Magical Girls

When someone tells us we fight like a girl, are we compelled to think that means we’re prone to casting Ultima?

To put it another way, is it unfounded to suggest women are stereotyped into the role of the meek mage? This is not to say that this happens all the time – there are certainly a fair share of lady bruisers and I’ll go into them more next week – but when we think of women, especially in role-playing games, there seems to be a tendency to classify them as magic users primarily.

There is of course a standard of pros and cons to the mage class that have to be considered; in the positive light, it tends to imply that women have higher mental power of some sort, and certainly no one is going to be insulted if you say they’re the among the smarter ones in the group.

On the other hand, mages usually can only give and deal back as much physical damage as a slice of soggy toast. While this is considered a standard part of class balance, the fact that female characters are routinely cast into this mold rather than one of the more physical classes does convey some sexist implications.

Let’s look at the Final Fantasy series for a moment, as it’s one of the more prominent series out there. As the games usually involve free distribution of magic between characters, it can be difficult to readily classify anyone as a mage with all but a few games as the exception.

Final Fantasy IV & IX both were among the few that featured preset classes as part of the character building system. Having not played all of IV (I’m a cad, I know) I can only readily call forth Rosa, who is the consummate white mage.

FFIX is a bit more complicated- two of the characters you get in the story are mages. The first is the Princess Garnet, who is both white mage and summoner, magic classes of course, and she is also love interest to the main character Zidane, who is a more dynamic fighting class.

Aside from a second mage, the little girl Eiko, there is Freya, who is a fighter and can be classified in the Dragoon class of the series. However, it’s worth noting that while Freya is a useful character, her character arc largely vanishes from the game not long after her introduction. While she is an example of a female fighter in the series and in this specific game, she’s not given as much prominence in the story as her magic using counterparts.

This does bring to attention a sub-aspect of the problem of how women are often represented in RPGs, and it’s how much they’re represented. The proportions are admittedly better today by and large, but this seems to be in part occurring because core playable characters are getting few in numbers.

To make a few contrasts, Final Fantasy VI’s cast featured only 3 women and some 11 men with the maximum number of characters you could have by the end of the game (maybe it’s 4 to 10… or 3 to 10 to ?… not completely sure what Gogo is). More recently, on the contrary, Final Fantasy X featured 3 women to 4 men. Percentage-wise, this is a great improvement; by diminishing the overall cast, the remaining characters do get more increased focus.

Of course, examining these numbers we have to ask how many of these women are fighters, outright, versus mages. With FFX, Yuna and Lulu (both featured for more of the story) are mages while Rikku, who joins later, fills the thief class, and isn’t especially strong. The guy who throws a dodge ball at the enemies hits harder, for cryin’ out loud!

I’ll admit some of my examples thus far are, arguably, a little dated. I haven’t played FFXII (the MMO-esque structure isn’t appealing to me) and XIII isn’t out yet. However, more recently we did see the U.S. release of Final Fantasy: Dissidia (maybe the “Dissidia” part comes first… but I don’t really care), which recaps and evaluates the first ten games somewhat nicely.

What one quickly notices upon initiating the game is that there is exactly one female hero between Final Fantasy I through X, FFVI’s Terra. The more experienced players will subsequently notice that Terra’s ability to use a sword is almost completely absent and that she’s dependant almost entirely on magic.

It’s not to say she shouldn’t use magic, of course; her ability to do so was a big part of the story, but she was never solely dependant on it, let alone downright restricted to it. Yet in Dissidia, the only time she doesn’t use magic is when she’s chasing an enemy down- she has no standard physical attacks.

So why is Terra, who was originally more versatile, suddenly boiled down to the de-facto mage? It isn’t helped that the character arcs from the original games are rehashed rather than continued in Dissidia, reducing Terra to the pseudo-amnesiac dependant she was at the beginning of the story, rather than the stronger and more assured woman she was at the end.

Why push the character down this way?

Much of this seems to come down to the love interest/save the princess mentality games have been built on.

I should stress that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with occasionally saving princesses. I’ve been known to do it myself and sometimes they, like any respectable people, need help.

At the same time though, has this created in part a sexist preconception in what we expect of women in games today, one that we haven’t entirely broken free of. To say that a woman might need to be saved versus to expect her to need to be saved are two very different things, after all.

A woman’s role in a story, in relation to the male main character, is often to provide support or spur him into action, inevitably resulting in love. Because of this, and perhaps in part because for so long the primary demographic playing the games (like the main characters themselves) are male, the lead female cannot overshadow the main character as that would interpretably emasculate him, which would in turn make the player himself feel emasculated.

Take the iconic Aerith of FFVII, for example. Looking at the material by itself, it can be readily concluded that she is meant to be Cloud’s love interest, and can easily end up becoming such based on readily available choices one can make in the game. Physically, Cloud is fairly buff while she’s a sweet, pink clad flower girl.

Of course, I’ve been focusing on Final Fantasy somewhat intensely here. As one of the premier RPG series out there, it does provide a lot of material. Still, other games come into consideration as well.

My personal favorite, Lunar, offers something of a mixed bag. Gender balance is largely better (in fact, for a good portion of Lunar 2 you only have two males in your party) and one of the girls is always physically capable.

Of course, in all the Lunar titles to date, the main character’s love interest is always more magically charged while he is physically adept. In both cases as well, the male hero needs to save the female damsel in distress (though in Lunar’s defense, said damsels are at least integral to the plot, so they’re put in danger for reasons other than merely pissing the hero off).

In the Breath of Fire series, the winged girl Nina who serves as a love interest to the main character (except in the fifth one… unless you’re really into little girls) is also always magically oriented. In fact, in the first game she at least wielded a rapier, but all future incarnations of the character have been reduced to wands, seemingly cementing her status as requisite mage to Ryu’s might.

Chrono Trigger offers a thematically better example, at least. Although Marle is still a magic user, armed with a crossbow (so as to avoid too much upper-body strength) when the main character Crono dies, she pushes for his resurrection and is there when he is brought back to life. This seems to be one of the rare examples of the woman saving the man- though indirectly as he’s not in direct peril at the time of his rescue (I mean, once he’s dead, he really can’t get any deader).

A problem that reveals itself with this analysis is that these are all titles that haven’t had new entries for almost a decade. Lunar, aside from one crappy prequel, is caught in remake limbo. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter was a deviation from the main series of mixed quality that apparently convinced Capcom that people just didn’t want it anymore. Chrono Trigger’s sequel isn’t really fit for analysis in this article as virtually every character is underdeveloped — Kidd, seemingly present as the counterpart to the main character is present for maybe a quarter to a third of the story.

Other series which have persisted have done little to push forward. Princess Peach of Super Mario fame has been captured so often that it’s become a running joke in the series, never mind that Bowser seems to enjoy capturing her for no purpose other than to have her.

Zelda of The Legend of Zelda has fared somewhat better as time has gone on. She’s at least evolved from merely being the princess who gets captured to having a more pronounced role in the later stories. But when she is involved in any capacity it’s always in a magical form… and she does eventually get captured by Ganon regardless.

All this comes down to the question of “why magical girls?” Aside from the reasons given, societal expectations of women in society seem to fuel this as well, coupled with the fact that women aren’t as well represented in the physical arena nor are they nearly as present at this point in time. Without a common range of physical talent represented, gender majority suggests that magic is the best capacity to make women useful… though archers and medics can have some representation as well.

This isn’t to say women can’t or shouldn’t be magical girls of course, but rather than it’s not all they should be or should be expected to be. Final Fantasy XIII’s Lightning looks like a move in the right direction, as she’s tough in both prowess and attitude. Of course, as the game isn’t out in the U.S. yet, so it’ll be hard to say if she effectively breaks the conventions or if she’ll fall into a few of them later in the story… still, I have high hopes for her.

Aside from the forthcoming Lightning, there are a share of other women in gaming who can fight, can be badass and do break the norms. But, as this was about the Magical Girls, their roles and why they have these roles, I’ll be examining the Warrior Princesses in detail next week.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is unlike any game in the series, for good and for bad. SH:SM revisits the ideas of the original Silent Hill, the concept of Harry Mason awaking from a car crash and trying to find his missing daughter, Cheryl. Most of the familiar characters of the first game will return, though in unfamiliar ways.

