Life-Taking Horrors and Dog Shit

Gaming is a form of escapism - a chance to get away from a not necessarily unhappy but decidedly dull life. Not something to really moan about, but it's either that or you die. You risk your life every time you leave the house. Gap-year students always end up dead somewhere in Cambodia. Sky-diving? Fuck that. Pop down to the shops to get some Frisps? (Do they still make those?) That sounds more like it, but still, there's always the risk of getting run over by a bus. If you don't cross any roads that are on bus-routes, then that particular risk is reduced 100%, but, if you live in the Daily Mail's blinkered view of the world, you could still get stabbed by one of them hoodies what are found on every street corner, injecting heroin into the eyes of innocent children. Nope, stay inside, play games, 'escape' those four walls that keep you safe from the big bad 'outside'. When did anything bad ever happen to someone playing videogames? Can you get thumb-cramp?

The point is videogames are seemingly doing more and more to bring the outside inside without all of the life-taking horrors and dog shit that populate it. But is this a good thing? For instance, a lot of games nowadays seem to give you a very limited amount of weaponry you can hold at any one time, so much so that it seems a rather alien concept for a game to let you carry the arsenal of a small country in your back pocket anymore. The more realistic something is, the better it is, right? What if GTA IV was completely true to life; imagine having to steal a car, and whenever Niko breaks a window with his elbow, he'd be unable to use that arm for about 10 minutes because it caught him right on the funny bone. Imagine if getting arrested meant you'd have to sit through a cut-scene of Niko sleeping in a cell, being taken to court then getting roughly taken from behind in the showers by Big Phil.

Disregarding the fact that, in the Halo games, Master Chief is a super-human and, as well as being able to melee someone while dual-wielding without dropping one of his guns (like a big spaz), he should quite easily be able to carry more than two weapons but doesn't, and it's obvious to see why. When Halo first came along, it brought with it a revolutionary control system that became the unofficial industry standard, and the fact that its weapon management was assigned to a single button was the main reason for this. It liberates the player from having to either scroll through all the weapons they are carrying, or selecting them from a menu. This was often the bane of the average shoot 'em up fan's life; hastily trying to select the right weapon for the job whilst a group of enemies shoot the crap out of you. It also added a little strategy to the game as you had to think about whether the weapon the enemy dropped is worth swapping for one of your weapons, and whether it'll come good in use against possible upcoming enemies. Another thing this does is free up a couple of buttons to be used for other essential tasks and simplifies the control system. This is also quite realistic, as most soldiers in real life only really carry two guns with them; a big one and a little one, e.g. a rifle and a pistol.

It can only be a good thing when a developer takes inspiration from real life to make its game better. There's also the fact that the more realistic a game is – again, take GTA IV as an example – the more satisfying it becomes to do things we'd never do in real life, like go on a high-speed police chase or crash a helicopter into the sea. The better it looks the more immersed you become. But how come the ultra-unrealistic Halo only lets you carry two guns when the ultra-realistic GTA IV lets you carry around 5, as well as a knife or a baseball bat? Niko seems to pull RPG Launchers and the like from out of his kecks! This is all down to ease of play. GTA IV is quite a varied game; whereas one moment could see you having a shoot out with a group of enemies, the next could see you trying to take down a helicopter. You'll forgive this as a minor inconsistency and will thank Rockstar whenever Niko unloads his pocket rocket into the rear-end of someone's chopper.

Realism is arguably at its best when it's mixed with something that is fantastical, impossible or imaginary. One of the biggest reasons why Harry Potter, Star Wars and books or films of their ilk are so successful is because they seem believable. The world of Harry Potter is hidden and runs parallel to ours, so there's an appealing sense that it might be true (even though it definitely isn't). Star Wars felt believable because, Tatooine in particular, felt rustic and lived-in and the Millennium Falcon was falling apart, something that would definitely happen to a space-ship that has been modified illegally time and time again. The same goes for videogames. Mass Effect goes into explicit detail into not only how the human race found the technology to be able to travel to distant galaxies, but it also goes into an almost obscene amount of detail about almost everything in the game from weaponry and space craft, to diplomacy between different space-faring races. There's an underlying sense that if or when the human race is finally able to travel to different galaxies, then Mass Effect is what would probably happen.

