Archive | Prince of Games RSS feed for this section

Splinter Cell: Conviction – or, “How I learned that I am never too old to suck at a game!”

28 Apr

I remember years ago, in love with Rainbow Six for the original Xbox, I picked up Splinter Cell. I played the single player for all of am hour, mostly repeatedly dying on the first enemy I encountered, before getting a phone call that it was time to play online together. The crew assembled, and we played a very lethal game of hide-and-seek, representing the most tense and intense gaming I can remember. Edge of your seat stuff, with a friend and I attempting to infiltrate a building to steal some kind of something, while two other friends played guard with big noisy assault rifles, trying to find us in our air ducts and fill us full of bullets. One friend found it TOO tense, and vowed never to play again. Down one part of our foursome, the game faded away quickly, never to be heard form again. I never even tried the single player campaign again. The End.

So it surprised me, knowing my history with the game, that I was at all interested in Splinter Sell: Conviction. Perhaps some part of me forgot about that excruciating hour of gameplay – that infinite inability to overcome not multiple, but one SINGLE enemy, who I seem to recall was actually sitting in the dark, alone, smoking a cigarette and listening to headphones. Christ, he may even have been in a coma.

Point is, game was specifically difficult for me, and I gave up on it and never came back.

As to the why of it, NJ Adam (aka JNCO Jeans) lured me in with promises of co-op campaign partnership. The single player campaign, allegedly a mere 4-6 hours of gameplay, was therefore ample training for our co-op objective, and JNCO requested 2 weeks of alone time with the game before we make our attempts at duo-greatness.

Let me explain two things. First, I suck at this game. Not like “running into a corner and getting stuck there” FPS-suck (I love you wife!), but more like instinctively and inherently incapable of playing a game this way kind of suck. Like “you can tell me how you want me to do this a million times, but I am NOT going to do it that way” kind of suck.

Secondly, my suckitude knows no bounds, and continues to not get any better.

And I guess let me add one more thing – I still love this game.

The reason for the suck is this: Splinter Cell continues to not be Halo. It is also not Gears of War. It similarly is not Sonic the Hedgehog, nor is it Super Mario Bros., and it most certainly is not Final Fantasy. Were it any of those games, my instincts would kick in right away. I would say “oh, this is a duck-and-cover shooter!” Or I would say “Oh, this is a run-and-gun FPS explosion!” or “Oh look, slow and meticulous puzzle-solving” or “catch all the rings and don’t hit the robotic lady bugs!” or even “let’s walk in a straight line and then level up and swing our over-sized gun/sword-combo over our head in a circle, barely missing my spiky hairdo!” Cause, see, those are things I get.

Splinter Cell asks me to do things I have never done in a game before. Things like “stay hidden at all costs” and “don’t run into a group of enemies firing” and “don’t get shot even once or you will be dead.”

This game continues that old tradition of keeping things tense, and intense. You MUST stay hidden. Your objective is to kill everyone, but to do so from the shadows. You drop down on enemies from steam pipes, or pull them out of windows and toss them to the bricks below. You shoot out lights and throw EMP grenades to shut down electronics. You are rewarded for hand-to-hand kills done stealthily. Your reward: the ability to execute upwards of 4 or 5 enemies at once, form the shadows, all with your silenced pistol.

It reminds me of being 10, and finding a wonderful hiding spot for our neighborhood flashlight tag games. The greatest and worst feeling in the world was remaining hidden, slowing and quieting your breathing as the Seeker quietly marched past your hiding spot, shining his flashlight and calling out your name. There was an almost real sense of impending doom, of the risk inherent in hiding from your foe. It felt envigorating and horrifying all at once.

That’s Splinter Cell for you.

The main problem I have is this: in real life and in assumed game persona, I am not sneaky. Far from it. Imagine an elephant. Imagine an elephant trying to tip-toe. Imagine this elephant, trying to tip toe and carrying a giant bag filled with brass heirlooms. Imagine this elephant is also wearing a one-man-band getup, and every time he takes a step, the damn cymbals SLAM! Also, he accidentally lights fireworks and gets a cell phone call at the same moment he sets off every motion detector alarm in the building.