I’ve seen many people argue that the series has gone downhill since the team that handled the original three were no longer involved and to a point I’ll agree. The series composer, Akira Yamaoka has recently left Konami, and unless he is hired as a freelancer or something specifically for future Silent Hill games, this could for all intents and purposes make this the last game in the series (at least for some time) with any thread of connection to the original team.

Still, it’s a good note to end on if this is the case. I’d actually like to see the series rest for a few years and have the original team return to it, look at what the last couple games did (this one and SH: Homecoming) and take the elements that worked best and mingle them into a more adept package.

That’s my ideal situation.

It should be said on the outset that Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is not scary. It is tense, it is unsettling, but it is not scary. The game opens with a “Psychology Warning” about how the game plays you just as you play it, and the warning is well founded; Silent Hill will truly #$^& with you.

At the very beginning you find yourself in a psychiatrist’s office, where you fill out a simple questionnaire with somewhat invasive questions- answer honestly, as it’s key to the experience. Throughout the game you are brought back to this office again and again, where you are asked to interpret little games and puzzles put down before you with no real right answer. Rather, the answers you give all say something about you and define what you see and experience in the game.

It’s hard to explain how effective some of this is without giving much away. Because of how the game is defined you almost want to look desperately to see what you might’ve changed, be it the path you took or the signs and decorations.

To give an example that’s not tied to the story, in the wall of the high school I’d noticed a message about a girl who would “… for $$$ or tequila.” The meaning of the “…” is hopefully obvious. I called the number (you have a cellphone now, you see) and got a voice mail from an angry girl saying she’d changed her number because the sign was put up as a prank. My roommate played up to that point, and his call to the girl revealed she was a total slut and the sign was completely true.

This is one of the more casual examples of how things change- thinks like the personalities and attire of other characters can be drastically altered by the answers you give and the choices you make. While the play experience itself is somewhat on rails (you get a few options for routes but you have to come to the same destinations) what you see on the journey is heavily defined by who you are (or who you pretend to be, I suppose).

Not only does this produce some shocking results (my wife, my roommate and myself were all present when I was playing and several key moments caught all of us off guard) it serves as the best replay incentive in the game, to see what your answers might change.

The story itself, while not necessarily as convoluted as the original SH, is very compelling all on its own and takes the idea of Harry searching for his lost daughter in a different but compelling direction. The twist that everything is building up to is so incredibly sobering that it’s easily comparable with finding out that James had killed his wife in Silent Hill 2- and in fact, I think this may be more heart-wrenching in its own way.

The story is told almost entirely the cast of the original game, save for a couple of faces that weren’t there before. Just by knowing the classic title you can easily identify pretty much everyone upon seeing them, though you don’t need to have ever played the classic to understand who they are.

The characters are all in very different roles, and in some cases the capacity of that role is further defined by the responses you give. My encounter with Cybil had her dressed in a heavy coat, drinking coffee and showed her to by supportive my search for Cheryl. My roommate’s Cybil was smoking, had exposed cleavage and was kind of a bitch. I don’t know if the clothes are necessarily tied in with the personalities, but regardless it makes for some very interesting encounters.

It should be said while the game is very interesting, it’s also fairly short. It can be cleared in about 6-8 hours – probably a bit less if you know what you’re doing.

Unlike Silent Hill: Homecoming, which focused on improving the combat (which was probably the game’s strongest trait), Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has abandoned combat completely, going for a Clock Tower 3 approach of encouraging the player to run for their lives.

When you’re in “normal” Silent Hill, you’re fine. Creepy things happen, the atmosphere is great, but you’re in no real danger. You’re meant to look around, explore, find stuff and get background info. When things shift to the Otherworld, however, this time by icing over (a welcome change from the blood and rust, which needed a vacation) monsters will try to kill you.

This is where you find out you cannot ‘Game Over.’

The Otherworld sequences represent the least enjoyable parts of SH: SM for the most part, save for the last segment which is reminiscent of “Nowhere” in Silent Hill 1, and probably the one time where the idea of “running for your life” is used effectively.

The sequences are generally somewhat short, however. You’re primarily required to run from point A to point B, trying to navigate around the iced over paths and sometimes maze-like environments. It’s often easy to get lost, and since the map your phone comes equipped with only covers the town at large, it won’t usually help too much in these segments.

The developers had claimed in articles, and to my face at E3, that you can sneak around the monsters undetected. I’ve tried… it doesn’t really work. I’m not saying that you necessarily can’t—the mini-map on your phone even shows enemies in the immediate area. It’s just once they draw close the automatically know you’re there, even if your flashlight is off. A lot of tension that could’ve been gained by a more indepth stealth system is unfortunately lost. It doesn’t break the game, but it forces the Otherworld sequences to be frantic when that’s usually what Silent Hill as a series is not, at least not to that degree.

Another part of the problem comes in the monster design- there are a few variances but there’s only one actual type. Short, lightly humanoid, made out of funny parts. Some have gears for heads.

These monsters are meant to chase after you- they can burst through doors and climb up ledges after you. When they get to you, they sort grab onto you and you’ve got to try and shake them off so you can break free and run for your life some more.

While the designs feel a little uninspired, the problem more comes with these being the only monsters. They’re not exactly on par with the knife wielding Mumblers of the original game, and other creatures like the requisite skinless dogs could’ve easily been included (imagine being chased by some, leading them into a pit and making your getaway by climbing out where they can’t follow). My wife had suggested using the large-armed monsters from Silent Hill 3, and I’d agree that using something like that to block a key doorway would’ve forced the player to give pause on their approach.

To this point, it’s not that the idea itself is bad. I liked the tension in Clock Tower 3 of running for my life. However, that tension worked because I still had to complete other objectives and hiding usually gave you a bit of breathing room. Hiding in SH: SM might keep you safe for a minute- unless you forgot to turn your flashlight off, in which case it doesn’t even do that.

Similarly, as there’s no combat there’s no definable final boss sequence. Without this element of scripting in the game, it does feel as things come to a head somewhat abruptly. While the timing of the ending more or less makes perfect sense in the sequences that follow, the fact that there’s really no way to lose actually makes it a bit confusing when you win, since you’re not necessarily sure you have until the credits roll.

On a presentation standpoint, the game is good, though not the best in the series. The problem here is more that the original Silent Hill team was able to do incredible stuff with the graphics and the sound- while Shattered Memories neither looks nor sounds bad, Silent Hill 3, now about five years old, managed to look and sound better by comparison. It’s not that the developer Climax lacks talent- it’s merely that they have the misfortune of trying to follow an incredible act, and probably without as much budget (I could be wrong, but I’m of the impression that Konami isn’t pushing the series development as hard since they shifted it stateside).

From a replay standpoint, I got nothing for beating the game, though my roommate who was continuing off my file noticed clues that would seem to lead to the UFO ending (since there has to be a UFO ending), so there’s at least that. However, this is the first time in the series I’ve wanted to replay the game for the changes the game itself offers, not just for the ending as was the case in the past. So while the rewards are skimpy, the replayability is unusually high, especially since I know there’s some people in the town I never even met because of my choices.

I played the game on the Wii system, as it was developed with this hardware in mind and using my Wii remote as a flashlight is awesome. The controls worked well for the most part, though trying to shrug off grasping monsters was kind of a pain in the ass sometimes.

I paid about $50 bucks for the game- the PS2 and PSP versions which should be out later will almost certainly be cheaper, and if you’ve got a button against motion controls it’s probably the way to go. It might be a hard sell if you have a very specific notion of what Silent Hill is, but many essences of the series are intact, if presented in a new fashion, and this game is in its heart consummate psychological horror, and for all its flaws I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Finals Week

So no article this week. I was working on it but it wasn’t really up to snuff (I swear I have standards) so I should be back next weekend with something new for public consumption.

Lotsa love!

~ Lucas Paynter

Retcon Rainbow

While I’ve spoken about remakes of classic games in the past, one facet I didn’t really cover that I’d like to now is the aspect of retcons.