And that's what videogames do best. As big a cliché as this next sentence is going to be, it doesn't take anything away from the fact that games do allow you to do anything, possible or impossible, from the comfort of your own home. So let gangsters, criminals, aliens, football players with muddy boots, rock stars, plumbers, bears with birds living out of backpacks, blue hedgehogs, pink echidnas, robots, elves, goblins, wizards and warriors, dragons, eidolons, titans, gods and goddesses, tomb raiders, pirates, ninjas, and gays all into your home. Just make sure that when you do, you're firmly gripping a game controller and that the door is locked. Who knows what could be waiting for you… 'outside'.

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Extolling the Virtues of Mass Effect

• Game: Mass Effect
  
• Console: Xbox 360
  
• Developer: BioWare
  
• Publisher: Microsoft
• Released: November 2007
  

As big a problem I have with certain aspects of Mass Effect, I do love it very much indeed. Something I really wasn't expecting from the same team as Knights of the Old Republic. Although KotOR isn't a bad game at all, I seemed to trudge through the 40+ hours of it without ever enjoying any of it, until perhaps near the end. So, no, Mass Effect wasn't a game I ever expected to enjoy as much as I eventually did, which is indeed a rather nice surprise. In fact, I knew I was playing something special as soon as I started Mass Effect, quite the opposite of KotOR. The opening cinematic that introduced the character you'd just spent about 20 minutes creating really set the scene for just how awesome they were going to become over the course of the game. I knew immediately that I could expect a lot better from this than from KotOR.

But enough of KotOR, that's Star Wars territory; Mass Effect is set in our very own galaxy (The Milky Way, in case you didn't know) about 180 years into the future. It's all so very in-depth and rather believable … or most of it is, at least. Mass Effect explains how almost everything in the game works; from your guns, to your shield, to your 'biotic' powers. Reams and reams of text - some of it narrated. Why, you ask? Because this is the kind of thing that gets Sci-Fi nuts hornier than when they see Klingon cosplay porn. But if you don't want to enter the kingdom of the fat, spotty, love-starved virgin 30 year-olds, then you don't have to, as most of this stuff is very easily ignorable. Now, I'm not a complete geek, but I admit I am a completionist (meaning that when I play a game, I want to see and do everything - at least to the limits of my gaming ability), so I read nearly all of it and damn, it's actually quite interesting when it isn't flying over the top of my head at 70,000Kpc/s.

You can land on quite a few planets and check out the scenery. Some of it really is quite stunning.

Then there's the actual game and, boy, is it epic. After the first couple of hours of gameplay, you're given the freedom to choose where you want to go next, provided you know of the system you want to explore. You're given missions that are essential to the plot and side-missions, which, while they lack the cinematic flair and dazzling locations of the plot-based missions, still serve to extend the life of the game well past the 20-hour mark. It's in the plot-based missions where Mass Effect really comes to life, though. The worlds you explore vary greatly in terms of setting, whether you're stranded on a skyscraper laden planet under attack by the self-aware cyborg AI Geth or conducting an investigation into the apparently dubious experiments a shady multi-global company is doing on a freezing ice-world.

It might be an RPG through and through, but the battle system is notable only by its apparent absence. This is a good thing, as there is definitely a battle system in there, it's just that it's completely seamless to the rest of the game, it's played in real-time and, most importantly, it's a shoot 'em up. Yes, there's none of that nonsensical turn-based fighting in this game, it's full-on blasting action. Grenades, sniper rifles, shotguns, assault rifles, pistols, biotic powers, technological warfare; it's all in here, and it works great. There's even a cover-system and recharging health. It's kind of like Gears of War, but without the burly and incredibly ugly men running around and grunting.

See, it's a 3rd person shooter. A 3rd person, RPG, space-opera, conversation-simulation, shooter.

Now, regarding the sex scene - even though it's not particularly titillating, I see it as big step forward for the gaming industry. It's handled pretty much like how films handle it; getting to know each other, flirting, sexual tension and then they get intimate. It doesn't seem contrived, at all. There's build-up to it all the way through the game, leading to your choice between the human male or female or the female alien. Even then, it's entirely optional. If you don't fancy seeing your man or woman making-out with a bald, blue-skinned girl with no ears, then you don't have to. Then there's the fact that there's barely any flesh on show, a bum shot and perhaps a bit of side-boob, but it's mainly just naked kissing. The controversy it garnered is really quite baffling after you've experienced it for yourself, even more so if you wonder how God of War got away with its nipple-showing threesome, replete with button combos and moaning.

