A Game Changer

Recently I finished and talked about Braid. The ending got me thinking about how we view games, and what we come to expect from them. A fresh player, having no prior knowledge of Braid would go in to the game thinking "Yes, of course I'm going to save the princess at the end, because that's what the story is setting up for me". That feeling would be reinforced at the end of the first (or rather second) world, where they are told that "The Princess is in another castle". "Ah ha, just a little homage to the Mario games, frustrating me a little, only to make the reward greater when I actually find her later - a little clichéd, but I'll allow it".

The entire perception of the game shatters right at the last instant though, due to a seemingly simple, yet world-changing plot point. You're not trying to save the Princess, in fact she needs saving from you. It's not very often that we don't get a "happily ever after" ending, which makes sense, that sort of climax is tried and tested, but it's nice when we get something a little different from the norm. That's not to say I want more unexpected endings either, the industry would eventually just become a big parody of itself to the point where a plot meeting would result in someone saying "Hey, why not this time, have the good guy win at the end for a change?" That's not what anyone wants, but it's not just endings that could benefit from a little variety.

Take Spec Ops: The Line for instance. It's a standard third person cover based shooter game with squad control mechanics. It received average reviews, but there was one thing that the critics all pointed out as a highlight - the unexpected story twists. "The white phosphorous mission" became almost instantly infamous and controversial. The scene sees the player equipped with a mortar and is shown small white dots which are the targets to be blown up. Yeah, you've seen this before right? In the AC-130 sections of the Call of Duty Games. Perhaps that's the point. In those games you blow everyone up, they might be trying to escape, but they're still terrorists and they've still got guns which they're probably going to use to slaughter innocent people. So in Spec Ops, that's what you do, you blast those white dots to hell. But what if those white dots were innocent people? That's what Spec Ops: The Line explores, and it's not until later that you find out that you've accidentally murdered defenceless men, women and children. It's not a moral choice you're given in the game, it's just something you did, and it's up to you whether you can live with that or not. CoD explored a controversial moment with the airport massacre, although it lacked subtlety. "Hey guys your character is going to go in and shoot up this airport full of civilians - isn't that extreme and controversial?!"

So those are examples of unexpected plot twists and game moments, but what about a game that utterly changes in what it's asking you to do? Fez starts out as yet another indie platforming game with a twist. You are the only person in the cute little world that can perceive a third dimension, which opens up interesting puzzles involving multiple planes. It's not especially difficult, and you can reach the end of the game without much difficulty. But the end of the game is where the real game begins. It almost becomes a cryptanalysis game, needing you to solve an entirely made up language along with dealing with other entirely new puzzle mechanics. No mention was made of this before the game's release, and it's possible to 'complete' the game without ever encountering any of the new stuff. When people did find out this unbelievable amount of hidden depth, there was a certain amount of shock.

There are games out there trying to be different and add a little something to the industry, they just need to be praised more for what they are doing. Do this enough and hopefully developers will sit up and take notice - "People actually care about games and aren't just buying them to give us bucketloads of money? I suppose we'd better give something back to them, then."

E3 2012 Part 1 - Microsoft

The biggest press event in the gaming calendar is here! E3 2012 started today and I'll be attempting to watch all of the press conferences and write about what has been sparking my interest.

Microsoft Press Conference
The entire theatre started awash with Microsoft's familiar green light, and then there it was - a FMV Halo 4 trailer! Now I've never been the biggest fan of Halo, and my hopes of something new were dashed when I saw that the first enemies to be seen were Grunts, Jackals and Elites. But wait, that Elite just disintegrated... wait, what are those glowing crawling animal robot things? Awesome, something new from the Halo franchise, perhaps I'll be excited about it after all.

Next up was Splinter Cell Blacklist. I remember when these were highly unforgiving stealth games, but not any more. This origin story sees Sam Fisher running and gunning his way through hordes of enemies, and scaling walls like a monkey. I haven't confirmed this, but I don't think Michael Ironside was voicing young Fisher, which made me a bit sad, but we'll see.