If for some reason you’re not familiar with the term, it basically refers to retroactively changing the continuity of something that’s already been released, often to justify a present story line or explain something that was left unexplained. Comic books are often ruined by retcons, as writers have to continuously build on hundreds of issues of past material; in extreme cases, decades worth of work can be shamelessly violated by a retcon desired purely to make the material cater to the common audience.

While retcons in games don’t happen nearly so often, they do happen, and with curious and mixed results.

For a simple example, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes made a series of minor retcons in an effort to ‘clean up’ the game- some more successful than others.

For one thing, all the women with interesting accent were shifted over to American accents. In some cases it was sensible (as with Mei Ling, who was born and raised in the united states), questionable (with Naomi Hunter, who could’ve really had the accent either way) or downright stupid (as with Nastasha, who recalls in her childhood when Chernobyl melted down near her home.

Over-the-top action sequences were added when Snake defeated bosses largely for their own sake- they neither helped nor harmed the plot or the overall continuity of the games.

In particular though, little dialogue quibbles were changed. Odd things were cut out- like Miller’s line stating Herbert Hoover was a racist in regards why there were no Japanese members of the FBI during Hoover’s administration- while other bits were added in, particularly an off-the-cuff line referencing the series shadow men, the Patriots, who previously had no mention in the first MGS.

Of course, all in all, the majority of these changes were pretty minor. Naomi and Mei Ling retained their American accents for better or for worse when Metal Gear Solid 4 roamed into town, but nothing else the game did had any real impact either on the subsequent titles or even how they were percieved.

In some cases, retconning can be used to clean up past mistakes. In the remake of the original Lunar: The Silver Star, the PSX version makes a few cosmetic changes on the map, particularly with the location where the Grindery itself comes to a halt in order to better match up with the map location in Lunar 2.

Also of note, by adding in the additional final dungeon in Lunar 1, a major continuity hole regarding the location of the Goddess Tower is cleaned up, as in the Sega CD versions the tower drastically changed locations without explanation.

This isn’t to say of course that retconning is limited strictly to remakes- rather, it’s just harder to define them outside of remakes. With long term mediums such as television and comic books, retcons usually occur as part of keeping a series going- in the case of comic books, indefinetely.

With games, it’s hard to say how much with a twist on something is meant to be an awaited development or some attempt to perpetuate the story.

With Metal Gear Solid, for example, I’m never sure how much of anything that occurs is the product of long term planning. Kojima’s constant insistence that every MGS game is his last one doesn’t help (as the man clearly has no follow through to these claims/threats).

Metal Gear Solid 4 denotes this well. Before the first actual screens were released, a page of concept art showing line drawings of all the characters was released. One must take note that Snake was not old and he was wearing a different sneaking suit. How much then, of MGS4’s plot which hinged so much on Snake’s aging, was built from this decision? How much of it was the result of fore-planning?

It’s hard to say. For example, the plot twist as to who the original Patriots were and their relation to MGS1’s secondary characters was probably one of my favorite surprises in MGS4, but was this planned from the time of MGS3 or was this the result of someone at Konami saying, “Hey, it’d be interesting if…”

This isn’t to say it’s a bad thing, nor am I even quick to mark this as a retcon, sloppy or otherwise. It’s more a question of whether or not there was any real plan- because if there’s not, even if the details change over time (which can happen even during the writing process and don’t necessarily hunder the story) it can run the risk of a story devolving- fast.

Time travel is one means which retconning can be explored and abused, and no series knows this better or does it better than Legacy of Kain. In the first game alone Kain changes the past near the end of the game and changes the landscape of Nosgoth as he knows it for his actions.

The sequel, Soul Reaver, was meant to be a simple follow-up that would culminate with Raziel defeating Kain and eradicating the vampires from Nosgoth. An encroaching deadline and disatisfaction with the endgame material prompted the developers to completely redefine the game’s outcome entirely, ending it prematurely after defeating the fourth boss and leading Raziel into Nosgoth’s past to really frak with history.

Soul Reaver 2 engaged this wholeheartedly, exploring the very idea of changing history and culminating with Raziel killing his past self.

What made the series work however is that these changes were done with intent and well handled. Soul Reaver was not intended on the outset to go the way it did, but the developers at least utilized it in full.

Part of what I’m getting to is that retcons aren’t bad- they can be good or even sorely needed, as is the case with the Resident Evil series.

Actually, I should say that nothing frustrates me more than the original Resident Evil. It’s not that the game is bad- in fact, I love the game. It’s just that it’s impossible to get an ending that meshes up with the series continuity. There is no presentable outcome in which Chris, Jill, Barry and Rebecca all get out alive.

More frustrating, Chris, Jill and Barry definitely survive (since Barry can save Jill in one of the endings of Resident Evil 3), while Rebecca’s survival has been left intentionally vague to the point that no one has any clue what happened to her to date.

The game has had three iterations- the original on the PSX, the remake on the GameCube, and the railgun version within Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, and none of these have answered the question.

RE: Umbrella Chronicles was in itself an interesting package- the Resident Evil 1 remake added nothing new (though at least characters were finally staying together, which just made more sense), while the Resident Evil Zero arc was ‘fixed’ just a little so the villain was no longer a long-haired pretty boy (which felt grossly incongruent with… everything on the planet).

On the other hand, the Resident Evil 3 story arc had what very little existed in it to begin with stripped out entirely and pretty much followed Jill and Carlos running around into the precinct and ending their game… which makes no canonical sense whatsoever on too many levels to count.

It’s not all bad, of course. In fact, the new Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles makes numerous positive changes with regards to the Code: Veronica arc that makes it a consistently better narrative in practically every regard.

Regarding the characters, Steve Burnside is considerably less annoying and now makes a number of wisecracks and smartass comments for many situations. Alfred Ashford’s annoying laugh is gone while his sister, Alexia, is presented as being much crueler and domineering, and kills her own brother for not having awoken her soon enough.

Claire Redfield is more freaked by the events of Resident Evil 2 in this telling but because of this is allowed to transition into a stronger character in Code: Veronica, and so in fact benefits from this telling. Additionally Alexander Ashford, the father of the psychotic twins who served as C:V’s nemeses, actually makes a real appearance and lends better to his role in the narrative.

Many boss fights are greatly improved as well. The Nosferatu fight, which was once dull and pretty much involved standing back and shooting since he mostly just grabbed at you with his long arms or spat poison at you, is now set in a large snowy environment (thus also using the underused Antarctic setting) where the freak moves around unnaturally fast and making many more interesting attacks.

Similarly, the boss fight against post-monster Steve now involves something more than run-get hit once-run some more-cutscene. Not too mention monster-Steve looks much more menacing simply thanks to little design touches.

One new areas was added, a sort of deathtrap maze that Claire and Steve are dropped into early on in the story. While this might sound like an arbitrary change, it actually makes more sense than what originally occurred in the game, as Alfred cackled about dropping them into some sort of deathtrap and never really had any follow-through.

Aside from all that, the story was generally just trimmed for time- elements like Chris’ time on Rockfort Island were cut out entirely for the simple grace of the fact that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAPPENED THERE.

Plus since he was alone it wouldn’t really lend well to two-player mode.

All in all, Code: Veronica came out better for it and is an example of retcon-gone-right. I wish the original game played and felt more like this one. Maybe it would’ve been scary. Or memorable.

Hell, maybe people would’ve actually remembered it for what it technically was: Resident Evil 4.

The Complete Package

Collector’s editions have become less collectible. In fact, they’ve become bloody common in a way.

A lot can be blamed on the way they’ve been handled in the U.S. The truth is, we haven’t gotten much in the way of Collector’s Editions of games. And when we do, they suck half the time.

Particularly popular these day are the requisite metal cases… which to be honest, I don’t entirely like. It’s largely that they’re unprotected and can chafe far too easily. Nothing worse than a collectible that can get thrashed upon entry. Part of the inherent value of your average CD based game is that the paperwork is transferable- the label, disc and manual can be moved to another case with great ease. These are the parts that matter.

Of course, this is more of a personal sticking point. Having worked in a video game store for quite some time, I see a lot of metal cases come in- beat up, colors rubbed off, dented- stuff like that.

It doesn’t help that these are often poorly designed cases. Halo 3 was particularly notorious as a common problem in shipping resulting in discs becoming dislodged in the collector’s edition of the game, resulting in them becoming scratched while shipping. Because of this, the standard edition or the more expensive legendary edition became the way to go- only a sorry sap ended up buying the so-called collector’s edition.