That’s basically what the bad guys are up against with me. And apparently, as I continue to go back for more punishment … apparently I like those odds.

The Myth of Choice and Willful Ignorance in Games

30 Mar

I can’t say for sure where or when it started. Most of these sorts of things are born in PC gaming, but popularized in mainstream console gaming, so any attempt I make at citing the first occurrence will like be met with Nerd Rage and “No, that was first done on the PC 10 years earlier!”

Yeah, no one cares. PC gaming is for nerds, NERD!

The easiest way to explain it is to call it Morality Gaming. Developers write alternative dialogue options which allow your character to “make choices” and treat the world the way he wants to treat the world. Those quotation marks will be explained shortly …

The best early example in a console (nee PC) game is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Bioware, maker of all morality games ever, allows the player to choose between Light Side and Dark Side actions as they journey to becoming a Jedi. In a universe built around this dichotomy and the major paradigm shifts that usually accompany such a swing, the SW universe was rife with opportunity to shape your world and to explore your character.

In theory anyway.

And for all its strengths, and including this system for its time, KOTOR suffered from the same limitations as all games in this genre – extreme choices. Given any scenario, Bioware was really only able to implement 2-3 choices. So let’s say an old man is being confronted by thugs. You approach in all your Jedi authority and see what’s happening. The game will give you 3 choices:

  1. Neutral – Leave the situation well enough alone.
  2. Light Side – Kill the bad guys and then give all of your worldly possessions to the old man to help him get back on his feet.
  3. Dark Side – Kill the thugs, then kill the man, but steal his ID and go to his house to sleep with his wife and daughters, then kill them, then burglarize the house, then steal his dog.

While comically extreme, none of these choices are what I would really do in the situation. The myth of choice exists, but the variations are completely limited. Further iterations of this game design have yielded many shades of gray in between, and characters can choose motivations rather than actions – for instance, if your character is greedy he might only help for a reward, or if he’s altruistic, he might lecture the old man on his drug habit that was the cause of the original altercation. But on the whole, the spectrum is very limited.

Still, we refer to this as “making choices” in games. Entire games are built around the concept of Good or Evil. But what choices are really being offered?

Typically a character is rewarded for delving fully into one side or the other, and will learn new abilities or powers for become 100% Evil or 100% Good. Story-lines will sometimes differ depending on choices made, such as whether to kill an NPC or save a colony about to be overrun. These sorts of games usually offer achievements for completing the game one way, then another for completing the game making the opposite sorts of choices – in Mass Effect, for instance, an achievement exists for saving a certain character, requiring the sacrifice of another. Conversely, the alternative achievement exists, mostly asking the player to repeat the game and, at the integral moment, make the opposite choice. Let me reiterate, requiring a second playthrough.

I understand, the developers are not requiring a second playthrough. In fact, games have become such long-term investments while simultaneously life has minimized free time as I have aged, making completion of a first playthrough mostly unlikely while a second playthrough is nigh impossible. This is simply not the way we game anymore.  And while I certainly understand the intention of creating a dichotomous system, I would be more likely to fully explore this duality if it really were a choice.

Here’s why we’re willfully ignorant to the fact that “choices” are not actual choices in these games: story arc. Any morality game sets up a series of core plot elements that WILL be met. Imagine that every playthrough gets to point A. Point A lets you choose whether you will make a good choice, leading to Point X, or an evil choice, leading to Point Z. But regardless of what you choose, Point X and Point Z both inevitably lead you to Point B. Lets see this in action:

Point A: Your character gets to a house in the woods. A man outside the house appears to be pouring some  kind of flammable liquid around the base oif the house, and you realize he’s going to light it on fire. You can:

  1. Stop the man, question him, end up having to fight him and kill him. You enter the house and find a family tied up. They are so thankful that the mother of the family gives you her heirloom necklace, a shiny emblem that looks like it might open a secret door …
  2. Ignore the man, and move on. When you are making camp that night you see giant flame lights in the distance. In the middle of the night that man attacks you. You have to kill him. When searching his body, you come across an heirloom necklace, a shiny emblem that looks like it might open a secret door …

Point B: You come across a giant palace, holy looking, with golden light shining from its windows. A giant golden gate bars passage, but there is a keyhole in the gate … that shape is oddly familiar …

It doesn’t matter what you’ve chosen – in fact, although the choices add flavor to the experience, on the whole there’s been no real change in the trajectory of the story. If there is no consequence, how can there have been any choice?

Gaming has always been a linear experience, even if allowing for minor wavelengths of options. The choices made by the player are more minuscule and less impacting than the illusion of choice as presented by modern gaming – as Mario, the player could always choose to jump wherever the fuck he wanted to jump. The impact seems ot be about the same – Level 1-3 is always going to follow level 1-2. Unless you use the warp pipe.

This is not to say that these games have not been enjoyable – the dialogue options in Mass Effect are a hoot, and watching the physical changes to your character in Fable has always been a treat. But to present these games in a light of “making choices” is rather dishonest, and I wonder to what degree the gamer is aware of that dishonesty.

Coming from a broader perspective, some games are allowing for broader freedom of choice. For example, Scribblenauts. Although I do not own the game, I have read nothing but rave reviews of this form of game, here called “emergent puzzle action.” The premise is simple: see a problem, identify a solution, write a word and the game will provide you with that item. Cat stuck in a tree? Write “dog” to have a dog come and scare the cat down. Or write “fireman” to have a fireman come and rescue the cat. Or write “mice” to have mice run across the screen and have the cat come down to chase them. There is no “correct” way to solve the problem, and the game attempts to give the player wide breadth in creative problem solving. The only real limitation here is the programmed content which, while very broad and expansive, is nonetheless a finite experience.

Similarly, Warioware DIY, the next iteration in the micro-game hyperactive spasm, will allow players to utilize a battery of tools to insert items and create their own microgames. Again, there will be physics limitations based on what the programmers deemed worth of putting in, but the initial idea certainly seems ot add a lot of leeway to the experience.

Finally, and less noteworthy, Little Big Planet offers gamers the chance to develop their own platformer levels to implement into the game-at-large and to share. Though I am not a LBP player myself, they have at times had a very robust and active homebrew community doing everything from recreating classic Nintendo game levels to finding ways to turn the experience on its ear.

If there is to be a dialogue about making choices in games, and about free will as players, there will need to be a more expansive technology created, or even possible. Free will in life is limited only by the possibilities and capabilities of the mind – perhaps game designers interested in Choice Gaming should start with free will and find a way to organically adapt the narrative to the choices being made.

Or perhaps my expectations of the possibilities of the genre are simply too lofty to come to fruition?

God of War III

29 Mar

I’ve only been able to play for about an hour, but its easy to forget why this series is so popular in-between mainstay releases. One hour is more than enough to remind you that God of War is King of this genre.

Within that hour, I have already very graphically eviscerated a centaur (replete with oodles of bowel noodles), defeated several crab/horse/water snake monsters who were attempting to disembowel Gaia (mother of the Titans), climbed Mount Olympus on the back of a Titan, watched scores of humanoids and demi-gods die, suffered very real vertigo while admiring the view from the precipice, and killed a god.

Yep. Killed a god. One. And this is Faux-Roman History, so don’t think that was any kind of turning point.

I won’t even say HOW I killed the god, or which god it was, but everything about his death was gruesome and powerful and spectacular. Vengeance awaits, and I see a whole pantheon of dieties with bulls-eyes on their nutsacks.

So this game is visceral and epic, as ere the series has been since its inception. The storytelling and pacing are quick, and the puzzles, including boss fight puzzles, have thus far stressed concentration over reflex.