The choice over who you make 'the beast with two backs' with is only one of several choices you make in Mass Effect, and each of them has their own consequences. The biggest choice comes at the end of the game, which directly affects the ending you get. Moreover, the decisions you make in the game will carry onto Mass Effect 2, along with your character, and seeing as Mass Effect is set to become a trilogy, these decisions will carry on into, and possibly find closure, in Mass Effect 3. So, even if you have finished Mass Effect, know that it is only the end of the beginning, which is an exciting thought.

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Beyond Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil

Quick moral quiz - as you leave the village an old man comes up to you claiming to have been robbed by bandits in the wilderness. He desperately needs the treasure that was stolen from him and promises to reward you if you get it back. Do you:

1. Ride to the bandits' camp and fight them all off but let them live once they promise to be nice. Take the treasure and return it to its owner but refuse to accept a reward because you were only performing your moral duty as a generic do-gooder.
2. Ride to the bandits' camp, kill everyone and loot their corpses. Then go back to the old man, refuse to give him back the treasure but threaten to kill him if he doesn't give you the reward anyway. Kill him and loot his corpse. Then stamp on a puppy. Loot the puppy's corpse.

Depending on your choice here, your Evil-O-Meter will move slightly in one direction or other, also you probably get more money and XP for choosing the second option, it's just a sidequest though so don't expect any kind of lasting consequences.

The above scenario is obviously a simplified version of the kind of moral choices that modern RPGs try to offer, the problem is that it's not simplified by that much. A typical moral choice will boil down to taking the unambiguously "good" option or the unambiguously "evil" option (occasionally with a few neutral options thrown in). As such, the whole moral choice aspect comes down to a decision made right at the start of whether you want to play a good or evil character.

The pursuit of good/evil points also leads to the character's actions feeling forced - a good character will go out of their way to help everyone who asks, even when they clearly have far more important things to be concerned about. Evil characters on the other hand seem downright insane; a truly self-centred person would probably just ignore the majority of sidequests (and maybe even the main quest) because they don't care about the problems of some random peasant. This however will be counted as neutral by the game mechanics so you need to take the quest anyway then throw in some act of gratuitous cruelty to make the point that you really are EVIL!

And this leads us to the biggest problem, the goody-two-shoes and asinine jerk characters clearly have no rights being on the same quest with the same teammates. The game needs to railroad the player and horribly break the plot to provide an excuse for why a character would go on a quest they clearly have no motivation for (generally an evil character on a good quest, although I imagine playing a good character in Overlord causes this kind of problem too). Someone who genuinely wanted to roleplay an evil character might want to take over the first low-level criminal organisation you fight, kill the leader of the good guys, or sell out the forces of good and take a position working for the villain. But these choices goes way beyond the level of variation that is allowed by the script and so either there will be no option to do any of them, or at best you'll get a few extra lines of dialogue giving a hand-wave to force you back onto the main path. Thus you have the paradox of an "evil hero" - a heartless killer who slaughters the innocent while battling the forces of darkness and amassing a team of pure-hearted allies.

And of course these allies may complain about your latest rampage but will never think of abandoning the psychopathic killer they've mistakenly teamed up with. Kill, steal and stab your friends in the back for minimal reward and they'll still follow you right up to the pre-scripted bit before the last dungeon where the two paths finally diverge.

I think a better option would be to abandon the forced attempts to allow both good and evil choices and instead let the player choose between different moral philosophies on the same side of the scale. Take it for granted that the player character is a hero, but let them choose how best to go about saving the world - more like Lawful Good vs. Chaotic Good rather than tying yourself in knots aiming for Lawful Good vs. Chaotic Evil. Do you work strictly within the law or break the rules for the greater good? Sacrifice innocent lives to stop the bad guys or save the civilians but let your enemies get away? Mass Effect tries to use this system, with both Paragon and Renegade being basically good but differing in how ruthless they are willing to be. There are still some cases of asinine jerkiness - anyone wanting to get full Renegade points needs to be highly xenophobic and needlessly rude - but it manages to be one of the few games where both paths make sense.

Taking the idea even further it would be interesting to see a game where there are meaningful consequences for both "idealistic" and "ruthless" actions. Even Mass Effect tended to allow the Paragon to accomplish everything the Renegade could, making the "I did what needed to be done" defence ring hollow. Ideally, both options should have something going for them, both in terms of reward for the player (most of the time, the evil route will lead to more fighting and stealing, hence more loot and XP) and moral consequences.

