Review: Saints Row: The Third

This week, we’ll be reviewing Saints Row: The Third. For those of you who have never played a Saints Row game before, let me describe the experience. Thrust into a crowded and hectic metropolis, you are immediately, overwhelmingly, and very deeply troubled by your surroundings... not only by the celebrations of violence, depravity, and avarice all around you, but also by the fact that these behaviors are encouraged, and even rewarded. Eventually, though, you begin to lower your inhibitions, and as you gradually chip off piece after piece of your previously virtuous soul, you begin to realize... my gods, this may be the most fun I’ve ever had. In other words, it’s a lot like vacationing in Las Vegas.

Design: 4⁄5

As was the case for its predecessors, Saints Row: The Third (SR3) could easily be written off by the uninformed as a pale imitation of a Grand Theft Auto game. True, it’s a mission-based sandbox game in an urban setting (the fictional metropolis of New York City Steelport), wherein most of the gameplay consists of stealing cars and killing people. The thing that sets Saints Row apart is that it does right nearly everything that GTA does wrong.

For example, let’s say you “borrow” a particularly awesome sports car from a passing motorist. In GTA, I might park that car at my apartment and never drive it, for fear that it might get destroyed and lost forever. In SR3, I’ll likely take that same car and pimp it out with sweet rims and a ridiculous paint job, after which I’ll jet around the city at 100 miles per hour as I gleefully mow down pedestrians, and then end my killing spree by Thelma and Louise-ing it over the nearest cliff. (Don’t worry, I have a parachute.) Then, magically, the destroyed carcass of my favorite death-mobile magically appears in my garage, and is quickly and easily repaired. It’s not very realistic, but it sure is fun.

In this reality, the Saints are bigger than the Beatles... which I suppose by the transitive property also makes them bigger than Jesus.

However, before you sprint out the door with wallet in hand, I should note that pretty much every praiseworthy feature of SR3 was already present in the first two games. From a design point of view, there’s not much the game does different or better than its antecedents. In fact, in their zeal to re-capture and expand upon the devil-may-care sandboxy freedom of Saints Row 2, the designers of SR3 may have made it a little too consequence-free, to the point where the difficulty and pacing of the experience really suffers. When last I checked the definition of “gameplay balance”, it said nothing about acquiring an infinitely-respawning attack helicopter with unlimited ammo within the first hour of gameplay.

Artistic: 3⁄5

The aesthetics of Saints Row: The Third are—simply put—good enough. No more, no less. For as much as the game goes out of its way to inundate you with its endless parade of bizarre characters, zany costumes, and scores of dildos, the overall ambiance of Steelport feels pretty blasé. (Wait... is it “dildoes”? Let’s check Merriam-Webster... ah, it seems that both are acceptable.) As I drove around the city, most of the scenery tended to blend together, and I rarely knew (or even particularly cared) where I actually was.

Wow... and all this time I thought the Golden Arches were excessively suggestive signage.

On the other hand, there are some nice touches. The menu and mission completion screens are pretty sharp, and the characters are rendered in a slightly cartoonish style that meshes well with the overall feel of the game. To be honest though, I’m not sure how much it matters, as Saints Row is really all about gameplay. I had a blast playing the first game more than five years after it came out, even though visually it looked like it came out ten years ago.

Narrative: 3⁄5

If the Saints Row: The Third experience is not really about aesthetics, then it is also not about narrative. What passes for a plot is basically a hodgepodge of quirky characters and bizarre situations, topped with enough sexual references to make Hugh Hefner blush. Granted, the quirky characters are really quirky, with the cast including such weirdos as a homocidal luchador, a tracheotomied pimp with an auto-tuned electrolarynx pimp cane, and Burt Reynolds.

Unfortunately for this guy, grenades now come in an easy-to-swallow gel-cap.

However, the zaniness factor is so extreme that it runs contrary to a deeper, more spiritual underlying theme of the game: being a complete and total badass. I’ve always enjoyed the simplicity of purpose of the unnamed protagonist (known simply as “the Boss”) of the Saints Row games. He’s not some complex antihero with a troubled past and a heart of gold; rather, he’s a remorseless sociopath whose only motivations are money and power. It’s a Zen-like approach to mayhem that fits perfectly with the violent sandbox genre. Unfortunately, it takes a bit of a back seat this time around, such that by the time you’ve finished SR3, the Boss has spent so much time wearing ridiculous costumes and cracking wise that his essence of pure malevolence has gotten lost somewhere in the shuffle.

Gameplay: 4⁄5

At its heart, Saints Row: The Third strives to be purely and unabashedly fun, and its commitment to this goal is evident in its gameplay. Even something as simple as driving around the city is immensely fun, as the game consistently apprises you of statistics like how much time you’ve spent driving in the wrong lane or when you’ve bested your longest stunt jump. Combat is even more fun, as the Boss can deal death using a variety of weapons, explosives, and melee attacks, in a fast-paced run-and-gun style that has been scientifically proven to be way more awesome than that pussy cover-based nonsense.

For those of you who don’t like driving, there’s an unlimited supply of disposable helicopters.

The fact that SR3 builds upon such a winning formula makes its few gameplay issues especially frustrating, like the aforementioned pacing issues. After a thrilling start, the game slows to a crawl with a seemingly interminable series of tutorial and mini-game introductory missions, and then races ahead at such a breakneck speed that by halfway through the game you’re essentially invincible, able to summon tanks with your cell phone and rain down aerial drone strikes like a demigod. Even after jacking the game up to the highest difficulty level, I more or less sleepwalked through the last third of the story missions.