Another prime example is Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. With this game, particularly the X-Box 360 version, the game was packaged in a loose, empty case with a cardboard CD wallet from which both the game disc and the bonus disc could not easily be removed, certainly not for repeated usage. What this almost inevitably resulted in was a collector’s disc that was actually far less desirable than the standard edition if only because the standard edition was less likely to be thrashed due to poor packaging.

Often times the bonuses aren’t any better. A common inclusion in games these days are a separate disc including ‘making of’ featurettes and the like. While it isn’t bad to include these features, they hardly constitute a selling point. Only the most die-hard fans are going to want to watch these, and it’s almost certain they’ll only want to watch them once.

Soundtracks, in my opinion, are the way to go. A lot of work is put into a game’s score and often it goes underappreciated. On top of that, soundtracks don’t often enjoy such heavy release in the U.S. To see a soundtrack get included in a game as a promotional item is often a great way to give the music to the fans that can’t get it legitimately any other way. Hell, I preordered Silent Hill: Shattered Memories at GameStop just for the soundtrack. And I hate GameStop!

My wife favors art-books. I’m a little mixed on them myself, as I’m not usually compelled to revisit a whole book of art any more than I necessarily am a ‘making of’ disc. However, I am particularly fond of when art is used gratuitously in the packaging and the manual. In fact, one of my favorite aspects of the PSX Lunar releases (which I’ll speak more on shortly) was the use of concept art in the large, full-color manuals. It made the books utterly gorgeous to look at as one skimmed through them.

In other cases, knick-knacks aren’t half bad either. Resident Evil 5 included a necklace, a patch and a figure, as well as a cloth bag in addition to the metal encased game and bonus disc.

Of course, this was all packaged in a flimsy cardboard box that’s liable to bend at the first sign of pressure. Comparing this on the other hand to the Japanese version which my wife just insisted on ordering, which came packaged in an elaborate and comparatively thicker box with a sleekly designed USB drive disguised as a virus capsule and, well… I feel kinda short shrifted.

Part of the problem in my own experience is that I may be used to shiny packages. I was buying games in the heyday of Working Designs… you know, before they couldn’t secure any major games and were eventually ax-murdered by Sony.

But seriously, their packages were the best. The original Lunar: Silver Star Story when released on the PlayStation included two game discs, a soundtrack, a ‘Making-of’ disc, a hardcover, full-color 100+ page booklet, and a cloth map. Lunar 2 only one-upped this with a whole little box of extras.

And this was standard for their games.

Admittedly, it made the titles more expensive than the average RPG out there (and in all probability this limited planning may have lent to their demised) but from a collector’s standpoint quality condition copies of their titles are worth a lot of money these days, and will likely only be worth more as time goes on.

While the Working Designs method may not be entirely the way to go from a marketing standpoint, the games they released felt special because, Collector’s Edition or not, holding one of their set felt like a lot of work was put into it.

Unfortunately, most Collector’s Editions don’t feel so spiffy. In fact, many feel downright half-assed.

Take the Batman: Arkham Asylum C.E. set released a few months ago. The highly touted batarang included in the set was made of cheap plastic and came out of the box highly scratched up- I haven’t seen a single one that actually looked descent. The game was packaged in a cardboard double-disc case (game and bonus disc) which looks nice in the case but seem endangered on a shelf amidst a collection. In fact, aside from the leatherbound book of inmates (whose info can be viewed in the game itself) the best part of the whole set was the instruction booklet, which was colorful and full of character, versus the standard edition’s paper-thin black-and-white instruction set.

Much of this seems to come from the idea that Collector’s Editions are meant to entice the average mook on principle more than they’re designed to entice average… y’know… collectors. How else does one explain such a poorly designed batarang that seems to be manufactured purely to save money for the publishers?

Part of the real problem this comes around to is coupled with the advent of digital content. Already, it’s not uncommon to see some sort of download or ingame bonus promised to people who preorder at major establishments as a sales incentive.

Hell, a year ago I preordered the new Prince of Persia at GameStop (and again, I hate that place! ) on the promise of a special skin allowing me to use the Sands of Time Prince. When I actually got the game, I was ‘rewarded’ with a little code booklet that I could’ve gotten off the internet two days later.

Now, this is more of an exception than the rule. Often, codes are provided for players to redeem to download their special preorder weapon or some such ilk.

Doesn’t it become apparent that we’re being had?

Particularly upsetting to me personally, recently, was Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins. Despite my misgivings with Mass Effect (which I may give another chance to one day) I decided to pick up the game. I won’t get to play it until school’s out, but I figured it’d be nice to have it there, waiting.

Then, at my game store workplace, we get in the collector’s edition, and so I read the back. Among the first thing I see is a touting of the ‘complete version of the game.’

Seriously? The complete version of the game? I just paid sixty bucks for an incomplete game?

I know it’ll run from start to finish. I don’t mind downloadable content being released down the line either. But am I seriously being sold something, out the door, which the developers themselves will admit is not all there?

It’s already seldom I see a Collector’s Edition I actually want. In fact, with the exception of Fallout 3’s lunchbox last year, I feel as though the majority of them are worth skipping. But are we now hitting the point where companies are comfortable selling us the bare minimum on release day and charging us money for the meat on the bones?

Part of the problem, admittedly, does come down to digital distribution. Because developers can now offer digital incentives for either preorder or collector’s purposes, it’s much easier to ‘build’ an incentive that doesn’t involve a manufacturing cost. I willing to brush off the Sands of Time Prince as an anomaly as most developers know better than the hand out a cheat code for a preorder bonus.

At the same time though, it begs the question of what the audience themselves really wants. That is to say, if this is all it takes to sell a collector’s edition or a preorder, are they wrong to do so?

To backpedal a bit, I made mention of the various editions released for Halo 3 upon its release. My workplace ordered a mass of Halo 3’s, all shapes, all sizes, upon its release. We had over a hundred of the Legendary Editions. I had to concede, despite my non-Halo fan status, that the helmets looks pretty sweet.

But in the end, we found out that most people didn’t want the helmet. All sorts of people came in, and part of the problem that became apparent is that the average Halo player doesn’t want a helmet or even cares about a helmet. They just want to go into multiplayer and shoot their friends. We weren’t able to even clear out the helmets until they were marked down for as much as the game itself previously retailed for new- and even then, it took awhile.

And it’s not that no one liked the helmet, it’s just that they didn’t want it. Often times when people ask about Collector’s Editions of games, the first thing they want to know is if there’s more game in the C.E. version- if there’s not, they don’t buy it.

Are these the kinds of people Collector’s Editions are meant to cater towards? Or does this suggest an over saturation in the market?

Alternately, let’s take a look at Demon’s Souls, released by Atlus. The game released right away with a C.E. version available- after selling unusually well, Atlus announced they would issue more copies of the standard version of the game, but the C.E. edition- which only came in a special box with a strategy guide- would be discontinued. Already the game has shot up $20 on Ebay.

Mine’s still sealed. Now it shall ever remain so. I shall buy a standard edition when I am ready to start playing the game.

My callous hording of unwrapped goods notwithstanding, this seems to be what a Collector’s Edition is supposed to be about. And it’s not even a great set. But it’s title that is more likely to collect actual collectors and the edition itself was made available at launch but allowed to dissipate quickly pursuant to release.

Part of what makes Demon’s Souls notable is that it’s the polar opposite of the Halo 3 debacle. With Halo 3, Microsoft tried to make sure everyone had an even stab at the Collector’s Edition of the game, without any regard the very terming of such an edition. The “Legendary Edition” became anything but that, turned out to be common as mud and will be fortunate if it holds any long term value at all.

This shouldn’t be confused with cheapening the inherent value of the game itself, but rather the market value. Terming something as being for a collector implies that it is, in some way, collectable. By making it readily available at every corner store in town, it cheapens it for the people who thought they had to scramble to get it and makes it less remarkable for those who didn’t make the effort.