Looking forward to more outrageous man-gaming.

Review: Final Fantasy XIII

16 Mar

Before reading this, please note my brief primer on reviews.

Overall: Final Fantasy has defined the RPG genre (or at the very least the JRPG genre) for the last 20 years. Its easy to forget why this is true when you talk about a game abstractly, or try to discuss the individual pieces. But imagine a beautiful clock. One cannot adequately explain or do honor to the complexity of engineering, craftsmanship and love simply by describing each individual cog. It is a thing of beauty to behold, and yet as easy to dismiss as a mundane and regular clock.To see it in action is to observe near perfection, albeit perfection of a very specific thing.

This game will remind any fan why FF is simply the best, and will easily engross any new player with the sheer depth of its creation.

Short Version: Final Fantasy 13 is very strictly linear right out of the gate until very far into the game. It has 6 main characters, one who is arguably the MAIN main character, but every single character has a primary storyline that drives the narrative as a whole.  The game is turn-based but with a very novel twist that keeps the action organic and very fast-paced. And finally, the game is gorgeous – I cannot stress enough how beautiful the scenery and monsters and characters and towns and …. well, everything is.  Every review of this game I have seen has been so far off-base, making hay out of the linearity and the lack of towns. Final Fantasy 13 instead streamlines some of the more pointless conventions of older RPGs and dismisses the “illusion” of having certain freedoms. More on this below.

Plot: There’s a definite feeling like you’ve returned to Final Fantasy 7 – the opening sequence of the game jumps right into the first shot of a rebellion. From a train full of exiles, a cobbled group of revolutionaries fight against an authoritarian, technology-based culture with nefarious intentions. The people of the Cocoon are being “purged,” which in PR terms means “moved out of Cocoon” and in real world terms means “blowded up real good. KABOOM!” You meet the MAIN main charcter immediately, Lightning, who wields a gunblade (a la Squall or my 2nd Edition AD&D Warrior – Rowena) and has a real anti-social chip on her shoulder (a la Cloud). Lightning starts the fight with the intent of saving her younger sister from said nefarious people in charge – and we quickly learn that until just now she was one of said nefarious dickholes! TWIST!

Beyond this, I will just say the characters are wonderful thus far. Sazh, the most enigmatic of the group, is a wise-cracking Danny Glover from Lethal Weapon, and has more than once made me ell oh ell. Also, he has a chocobo chick that he keeps in his hair. Seriously. Then there’s Snow, who fancies himself a hero and oozes enthusiasm and determination (by far the most annoying character IMHO). Hope looks like Sora and acts like a whiny little bitch (but his mom just died so back the fuck off). Vanille is a real team-supporter with a strange accent and a secret. Finally, Fang looks like Rinoa and Yang were doing it and had a baby, and also has a strange accent and a secret.

Despite my brushing over it all, the characters have rather well fleshed-out stories and some real emotional moments. I don’t want to set any expectations nor spoil some of the better character moments, so suffice it to say the developers spent as much time on the character’s personalities and plotlines as they did on the designs, and both will impress.

The story is one of loss, of fighting insurmountable odds, of impending and inexorable tragedy. It takes elements from all of the best Final Fantasy stories but makes something entirely new. As the action progresses in real time (no flash forwards or time skips), the events leading up to that first shot fired start falling into place. The overarching narration, from Vanille, continuously implies that the strings of fate bringing these 6 together were inevitable, making their very clear potential fate unavoidable too. All in all, I find it very compelling.

However, as Tycho noted over at Penny Arcade, there exists a very distinct possibility that you won’t care about any of these characters. [To quote: "I don't give a shit what happens to Sulky, Twat, Twit, Pip, and Marm. Sometimes, I kill them on purpose." ]There’s a length of innocence that all Final Fantasy traverse, and you will not find heart-rending dichotomous choices to make here. This is a linear story the creators wish to tell, and the pallet of colors does not delve much into the dark areas of the heart.