Summary

When it isn’t preoccupied with trying too hard—or not hard enough—Saints Row: The Third shines with some entertaining missions and riotous gameplay, and so fans of the series will probably be satisfied. However, given how labored the sophomoric humor is at times, and the fact that little has been improved over previous games, newcomers may be better off just dropping $20 for the Saints Row / Saints Row 2 combo pack instead.

By the way, I wasn’t kidding about the parachute. The Boss never leaves home without one.

Game Over: On Video Games and Death

The heart of the holiday season is a wonderful time of year: the Christmas lights are up, there’s a spirit of goodwill in the air, and the stores have finally cleaned up nearly all of the discarded blood and teeth remaining from Black Friday. It’s a magical time, one that makes you want to grab a mug of egg nog, curl up by a roaring fire, and write an unnecessarily morbid blog post.

It occurred to me the other day that if I had to choose a single concept or idea that most defined video games, it would be death. (A glass-half-full kind of person might say their major theme is “life” but it’s fair to assume that I tend to view my glasses as fairly empty.) Throughout most of their 40-year history, video games have been utterly consumed by the topic of death. It’s an obsession that continues to this day, and for someone like me who has played a lot of video games, I can’t help but believe the experience has affected the way I think about mortality.

Consider Pac-Man, an iconic arcade title virtually synonymous with video games. To a 1980’s adolescent, Pac-Man was more than a game; it was a spiritual experience. For a mere quarter, one could witness the birth of a hero, thrust into a brutal and uncaring world full of angry phantoms and energy pellets... and then, like an acne’d guardian angel, shepherd that hero through his transient existence to an imminent demise. It was an entire life, start-to-finish, in a box. Like real life, there was no escape, no bargaining, no loopholes... only survival. (Even the most talented angels among us—those who made no mistakes—would eventually reach the infamous split-screen level, and could proceed no further.) From the moment you touched that start button, Pac-Man was doomed.

Revenge.

While many classic games like Pac-Man reinforced the sentiment that death is inevitable, at least they allowed us a modicum of control over the timing of our passing. By contrast, there were a number of far less merciful games that taught us that death was savage and unpredictable, ready to descend upon us at any time and for any reason. Perfect examples of this sadistic mentality were Sierra games like those of the King’s Quest and Space Quest series. In the real world, leading causes of death are things like heart disease and vehicular accidents; in these games, leading causes of death included (but were not limited to) honeybees, playing alien slot machines, genies, buying bargain-priced robots and/or spaceships, prematurely eating custard pies, and ignoring trash cans. (Believe it or not, I did not make any of those examples up.)

Did you enjoy the movie Groundhog Day? If not, then Space Quest probably isn’t for you.

Of course, as much as video games are about your own death, they’re also about other people’s deaths. Just as no man can make his proverbial omelette without sacrificing a few eggs, no plumber can rescue his princess without systematically murdering scores of anthropomorphized mushrooms. During my lifetime of gaming, however, there seems to have been a general philosophical shift in this regard. Games used to be about survival, or rescuing the princess, or defeating some sort of world-threatening evil. From a moral perspective, atrocities such as Link’s genocide of a entire species of rock-spitting octopuses were unfortunate but necessary consequences of the pursuit of these greater goals. (Plus, I needed the rupees.)

Rumor has it that when they made Friday the 13th for the NES, they couldn’t decide between this “Game Over” screen and the alternative, “You die alone and unloved. No one mourns your passing.”

Now, though, many games are less about fundamental life-or-death struggles, and more about killing as many things as possible. Sure, Halo, Gears of War, or Call of Duty might pretend to have plots wherein some person, place, or thing has to be saved from some other person, place, or thing, but really the epic battle between these seemingly arbitrary nouns is simply a venue for bathing oneself in as much gore as possible. At least, I assume that’s the point, since I’m constantly being encouraged to “frag” enough people and get enough “killstreaks” during each “deathmatch” to maintain a respectable “kill/death ratio”, presumably so I can feel good about myself when I’m at home sitting on my throne made of infants’ skulls and drinking a chalice of baby seal blood.

I wonder how this shift is affecting the viewpoints of the next generation of gamers. To be honest, I worry they might be missing the point. Let’s say I’m playing an online and I witness a 12-year-old kid (with clearly absentee parents) brutally executing 20 people with a sniper rifle, only to throw a verbal hissyfit when the bell finally tolls for him in the form of a rocket launcher to the face. I want to say so many things to this kid, like “I’m sorry son... but it was just your time,” or, “hey, war is Hell,” or, “sometimes bad things happen to good Modern Warfare players.” But I’m afraid he just won’t get it, because unlike me, he didn’t have to grow up watching Pac-Man die.

So instead, I tell him, “Look, it could be worse... at least you’re not playing Space Quest.”

Review: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

For anyone addicted to release-date gaming, this November has been a grueling month, each week stuffed to bursting with high-profile new games. It’s been the kind of hectic month that April is for certified public accountants, though probably with a lot more software patches. 

This week, we’ll be running the numbers on Skyrim, the fifth and latest installment in Bethesda Softworks’ flagship role-playing franchise The Elder Scrolls. (Note that this is the last time I will use the word “scrolls”, because like Notch (the indie developer behind Minecraft—I don’t feel it particularly embodies the spirit of the series. Plus I’m afraid of getting sued.)

Design: 5/5

If you’ve never played Bethesda games (such as Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, or New Vegas) before, they’re best summed up by one word: MASSIVE. Starting a Bethesda game is like reliving your own birth: after a short tutorial in a safe, warm dungeon, you are expelled into an enormous and confusing world full of hostile beings, most of whom are trying to kill you. Like its predecessor Oblivion, the game world of Skyrim spans about 16 square miles to scale (approximately two-thirds the size of Manhattan) and has around 150 dungeons, nearly all of which are completely accessible from the moment you step out of your little instructional womb. While environments this expansive are impressive for any role-playing game, they come across as even more amazing when presented in this unfettered open-world style.

