Cheap Thrills - Alan Wake

I recently reviewed Alan Wake for a school paper, so I figured I'd throw it up here. It's lengthier than most of the stuff I normally write, so be forewarned. I actually didn't get to address everything I wanted to because of length, so I might put up a separate post talking about those things. This one's worth it, though, because it's fucking awesome. Enjoy.


“But nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.” - Stephen King

Alan Wake, a psychological thriller developed by Remedy Entertainment for the Xbox 360, opens with the above quote by Stephen King, and the titular character narrating what seems to be the central theme of the game. According to Wake, the “Why?” is never as important as the emotions one goes through during a horrifying experience. There’s nothing wrong with that sentiment. In fact, I mostly agree with it. But Alan Wake forgoes the “Why?” almost entirely, in favor of nonsensical exposition and repetitive, tired shooting mechanics that would be more at home in Max Payne 3 than something rooted in psychological horror.

Alan Wake is a writer. After a string of best-sellers, he feels burnt out and ready for some rejuvenation, so he and his wife, Alice, retreat to the small town of Bright Falls. It’s a typical, if extraordinarily beautiful, mid-western American town, replete with trailer park communities and neighbors all on a first name basis. Bright Falls would normally make for the perfect getaway destination, but when Wake and his wife arrive, they quickly find something more sinister and violent lurking about the otherwise peaceful surroundings. His wife soon ends up missing, and the only clues to her whereabouts come in the form of torn manuscript pages from a story he doesn’t remember writing, but is obviously penned by him. As the game progresses, it’s made evident that whatever is written on the torn pages actually comes to pass. Armed with this knowledge, Wake tries desperately to find and save his wife from whatever is holding her captive.

Alan Wake’s premise was one of the things that caught my attention early on when the game was first announced. I figured the mountainous and woodsy terrain would make an excellent backdrop for psychologically-themed horror. Playing the first chapter of the game, which takes place inside one of Wake’s nightmares, communicates a world full of unique and scary situations. The very first enemy encounter is simply a man with an axe, but it’s not the weapon he wields that makes him terrifying. While blindly swinging the axe back-and-forth, the man assaults Wake’s fragile psyche by calling him a fraud and a horrible writer. The threat of physical harm may be obvious, but barrages of mental abuse, especially within the context of a nightmare, carry much more weight than wood and steel ever could.

Unfortunately, such a promising concept is all but abandoned shortly after the end of the first chapter. Gone are the venomous projections of Wake’s personal demons, and in their place are slews of non sequiturs about working at lumber mills and pumping gas. Part of who these people used to be is still inside them, but they are now owned by whatever entity is plaguing Bright Falls. That may sound intriguing, but by replacing the focus on Wake’s internal strife with random, nonsensical shouts about small town living, all the tension and fear is instantly siphoned away. Coupled with uniformly featureless faces and pitch-black appearances, the enemies in Alan Wake directly mirror the game’s inability to differentiate itself from countless other horror-themed experiences.

And at no time is that exemplified more than during a point about mid-way through the game, when Wake finds himself a guest in a local psychologist’s mental institution called “The Lodge.” Wake opens his eyes to the doctor peering down at him, telling him that he’s been a patient of his for some time. Wake’s wife died a long time ago, and he couldn’t handle the stress and grief, or so the well-meaning doctor informs him. This section of the game could have contained its most probing character study, but instead devolves into the predictability and repetition that plagues the entire work. Instead of Wake questioning his own sanity, cooped up in a loony bin with all the other fine patrons of the establishment, he never second-guesses himself. Within ten minutes, the doctor’s ruse crumbles against Wake’s underwhelming scrutiny. Once he decides to expose reality for what it is, all it takes is a trip to the main office, where records clearly exonerate him of his “fragile” mental state. Of course, after this information is obtained, enemies begin appearing, and Wake has to shoot his way to freedom. It’s also worth mentioning that once he makes it to the outside grounds, Wake must navigate through a Shining-esque hedge maze in order to escape. No, he doesn’t freeze to death while screaming “Danny!”, but that would have at least been unexpected.