As one friend has said to me, some people love the Mass Effect illusion of choice and morality. Other people just want to be told what to do. I find myself able to enjoy both, but FF13 is not a game about making choices, so be forewarned.

Gameplay: Let’s talk turn-based. In the old days, it happened like this: ATB gauge fills. Once it does, that character chooses an action. ATTACK. MAGIC. ITEM. RUN. If you know an enemy weakness, exploit it. FIRE. ICE. LIGHTNING. METEO. Maybe summon a gigantic, screen-filling monster. Wipe out the foes. Lather, rinse, repeat.

XIII takes this old system and pumps it full of gnard-reducing steroids. For starters, the game offers something called “Auto-Attack,” which, for the first couple of hours, means literally run up and swing a weapon at a bad guy. However, once the plot starts unlocking battle options, things get complicated, fast and difficult.

There are no magic points or spell costs. Your ATB fills up to a limited number, which increases as the game goes on. Let’s say it fills to 2 units. By choosing auto-attack, your character will pick two appropriate actions. FIGHT and FIGHT, or FIRE and ICE. At first this seems lazy, but its rather ingenious; let me explain.

You learn “SCAN” early on. Once an enemy has been fully scanned, you don’t ever need to scan that type again. Scanning not only tells YOU the weaknesses, strengths and abilities of any monster, but it more importantly tells your party members. Now when you auto-attack, your other members will always choose the most effective attacks against that particular enemy type. Sounds simple, but in practice it is literally rewarding your experience against any enemy type by making you more effective against that type. Further, because of the break-neck speed of the battles, auto-attack is usually the best option.

However, battles are by no means passive. Characters learn classes, such as a Commando who attacks with a weapon, a Ravager who flings spells, or a Synergist who boosts party attack and defense. Instead of choosing from a massive list of abilities, characters are assigned roles before hand. So your party of three gets 4 paradigms to assign. All three Ravagers, lets say, or Ravager, Synergist, Ravager. For situations when your health is low, you may want Ravager/Medic/Ravager. Not every character knows every role, so it makes you really have to understand the roles available and how they fit together.

Shifting between paradigms is a free action in battle. So instead of having to choose each action, like ATTACK or HEAL or FIRE, now all you need to do is shift paradigms for whatever the situation. This makes watching your own health and your enemies’ bars imperative to achieving a win, and auto-attack seems a whole lot less lazy. In essence, switching paradigms has replaced choosing which ability to use (though as an aside, there is the option to make battles slow down and choose every action a character will use – however, you are always limited by what paradigm you are in).

The other major aspect of battles, poorly addressed in reviews, is the Stagger System. Most reviews talk about how you can stagger enemies to do even more damage. Honestly, if you don’t master this concept, you won’t win and you will hate the game. Enemies have two bars – a health bar and a stagger bar. An enemy will be taking little or no damage, but their stagger bar is increasing. Once that bar fills, the enemy is considered staggered, and will take significantly more damage until its stagger bar empties and it normalizes. This is helpful on general enemies, but it becomes absolutely essential to defeat bosses. Certain classes are better at staggering against certain enemies, so again you will be switching paradigms often until you figure out the best approach.

The Stagger System and the auto-attack feature make battles fast-paced and really challenging. Learning new abilities (via a leveling system very similar to FFX) brings some depth to the classes, and each character’s variation of a class differs pretty significantly. On the whole, battles feel very organic and very rewarding, unlike predecessors where battles often degraded into one-button-pressing fests. I can’t stress enough that the sheer speed of the battles keep things feeling a lot more like an action game than a turn-based RPG.

Summons are back, and are as ridiculous as ere they were. Side-quests are limited but rewarding as always, and the game opens up just towards the end, same as it ever was. Finally, the addition of an item-leveling systems replaces the need for outrageous amounts of equipment – every weapon is uniquely designed to fit a character play style, and can be leveled up and even transformed up to two times. Similarly, all trinkets can be leveled up as well, with stat improvements and increased resistances or passive abilities. All these pieces working together make for substantial but well-spread gains in character development as the game progresses.