To make a point of example, since the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 I’ve had my share of people asking for the Prestige Edition of the game- which touts a set of functioning night-vision goggles in the set. The store I work at was careful to order a considerably small number- the Halo 3 debacle taught us well- but this has also made the set something of a more desired commodity as those who did not get it now wish they had.

At the time of this writing, I don’t know what the longterm value of this set will prove to hold- but it seems to be that the people who really wanted it got it, and those who didn’t, well… they were left wanting.

And cruel as it sounds, maybe that’s the way it should be with Collector’s Editions. They should be things that the people who really want can desperately pursue, not some common commodity anyone can get a hold of.

Part of making them so is making them desirable. Put care into the design. Put things in the that the people who really want to support the game or the series will want. At the same time, don’t cheapen the standard edition in the process (as was the case with Batman: Arkham Asylum’s booklet).

Putting this kind of care into a Collector’s Edition may in fact make it… collectable!

Ominous thoughts, no?

Game Breakers

The alien pistol in Silent Hill: Homecoming breaks the game. I learned this a couple days ago, after a replay of what I normally consider to be a fairly challenging survival horror game was turned into a cakewalk with my sci-fi weaponry in hand.

Now, I’ll grant, as it’s a replay bonus, it’s allowed to do this. I’ve braved the game’s monsters, earned my reward… which is senseless, merciless slaughter of all who stand in my way.

But as a game where the designers severely restricted bullets and encouraged players to learn enemy quirks and time dodges precisely… it seems underwhelming to just point, aim and shoot like an idiot.

It’s considerably worse when this sort of game-breaking stuff is integrated into the primary game experience itself. And I’m not talking about momentary shifts of power, such as the last sword given in the original Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which provided unlimited killing potential because it did so at the cost of the ability to rewind time.

I’m talking about things that are given to you and consciously or unconsciously shatter the challenge. Often times these elements are tucked away, just past the line of sight.

A fantastic example of this is the Shield Rod in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The aforementioned Rod can be acquired about a quarter of the way through the game, and on its own merely seems like a neat weapon. However, equipping it in conjunction with a shield will allow you to- by pressing both attack buttons simultaneously- to activate the shield’s hidden power at the cost of magic points.

Some shields are quite harmless- they may do nothing at all or merely provide a handy stat boost. Then you buy the Iron Shield for a few thousand dollars and discover that it, in conjunction with the vaunted rod, serves to unleash unholy terror upon the enemies before you. Twin swords fly forth and raze the landscape in a moment of glorious triumphs!

Which means anything dies. Anything. Even bosses.

And this is the less tame example. Aside from several other, admittedly less easy to acquire, shields with similar combat abilities, the later half of the game allows you to reacquire equipment that was stripped from Alucard early on, including the namesake Alucard Shield.

When combined with the rod and activated, the mere act of holding the shield outward and touching an enemy with it will ravage their meager HP stores and modestly heal the dhampir hero in the process. The damage dealt is absurd for such a passive attack and none, even Dracula himself, will survive.

The worst sin about this exploit is that it bypasses the need for any skill in what is argued to already be an unusually easy game for an otherwise challenging series. With the Alucard Shield you no longer even need to know how to fight- only to jump.

Another piece of equipment- though comparatively far less menacing- is the reaper blade in the first Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the original X-Box.

Part of the beauty of the first title- if only for fans such as me- is that it made one appreciate the art of the Slaying of the Vampyres. That said, it wasn’t easy. You had to beat the crap out of one, make sure you had enough clearance (read: nothing else trying to beat the crap out of you) and inject them with a dose of lethal splinterage.

Then, partway through the game, Giles gives Buffy a double-edged hand-blade which can be used in normal attacks, has no breaking threshold, and decapitates with reckless abandon.

Anything I fight with the reaper blade dies. Horribly. If things didn’t turn to dust all around me, heads would be everywhere. As things to do turn to dust I’m left with large piles of dust a couple feet apart from much smaller piles of dust.

It’s not that the weapon’s not fun to use- in fact, I wish I could use it in earlier levels- it’s just that it seems like it was placed into the game without consideration of the damage it would do to the play-balance. It feels like it should be powered up first or have a cool-down meter.

Instead it just kills. And kills. And kills.

Game-breaking needn’t be limited to conventional equipment, of course. Final Fantasy VI has a game-breaker that trumps all.

In FFVI, the characters can start learning magic. Among the first spells provided are the seemingly unrelated Vanish and Doom.

Doom (now called Death in the current games) theoretically kills something instantly, except it never works. Vanish makes something disappear- you can’t hit it with attacks, but magic works 100% of the time on it.

You see where this is going?

With the exception of some undead dragon, every boss in the game short of the final boss could be Vanish/Doomed (and it’s possibly that the final boss could be and I’m just forgetting, so spare me). Bosses with powerful techniques, masses of HP and devastating attacked could be rendered invisible and promptly beaten like kittens in a potato sack.

The Vanish/Doom trick is a staple FFVI’s design, like some sort of ultimate dirty trick. Exploits like this and the rod, and weapons like the Shield Rod and the reaper blade don’t necessarily ruin the games where they can be found, but they invariably subvert the intended experience.

The games are still fun, but are they perhaps less fun? Part of the joy of challenge is using skill and technique to overcome an obstacle. While there is something to be said for a power rush of overcoming a series of foes with great ease, in the end you’re just charging forward with your shield out, and if that becomes all you’re doing, it becomes less and less about developing a skill (however frivolous it may be) and more about taking the absolute path of least resistance. If one is going to take the easiest way out of every available problem, is a game really still worth playing at that point?

Terrible Twos

Every so often something miraculous comes out- a game that is either an entirely original title, or one that reestablishes a long dormant franchise to a new audience, with something brilliant and enticing to it.

Games like Metal Gear Solid and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, highly reviewed across the board. Action epics like Devil May Cry, role-playing classics like Chrono Trigger and even 8-bit classics like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.

Games that shine as pillars among the wasteland as to why gaming is great.

Then comes the sequel.

This isn’t a problem for everything of course, but it seems like there’s been so many cases where something great comes out and what makes it great is inevitably marred in some way by the need/demand to follow it up.

I’m going to go into a few examples, but the best one is probably Devil May Cry 2. Capcom had a hit with the first DMC- they knew it and pushed hard for a sequel. A sequel handled by a different team with a different art style, and beyond a few trademark moves felt barely like the original.

The game was offensively easy, the graphics were muddy and uninteresting, and Dante himself was reduced from a largely upbeat wise-cracker to a quiet, surly jerk. It’s like he got in touch with his inner Squall Leonhart.

The team who handled this game clearly had no idea what made the first game great and weren’t given a lot of time to find out.

Embarrassingly enough, I bought the game when it came out. I heard the cries, the warnings, and I thought to myself “It couldn’t possibly be that bad.” But it was. It was bad. Sickeningly bad. It was so bad that I refused to buy DMC3 until it dropped to the $20 mark, not because I felt the game could possibly be bad (the buzz all around was decidedly positive), but because I was honestly under the impression that Capcom owed me money.

The hardest thing to talk about this game is that as a sequel and just as a game in general, there’s so much wrong with it, that it’s ridiculous. It feels like such an unrelated title that it seems like it’s only related by the grace of Dante himself. And he ain’t that graceful here.

Let’s look at something with a little more meat: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. PoP2 provides more substance because there’s a clear process as to what went wrong with it- and while the game isn’t fundamentally bad, it isn’t fundamentally as good either.

The original PoP of the last gen. was praised across the board- the graphics were beautiful, the gameplay was brilliant and the story was meaningful. In fact, the only point of contention was the combat system- which was in no way bad, merely limited in scope.

So when the developers took the sequel to task, they tried to revamp the combat system. Okay, that’s fine. Then they decided to make the sequel all about the combat system.

Uh…

Then they decided to cater the game to the people who didn’t buy the first one by adding high concept stuff like: Blood. Swearing. Cleavage. Angry brooding ‘heroes’. Rock music. Lots and lots of fighting. A less charming actor for the Prince.

Now, it’s one thing to try and make your game more appealing to people who didn’t like the first one- but you don’t do that by making your game so completely less appealing to fans of the original in the process.

Now, I’ll grant, PoP2 is an extreme case- most designers don’t violate the trust of their original audience quite so explicitly. Most do it by accident, not by design.