The more contiguous narrative problem goes back to Wake’s declaration that “Why?” is not a necessary component of effective horror. In the case of Alan Wake, its believability hinges on that question being answered. And to a degree, it is. Throughout the course of the game, the moment-to-moment narrative is explained well enough, but the bigger, game-spanning question of “Why?” is almost never even addressed. If the whole game takes place after Wake writes a story, then why are characters and situations he’s yet to encounter present in an unrelated nightmare before he even goes on vacation? Why is only his manuscript capable of changing reality? Why can demons that appear out of nowhere be killed with guns when light is supposed to be their weakness? Why does the evil entity even need Wake when it seems capable enough of destruction on its own? Why can’t Wake just write the happiest ending imaginable at any point during the game? All those questions are perfectly reasonable to ask, but they’re sidestepped in favor of vague premonitions or visions that don’t make much sense, even after the game is over.

Perhaps even more disappointing than the story are the mechanics. This might sound like a snarky question, but it’s an honest one: What the hell has Remedy been doing for 7 years? Their last game, Max Payne 2, released at the tail end of 2003, and they’ve been silent since. I could brush that aside if there was a reason to, but the core game play doesn’t feel like it’s changed much since their previous efforts almost a decade ago. Wake aims a flashlight at enemies, shoots them until they’re dead, and then does it again when necessary. That’s it. There’s really no finesse to speak of, and nothing interesting, evolutionary or innovative has been added to the static formula of most third-person shooters. What that boils down to is the unfortunate fact that I could have played this game 7 years ago and been fine with it. But at this point in the lifespan of the medium, to only require such a rudimentary and rote skill set speaks volumes as to the mindset of the people responsible for implementing it. Enemies never change, and neither do the tactics for dispatching them. If there are too many to handle, just pop a flashbang or use a flare gun to thin the crowd. Always aim for the head, and reload often. Those tips shouldn’t be applicable in the slightest in a self-proclaimed psychological thriller. After all, shooting everything that moves seems pretty physically thrilling to me. In any case, Alan Wake’s game play is a textbook case of wash-rinse-repeat, only in the blandest way possible.

One of the most egregious examples of Alan Wake’s stale mechanics again takes place at “The Lodge.” Once Wake finds the evidence of his still-reigning sanity, he has to get out of the asylum as fast as possible. But first, he must do battle with inanimate objects come to life - a notable Stephen King trope - in order to get outside to safety. Floating couches and barrels might be scary in a movie or book, but when “defeating” them entails the exact same shooting mechanics employed against human enemies, I have to wonder why the game even bothered to include them.

After having valiantly and courageously struck down a possessed Art Deco ball sculpture, Wake heads outside, where the aforementioned hedge maze awaits him. What kind of surprises could be hiding in the bushes? If you guessed “shadow people,” you might have a job opportunity as a Remedy scriptwriter in your near future. Just like every other encounter in the game, Wake is tasked with putting bullets into people while running forward (technically in a zigzag pattern). But what stands out the most in a long line of miscalculations is the decision to turn the psychologist from the beginning of the chapter into just another faceless goon. A potential story-defining character is reduced to acting out enemy behavior whose redundancy knows no bounds. There is a clearing at the end of the hedge maze, and in the middle of it stands the good doctor, patiently waiting around for Wake to show up. Once he does, the doctor reverts back to the supposedly antagonistic cries about work-related situations that have already grown tiresome. Such is the cure-all in a game more able to deal with the illusion of fear, rather than the reality of it.

There are some great environmental effects, such as the trees and wind looking as if they’re being perpetually rewound in a VCR, and gigantic trees crackling and buckling for seemingly no reason, only to fall directly in your path with a deadening thud. But those effects are wasted when the whole game consists of the same few tricks repeated ad nauseum. If having explanatory power is antithetical to the poetry of fear, then predictability should be a cardinal sin of writing horror. Even when certain plot points are explained at the end, the only thing that I came away with was the fact that an even bigger mystery just supplanted a smaller one. Ambiguous endings have their place, and when done well, they can turn befuddlement into a praise-worthy event. Without giving anything away, Alan Wake basically ends with “…and you thought THAT was weird!” As a matter of fact, I did, and I also realized that there have been dozens, if not hundreds, of similar experiences in different media that far outweigh this game’s blind repetition and reluctance to explain anything of importance. If the devil’s in the details, Alan Wake is as angelic as it gets.
Read more...