Myths, Stupid Criticisms, and Bad Reviewing: There are a lot of things that can be said about this game, some of which are “true BUT …” and some of which are “completely, fucktastically wrong.” Also, there are some stupid things too. Also, balls. Balls is a funny word.

But I digress. here are soe quick issues I have heard that I will debunk.

1) Waaaaah! It’s a Linear path.  – Dude, go back and play any previous Final Fantasy game. They have all been linear, since the first. Sure, there is the illusion of an open world map you can explore. But every one of them was always “start at a town, explore an open world map, get to the only other accessible location on the map.” That is an illusion of exploration which FFXIII has done away with. People making this argument have not played a Final Fantasy (or any JRPG) before, or are too numb in the brain to understand what linearity really is. Don’t be so stupid, stupid.

2) Waaaaaah! There are no towns! – This is true; it will be a long time before you make it to a town. However, FFXIII supplements for this lack of towns by making every save spot a shop hub and upgrade station, by replenishing your HPs after every battle, and by filling in the inane “Rosa likes tea” needless side story with sometimes charming banter from your party members as they walk with you down the linear path. Towns are a bit superfluous, wouldn’t make sense in the context of the story, and in general are not missed. If you want to spend your time walking around a town listening to inane banter, just go talk to yourself in the mirror. You’re quite the conversationalist!

3) It’s a bit …. Japanese. – This one I cannot debunk. I highly recommended this game to a friend, and she bought it last night. This morning I get a gchat message with the following? “Mom’s are tough? WTF?!” yes, there will be some dialogue that comes across as trite at best, or tripe. Mmmmmm, tripe…. Now I want pho in mah belly ……

But I digress!

This is an aspect of import games that has not improved as facial rendering and complex animations have become standards of the industry. In the old days, with text and only text, jokes and mannerisms could be “Americanized” to make more sense to a NA audience. Mostly make them about hot dogs and assault rifles AMITRITE?! But now, with animations made specific to character and dialogue, its nearly impossible to supplement the lines of speech. As such, the occasional awkward moment arises, like Hope’s mother’s existence, or Vanille’s insistence to make sex noises whenever she’s jumping around the terrain. But on the whole, this is not a major distraction, only a minor annoyance or chagrin moment.

Conclusion: Play this game. Play it for the innovations to turn-based rpgs. Play it for the FF standards, like Cids and airships and chocobos. Play it to try something new, or to remind yourself of why you love this franchise. But I highly recommend everyone play this game. It is not just a big-budget video game; it is a well-oiled machine and a reminder of the high standards and infinite possibilities of an entire industry.

Why you should play Bioshock 2

3 Mar

Despite typically dry winters and summers of games, there’s been a crazy influx of quality console titles in the last 2 months. Suffice it to say, I have been a very productive human being since Xmas  … if by productive you mean fat lazy piece of shit eating Cheetos and ruining my xbox controller with Cheeto-fingeritis.

For my nerdsters, I plan on writing up some thoughts on the games I have been playing over the last few months in the hopes of getting you to try something new and addictive and often inspired.

So, without Further ado …

Bioshock 2 OR “Hey, you got your Objectivism in my Nerd Soup… AGAIN!”

Before I start, lets get to the bottom line – Bioshock 2 is not Bioshock 1. PLAY IT ANYWAY.

For those who don’t know, Bioshock was a bit of an enigma when it released. Pretty standard gaming concept – FPS (First-person perspective shooter) with some form of “magic” or “psychic” or “nanotech” or “lazerz” abilities. The real mindfuck of the original Bioshock came from everything BUT the gameplay mechanics.