I know lots of "proper" gamers don't like sports games, but that's only because they're wrong. Fifa 13 will be the new slightly improved football game for this year, and will feature Kinect support for the first time. You can make substitutions without going into menus, can call for passes and so on. My favourite part was when they showed a player being caught by the offside trap and swearing at the Kinect (it was beeped out, kid friendly show). The Kinect picked up on this however and the commentator began saying how the player was unhappy about being caught out, very amusing.

Madden 13 too will feature Kinect support, and the presentation even featured legendary quarterback Joe Montana! I found it funny that no one seemed to be acknowledging that Sega made the largely unsuccessful Joe Montana football games back in the nineties, but anyway. Montana began to call plays using his voice rather than a controller and then proceeded to score a touchdown! Against the Seahawks, with the Niners, what a dick.

Fable The Journey is a Kinect Fable game. Yay.

Gears of War Judgment got a trailer too, sparking many debates about what the correct spelling of that word is. The trailer didn't show much other than confirming that it is indeed a new Gears of War game, so there's that.

Then there was dubstep, which can only mean one thing: a racing game! Forza Horizon was on show, and this time they're leaving the track and heading out into the open world, and it looks very, very pretty. I've never been drawn to the Forza franchise despite being a big racing fan, hopefully this will do something to persuade me.

Last year we saw the new Tomb Raider game, and this year we got to see a bit more! The gameplay looks incredibly fast paced, seeing Lara running, jumping, shooting and stabbing her way through the level at breakneck speed. I'm hoping that there will be more of an exploration element to the finished game, but I guess they have to show off the exciting sections here.

Then three new titles. Ascend New Gods seems like a fantasy beat em up, in the same vein as God of War, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it from what they showed. Then they showed a trailer for a game called Lococycle, and in the notes I made for the press conference it says "Wat???????", so there you go. Go and watch the trailer. Then finally 343 Guilty Spark was floating around a test chamber from Portal and apparently that's going to be called Matter. 


But that doesn't Matter because Resident Evil 6 was next, and much like Tomb Raider the action was fast and action packed, with explosions and fire and helicopters and quick time events out the arse. I wasn't particularly interested, but then I haven't been interested in a RE game for a long time now.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park then made an appearance to grant some much needed levity to the press conference. They were showing off South Park: The Stick of Truth, well not so much showing it off as showing a trailer which gave no indication of what the game will be. You will be playing as the new kid in town who is trying to become cool and be the fifth member of the group. It remains to be seen just how this will be done and whether it will be any good or not.

Then for some reason Usher came out and sang a song and danced. A lot. And then he left and apparently that was them showing off Dance Central 3, huh.

Finally, Microsoft closed out their star studded show with the big guns, quite literally. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or CODBLOPS2 if you're feeling that way inclined showed the public what they've been showing press since the game got announced a while back. There's a female president and holographic devices, so you know it's the future. Also there's a gun which you can "charge up" which apparently means it can shoot through solid concrete to kill guys on the other side. The gameplay demonstration takes place in Los Angeles and shows the branching storylines and differing tactics you can use to approach your mission. At one point you can choose to either snipe from the top of the broken freeway or rappel down and shoot guys that way. Okay fine, it's not really revolutionary, but at least it's a step in the right direction for the ageing franchise. The most interesting part for me was the use of drones which could be controlled using a PDA thing on your wrist, and that there was a pilot-able jet. I'm unsure whether the jet is on semi- rails, as there didn't seem to be a way to alter your altitude when you wanted to, but I could be wrong about that. Also, the future is black, apparently.

So that was Microsoft's press conference. I'll be writing up EA and Ubisoft's respective press conferences early on tomorrow, and then I'll hopefully be able to do Sony and Nintendo's later in the day.

Excited about games yet? I sure am, and we're only a couple of hours in to this epic event. Thanks for reading, see you later.