Cults and Crosses.

Having finished Siren Alley about an hour ago, I'm struck with just how much Rapture has changed. Gone are the statues portraying Man looking up to the heavens, and in their place are shrines for Man to bow in deference to the very thing they formerly aspired to be. It was strange being in a traditional church setting, but the cult vibe permeated the air far outside of the Temple of the Lamb. I think one of the most appealing things about this series is that it makes you constantly think to yourself, "Wow, I'm glad I don't live there." No matter what is going on in Rapture, I can't help but feel the hopelessness and futility of everyone still roaming the once-great halls. The feelings I experience while playing Bioshock 2 are, for some, the same things video games allow them to escape from. I use games for that purpose as well, but it's not often for a world as rich as Rapture to exist in the form it does.

Siren Alley is the sanctuary (or at least one of them) for the cult following of Sofia Lamb, which, it seems, has built itself a strange form of Christianity. There's a lot of talk about The Almighty Lord doing this and that, and sin and redemption. Numerous Holy Bibles are littered around nightstands and counter tops. People seem to want to be forgiven for the things they've done, and in wanting their burdens to be lifted, they've allowed extreme thinking to alter their minds. It's really no different than what happened to Rapture before, but this time it's for a totally different reason. Lamb has some secret stuff going on behind the scenes, which I'm still trying to puzzle out, but I have at least an idea of what she's doing now. All I'll say is that having an army of people convinced of something with everything inside them can be very, very useful for ulterior motives.

The characters in this area, in a way, almost made me wish the structure of the whole game was different. Most of the time in Bioshock, every different area has a sort of "boss" character. They each have their own little block of Rapture carved out for themselves, and the goal of the area basically boils down to exploring their weird little world and then confronting them once you've discovered everything there is to know. The same holds true in Siren Alley, but I really wanted to get to know the central characters better. I could smell a good story coming from their relationships, and I wish there was a logical way to elaborate on it without bringing the whole game to a screeching halt. There's no real way to do it, so it's not something I begrudge the game itself, but I do think it's too bad I'll never really get the chance to explore the lives of these people a little more. In the end, I'd call it a massive compliment to the game world and the ability of the designers who crafted such a believable and interesting narrative. Leaving the player wanting more can sometimes be the best thing a storyteller could possibly do, and in the case of Bioshock's characters, it is certainly the case.

I'm also starting to get a lot more plasmids and tonics now, which is further opening up the gameplay for me to experiment with multiple ways of totally ruining people's shit. Spider splicers seem a lot quicker, but it doesn't really matter when I have a home-made shotgun with tesla coils sprouting from each side. I think I'm going to be using the next few hundred Adam I get to buy up every tonic slot, because there are just so many stackable benefits to be had from them. I don't want to have to be continuously switching them out at the gene banks, so I'll just kick ass and equip as many as possible. I'm not really sure if I'll be able to buy every plasmid in the game, but I've already pretty much found my stable of a few abilities I consistently use. There are quite a few plasmids to be had, but some of them don't seem particularly useful to me, especially with the tonics I already have equipped. For example, there are both tonics and plasmids that deal with elemental damage. Having both equipped would be stackable, but it seems like overkill and a waste to use them at the same time. Needless to say, I have a lot of options in front of me.

The last thing I'll mention is that as I was walking around in Siren Alley, I saw a Little Sister start harvesting Adam from a corpse that wasn't a corpse until I showed up. So, my initial reaction was spot-on: any corpse will do for collecting Adam. Sometimes I hate being right.

Read more...

Deeper, Still.

As I played through some four more hours of Bioshock 2, I continued to be in awe of the world Irrational Games (2K Boston) created. I've never played System Shock or System Shock 2, but man, would I love to. The price for System Shock 2 on Amazon is unfortunate, to say the least, so it looks like I won't be playing it in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, that game's so-called spiritual successor is keeping me plenty busy in the mean time.

