Portal 2

No beating around the bush: Portal 2 lived up to and exceeded my expectations (which were high).  And here's how:

1.  Simple game mechanics explored by every angle imaginable.

The game play is pretty easy to understand: open up a blue portal, open up an orange portal.  Whatever goes in the blue portal comes out the orange portal.  Lasers, weighted cubes, yourself.  Use the portals to get from the entrance of each area to its exit while evading any obstacles designed to cause your demise.

Any time I'd get stuck on a puzzle (it happened a couple dozen times), the solution was nearly always a simple return to the basics: take a step back and open up some portals.

2.  Stupendous writing coupled with excellent voice acting.

The bar for comedic writing was set fairly high in the original Portal, and I'm delighted to say that Portal 2kept up pace incredibly well.  The three "main" characters have excellent interactions with each other and plenty of great monologue opportunities when interacting with the player character.  But in addition to just being hilarious: the writing creates excellent moments of sympathy for the characters.

And the voice work is exactly what it needs to be.  Each character is full defined and encapsulated within their first few lines of dialogue.

3.  Story, story, story - but don't shove it down my throat.

We also get a great look into Aperture Laboratories and its development, but it is fully at the player's own interest to discover it.  There is very little delivered narrative, but plenty to discover, which earns Portal 2 an A+ in creative writing and story delivery.

And that's just the single player campaign.  Once I've got a chance to play co-op I'm sure I'll be continuously wow'd.  Worth a pick up, indeed!  Though the game was somewhat brief (I bested it in about 6 or so hours, total), I'm sure it'll be the kind of game I play again and again...

Portal 2 Released

I just thought I'd add to the internet ethosphere (I just made that up) of the number of times Portal 2 appeared in newsposts and blogs and the whatnot.  I haven't had a chance to get my salacious mitts on the thing, to be honest, but I'll be plenty excited when the time comes.  All in good time.

I am a bit dubious about the multi-player aspects, mostly because I believe video games are selfish isolations from the cruel, cruel world around us, but I've had some success in some multi-player ventures, so it might be fair to give the dog another chance.

Finally, if I was a professor, I would have sent out this e-mail too:

Bioshock

Shortly after it was announced that Bioshock would be released for the PS3, I got an opportunity to finally experience Rapture; an experience others had been privy to for what seemed like decades.

You have to ask yourself, are video games art?  The Smithsonian seems to think so, and among the subjects of its upcoming feature of the Art of Videogames, Bioshock is sure to make an entry.  From the demo-drop to the PSN, through receiving the game for Christmas (from my awesome husband), and the six or seven completions since then, I am constantly enRAPTUREd by this gem.


The box art gives an idea of the amazing world within.

Bioshock has often been described as the spiritual predecessor of Ken Levine's System Shock 2, but whatever brought the idea to fruition is okay with me.  The story, set in 1960, is about the unnamed protagonist (who is dutifully known as "Jack"), who - as the only survivor of an airline crash - finds a mysterious lighthouse with a bathysphere that transports him to the underwater city of Rapture.
Rapture was created by Andrew Ryan, who believed the city was the only place safe from the persecution of the government, communists, and religion.  During the bathysphere ride down, we learn that he created the city for an artist to not fear the censor, for scientists to not be bound by petty morality, and the great to not be inundated by the needs of the weaker members of society. 

However, as it is 1960, you find yourself in Rapture in media res - literally late for the party.  The city has devolved from ongoing civil war and the discovery of deep sea slugs who produce ADAM, a genetic substance capable of granting superhuman powers.  As Rapture's denizens fought, and further spliced (shorthand for using ADAM, splicing ones' DNA) themselves, the toll of constant war and ADAM's effects begin to turn them from being the foremost artists and scientists into killing machines, hell bent on collecting more ADAM to feed their ongoing addiction.



A splicer, who was surely once handsome, now deformed.

 To further produce and maintain a supply of ADAM, leaders of Rapture develop the Little Sisters program.  Young girls are implanted with a sea slug, which allows them to gather ADAM from the corpses of the fallen; however the girls are to fragile to go alone, and giant diver suits are grafted onto "volunteers" to become Big Daddies to protect the Little Sisters.