In Skyrim, the shortest distance between two points almost always involves a mountain.

The down side of a game this enormous is that technical glitches are almost a certainty. Like past Bethesda games, Skyrim has its fair share of bugs, though in my experience they’ve been of stereotypical and fairly harmless varieties, such as occasional missing textures, erratic AI behavior, and one or two “outside the map” glitches. I found they had little impact on my gameplay—especially for a compulsive game-saver such as myself—and so far I’m inclined (as with other Bethesda games) to overlook them.

What really impresses me about the design of Skyrim are those few minor changes made from Oblivion that have had an enormous impact, such as improvements to the leveling system. In Oblivion, your character gained a level whenever he/she had sufficiently advanced specific favorite skills. However, the improvements to your statistics (e.g. strength or dexterity) depended on how much you had improved those and other skills. For example, let’s say you were a heavily armored, warhammer-wielding orc. If you wanted to make sure that by level 40 you were at least as dexterous as your average severe stroke victim, you couldn’t just work on increasing your “speed” attribute as part of normal gameplay. Instead, you had to go off and pick 100 locks or spend 15 minutes swimming in circles whenever you were about to advance to your next level. In Skyrim, on the other hand, most of your attributes are derived from your skills. If you start off as a mage but decide later to dabble in a little swordsmanship, it won’t take much practice before your spindly, atrophied arms are swinging that broadsword like a pro. It’s a subtle difference that has a huge effect on the gameplay.

Artistic: 4/5

Aesthetically, the province of Skyrim is cold, blue-tinged, and harshly lit, like someone took a Jason Bourne movie on an arctic expedition. Hiking along icy rivers and up jagged mountains, I found the landscape to be dangerously beautiful—the kind of place that makes you want to let your guard down and enjoy the view, and then murders you with a savage pack of snow wolves. Just to give you an idea of how much of an impact these visuals had on me: whenever my character stepped out of the cold to sit by the fire of the nearest mead hall, in real life I actually felt warmer.

So pretty, I’ve almost forgotten about that polar bear that’s about to rip my head off.

From a purely technical perspective, however, the graphics of Skyrim certainly aren’t groundbreaking. Look too closely, and you’ll find plenty of sub-standard elements, like lackluster textures or rocks that appear to be made with only a handful of polygons. It’s a bit of a problem, and one that’s exacerbated on the Xbox 360 by the texture loading issues with hard-drive installations (for which there will apparently be a patch). Nevertheless, what Skyrim lacks in brute force, it makes up for in finesse.

Narrative: 4/5

The question of narrative is a difficult one for a game like Skyrim. A “story” is basically a distillation of reality with respect to a particular point of view. How do you tell a single story when you’ve created an entire world? In other words, a concept as limiting as “plot” is almost too small for Skyrim.

Oh, I see now... it says “dragon” right up there.
And here I thought I was fighting some other kind of giant, scaly, fire-breathing thing. 

Of course, there is an over-arching story line, which to be completely honest, I haven’t even finished yet (and it’s within the realm of possibility that I may not do so for the next 80 hours of gameplay). It seems reasonable enough, plodding along with some forgettable characters and mediocre voice acting. From what I have gleaned so far, it has something to do with dragons, which is really the only thing you need to know, because it means you get to have a blast killing some dragons.

For me, the meat of the game is really the ridiculous number of “side quests”, so much so that they should probably just be called “quests”. There’s an amazing number of things you can do, such as become a mercenary, join a secret brotherhood of assassins, go to college to be a mage, or fight in a rebellion against (or for) the Imperial army. From a narrative point of view, the only issue with all these choices is that a completionist like me will want to do them all, meaning that by the end of the game, your character ends up as some sort of ridiculous mercenary-assassin-wizard-rebel-type person, i.e. a schizophrenic.

Gameplay: 5/5

In Skyrim, gameplay has three main aspects: exploration, character development, and questing. Much of the game follows a basic yet rewarding formula: wander around until you find a dungeon, slay its inhabitants while you gain a level or two, and then rifle through the resulting mountain of corpses and steal anything of value. If you’re the sort of person who thinks that “fun” is spending a few hours wandering around hunting enough animals for pelts and picking enough herbs to make yourself a nice little leather cuirass and matching health potion, then Skyrim is for you.

Don’t be fooled. Just because those NPC’s look different, it doesn’t mean they aren’t all voiced by the same actor.

While Skyrim—like most Bethesda games—isn’t really about combat, there have been some definite improvements that make it much more palatable. The most notable is the ability to dual-wield. For instance, instead of a sword and a shield or a two-handed weapon, you could choose to fight with a sword and a fistful of fireballs, or by casting a different spell with each hand. When combined with the option to “favorite” certain items and spells in your inventory, the dual-wielding makes playing the game as a mage almost a reasonable option... almost.

Summary

If you’ve played and enjoyed Bethesda games before, then Skyrim shouldn’t disappoint. If you haven’t—but do fancy yourself an RPG fan—then Skyrim’s obvious improvements over past games make it an excellent place to start. Just be sure to bundle up, because it’s a bit nippy out there.

Review: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the third and latest entry in the Deus Ex franchise, a series of first-person action role-playing games set in a dystopian future full of sunglass-wearing cyborgs. For those of you new to the series, here’s a helpful little timeline:

2000. The original Deus Ex comes out, giving PC gamers and cyberpunk fans an innovative new gaming experience, which keeps them occupied while people with actual lives are off drinking Budweiser and dancing to Thong Song by Sisqó.