Tonight I went through Pauper's Drop. It's where, according to Augustus Sinclair, at least, the dregs of society hang their weary heads. The place is directly under the Atlantic Express line, and everything about it is fittingly shanty'd up. Pauper's Drop is also where the game starts to feel like it's opening up for me to do things the way I want to do them. Bioshock 2 is structured differently than the first game, because once you've left certain areas of Rapture, you can't go back. The game even gives you a warning that if you continue past point X, it's closed to you from then on. The great thing about this new area is that it's a lot bigger than previous areas, and the game's mechanics are starting to gel together to form the bigger gameplay picture.

For one, there is more than one Little Sister in this area, which means twice the amount of protection segments. Sure, they're absolutely, transparently artificial, but it's still fun to set up a fire zone and wait for the horde of splicers to come happily running to their fiery doom. The one thing that bothers me, though, is that other Little Sisters can walk around willy-nilly, jabbing syringes into whatever the hell they feel like without getting so much as a fart in their general direction. Randomly, firefights will erupt between a Big Daddy and some dude with a bandage on his head, but it's nothing near the all-out chaos that occurs when I decide to harvest some Adam. Whatever, I have cyclone traps now, so they can suck it. Besides the added mass splicers-as-lemmings carnage, the research camera becomes available part-way through the area. Just like in the original game, the camera adds a bit of depth to multiple gameplay aspects. Not only is it more fun to take snapshots of enemies before beating them to death, but taking good pictures gives you bonuses such as tonics and added damage against certain enemies. The combat feels like it has more than one dimension to it now, as it should. I maxed out all research tracks in Bioshock, and I imagine I'll do the same again. I wonder, though, if any part of Bioshock 2 will be able to best Sander Coen's game of take-pictures-of-corpses-so-I-can-get-off-on-it, while at the same time wondering if the ash-covered dead people are going to eat your face off. That shit was fucked up.

I also appreciate the scaled-down approach to such a large game world. In Bioshock, there was a lot of running around between areas with tons of real estate. This time around, the world feels just as big, but it's sliced into smaller chunks that the player has to tackle one at a time before advancing. It's nice this way, because it cuts back on the risk of backtracking too much or going in circles trying to find that one door or thing you missed. The map seems to be a little more helpful, as well, but that could just be because there's less square footage involved. Either way, the game feels a little more focused and intent on making sure the player has just enough space to work with. I've heard the game described as more linear, but that's a bunch of bullshit. You're still dropped into a wide-open arena full of things to do, and the ways and means of accomplishing specific goals are totally up to you. I, for one, feel like I have total control over the way I'm playing.

Very briefly, I feel the need to mention something I brought up in my previous Bioshock 2 post. I mentioned the moral "decision" regarding the Little Sisters, and how the choice is nothing more than the simplest of dilemmas, especially when stacked up to what the rest of the story has to offer. I experienced the same sort of thing tonight in Pauper's Drop. There's a character in the game whom you can either kill or let live. It's presented as some big choice for you to mull over, but the whole kill-or-spare version of morality is getting a little stale to me. Why does it have to be such a drastic choice? Why can't the game be filled with smaller, more subtle choices that add up to something in the end? Mass Effect sort of goes down that route, but I also have problems with Bioware's system. All in all, I've yet to see a game fully realize a "moral compass" within the constraints of a narrative. I'm sure it'll happen one day, and I'll blog my happy little ass off about it.

Read more...

The Wrong Kind of Challenge: Why Demon’s Souls Represents Rudimentary Game Design

Based on the title of this article, it may be assumed by those reading that I would take the stance that Demon’s Souls is not a game worth playing. The reality is quite the contrary. More than anything else, Demon’s Souls is a game that ultimately challenges players to examine the notion of game difficulty, and asks us to consider several questions regarding the relationship between game design and game difficulty: What aspects of a game make it difficult? What is the difference between challenging and difficult? Is there a difference?

The answers to these questions, particularly if you agree that there is a difference, all eventually lead us to the ultimate consideration that Demon’s Souls invites gamers to consider:

How difficult is it to make a difficult game?

The answer that Demon’s Souls relates to that question is one that could not be understood without the existence of, and comparison to, another game of a different genre: Ninja Gaiden. With both games in mind, the answer becomes quite simple.