For starters, the imagined world of Bioshock was original in the sense that it’d never been done before in a game. However, I dread the thought that playing Bioshock turned anyone on to the selfish raving egoism of Ayn Rand . But that was the failed utopia of Andrew Ryan, the submerged city of Rapture – a stolen (or would you kindly call it a homage) requiem for the most selfish and self-righteous schlock ever flung our way, ultimately ruining the potential for altruism in many people while simultaneously cementing the idea that “making money for myself is helping make the world a better place!” Anyway, the setting of the game was the dystopian society, an underwater metropolis built to honor the followers of Ayn Rand slash Andrew Ryan’s Objectivist ideals. Major characters included a man named Atlas (Atlas Shrugged, and we all die from lack of leadership cause we’re all inbred morans oh noes!!!!) and a scientist named Fontaine (the Fountainhead?! OMG!). Understand, these are lofty ideas for a video game. Christ, these are lofty ideas for a middle-schooler!

Bioshock hooked in a million ways though. The major enemies were splicers, addicts of gene manipulation who went crazy and ransacked the entirety of Rapture, murdering and worse along the way. In other words, the setting is an underwater city filled with crazies chasing you around throwing fireballs and screaming in agony over their non-existent dead baby. Awesome.

Add in some of the best mood lighting since my secksay black-lit dorm room days, an eerie soundtrack of 50’s tunes (Somewhere Beyond the Sea), creepy little girls who harvest magic goo from dead bodies (and become subject to being rescued or murderated!), an epic plane crash, brain washing, and mind fuck after mind fuck, and you’re starting to understand the debate on Games as Art. This game was intense and groundbreaking, and everyone who played it was a better person for the experience.

I am only slightly exaggerating there. Seriously.

Bioshock 2! But I heard it’s more of the same!

Within 15 minutes of starting Bioshock 2, I found myself making comparisons. Bear in mind, this is not the same team behind Bioshock 1. They certainly used some of the same assets, though, because many things look very similar – title cards, Big Daddies, the archaic steam valve technology of the weapons, the scattered recordings, the Health and Eve bars, the Little Sister vents, the in-game adverts for Gatherers Gardens. I began to imagine a deterioration of the quality of these things – sure, this captures the flat idea of the original, but it’s merely a caricature of that genius. Within an hour, I was convinced that Bioshock 2 was just a crappy sequel to Bioshock 1, trying to recapture the madness of the original and falling flat on it’s taint.

But as I played, something emerged; something new, and enticing. A new failed philosophy, this time a John Stuart Mills Utilitarianism to directly combat the Objectivism of Bioshock 1. And not just to have another crap-philosophy to tear down and present as a failed Utopia – the story progresses both as a here-and-now mission as well as an exploration of the fall of Rapture, a missing history of Utilitarianism fighting Objectivism in the face of poverty and racism. The story of Rapture is told despite the action of the game, in secret messages and hidden recordings, advertisements and bloody scrawlings on the walls. There is a subtlety to Bioshock 2 that exactly captures the brilliance of Bioshock 1, and refuses to smack the player in the face with a giant dildo of obviousness.

Yep. That’s the image I chose. Love it.

The plot remains compelling, the player is offered more choices than in the original, and the gameplay never fails, although the weapons  are interestingly different than the original given the “nature” of the protagonist.

The problem with reviews of Bioshock 2 is this: expectation. Every Mario game must be substantially new and different. Every Zelda must capture the staples of the series while simultaneously bringing the newest features of the newest console into the mix. Every Final Fantasy sequel must have even spikier hair on even more androgynous characters!

Bioshock 2 is not moving the franchise in unexplored new directions. And it is not groundbreaking like Bioshock 1 was — but nothing can be. What you get here is a well-polished, moody, tense and intense game that further explores the wide swaths of territory that Bioshock opened up. There is a lot to love here, and it’s a shame that reviewers cannot separate their journalistic responsibilities from their passions as enthusiasts of games.

So fuck the reviewers, and trust your Prince of Why. Also, if you wanna borrow my copy, I’m done with it for now …

Newer Entries →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.