Monthly Archive for February, 2008

‘Grand Theft Auto 4′ More Realistic Than Predecessors

Published
on February 28, 2008
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A preview of April’s “Grand Theft Auto 4″ at VideoGamer.com shows a departure from the almost cartoony gameplay of the past few iterations in the series.

Damage to cars affects their performance: get in a head-on collision and your car will slowly grind to a halt. Tanks, airplanes and bicycles are cut in the interest of realism. Niko, the game’s protagonist, gets text messages when he fails a mission. The world itself is more realistic, with destructible environments and animated crowds of pedestrians who do more than walk up and down the street.

A lot of what made the previous GTA games so fun and engaging were devices like the star count that could be called unrealistic, but the article is quick to point out that these aren’t being left out.

Still though, GTA 4 is no Holodeck. During my few hours of hands-on time I experienced plenty “oh yeah, this is still a game” moments that reminded me that, despite Rockstar North’s efforts, Liberty City still plays by virtual rules.

Pull a gun on a random bystander, perhaps someone casually walking down a street, or withdrawing money from a cash machine, or sitting on a bench reading a newspaper, and they’ll either run away or cower - and that’s it. Cause death-filled carnage in an area, drive the cops absolutely crazy, escape their line of sight and search radius (visible in the mini-map in the bottom left hand corner of the screen) and then return to that area, and everything will be returned to normal. Fail a mission and you’ll be sent a text message offering you the chance to reset and retry. I’m not criticising the game here. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t expect a virtual world simulation. Liberty City is quick to react, but it has a hard time remembering.

Liberty City is still a world open to experimentation. The violence is over-the-top, and satire and humor are ever-present.

It remains to be seen how much of the game will be influenced by this struggle for realism. Hopefully we’ll see a good modern crime story instead of a retelling of “Scarface” or a rap-infused gangbanger mess. Either way, I think the added realism will make what has already proven to be an incredibly immersive series even more so.

Also, Rockstar will be careful to not include a scrapped sex game in “GTA4.”

GDC: Panels Discuss Story in Game Design

Published
on February 22, 2008
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Two panels discussed the importance and state of storytelling in video games at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The first covered the place of story in the developing medium of games, and the second looked at examples of good storytelling in games.

The Future of Story in Game Design

A panel Thursday discussed the future of story in video game development, reported Gamasutra. Deborah Todd led the panel, which included Denis Dyack of Silicon Knights and Saber 3D’s Matthew Karch, as well as Tim Willits from iD Software and Matt Costello from Polar Productions.

“I think story should serve the gameplay, and not the other way,” said Karch. “In the shooter genre, which I’m in, I don’t think anyone really cares about the story. I don’t think in some genres it’s especially important.” Karch’s team recently released “Timeshift.”

“In 5 to 10 years I don’t think there’s going to be a shooter genre. It’s going to be more literary,” argued Dyack. “A shooter would just be ‘action’.”

Dyack said story will become the dominant element in game design. “Games are the eighth art form: the glue is interactivity, and that aspect is something that makes our industry unique and there’s a huge misconception at this industry is that gameplay is everything. These people are going to be mistaken,” he said. “And as this industry matures content and story, as it did in the 30s and 40s with cinema, will become dominant.”

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GDC: Portal Named Game of the Year

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on February 22, 2008
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Valve’s “Portal” earned game of the year at the 8th annual Game Developers Choice Awards last night, as well as Best Game Design and Innovation, reports gamesindustry.biz. The awards were announced last night at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

2K’s “Bioshock,” nominated for five awards, won three for for Best Audio, Best Visual Arts and Best Writing. “Crackdown,” generally neglected by 2007 lists that focus on fall releases, won best premiere game. “Halo 3″ was quietly nominated for one award, Technology, and won nothing.

Sid Meier earned a Lifetime Achievement Award for his library of open world games. Since the 1980s he has created classics like Civilization, Railroad Tycoon and Pirates!

It’s good to see a small game like “Portal,” a fantastic game like “Bioshock,” and an older game like “Crackdown” get recognition from what I consider a very respectable group.

A full list of Game Developers Choice Awards winners and nominees follows.

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REVIEW: ‘Assassin’s Creed’ Has Immersive World, Bad Story

Published
on February 21, 2008
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“Assassin’s Creed” is more than meets the eye. Behind the roof-jumping, sword-swinging medieval gameplay is a bizarrely science fiction explanation. The modern day setting — where bartending assassin Desmond Miles is kidnapped by a mysterious corporation bent on tapping his genetic memories of medieval assassin Altair (got that?) — not only explains the Holy Land gameplay but also more conventional aspects of the game, aspects normally taken for granted.

[Spoiler Warning: This review covers many aspects of the game's plot, but does not reveal the ending or anything really significant.]