2011 (The Present). I play Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the Xbox 360, subsequently composing this scintillating review.

2027 (16 years in the future). The events of Human Revolution take place. Not only has the advent of cybernetic technology blurred the lines between man and machine, it also has somehow led to everyone keeping their important belongings (i.e. money, booze, and weapons) in unlocked drawers, sewer drains, and easily accessible man-sized air vents.

2052 (another 25 years after that). The events of the original Deus Ex take place. Everyone notices that in the past 25 years, the world’s graphics just don’t seem as good, and the selection of available cybernetic augmentations has somehow gotten markedly less awesome. However, Deus Ex fanboys argue that everything is better than whatever happened 25 years ago.

Design: 3 / 5

For the most part, Human Revolution tries to recapture the spirit of the original Deus Ex. The core philosophy of both games is that a truly immersive gaming experience should support a variety of play styles.

Presenting Adam Jensen, your protagonist.
I’d say he’s half man and half machine, but it’s really more like 3/4 machine, 1/8 gravely voice, and 1/8 sunglasses.

Let’s say it’s your goal to get inside a particular locked room. In Deus Ex, you can choose to tackle this challenge via any one of the following approaches:

1. Kill the guard and hack the electronic door lock.
2. Knock out the guard, draw a penis on his forehead in permanent marker, and then search his unconscious body for the door code.
3. Chat up the guard with a little “Hey, how ’bout that whole ‘guarding things’ thing... sucks, am I right?” and then convince him to let you in.
4. Climb through an air vent in the next room and use your bad-ass robotic arms to punch through the adjoining wall.
5. Do #4 above, but then kill the guard on your way out for good measure.

The extent to which you will be successful in any one of these approaches depends on your character’s particular set of abilities. Using software upgrades called “Praxis Kits”, you can unlock different cybernetic abilities (or “augments”) that let you excel in different styles of game play. For example, one ability allows you to sneak around more quietly, while another lets you release pheromones that make you more persuasive. There’s also one that instantly vaporizes any nearby life form into a bloody mist by way of a lethal cloud of high-speed metal bearings. Although very cool, this one is somewhat less useful than the pheromones when Adam Jensen is on a date.

Just because you made a pretty loading screen doesn’t mean I want to stare at it for 60 seconds every time I fuck up.

Considering how many ways you can approach nearly every aspect in the game, the developers did a decent job keeping the game balanced and relatively bug-free. I tried a few different character builds, and they all were fun and playable. I had heard that the boss fights were a little unforgiving toward non-combat play styles, but even when playing with a non-lethal stealth character, I didn’t find them to be out-of-step with the difficulty of the rest of the game.

I did have a few issues with the game design, however. First, the control scheme isn’t the best around, and routine things like readying/equipping weapons and using items were a lot more cumbersome than they need to be. This wasn’t too much of a problem for the pacifist ninja I played most of the game as, but I could see it being quite frustrating for a combat build. A much bigger issue was that the load times were frustratingly long. I don’t know if I’ve just been spoiled by the seamless loading strategies of other games, but by the end of Human Revolution, I was literally choosing my course of action based on what was the least likely to return me to that damned loading screen.

Artistic: 4 / 5

For the most part, there’s not much about the aesthetics of Human Revolution that will knock your socks off.  There’s only so many ways you can can rip off Blade Runner, and with light-up umbrellas off the table, options are somewhat limited.

The streets of modern Hengsha. It reminds me of the old saying: “Visions of a dystopian future are like assholes: everyone has one, and they’re usually dark, brown, and full of toxic pollution.”

However, the game does manage to put a few of its own small twists on a tired genre. While most of today’s companies would have us believe that our future will be full of smooth, elegant curves like one big iMac in an evening dress, the world of Human Revolution is decidedly angular. Triangles appear to be the most fashionable shape one can wear, and most of the buildings and vehicles could have been designed by Volvo. Even Jensen’s chin is aggressively pointed, like his goatee is coming to attack you. It’s a solid motif, and helps convince me that some genuine thought went into the art design of the game.

Yelena Fedorova: voted worst-dressed villain of 2027.

Narrative: 4 / 5

If you can suspend enough belief to get past its idiosyncrasies, the world of Human Revolution can be quite enthralling. Although Jensen has the charisma of Keanu Reeves pretending to be a paperweight, his story is set against the backdrop of an ideological clash between the corporations that want to further the goal of human augmentation and factions that wish to resist and/or eradicate it. Throughout the missions, I was exposed to a number of opinions on both sides of this massive societal struggle, and I found it to be an interesting and believable setting for the events of the game.

Honestly, the thing that kept pulling me out of the game is what I call the “douche factor”. Since Jensen is a cold, monotone, and fairly unlikable character, it seemed like the game designers tried to force me to empathize with him using a simple strategy: making everyone else in the game more unlikeable. Sure, Jensen may seem like kind of a hard-ass, but wait until you meet Frank Pritchard, the douchey IT guy at his company, or David Sarif, his douchey boss. Compared to these pricks, Jensen seems like a swell guy. In fact, pretty much everyone you’ll meet in this game is kind of a jerk, which might explain why so many people are trying to kill you.

Gameplay: 4 / 5

If I had to sum up Human Revolution with one word, it would be choice. I’m not talking about the bullshit moral choices of games like Mass Effect, Fable, or inFamous, where you basically have to decide at the beginning of the game if you’re going to play as a bloodthirsty sociopath or a benevolent doormat, depending on which path gets you the coolest stuff. I’m talking about playing the game as though you’re a real person. Perhaps you’re the type of guy who tries not to kill people, unless it’s really convenient. On the other hand, maybe you like to put as many bullets in bodies as possible, but decide to talk your way past a guard just that once. In other words, instead of your character being a one-dimensional caricature of a moral being, Human Revolution (like its predecessor) allows you to approach each situation individually, weighing strategic concerns, moral issues, and your own personal preferences to determine your way through each challenge.