In its defense also, PoP2 was still playable. It was rushed. It was buggy. Whenever the characters moved their mouths the sight was so horrific that I was certain I was about to be sucked into hell- but the game was playable and largely fun, which is more than I can say about DMC2 which technically so much more polished but technically so much worse to ‘experience.’

In fact, a fair number of flawed sequels are still perfectly playable. Take Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for example.

I’ve probably played MGS2 more than any other game in the series, despite the fact it’s my least favorite. The gameplay itself was a logical but well structured improvement over the original game, and while I think Snake Eater in particular did a lot of stuff I favor and Guns of the Patriots was a technical marvel, I so happened to have one summer which I ran through MGS2 a couple dozen times, deviously refining my technique until no guard would ever see me and nobody would ever die- only sleep a deep, never-ending sleep.

It’s just that the story blew chunks.

The story of MGS2 starts as a sequel and then becomes a side story which is kind of a sequel and slowly becomes a little connected again to the actual plot until you realize that it’s conspiracy theory schlock with a sci-fi edge that won’t be rationalized until the next two games come out, one to explain how we got here and another to explain where we’re going.

Much of the problem drawn is that MGS2 seemed fundamentally confused as to what kind of sequel it was. After all, we have many sorts of sequels.

We have the Final Fantasy sequels which really just rely on names, creatures and a guy named Cid but are otherwise entirely unconnected in terms of history and location. We have continuity heavy sequels like what comprised a large portion of the Legacy of Kain series where everything is tied so snugly together that if you tried jumping into the game late you’d just be very, very confused. Then we have episodic sequels, where the games are connected but written so that you can hop into a later installment without being completely confused like, say, the Jak & Daxter series.

MGS2 started as the latter, picking up a few years after the original, filling in the gaps… then suddenly became a Final Fantasy game about Raiden taking on a totally new team of terrorists, trying to confuse the player in the process with startling plot twists which are completely spoiled in the process based on the fact that you had to play the Tanker chapter first so you pretty much know all the accusations of Snake sinking the tanker are total bullshit…

And then! the game turns around and goes overboard with the continuity, turning the whole Raiden story into a (not so) clever rehash of the first game’s plot and concepts with enough overdrawn conspiracy rhetoric to make Amy Hennig (Legacy of Kain’s writer) raise an eyebrow.

The short hand is that the game never knew what it was, and it showed.

Chrono Cross had a similar problem; it never knew what it was until after the final boss fight. It suddenly realized it barely qualified as a sequel on every possibly level until you beat the final boss, the Dragon God, at which point the game exclaimed “$%^&! I’ve got a legacy to uphold!”

At which point CC drew in as much BS about Schala and clone daughters and anything else that it could as if to exclaim “See! See?! I’m a sequel!”

It barely qualified.

Not all games have such a severe case of identity crisis. Sometimes a sequel tries to be something new. Sometimes it’s considered to fail miserably.

Take Zelda II: Adventure of Link way back in the NES days. It maintained enough staples of the first game to fairly qualify as a sequel, but it also was so completely different that many people dislike it not necessarily on its own merits as a game, but because it was so completely not what the first game was, or what any game in the series since has aspired to be.

It made a jarring number of changes- it replaced the overhead dungeons with side-scrolling, platforming environments. It added magic spells and experience for leveling up. Link was not the last young man on the planet.

All in all it actually came together as a perfectly good game. It’s just not what people wanted in a sequel, and what people want in a sequel is a degree of familiarity. It’s not to say designers can’t do something new or shouldn’t do something new, but it seems that when one invests in a trustworthy name they expect a trustworthy experience.

This is actually the case with a lot of games and their sequels, but it also begs to ask would a game be better if it wasn’t a sequel? Would it be worse?

Devil May Cry 2 might be the best one to look at objectively. Beyond a few physical traits, Dante barely resembles his former self. There’s no real connection to the first game’s story at all, and what’s there is easily omitted or overwritten. The combat style could be argued to ‘borrow’ from DMC1 more than anything else- the combo system is more limited and less intense.

It’s entirely possibly if the designers simply had removed Dante and changed the name it could’ve been an entirely different title and no one would’ve batted an eye. Of course, it probably also would’ve sold less without the DMC name since it would still suck.

Of course, you can’t do this with everything. MGS2 still plays heavily like an MGS game with or without Snake (which it did largely without him). Similarly, as much as Prince of Persia: Warrior Within was for all intentions a deep cutting betrayal, it still handled very much like a PoP game- in fact, if it had been a different Prince entirely it probably would’ve made more sense than claiming the protagonist to be the Sands of Time Prince.

It seems like problems such as these come about because someone higher up just doesn’t understand their target audience.

Take Super Mario Bros. 2. Which game you think of depends drastically on where you live and what you know. If you live in Japan then you’ll think of a game similar to the first one, but with new features and a much meaner streak in design.

If you live in the U.S., which is more likely given this blog is only available in English (no one’s licensed GamEntropy for international distribution, sadly) then you know a game where you plucked turnips out of the ground and sometimes went into subspace.

Many people in the U.S. dislike their version of SMB2 because it was not similar enough to the original game. It’s not because it was a bad game, but because to them it was not a Mario game. If we had gotten the original version of the game, Doki Doki Panic, the game would’ve been exactly as good as it is now and no one out here would’ve played it because it wasn’t Mario.

Obviously this sort of switch out is harder to do these days- you can’t just swap out the character sprites, change the opening text and be done with it (unless you worked on DMC2, possibly). But it says something about how an audience interprets a game and what a sequel really means.

A sequel being bad isn’t necessarily the result of a rush job- it can be, such as with PoP2, which was released roughly a year after the first one, and it showed. At the same time, MGS2 had about 3 years and was perfectly polished yet full of bad ideas.

Part of the trouble with doing a sequel is trying to make it like the original but not like the original. It does need to feel like it’s connected to the original entry (otherwise, admittedly, you have Zelda II), but it needs to be different enough to justify moving forward into a new installment so it doesn’t feel like rehash.

A symptom of this may also come from developers trying to challenge themselves while keeping the audience happy- other cases may come from developers handed a task to do instead of working on what they want.

Regardless, once development for a sequel starts responsibility does fall on them to choose the best point between the rifts of old and new to let the sequel bridge. If one side ends up longer than the other, then well, the whole bloody thing turns out uneven.

Decisions, Decisions

One of the generally weaker aspects in gaming is the approach games take to multiple endings. Here, we have a genre that can utilize elements of a ‘choose your own adventure’ book without including the crappy jump to page 68 that just kills you every time the option comes up.

The downside though is that games that tout multiple choices and multiple outcomes often don’t do it very well. I’m not just talking about the endings themselves, which usually are either predictable or only mildly varied, but about the methods to acquire these endings… which are also usually predictable or mildly varied.

In the beginning of choice, this isn’t a bad thing. The very existence of the concept itself was new, from saving a couple of characters in the original Resident Evil to rescuing Kaufman and saving Cybil in Silent Hill, these things were cool for their time… but inevitably we expect something more.

Yet even today, we still see many of the same mechanics being utilized, or see good ideas go underused.

When I was playing Saw not too long back, I knew ahead of time there were two endings, and having heard you could supposedly choose who lives and dies with regards to the major characters, I thought that might have an effect.

But I couldn’t choose who lived or died… pretty much everyone just lived, and then died shortly thereafter with no help from me. Then, when I arrived at the ending, they gave me two big freakin’ doors with the ending types written on them so I knew just what I was getting into.

This was a clear example of the most black and white type of ending choice out there. While the endings themselves were really more about the character instead of the usual “Will you be a dick?” option so often employed in games that like you to wrestle between good and evil, the mechanic itself used in Saw really just affirmed that this wasn’t going to be a game with heavy replay value.

By far one of the worst examples of this sort of black and white choice is in one of my favorite games, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Near the end of the game you confront Bastilla, who has totally turned to the dark side, and she offers you a choice between staying with the good guys and getting destroyed or teaming up with her to overthrow the lord of the Sith.

Technically, the choice itself isn’t the source of problem. This isn’t to say that it’s implemented in some brilliant fashion, but it’s done in a way that’s narratively interesting, so I forgive it.