So, your Bathysphere unable to return to the surface, you are guided through the arrival terminal by a friendly (and more importantly, sane) Rapture hold-out named Atlas.  You pick up a wrench and blindly inject yourself with the first Plasmid (superhuman power) you can find.  Weapons (which diversify from the melee wrench) are switched and fired with the right shoulder buttons, while Plasmids are selected and activated with the left shoulder buttons.  This is highly intuitive, as your first-person view shows you holding the weapon in your right hand, and your left hand has a representation of the Plasmid equipped (covered in ice, or bursting with hives of bees, for example).

The game is fairly linear (one fetch quest after another), but there are plenty of off-the-beaten path areas to explore, kill splicers in, and collect resources (first aid kits heal, while EVE hypos repower your Plasmid use).  The great challenge of the game is that of the Big Daddies.  In order to procure ADAM, you must either rescue the Little Sisters or harvest the sea slug inside of them, thereby killing the girl.  But before you can get close enough to the girl to perform your act of kindness or malice, you must defeat the otherwise placid Big Daddies.

During my playthrough on "Survivor" difficulty, I really got an opportunity to get creative with Big Daddy battles, to the point of what some might consider cowardice.  It can easily take all of the ammo and first aid kits to best a big lug, as well as carefully considering the environment you engage them in.  Setting up traps tended to be a better solution for me, since I am a terrible aim and typically relied on melee attacks to best most splicers.  To date, Big Daddy fights remain some of my favorite experiences in a game: challenging, but not overly frustrating.

Once you've substantially dealt with her guardian, there's the Little Sister herself.  You may choose to rescue the girl, using a Plasmid you get from Dr. Tennenbaum, or you can reach right into the girl and grab the slug implanted in her.  Harvesting nets twice the amount of ADAM instantly, but Dr. Tennenbaum ambiguously promises to reward you if you save the girls instead.  Almost constantly in games like these, I prefer to play a righteous character, but in my "Survivor" playthrough I needed every drop I could get.  Sorry girls.

This small mechanism is highly praised as introducing a morality to the game, and I'm going to harp on that: while the decision doesn't have long-standing changes to how you play the game (some dialogue changes, and a different ending, befitting how horrible you are), but forcing a player like myself to work outside his comfort zone for a relatively low payout to get a marginal leg up on survival did create a question:  If this was real, would I be so noble, or would it be every man for himself?  Of course, this is the question of Rapture itself.  The individual, or the community?

Holy shit!  A video game made me think!  MAKE IT STOP!

Additionally, the graphics tell the story of the underwater city beautifully, complemented by an excellent soundtrack and phenomenal voice acting.  You interact directly with very few characters (and even then, they are behind barriers), but you learn about Rapture through a variety of Audio Logs recorded by its residents.  From these tapes, which are scattered precariously everywhere, you learn about the revolution against Ryan, its motivations, and how things got so fucked up.  And despite the fact that you probably shouldn't be sitting around listening to dead people's diaries, especially while you're being hunted by those you haven't slaughtered yet, it's a genius method in delivering story content.

The game levels out with difficulty, as eventually the Plasmids on weapons available to you can massacre almost any enemy you come across, but it's okay because you should feel that powerful.  The replay value exists, but the predictability of the games' AI makes additional playthroughs past the fourth get a little tedious.  All the same, if you haven't yet, Bioshock is a must play.

Portal 2 Comic Online

I may have mentioned earlier that I was interested in Portal 2.  I typically feel like blogging about something I want helps alleviate the cravings, but seeing as there are billboards everywhere, television and internet ads, and this awesome 27 page comic detailing the events between Portal and Portal 2, I don't honestly know how it is I'm supposed to be resisting its siren's call.

Best game ever?

I love cats.  I love President Bill Clinton.  I love video games. 

There was a video game made about President Bill Clinton's cat, Socks.  Though unreleased, I will now scower the very depths of the internet to find this gem.

Flash Game Friday: Corporation, Inc

Oh, resource management games.  I have a confession to make.  I love you.

No, now, don't freak out on me.  I think we're ready for this next step.  After all, I've been clicking to and from things for hours (gosh, has it been that long?  It felt like mere minutes), and you've been rewarding my minimal effort with power-ups gifts of your love to make my clicking easier!

Upgraded bathrooms make employees happier.  That makes sense, I guess.