This whole computer hacking thing seems a bit unnecessary, considering this guy probably wrote out his password on a Post-It and left it next to his keyboard. 

Unfortunately, if this whole choice thing doesn’t sound that interesting to you, then I have to tell you that a lot of the other gameplay elements are lacking. By combining elements of a shooter, a stealth action game, and a role-playing game, Human Revolution is jack-of-all-trades and master of none. If you’re looking to experience high quality gaming in any of these other genres, you’ll find better experiences elsewhere.

Summary

Without a doubt, the original Deus Ex was a landmark experience that brought something new to the world of gaming, and as its heir, Human Revolution goes a long way at recapturing the spirit of the original. While it has some quirks, and may annoy the hell out of you at times, Human Revolution is still worth checking out, especially for those of you who are new to the world of Deus Ex. Now, it’s time for me to go... I think my save game is almost done loading.

Thoughts on the iPhone 4S (By a Former Android User)

On a cold Friday night in October, I found myself standing in an unmoving queue on a dark and poorly-maintained sidewalk outside a UPS distribution center. Clutched in my hand was a tattered scrap of official-looking paper, which dispassionately stated that my iPhone 4S “could not be delivered’, and that someone would “try again on Monday”. As I glanced around at the people standing in line with me (well over a hundred in all), I saw that many of them wore the same expression as I did—a mix of shame, fear, and despair that reminded me of a domestic abuse victim as she tells her doctor the black eye happened when she “ran into a door.”

Then, the night sky opened up, and as the rain came down in sheets, I looked up and thought in horror: “My god... what kind of a smartphone can get people to do this to themselves? What has happened to me??”

A few weeks have passed since that night, and I’m still coming to terms with the fact that I’m now an iPhone user. To help me cope with this transformation, I’d like to share some of my thoughts on this strange new device in my life.

My Old Phone

In Hell, this is the same exact phone
that Satan makes Hitler use.

To understand my perspective, you need to know where I’m coming from. I’ve been a Verizon Wireless customer as long as I’ve had a cell phone (at least 10 years), and about two years ago, I bought my first smartphone ever: the HTC Droid Eris.

I can say without hyperbole that this phone is one of the worst pieces of technology ever produced. With its woefully underpowered hardware and abysmal battery life, the Eris possesses a level of usability and functionality slightly below that of a cardboard cutout of a Motorola RAZR. Somewhere, there is a line that separates poor engineering design from criminal negligence; upon finding that line, the creators of the Eris leapt gleefully over it, so they could have a picnic with the designers of the Ford Pinto and the people who said asbestos was safe. Hell, those bastards even had the cojones to name this abomination after the Greek goddess of discord, and discord is exactly what the Eris created in my life every single time I used it.

The iPhone 4S

I always thought that having your desktop
completely filled up with icons was a bad thing,
but apparently Apple thinks that’s how your
world should look all the time.

Given that my last phone was so terrible, it’s hard for me to evaluate how the iPhone 4S compares to the other smartphones on the market right now. In other words, if it were a meal, the iPhone 4S could be filet mignon or it could be day-old Taco Bell... either way, I’ve been eating dog shit for the past two years, so it tastes pretty good to me. Especially when paired with the beefed-up hardware of the 4S, iOS 5 is fast, responsive, and everything just plain works. (Well, almost everything works.) The entire experience is so seamless that even the gratuitous animations such as zooming icons, swirling windows, and the like—which always enraged me when using a Mac computer—seem far less offensive.

Having used a number of Apple products before, I was able to prepare myself for the idiosyncrasies of the iPhone interface. As an avid PC user, I’ve become accustomed to certain things, such as a second mouse button and the general feeling that my computer doesn’t view me as a complete and total moron who needs to be protected from himself. However, in switching to the iPhone, I knew I would be entering Apple’s One-Button Toddler Fun Park. For someone like me who actually likes all the buttons on the standard Android phone (menu, back, home, search, call, cancel, and a trackball), it has definitely been an adjustment. I’ve been getting used to a single home button that performs a variety of different actions depending on the context, while trying to pick up any slack in the user interface with a combination of haphazard finger swipes and swearing. While I understand Apple’s obsession with simplicity of visual design, I really think it would behoove them to relax their one-button rule. If nothing else, they could redirect the massive amount of development resources they currently funnel into arcane finger-gesture research.

The Apps

One of the main reasons I made the switch to the iPhone was the apps. Although the Android app store has come a long way, the fact remains that nearly every Android app falls into one of three categories: (1) useful apps that would never be allowed on the iPhone, (2) shitty apps that would never be allowed on the iPhone, and (3) half-assed ports of apps that were originally developed for the iPhone. Although I certainly will miss offerings from the first category (like my Android NES and SNES emulators, as well as my app that provided free laptop tethering), I can do without the other two types.

Here are some of my favorites:

RunKeeper. This is my favorite exercise tracking app... in fact, my addiction to RunKeeper on my old phone was probably the only thing that kept me from shoving it down the garbage disposal. Since this app was actually designed for the iPhone, I’m finally getting use it as the RunKeeping gods intended, instead of struggling with its bug-laden Android counterpart. (Although, the Android version did have one advantage—you could turn on airplane mode, and RunKeeper would still receive GPS information with no problems. No such luck on the iPhone.)