Actually, my biggest problem with it stems from a replay I did. Noting the wide variety of “I kill you!” choices available that I never utilized, I decided to do a run through the game with a character whose sole solution to every problem was wanton slaughter.

Naturally within the first twenty minute she comes off looking evil as fuck.

So, as I expected. I play through the game, I smash relentlessly. Then I get the choice.

Bastilla offers, reasons, argues… I just keep threatening to kill her, over and over again. So, naturally, when my raging psychopathic perspective culminates and Bastilla realized I’m probably not going to won over because I only do the right thing if it happens to let me kill the thing that’s right in front of me, I’m forced on the light side path despite the fact that I’m a violent lunatic and I get a heavy shift of light side points, making me look considerably less evil and nerfing my Force Lightning somewhat.

I’m not sure what moral lesson I’m supposed to learn from this. Indiscriminate killing is okay if life forces you in the right direction? If I’m psychotic enough I’ll eventually loop around the Dark Side like it’s a race track and get back on the right path?

It’s not so much that I was annoyed by the lack of a third neutral ending as I was by the illusion of options. I’m obviously a violent brute- I’m clearly not one of the good guys just as much as I’m not one of the bad guys- why is no one trying to kill me? Why does Jolee Bindo just keep giving me firm brow beatings? Why the hell is Carth Onassi okay with me as a human being?!

So, yeah, that was pretty bad. The choice options were pretty much par for the course with Bioware, but this was a case where when I actually explored all the options, it became apparent that some of these options just didn’t make any sense.

Part of this trouble comes from having only two endings, which can summarily be boiled down to “Yay, Republic!” or “Let’s go Sith!” Not much subtlety there.

A better use of choice nearly came out of Silent Hill: Homecoming last year… until the designers kinda flubbed its potential. The Silent Hill series when compared to Star Wars… and possibly a lot of other stuff… has the advantage of not being shackled by a large-scale conflict of good and evil, or even any overall continuity since the games in the series tend to stand alone.

Silent Hill: Homecoming had dialogue options in the game that let you decide just what you wanted to ask, how you wanted to react and define what your Alex Shepherd cares about and where that might take him.

Except all those choices didn’t really matter. Only three choices actually mattered, two regarding your parents and one regarding whether or not you were going to be a dick and keep the first aid kit for yourself when your friend is dying on the table.

This undercut many of the occurrences because anything you tried to care about wasn’t wholly relevant in the long run. It didn’t matter if I placed value on finding out what happened to the town versus how my childhood sweetheart was doing, or whose well-being I prioritized. The two branching choices they went with weren’t irrelevant- but things that could’ve been weren’t given the chance to be.

Another underlying problem in this avenue of choice may be present in the active choosing thereof. In a way, it says something to see what someone does of their own accord versus when what they’re doing is pointed out to them.

In example, if you were actively presented with an option to choose to kill or not to kill someone, versus just playing a game where it happened to be something you could do, would you be as likely to do it?

Okay, so some of you would.

My point though, is that when we’re actively presented with a choice, we tend to make our decision based on the information of that choice. Ergo, that choice which we make may then not necessarily be in line with what we’d actually do if we weren’t presented with a sentence that makes us stop and think about it.

Silent Hill 2 presented a different approach to gauging the outcome and circumvented the usual methods. Rather than demanding some active decision, the game analyzed what you did based on what you examined, listened to, how you protected Maria (or didn’t) and other, lesser things.

It didn’t work perfectly, sure. In fact, the biggest problem is that it seemed to lock players into particular paths based on their play-styles- I routinely talked to people who couldn’t help but get the Maria ending (which I got exactly once and I liked) whereas I always got stuck with the Leave ending (which I disliked), which most of these people said they could never get.

On replays it made it difficult to track what ending you were gonna get before you got it. It could be argued that it punished the curious and the thorough. It didn’t allow much for error where Maria was concerned (unless you thought she was a bitch and didn’t care about her).

Still, it was different. It integrated the determination for the ending much more naturally into the game’s infrastructure than most any game before or since.

Part of what made SH2’s ending system work was the way choice was integrated into the experience. Another part of what made it work, however, was the subtlety- the fact that there were no clear right or wrong actions to take. If SHV had used such an option just with the choices given, the experience could’ve been much more interesting.

I’ll admit, I’m a little lukewarm about multiple ending approaches. I believe I’ve said in the past that they generally tend to lack a more concrete structure to their outcomes. But I do enjoy the choices made in the game, and if I’m going be given choices to make I’d like to have them play on more subtle notes, and with that, I’d like them to matter.

Finish Him!

Admittedly, this is probably not the best title for this article. I’m not a Mortal Kombat fan, and this article isn’t even really about it, nor will it mention it in any way.

But the name kinda makes sense, so oh well.

So! I like games that make me go an extra mile to kill something. I mean, maybe not all the time, but a lot of the time. I’ve also found a majority of these games happen to be licensed titles, which I’m trying to figure out still if that’s a weird coincidence or if the element of the design I so gracefully refer to as THE KILLING BLOW happens to work better in them.

THE KILLING BLOW (which I will no longer capitalize as from here on that would only be annoying) is basically when you beat an enemy within an inch of his life, but then you have to take that inch.

This of course alters course from the majority of games wherein you just beat the crap out of something until it dies. God of War is a popular example, as it marries both standard gameplay methods with THE KILL… er, the killing blow. In God of War’s case, you can kill something ’til it does or engage in a mini game to finish it off, which will be a lot faster and yield specific rewards. With standard flunkies, you can usually bypass killing them and just target one and rip him apart directly.

Wet played it a bit differently, wherein killing the enemies was purely standardized, but certain major enemies, primarily jackasses who came out with gatling guns, had to be killed by triggering a mini game after dealing a certain amount of damage.

The first time I encountered the killing blow was in the original Silent Hill, where enemies would regenerate if you didn’t stomp ‘em dead while they were on the ground. Sometimes lining up on the enemy could be a little tricky, but it added a new level of tension whereas Resident Evil by contrast, had required that you merely shoot something enough times.

Of course, I did just say that I mostly see this in licensed games so I’d look silly if I just talked about non-licensed games, now I wouldn’t I (though I’ll admit, I conjured up a few more examples than I expected)? Besides, while I’m sure there’s a few more, I think I’ve run out of examples.

The first time I recognized the killing blow for what it was happened to be in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, on the original X-Box.

The good one. The sequel wasn’t as good.

Buffy, I mean. Not the sequel to the X-Box itself. I think the 360 is a marked improvement.

Anyway… in Buffy (yes, I’m a fan of the show. No, I don’t care if you think it’s funny if you’re one of the people that never watched it) you have to slay vampires. Stunning concept, huh? But what was nice about the game is that they really made sure that you had to do it properly but that there were a number of ways in order to get it done.

Foremost, you’d be relying on the almighty stake to the heart to do the majority of your dusting work. However, you couldn’t just run around and stab the bastards left and right- you had to deplete their health in order to make them tired enough for you to get an opening. Otherwise, they would just keep blocking your pointy stick over and over again, and if you didn’t kill ‘em fast enough they would just regenerate over and over again ’til you got it right.

Or died.

But it didn’t stop there- you could use a crossbow for sniping (which admittedly I didn’t) holy water- both by lobbing holy water grenades or throwing some at small water sources to sanctify then as almighty death spots. There were also hellfire grenades, a super-soaker which could be loaded with fire and holy water, there was a blade you could use for easy decapitations later in the game, and then there were the environments.

Oh, how I loved the environments. You could throw an enemy into the train, kick them into the sunlight, punch them into a nearby fire… the options were pretty numerous. And of course there were shards of exposed wood everywhere, like a broken two-by-four or a mop handle sticking out of a trash can.

There were many ways to kill! And this is what I liked about Buffy, and probably why it sticks out in my mind foremost as an example of the killing blow. Not only could you not beat most conventional enemies into dust with mindless pummeling (except for the zombies) but it made me appreciate the show from a weird standpoint- like just how hard it is to kill a freaking vampire.

I think much of why this stood out in my mind more prominently is while Silent Hill added a dynamic to survival horror combat, Buffy for me was an extreme shift in what action combat relied on.