It is not difficult to make a difficult game, but it is challenging to make a challenging game.

Everyone agrees that this is a hard game...

In the case of the two games above, Demon’s Souls would be difficult; Ninja Gaiden would be challenging.

I realize that based on the overwhelmingly positive reviews for Demon’s Souls, my statement may get under the skin of the game’s fan base. However, it is important to note that nowhere have I stated that Demon’s Souls is a bad game. I have simply stated that it is much easier to make a game like Demon’s Souls than a game like Ninja Gaiden.

Think about it. Reconsider the questions I posed above. How hard is it to make a game difficult, and what tools do game designers have at their disposal to make this happen?

What is actually being asked with these questions is how easy is it for game designers to kill you in a game?

Very easy. At every step through every part of a game, the designer plays God. Their power is limitless, and what becomes possible and impossible in the game world is entirely in the designer’s control. The player, on the other hand, is the guinea pig. While some aspect of player choice may be perceived by the player, the reality is that those choices have already been predetermined by the designer.

Therefore, any possibility of player death within a game is entirely under the designer’s control, and making a game difficult simply means the designer makes it easier and more frequently possible to die. This accomplishment is rather easy, and the choices the designer has to make this happen is varied: Increase the damage dealt by the enemy. Decrease the player’s damage dealt to enemies. Make more enemies. Make more traps. Decrease the amount of checkpoints between saves. Take away checkpoints. Take away saves. Decrease the amount of healing items. Decrease health.

This list could go on even longer, but the general principle will always revolve around one central concept: the manipulation of numbers. In each of the examples given, the designer is able to increase or decrease a game’s difficulty simply by manipulating a set of numbers.

In the case of Demon’s Souls, and with many games of the early consoles, this tool is the backbone of the game’s concept and design, and in most cases, the system is praised for its risk/reward factor. While the sense of accomplishment may exist from completing such a game, the reality is that not much thought or skill is needed to create a game with this type of difficulty. In theory, any designer could create the most difficult game ever made simply by setting the numbers against the player unreasonably high, and dropping the numbers associated with the player unreasonably low. As a result, the player would deal little damage, but take a lot; the player would have very little health to fight with, but have to deal with fighting enemies who could absorb a lot of damage.

I’m certain that this game would be very hard to beat. I’m also certain that this game would get praised for how punishing it was.

With Demon’s Souls, this results in only one real tool that the player must utilize to complete the game: memory. The player must memorize where the enemies are, and slowly and progressively take them out one by one. This is rudimentary game design.

However, the days of rudimentary difficulty in game design have long passed, and superior forms of player manipulation have surfaced that favor challenge and complexity over punishing difficulty.

Examine the aspects that make Ninja Gaiden challenging and you notice that none of the design principles have anything to do with memory of enemy locations, excessive punishment of the player with a lack of checkpoints, or overwhelming damage of enemies. Yet nobody disagrees that Ninja Gaiden is one of the most challenging games ever made.

... but this game is actually challenging.

The reason why Ninja Gaiden achieves that dichotomy is that the game designer gives the player more tools than simple memory: skill and variety. In order to be successful, the player has many methods for taking out the enemies, and survival has nothing to do with memory, and everything to do with reflex, reaction time, and dynamic strategies of using the wide array of moves and combos available to the player.

Simply put, the game favors complexity as the catalyst for challenge, not number manipulation. As a result, Ninja Gaiden is only as challenging as the player’s lack of skills and reflexes. No battle will ever play out the same, even when the same battle is fought several times after death, because the game does not allow memory to become a factor.

Moreover, when the player dies, the game does not elongate itself by placing the player at the beginning of the level, instead using checkpoints to encourage the player to experiment with new techniques without worrying about unreasonable risk.

It is no secret that gameplay is unrealistic to the way the real world works. No matter how difficult a game is, it never truly reflects the impossible realities of the scenarios that we as gamers play out in our games. It will never be realistic to assume that any one, ordinary soldier could slaughter hundreds of equally skilled soldiers. Games will always favor the player (the protagonist), much in the same way that movies do. Otherwise they wouldn’t be very fun.

But as long as we strive to make the notion of game completion an actual accomplishment, the decision on whether or not a game should be difficult or challenging must be addressed.