MapQuest 4 Mobile. Believe it or not, MapQuest still exists, and they’ve decided to celebrate this fact by providing a free (yes, free!) navigation app with audible turn-by-turn directions. Although not the best navigator out there, you can’t argue with the price. It certainly takes some of the sting out of no longer having access to Google Navigation.

CardStar. This app lets you ditch your wallet full of loyalty/discount cards by scanning them all into its database. By the time I was done setting it up, I actually needed a smaller wallet because the few cards that were left kept falling out from all the space. The only problem with the app is that it makes using these cards painless, and so I no longer harbor the level of resentment towards stores that have their own discount cards that such places truly deserve.

Evernote. Basically an eidetic memory that you can download, this app lets you store the contents of your entire brain outside of your own head. ’Nuff said.

Siri

Supposedly the big game-changer for the 4S is “Siri”, the iPhone’s new “personal assistant”. Using voice commands, Siri can be instructed to perform a number of tasks, such as sending text messages, making appointments, or finding directions. Though Siri is fairly limited in what she can do, in my experience the voice recognition results have been excellent. I use her especially often for composing text messages, because trying to use that godsforsaken touch-screen keyboard is basically like trying to type with your feet.

I have my new personal assistant deal with all those unpleasant little parts of life I don’t wish to handle myself.

The biggest problem with Siri is that the voice processing seems to be done remotely. Thus, any time that she can’t reach that special place in Skynet that her answers come from, she’s basically useless.

iPhone Games

As this is allegedly a gaming blog, I suppose I should take a minute to talk about games. One of the reasons I was excited about getting an iPhone is that I don’t currently have a mobile gaming system. Although a smartphone is hardly a fair substitute for a Nintendo 3DS or a PSP, it’s certainly better than the other alternative, which is actually talking to the other person in the car with you.

Since I tend toward the action-adventure and RPG genres, I started with Chaos Rings (Media.Vision / Square Enix) and Infinity Blade (Chair / Epic Games). Chaos Rings is a J-RPG cast in Square Enix’s typical style, and its release last year marked the company’s first original RPG for the iPhone. Technically speaking, the game is well-executed, featuring effective touch-screen controls, fluid animations, and polygon graphics comparable to what you’d see on a PS2. However, in terms of gameplay, Chaos Rings is disappointing. The RPG mechanics are pretty shallow, the plot and characters are inane, and the dialogue is poorly translated from the Japanese version. (Or, perhaps it’s well-translated but poorly written; obviously, there’s no way for me to tell.)

The second game, Infinity Blade, is an on-rails action RPG. Gameplay consists of a series of one-on-one battles, where actions like attacking, blocking, and spell casting are performed by particular gestures or by touching certain on-screen buttons. From a technical standpoint, Infinity Blade is even more impressive than Chaos Rings—in fact, graphically it could easily pass for a current-generation console game. As for the gameplay, while the combat is fun at first, it starts to get pretty tedious after a few hours. Still, for $5 it’s well worth checking out.

Going mano-a-mano with a Titan in Infinity Blade.
I’m glad the iPhone’s screen isn't any bigger, because that’s about as much of that guy as I care to see.

Although both of these titles indicate that iOS gaming is headed in the right direction, they also highlight the fact that the iPhone has a long way to go before I would dare consider it a “serious” gaming platform. Of course, if one is looking for some meatier game offerings in the interim, there’s always the option of playing ports of actual console games, such as Secret of Mana.

One last thing... if you’re an achievement addict like me, then you’ll be pleased to hear that iOS boasts a “Game Center”, where you can rack up all the meaningless cheevo points you want. Consider yourself warned.

Criticisms

Now, we come to my favorite part of the program: the bitch list. In order to maintain my reputation as a hardened critic who eats Apple fanboys for breakfast, I’ve compiled a list of my biggest gripes with iPhone 4S. Here we go:

Shoddy Google support. ;One of the things that drew me to the Android platform in the first place is that I’m a heavy user of Google products. ;In switching to the iPhone, I was assured by many of my friends that I would still have access to my Google email, contacts, and calendar. ;While they were technically correct, I can’t help but feeling misled. ;You can indeed use Gmail as your iPhone mail service, but it has only a small fraction of the functionality of the web interface. ;For example, you have the ability either to delete or to archive messages you don’t want in your Inbox, but not both. ;(Hopefully a Gmail iPhone app will remedy this... if they can get their act together.) ;Other Google products are similarly crippled. ;(For instance, if you want to sync your Google contacts, it can only be done by hooking your phone up to the software equivalent of a bloated, rotting cow carcass, by which I mean iTunes.)

The battery is a lie. ; Well before reports came out that iPhone 4S’s battery life performs well below specifications, I noticed that something was amiss. ;Like a lot of other 4S users have been reporting, I’ve been charging my iPhone two to three times a day, though I had chalked it up to new-user zeal. ;Hopefully this issue is a software and not a hardware problem, and will be fixed soon.

iCloud is a joke. ;Sync with the cloud! ;No more iTunes! ;Despite sounding like a dream come true, iCloud is pretty much useless unless you want to switch all your mail and calendar services over to Apple products. And since any third-party app that needs to interface with files on your computer has to go through iTunes anyway, you might as well accept that your favorite overgrown beast of a music player isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

App limitations. ;There’s no way of getting around the fact that the iPhone puts some pretty binding restrictions on its apps. ;Although this helps protect the operating system from poorly-designed and malicious apps, it also means that there are a lot of cool things that iPhone apps just cannot do. ;With great power comes great responsibility—and clearly, Apple has decided we can’t handle either of those things.

