the resources for roads, settlements, cities and people (which are roughly similar to port trades from the original game) and you mark them off on a special score card. What I didn’t particularly like was that it suffers from the same fate as a lot of dice games where attentions wander when your turn is over because the off-turn interactions are minimal. We played with a big group which may have been a big factor in how slow the game seemed but one of the things I like a lot about the board game and the card variant is how off-turn players are frequently involved via trading and similar mechanics. I think Catan dice (which is scheduled to have an English release this month) is probably a good game for 2-4 players, and a solid side-game.
Parting Shot
I traded away Gears of War over the weekend via Goozex despite the recipient being a pain in the neck. And despite the fact that I still haven’t seen the ending to the game because it glitched out when Doctor Mac and I beat it on co-op and I never could get past General RAAM on Insane difficulty. But I have no real desire to waste more hours trying to defeat a stupid boss for a second time just to get one lousy Achievement and see a cutscene. The big question now is whether or not I really liked the original enough to make picking up Gears 2 on release day a priority this fall. My initial inclination was yes, I do want to get the game, but the more I think about it the less convinced I am that I view it as a must-have.
I can practically see the reviews already, “More of the same, more of the same,” and while I wouldn’t mind that, I don’t know if it works out to being worth an entire month’s budget.