Making it so that neither path is obviously more "good" than the other, would still give just as much choice as the more traditional good vs. evil dichotomy but since the choices are limited to the heroic ones the story would make more sense and feel a lot less like you were being railroaded. Perhaps more importantly the player would hopefully end up actually thinking about which one they should choose rather than simply going for the one that earns the most points for their alignment. All in all, the story and your choices in it would become a lot more interesting.

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News Round-Up

Braid is available on Xbox Live Arcade now and is awesome. At M$1200, you might think it's a little expensive, but try the demo and make up your mind, you may be very pleasantly surprised.

Braid Thread on TGN

Lionhead Studios have announced a release date for Fable 2. It hits shelves on the 24th of October and comes in two flavours: original and Limited Collector's Edition. The LCE looks a little like this:

Click 'em!

Source

Battlefield: Bad Company's got a new game mode in the form of 'Conquest'. Expect a quick old review of that when one of us gets the chance to play it. It's free to download, even if you haven't got the game, but that'd be pretty useless.

Mass Effect might get more DLC, according to Joystiq and MTV Multiplayer. It was remarked upon but not really confirmed.

Driver, the PSone crime-busting car-chase sim is getting a release on PSN on August the 14th.

Want Chrono Trigger on the DS this Christmas? Tough, unless you get it on import, of course.

This is FighterO'Foo for TGN. Don't expect this everyday and, please, don't have nightmares.
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Game Saving

Mass Effect is an awesome game. It might have some issues with repetitiveness with regards to the side-quests, as well as technical issues with the game not loading the textures quickly enough and the fact that the inventory system is a complete shambles, the motions of characters can sometimes be stunted and robotic and the conversations can be a little strange, but other than that it's an awesome game. But my biggest gripe with Mass Effect is that you have to keep saving it, just in case.

This is an RPG, and one of the biggest things that put me off RPGs (JRPGs in particular, like Final Fantasy etc.) is that you get massively punished for dying. Mass Effect lets you save anywhere you like as long as it's not in the middle of a battle, which is perfectly understandable. This is great, but if you have a big session on the game only to die without saving it, it's a complete chore to go back through the same section of the game. It can also be incredibly hard, especially on 'Veteran' difficulty. Add this to the fact that your squad members are nearly completely useless, with their only saving grace being that you can utilise their 'powers' as if they were your own, provided they're not stuck behind a wall or something.

What I'm trying to get to, though, is the fact that in this day and age you'd think that games would learn from past mistakes and not punish the player so much for dying. Originally, dying was a way to get people to stick more money into the arcade machines, but now, when a game's story can be a lot more important than the actual challenge of completing it, it seems a shame that game developers are stuck in the past and are insistent on having what I see as major flaws in their game such as this. I'm not saying that every game released hence should feature indestructible characters that can never die, because that would spoil it for those who love a challenge, I'm just saying that games with plots that are essential to the enjoyment of the player (like the Mass Effects of this world) should have a much better way of saving your progress and not punish those that are playing for the story.

Shepard: "Who do I gotta blow for some auto-save?"

With all that said, though, I do enjoy a challenge, and I try to play Mass Effect on the hardest difficulty setting that I deem enjoyable. But for me, it's the 'Normal' setting which isn't much of a challenge at all, because you die a hell of a lot on the other, harder, difficulty settings and, like I said, if you don't save (it is very easy to forget) you have to go back to your last save, which is normally where you picked up the game from when you last left off. This can be really frustrating in a game like Mass Effect, where upgrading your character, buying and selling and inventory-management are all big parts of the game. Having to go through them all again when you die is a little dispiriting. But all this could be remedied by having an auto-save feature, or a checkpoint system like Halo. Gone should be the days of save-points; the folly of games that saved onto cartridges or memory cards, because being able to save anywhere would simply require too much memory. Now we have hard-drives and SD cards - more memory than we know what to do with - why can't every game have auto-saves? GTA IV had them and got rid of the ball-ache of having to travel the entire length and breadth of the city to save your game so you could have your dinner!

However, I still testify that Mass Effect is one of the most engrossing games that I've ever played (probably the reason why I keep forgetting to save), but not having auto-save is a far bigger nuisance than textures not loading properly. Mass Effect 2, you've got a lot to live up to!

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