A random gripe. ;No matter how much I looked, I couldn’t find an easy way to set one of my iTunes songs as a ringtone. ;Apparently, even though I’ve ;legitimately purchase a ton ;of digital music, Apple still wants me to pay for ringtones separately like it’s 2003?? ;Although eventually I was able to find a number of apps and other workarounds to deal with this issue, it still grinds my gears.

Summary

I’m not saying I’ll never own an Android phone again, but for now I’m pretty happy I made the switch. ;Nevertheless, owning an Apple product is a dangerous prospect. ;Every day I use my phone, I worry there’s a chance I’ve mistakenly drank the Kool-Aid that turns people into mindless Apple zealots. Only through ceaseless vigilance and unyielding negativity will I be able to avoid being subsumed into the Cult of Apple. ;

It’s a grueling prospect, but I’ll endure it... for the apps.

Motivated Slacking: Or, How Come I Never Need Extra Incentive to Kill a Locust?

I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately. I find that I get in these funks from time to time, where a few week pass and I feel as though I am accomplishing very little, both personally and professionally. I don’t know if it’s a seasonal disorder / nutrient deficiency / alignment of the planets thing or what, but whatever it is, it sucks a throbbing donkey dong.

Whenever I get in these little ruts of mine, there’s one thing I always find a little curious: no matter how listless I get, I always manage to keep up with my video gaming. Moreover, I find myself asking the same questions each time: “Why are video games such an exception? How come when I don’t feel like doing anything, I still feel like doing this?”

Now, there are certain obvious answers to this question that may occur to the naïve reader. Of course I still play video games... they’re “games”, after all. By definition, they’re supposed to be fun. What’s more, they’re the kind of fun I can have without the burden of leaving the couch or putting on pants. What could be easier than that?

However, I think the real answer is more complicated than that. For example, anyone who has ever seen me play a video game—with my body rigid and twitching from the stress of thousands of near-death experiences, eyes red and bloodshot from lack of blinking, and a slight bruise on my thigh where I punch my leg in frustration every time my character meets an untimely end—would be hard pressed to imagine that I’m having “fun”. In fact, they’d be just as likely to call the police, assuming that I’m being held against my will, subjected to some variant of the Ludovico technique.

Maybe if I develop an aversion to being chainsawed in half, it’ll make me better at Gears of War.

It’s not just appearances… in fact, there are plenty of times when I’m really not having “fun”. For example, I don’t think I was having fun when I spent two hours jumping down flights of stairs trying to train up my Acrobatics skill while playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and I certainly don’t have fun playing Call of Duty online multiplayer as I’m repeatedly and brutally murdered by foul-mouthed adolescents with Gamertags like PwnsUrMom. (I made this tag up, but of course it turned out to be the real handle of a redneck from the Florida panhandle. Motto: “Cold beer, George Strait, and good people is all I need.”)

So what’s the difference? How can I be “motivated” enough to play video games, even when I’m not motivated enough to do virtually anything else?

I think the answer to this question is best phrased in terms of goals. Let’s say that a goal consists of three parts: a what, a how, and a why. In other words, what do I want to accomplish? How do I go about it? Finally, why the hell should I bother?


In video games, the “what” is usually handed to us. Typically, the “what” is as simple as “save the world”, or “kill that guy over there”. Although more specific goals may manifest as Achievements, such as “Smash 1000 pixies with the Gavel of Procedural Amendments (+30 Gamerpoints)”, in any case our goals are nearly always given to us. In fact, so common is this practice that I remember being pretty confused and disoriented the first time I played Minecraft, a sandbox game so open-ended that there really is no stated goal.

Great, I built a castle.  Does this mean I win?

However, it’s not like things are much different in the real world. Most of the goals I have are things handed to me by society: “graduate from college and get a job”, “copulate with a woman for the purposes of making a genetic copy of yourself”, “survive 78 consecutive years without dying (+30 Gamerpoints)”. I’m not saying this is a bad thing... I mean, there has to be some reason these goals are so common, as opposed to goals like “collect one million plastic forks” or “grow more limbs than anybody else”.

Where video games and reality differ much more is in the “how”. When I’m playing a video game, I almost always know how to work toward the thing I’m trying to accomplish. (Role playing game: kill enemies, get gold, buy better weapons, repeat. Platformer: kill enemies, save princess, repeat. First-person shooter: kill enemies, repeat.) By contrast, at work I almost never know how to work towards my goal. (Will this equation solve my problem? Will that project get me a raise?) At home, it’s even worse. (Will this thoughtful gesture keep my wife from getting mad at me? Will that parenting style keep my kid alive until adulthood while subjecting him to the minimum amount of emotional damage?)

Finally, there’s the “why”. At the most philosophical level, this question is all-encompassing: why are we here? What is our purpose on this Earth? Fortunately, the answer to these questions (like all questions) can be found on the Internet, both here and here.

Seriously, though... why do we do anything that we do? For wealth or power? For glory or recognition? To help others? For me, I’m not sure how much it matters. Even at my motivational nadir, I’m still compelled to play video games, and they offer none of those things (at least, not in reality). Regardless of the “why”, I think I’m more likely to get off my ass and do something if the “what” and the “how” are easily accessible. Perhaps if I could find a way to make real life more like video games in this respect, I’d have an easier time getting things accomplished.

Review: Gears of War 3

As a critic, I’ve found the most challenging reviews to write involve games to which I have a particular emotional attachment, and this is certainly the case for the Gears of War franchise. As long as I’ve had an Xbox 360, Gears of War has been a constant and dependable companion. Sure, every once in a while I’d run off and have a fling when a sexy new Call of Duty game came along... but once the thrill wore off, I’d realize all those new frags were meaningless, and soon I’d be stomping Locusts again like I never left.