Should game difficulty be designed with challenging complexity in mind, and not simple difficulty? Should game design favor player skill and dynamic gameplay over player memory and numbers manipulation?

We can thank Demon’s Souls for making that a question to ask.

Read more...

Level Design 101 - Prince of Persia

Sometimes, a game doesn’t sound so hot on paper. Take, for instance, the latest Prince of Persia. If you were to read the design doc, it would have words like “backtrack” and “re-navigate” all over the place. A lot of developers run into that problem; designing levels is hard, and budget constraints and time are both factors that heavily weigh on how much content they’re able to put into the product you see on store shelves. It’s with this in mind that, upon finally finishing Prince of Persia, I can only applaud what Ubisoft Montreal has accomplished with the world they created.

There are two central reasons Ubisoft succeeded at the level they did. For starters, each area of the world is unique, and you’ll never find yourself cursing at having to go back to a place you’ve already been. The world is big enough that you might go hours without revisiting an area you’ve already cleared, but when you do, it’s just so damn fun to navigate that it’s anything but a chore. The platforming has some of the most fluid and intuitive controls I’ve seen in quite some time - but great controls in the context of crappy level design wouldn’t impress me much. Fortunately, Ubisoft felt the same way, and went about crafting supremely satisfying, easily navigable environments to compliment the silky smooth controls. Some would call the game easy, and I wouldn’t argue against that. There’s not much challenge – you essentially can’t die, after all – but for me, the fun wasn’t in how hard the jumps and shimmies were to execute. In place of traditional platforming, where your character has to be positioned just right to accomplish anything, Prince of Persia opted for a more streamlined approach. One press of a button sends your character flying towards a wall, and you don’t have to press anything to continue momentum. It’s almost like a rhythm game, and once you’re in harmony with its beat, tunnel vision sets in and everything else just melts away. All this is made possible by the truly inventive spaces you find yourself in. While a game like Tomb Raider gives you the same basics to repeat in same-y looking areas, Prince of Persia’s landscape is as different as it is easy to progress in. Throughout the game, you’ll find yourself propelled against hot air balloons, flying through the air, Rez style, plummeting hundreds of feet down the side of a wall, swinging from poles and grappling onto vines. All of those activities blend seamlessly, and it honestly never gets old. It’s a game I could see myself going back to for a second, third, and even fourth time before it’s all said and done.


The second reason the game turned out as well as it did also has to do with the level design. I mentioned backtracking before, and it comes into play for the entire length of the game. The idea behind the game is that the world is becoming corrupted by an evil force, and as such, it’s polluting the environment with a black sludge over almost every surface. Your goal is to navigate through this shitty, dreary land and make your way to “fertile ground,” where you can then cleanse the surrounding area of all evil and shittiness. Once you do that, the environment instantly turns from dark and foreboding to bright, colorful and happy. Your goal is to then collect as many “light seeds” as you can, which are white orbs scattered throughout the world. They only become visible once an area is cleansed, so here is where the backtracking starts. But what makes this particular brand of backtracking enjoyable is the drastic visual change made to everything around you. Gone are the black pits of death waiting for you on almost all solid ground, and in its place are blades of green grass, flowers, and butterflies hovering just below eyesight. The darkness that once plagued the land has given way to illuminating sunlight, and you almost forget you’ve been there before. Previously barred areas are sometimes found, since the sludge covering a particular ledge or crevice is no longer there to bring down the décor. This aspect literally doubles the play time, and definitely not in a cheap way. Some of the most fun I had was in collecting the “light seeds” and seeing the places I had just come from in the new light of day. It also helps that the art style is such that Prince of Persia will still look good ten years from now.

If you couldn’t already tell, I loved this game. There was one particular boss that I found to be downright annoying to fight, but other than that, I enjoyed the combat a lot. It wasn’t my favorite part of the game – it got boring here and there – but it didn’t detract nearly enough from the otherwise fantastically designed game play to bring down my overall enjoyment. I’m pretty sure the next Prince of Persia game will be a direct sequel to this one, and I, for one, will be marking the days off my calendar until it jumps, shimmies and falls into my hands. Read more...