That's why I'm dedicating this Flash Game Friday to Corporation, Inc.  It was pitched to me as a "SimTower like" experience, and I loved SimTower.  And it has everything you'd want in a resource management game: employees, offices, upgrades.  An easy to use and navigate interface allows you to extend your office to heavens, or just build a 9 floor wide complex full of researchers hellbent on discovering the secrets of world domination (no, really!).

Check it out, especially if you want a distraction from work, by - you know - doing some other type of work.

Flash Game Friday: Upgrade Completer!

Fire all lasers!

I think I've spoken before about my love of the meta-game of acheiving things and upgrading things and watching bars fill up to bursting completeness.

You can get a feel for this by playing Upgrade Completer!

Everything is upgradable, even the grammar of the upgrade menu!  You even have to buy certain upgrades before you actually play, and once you do, you'll be rewarded with a fun little shump shooter game.  Eventually, your upgrades make the game batshit crazy easy, but it's totally worth the couple hours you'll throw down in its throws of interest.

Yahtzee Croshaw's Take on Being Gay in DA2

You know how I made a blog entry about the Dragon Age 2 gay nonsense debate that is still permeating the very crevices of the interwebs?  Well, Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation (whose wit and unmatchably fast tongue supercede my own) has written a nice little treatise on the topic wherein he found himself accidentally playing a gay Hawke, regardless of his individual desires to avoid "sausage sandwiches."

Warning, the article may not safe for work (depending on your place of employ) and is excessively British.

Want: Portal 2

I even love this logo.

So, confession time.  I've never played Portal.  There.  I've said it.

It's not because I didn't want to!  It's because the game was exclusive to the Xbox 360 and PC.  I don't have an Xbox 360 (anymore), and I only play games on the computer that are low quality, low comittment.  True, the Orange Box was eventually released for the PS3, but by that time, I'd already almost played the game anyway... 

Well, I haven't played the game, strictly speaking, I just OBSESSED about its existence after first hearing the credits song Still Alive.  I spent hours watching gameplay videos to dedicate all of the GLaDOS' dialogue to memory.  I even got to understand the basic mechanics of gameplay from the demo on Steam and the flash-based fan game.

Look at me: still talking when there's wanting to do.  The sequel to the smash game, aptly and inarguably named Portal 2, comes out April 18, 2011.  And since its being released for the PS3, there's no reason I should miss out on this iteration.

Portal is a first-person shooter, except instead of a gun that kills things, you have a gun that opens portals.  One portal is blue and one is orange.  Leave one, you appear at the other.  So it's a first-person-puzzle game, tring to figure out where the portals should go to help you through the test chambers.  And because of the mechanics, it's also a platformer, and sort of an adventure game.  So it's a first-person-shooter-puzzle-adventure-platformer.  And also, physics and gravity.  It's no wonder this darling of a game wowed so many critics.


Easy enough to understand.  Go in one portal, out another.

 And while gameplay is looks fun and innovating, its the intensely well written GLaDOS character that embodies the game's success.  GLaDOS - or, the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System - is a sentient computer system which guides you, the test subject, through the various obstacles.  Fair enough, except GLaDOS is sort of crazy.  Not HAL-like, with rational reasons for murder, but truly schizophrenic.  One moment, GLaDOS will recommend your imminent death, and the next she invites you to enjoy cake!

The writing is brilliant, with sincere moments intermingled with GLaDOS' tongue-in-cheek dialogue with the silent player character.  Her taunts are rewards that really complete the Apeture Science environment.  In one particular instance, you are issued a Weighted Companion Cube, which you are told to love and cherish.  By the end of the level, you are instructed to incerate your Weighted Companion Cube.  You are presented this gem of dialogue if you hesitate in your inceration:

"While it has been a faithful companion, your companion cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you."

"Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture Science engineers believe that the companion cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain."

I feel fantastic and I'm still alive.

When the Portal 2 teaser was released, a familiar disembodied voice greeted us, and it seems GLaDOS is making good on her promises that she is (indeed) still alive.  And she's willing to put our differences behind her, for science.

Harvest Moon

Oh, cows.