For example, when you die in “Assassin’s Creed,” you revert back to a checkpoint. Sounds normal, but it’s not. Rather than dying, the game says that Miles becomes desynchronized with his genetic memory of Altair. What appears to be a health bar is explained as a synchronization count, and going back to a checkpoint is explained as going back to a previous memory to ensure proper synchronization.

All this seems semantic, but it has the effect of turning player death, which should be a jarring aspect of a storyline, into a fully rational occurrence. (Imagine it in a book: All the main characters just died because you read the chapter wrong, and now you have to read it all over again.)

“Assassin’s Creed” draws from the storytelling technique of its predecessor, “Prince of Persia.” Both games were developed by Ubisoft Montreal, and “Assassin’s Creed” takes the platforming model of “Prince of Persia” and plunks it in an open world with a very much expanded fighting mechanic. When you die in “Prince of Persia,” the Prince tells the story speaks up and says, “That’s not how it happened.” If the Prince plummets to his death during the game, it’s a failure on the player’s part to stick to his plot, just as dying in “Assassin’s Creed” is a failure to adhere to the memories of Miles/Altair.

This “memory” theme of “Assassin’s Creed” lends itself to other aspects of gameplay. Selecting from old assassination missions to replay, while essentially just a level selector, is disguised as a menu of genetic memories. Teleporting from one town to another instantly is fast-forwarding through the memory of Altair’s travels.

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Adding Stories to Sandbox Games

Published
on February 20, 2008
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“Civilization IV,” “Rome: Total War” and “The Sims” don’t usually make the Best Video Game Story list. Single player play in these expansive sandboxes generally boils down to a massive skirmish against computer bots, and the game ends not when you slay the last boss but when you check off the last objective.

Gamasutra has an interesting feature by Neil Sorens on turning the stale check lists and computer bots of sandbox games into user-developed storylines and characters.

“When a player creates a family in ‘The Sims,’ the resulting game — based on input from the player — tells the life stories of the members of that family,” writes Sorens. “Designers can and should do more to exploit these player-generated stories.”

The problem as Sorens sees it is that players cannot see the stories they naturally create in these massive worlds. Say you declare war on the Russians in a “Civilization IV” campaign. You might do so because the Russians are there and you have a big army in need of employment. Under Sorens suggestion, the game justify this campaign for some story reason (Russians killed your dog, you hate Commies, they abused people of your national religion, etc. etc.).

Sorrens advocates that story-driving exposition replace the bar graphs, charts, and reports that generally represent player statistics, achievements and attributes in big sandbox games.

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BioWare Announces KoTOR 3, Pandemic a New LotR Game

Published
on February 15, 2008
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Looks like the first products announced by developers BioWare and Pandemic since their acquisition by Electronic Arts are franchise titles.

BioWare announced at an Electronic Arts event that they will develop ‘Knights of the Old Republic 3.”  The second game in that series was made by Obsidian Entertainment. BioWare is hard at work on the forthcoming “Dragon Age” and possibly the unannounced MMO game.

Pandemic announced at the same event that they are going to be working on a Lord of the Rings movie tie-in just as soon as “Mercenaries 2″ is finished.

While the future of BioWare and Pandemic under Electronic Arts is uncertain, this first announcement does not bode well for creativity. Electronic Arts is notorious for sticking to franchises, and I would have felt a lot better about some new intellectual property, especially from BioWare.

Writers Guild Strike Ends

Published
on February 13, 2008
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The Writers Guild voted to end their strike today. “The Office” will return April 10. Yay, and congratulations to the writers.

REVIEW: “Rambo” Successfully Revives the Franchise

Published
on February 6, 2008
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[I wrote this for my college newspaper, which comes out Thursday.]

“Rambo” is awesome. Not in the ’80s sense of the word, but in the traditional, fear-the-wrath-of-God way.

Instead of watching it, you might as well just ask your local projectionist to shine it directly into your mouth. It is delicious, a visceral action treat infused with steroids, bullets and explosives that sticks to the roots of the franchise.

Clay-faced Sylvester Stallone, the greatest American actor of all time, reprises his role as ultimate badass, John Rambo, tortured by memories of Vietnam. “Rambo” is the fourth film in the series, following “First Blood,” “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” and “Rambo III.” If this naming sequence doesn’t make sense, maybe “Rambo” isn’t for you. John Rambo isn’t a fan of “sense.” He prefers to run in screaming with a knife, to stand in a hail of bullets he knows can’t hit him before blowing everyone away.

Even at 61, Sly Stallone still pulls off the muscled, mulleted action hero. You won’t see Rambo jump off waterfalls or climb up cliffs, but he’s great at running through rain-soaked jungles and disemboweling enemy soldiers with a knife as big as your head.

As for plot, nothing much has changed since the 1980s. Some whiny missionaries get in trouble while helping the Karen minority in eastern Burma; Rambo has to go save them and kill everyone else. They add in some junk about the human rights violations, but who cares? It’s really just an excuse for Rambo to vaporize faces. He jumps the political red tape and machine guns his way into our hearts.

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