I’ve seen other games do it since, but none have ever done it for me quite as well as Buffy. It was a game I went back to play time and time again solely to find new and different ways to kill my enemies. Sometimes I would try and rely entirely on environmental kills, which made some normally easier foes much tougher, particularly when you’re trying to position and throw one onto a shard of wood, but another you haven’t dealt with yet interferes with your plans.

I enjoyed the challenge. If there were achievements, I’d probably have all of them.

As I said though, this concept has been used to some degree in other games as well, though maybe not quite with the same level of death.

The recent Batman: Arkham Asylum built its combat around the very same idea I just talked about in Buffy. In the case of Batman, you’re of course not staking your enemies, but in order for them to stay down you do have to knock them out. This isn’t quite as fast as staking, but the bright side is you can always do it- if Buffy’s stake was knocked out of her hand, that was time spent retrieving your weapon before finishing the job.

Of course, Batman, running on better technology and more current design methods, fights much more smoothly. But much of the challenge would be lost if the developers hadn’t employed the killing blow. Because the game operates, Batman fights, well, like Batman. Does the everyman thug really stand a chance?

So, in order to justify letting you take on ten people at once and, y’know, win, the game requires you to clock your enemies in order to make them stay down. What this utilization of the killing blow results in are fights which are made considerably harder than they would otherwise be, by making sure that if you don’t clear the space you need to knock someone out permanently you can very easily get overwhelmed by the five guys you knocked down just a minute ago.

Alternately, Evil Dead: Regeneration used the killing blow method to complement its Devil May Cry-esque gameplay, making sure that when you killed your enemies, you had to look cool doing it. Sufficiently knocking an enemy down meant you could hit a button and trigger the kill move, which usually resulted in something cool with your chainsaw or shotgun. You were safe doing these things too, so with ED:R it was less a case of it being part of the gameplay challenge, versus what we saw with Buffy and Batman, and more intended to be complimentary to the style of the game.

Of course, these are all standard examples of the killing blow in action games, and serve to represent various incarnations of what you’ll usually see. To its credit (and to some people’s dismay) Ghostbusters provided an interesting but logical (to its material) idea a few months ago.

Much in the style of the aforementioned games, Ghostbusters too required the player to deplete their enemy’s health before finishing them off. The catch with Ghostbusters however was that instead of simply dealing a finishing strike, the ghost had to be wrangled and drawn into a trap in order to take them out.

This sort of killing blow was received with somewhat mixed applause. It’s not because the idea was bad- it was right in line with the source material. Nor was it because the mechanic was broken, as it handled fine and did what it was supposed to. Rather, most people who didn’t like the game just seemed to be unhappy with the amount of work it took to finish off your average ghost. Wrangling wasn’t meant to be super easy, and some people are just of the “kill and move on” state of mind.

The killing blow is clearly becoming a more prominent device in gaming as time goes on, with many major titles as stated using it. Even games that don’t rely on it so completely still make some use of the device in part.

For example, Kingdom Heart II required that bosses be finished off with the closing strike of a combo, and would not die even at one HP before then. This was done in part so that no boss could be defeated with Mickey Mouse if the player had to fall back on him, but added a touch of challenge, especially for players used to extended the heck out of their combos.

Way back in the day, the original Legend of Zelda couldn’t be beaten without using a silver arrow to finish Ganon off; without said arrow, ol’ pig head just would not die.

The killing blow is indisputably requiring more effort on the player’s part per encounter, and is not likely to be a device loved by everyone. But for its salt, adding creative means to dealing with enemies can make individual encounters more memorable and satisfying, and can allow designers to space out enemy encounters a little where needed without sacrificing length by demanding the player focus more energy into the fights that do come up when they occur.

Eligible Bachelors

It has occurred to me recently that married men do not represent a large portion of the protagonists in gaming. The majority of these men are either single, recently widowed, or the subject of their significant others simply doesn’t come up.

This isn’t to say I’m necessarily espousing any one marital lifestyle, but let’s see if we can’t get the word out and get some ladies flocking in the right direction.

First up on the list is Jack from Bioshock. We, uh, don’t really know much about him. I mean, he’s white… he might be handsome and he can do some freaky things with his hands (definitely a pick for the fetishists out there).

He definitely does have sturdy hands- and the man is pro with a pipe wrench. He’s capable too- just put a gun in his hand and he can take down a whole airplane if he has to! I think we’ve found the next star of Die Hard!

But don’t think that Jack is all business- he’s sentimental too! He always carries a picture of himself and his parents back on the farm, so you know he got some real familial love and probably isn’t going to have any “issues” down the line.

He’s good with kids too! Or awful! He’ll take down monstrous Big Daddies in order to save the Little Sisters who are stuck with them! Or cannibalize them!

He’s flexible with kids! And that’s the kind of flexibility you’ll need in a long-term relationship. Plus one way or another, he definitely doesn’t support child labor, and that’s the kind of respectability that’s hard to find in this day and age.

So what’s his best trait? Jack’s selling point is that, ladies, you can probably get him to do just about anything with the right amount of coaxing. “Jack? Would you kindly take out the trash? Would you kindly do the dishes? Would you kindly massage my feet?”

And so much more! Remember, he can’t say no (in fact, he probably can’t say much of anything at all).

Okay, so if you’re looking for conversation, Jack’s not your guy. If you’re being harassed, it’s hard to say if he’ll rush to defend your honor… or do anything at all.

So let’s look at another contender.

This guy will speak- loudly. Not only will he defend you in a pinch, he’ll probably rip the guy’s arm, beat him to death and then stuff the appendage down the asshole’s throat just for looking at you the wrong way.

Yes, I’m speaking of Kratos from God of War!

He’s Greek. He’s edgy. He rocks the goatee.

Kratos is more than capable of doing any absurd degree of physical labor- you’ll be amazed with his furniture moving skills! And his voice, wow! Even if you’re on the other side of the supermarket, you know you can hear him “DO YOU NEED ME TO GRAB MORE MILK, WOMAN?!”

It’s worth mentioning that in a crisis, Kratos is the kind of guy whose side you want to lean against. After all, he’s not skittish in the face of blood. Or gore. Any amount of it, really. You can count on him to keep his cool in front of the stuff even if you yourself cannot.

Now, granted, Kratos is recently a widower. He may not want to get close to another woman emotionally (he’ll definitely still bang ‘em though) so trying to form a lasting relationship with him could be a challenge. He may act like a violent jerk, but odds are pretty good that he’s just a big teddy-bear beneath the surface.

In fairness of full disclaimer, I probably should mention he’s a widower because he killed his wife. Nothing to be alarmed about of course, it’s not likely to happen again unless he flies into a violent bloodthirsty rage and really! What are the odds of that?

Anyway, if it does happen he’ll at least feel really bad afterward.

Okay, so Kratos may be a little rough around the edges, and not necessarily the right guy for all the ladies. For those looking for someone a little more down to Earth, James Sunderland of Silent Hill 2 may just be the perfect man.

Now, I’ll admit that much like Kratos, James also used to be married until he also killed his wife. But let’s turn that con into a pro! Look at what a devoted husband he was! James Sunderland dived headfirst into Hell to try to find her! He would drop into random pits, stick has hand into strange, creepy places that no man would dare!

So, you’re probably thinking “Well, that’s because he was married!” Keyword: Was. After all, Silent Hill 2’s endings didn’t exactly have him reuniting with Mary and riding off into the sunset with her. There’s an eligible bachelor out there just waiting to be snatched up!

Now remember ladies, you’ve gotta dress to please. He already made a mistake once- just look at Mary! She dressed like a prude, and James knew it. Maria, his fantasy version of his wife? Totally dressed like a hooker. And that’s what you’ve gotta work in order to snag this dreamboat.

The man is resourceful- he can turn a plank with a nail sticking out of it as a weapon and not bat an eye. He’ll unclog your toilets (just make sure he washes his hands afterwards- and gets under the nails!).

Not too mention his social skills are impeccable- despite meeting a small band of psychopaths in Silent Hill he only really ends up actually killing one of them! That’s a track record I wish I had!

So there you have it- strong, soft spoken and if you’re dying of a mysterious disease he will put you out of your misery if you ask!

Or maybe just because he got sick of your complaining.

The perfect man!