Did you know that I used to be a farmer?  Like, I actually farmed things.  Seeds went into the ground, time ellapsed, and then mature fruits and vegetables were picked and sold.  This process taught me three important things:

1. Farming is not a valid career choice for me.
2. There is a point at which you cannot be any dirtier or any sweatier.
3. Video games make things that are chores seem like fun.

There was a time when FarmVille was an insanely popular Facebook game.  Click to hoe ground.  Click to plant seeds.  Click to water.  Click to harvest and sell.  It was a pretty crappy time waster of a game, even for a resource management game, though it probably did teach some basic concepts of profit margins (they game could be even more edu-taining if it had some Drug Wars-esque supply/demand algorythms).  This is not how real farming worked, and whats more, Zynga wasn't the first company to capitalize on the notion of turning farming into a simple point here and do this; it was a Japenese company called Victor Interactive Studio, and localized for the United States by Natsume.

Harvest Moon (or rather, the Harvest Moon series, as there are about a dozen iterations now) was a sprite-based resource management game released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1997.  You control a young man who must repair a desolate farm, plant crops, make money, and woo a local townswoman to then be your wife.  Resource management describes games where you must balance a finite set of resources (in this instance, it is mostly time and stamina, although there are some aspects of space and money) in order to acheive your goals.  There is no mini-game aspect for planting: just move to where you want the seeds to go and push a button.

Again, I should iterate that this is not how real farming works.

I devoted a great deal of time that I could have actually have been farming to playing this game about farming, which probably says something about me and my generation, but I couldn't help it: the Harvest Moon formula worked. 

You're an open book, Rick.

I've started to play through Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town - or more specifically, its sequel More Friends of Mineral Town.  The difference between the two is that the latter allows you to play as a female farmer and woo one of the male townsfolk.  The game is the same tried and true Harvest Moon.  Gotta clear the weeds and rubble from the farm, hoe the ground, plant the seeds, water the seeds, harvest the crops, feed the chickens, milk the cows, brush my horse... However More/Friends of Mineral Town is a lot more dating sim than the previous versions.

If you want to try your hand at farming, it'd probably be easier to try the above mentioned FarmVille, but you miss out on the nostalgia and (lite) interactive fiction of the Harvest Moon games.

Late for the Party: Gay Romances in Dragon Age 2

The train has left the station on much of the debate from a post on the Bioware forums regarding relationship options in Dragon Age 2, but I have a blog and an opinion, regardless to the fact that I haven't shelled out the $60 the game would cost so I could refine said opinion.  I did play the demo, and I've read a lot from both all sides of this controversy.

TL;DR: On one hand is this dude's assertation that DA2 didn't cater to the "straight male gamer," and a response from one of the writers that it wasn't supposed to, and some petition that's upset that gay characters were oversexualized.  The internet is serious business! 

Games like Dragon Age 2 are role-playing games that use a blend of open-ended interactive fiction and focused, structured narrative to communicate a story.  The open-ended interactive fiction is what has created the problem for DA2 writers, apparently.  With same-sex options intermingled with opposite-sex options for the romance of the hero (Hawke) as a component of that interactive fiction.  But, as interactive as it is, it's still fiction, and it is not an open-ended storytelling experience.  There are only so many paths available.

Compare a situation like that to one of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, or even a MMORPG.  Herein, the player is able to fully define the character and his or her interactions with all other characters and the environment.  In interactive fiction, the player can choose which path to take, but cannot forge one of his or her own free will. 

When I played through Dragon Age: Origins, I delighted at the opportunity to experience Fereldan as a female elf on my second playthrough.  The way in which characters interacted with me changed, and I enjoyed seeing that perspective.  It does not mean that I in any way want to be a woman, or an elf for that matter.  This rings true, since a majority of gamers (straight male, or otherwise) will play characters of an opposite sex.  Was Tomb Raider designed with the "straight male gamer" in mind?  Was Super Mario Bros.?  How about Ms. Pac Man?

In short, I think the entirety of the debate boils down to someone who self identifies homosexuality as "disgusting" being upset that a male character hit on him while he should have been more concerned about the influx of dragons about to eat him (seriously, think about your priorites, dude).  Fiction tells us a story, and interactive fiction lets us direct some of the ways in which that story is communicated.  The presence of sexuality is not guaranteed to match your own, in fact it would be astounding if it did.  Instead, indulge the opportunity to experience character, which is what role-playing games are all about.