Now Gears of War 3 is out, the final entry in Epic Games’ blockbuster trilogy. As excited as I’ve been about this moment, I’ve resolved to do my best to be objective. Given all that we’ve been through together, I’m sure my girl will be furious about being treated like any other release. All I have to say is that I’m sorry, babe... but this is business.

Design: 5/5

In any well-established franchise—especially those with a strong multiplayer component—each sequel is a delicate balance between innovation and tradition. Gears of War 3 finds this balance well, leaving the majority of the essential play-control elements unchanged, while making a few subtle yet important tweaks. Pick up a controller, and initially you may feel like you’re still playing Gears of War 2; however, you’ll quickly notice that things feel more refined and responsive. For example, the button mechanics for actions such as picking up weapons and reviving allies have been slightly adjusted, so now the next time one of your comrades takes an unhealthy number of bullets to the head, you’re much more likely to help him up as opposed to accidentally rummaging through the ammo crate upon which he happened to lie bleeding.

Hey, you can cook him, but I sure as hell ain’t gonna eat him.

Of course, there’s the requisite bevy of new ordnance, including the Digger Launcher (which fires small, highly-explosive Locusts that burrow under cover), the One-Shot (a heavy instant-kill sniper rifle), and the Vulcan Cannon (a two-person chain gun setup, where one person shoots while the other feeds ammo using some sort of bizarre hand-crank device that looks like it also doubles as an ice cream maker).  These new additions are fun, and so far appear to be limited enough in power and availability as to not alter the core gameplay too substantially.

One of the biggest changes involves “Horde mode”, a staple of the Gears of War 2 experience. While you and four friends still get to fend off waves of attacking Locusts, you now have the opportunity to establish a dedicated base, complete with fortifications such as razor wire and turrets. Instead of points (and gore and self-satisfaction), killing Locusts yields rewards of cold hard cash (also, gore and self-satisfaction). After each wave, you can use your newly earned wad to repair and upgrade your sweet fort. Oh, one more thing—every 10th wave is now a “boss wave”, which in my experience usually meant that before his gruesome demise, my character spent his last few terrible seconds of life as a pair of Brumak slippers.

Artistic: 5/5

It’s hard to know where to stand with the visuals in Gears of War 3. From a technical standpoint, everything looks jaw-droppingly amazing, but I consider this to be more of an engineering accomplishment than an artistic one. However, in terms of pure aesthetics, I didn’t find most of the locations in the campaign to be all that compelling. One issue is that at this point, the world of Sera has been wrecked more times than I was during my freshman year of undergrad, and thus most areas have devolved into the same uniform collection of gray rubble. Although there are some occasional breaks from this monotony (such as the setting for the last act), for the most part I wasn’t particularly impressed by too many of the new locales. 

It took some hard work, but designers of Gears of War 3 were able to make Marcus look about 20-30% more haggard.

The enemies, however, are a different story. There are a ridiculous number of new foes, and most of them look pretty bad-ass. Particularly impressive are the many new Locusts of the Lambent variety, which are so packed full of Imulsion that upon dying they explode in a spectacular display of glowing ooze, like some sort of toxic piñata.

Narrative: 3/5

In trying to trying to describe the plot and dialogue of Gears of War 3, I felt it necessary to strive for the same delicate blend of dramatic sensibility and elegant wordsmithing that surely went into the game itself. Here’s what I came up with: “It’s okay.” If you happen to care at all about the fate of Sera, then the campaign does offer a few answers and a bit of closure, but don’t expect to see any Marcus Fenix soliloquys showing up in the drama curriculum anytime soon.

In a lot of ways, Gears of War 3 feels like it’s just running down the checklist of action game clichés. Noble battlefield sacrifices? Check. Comic relief through gallows humor? Check. Newly-introduced NPCs dying quick and horrible deaths? Check. On the other hand, perhaps I should cut the writing a little slack. If you consider the characters, perhaps it’s actually spot-on. I mean, these guys are soldiers—and not the macabre “war is a terrible tragedy, but I’ll fight because I must” kind of soldier, but the kind who gleefully crush skulls under their boots while cracking jokes. I have to assume that they’re not too particularly thoughtful or self-reflective, because otherwise I’d start to worry that they were total sociopaths.

Gameplay: 5/5

As I’ve already mentioned, Gears of War 3 sees adjustments to both the multiplayer and Horde modes, and the result is a noticeably improved gameplay experience. Add to this full four-player co-op in the campaign and a new albeit brief “Beast mode” (basically the reverse of Horde, wherein you play as the Locust), and you’ve got a total package that should keep anyone entertained for quite some time. In fact, while playing the game I got a very real sense that the developers tried to make a game that one could continue to enjoy for years, and so far it seems to me like they achieved that goal.

Once you’ve crushed a Locust’s head with a Silverback mech, you won’t want to crush one with anything else.

Summary

When it comes down to it, when evaluating any video game there’s really only one question that matters: “Is it fun?” After all, you can’t spell “video game” without “game”. (Or, I suppose, without “demo”, “evade”, or “amigo”, although none of those words are at all relevant to my current point.)

If you enjoyed playing any of the previous Gears of War games, then you can rest assured that this one improves upon them in nearly every way, including being more “fun”. Alternatively, if you haven’t played Gears before, but the prospect of exploding one of your friends into a pile of bloody chunks with a short-range shotgun blast (and then having a good laugh about it) appeals to you, then now is as good a time as any to jump on the bandwagon.

Merry Gearsmas!

I could barely sleep last night. Laying in my bed, I thought about (of all things) my Google Calendar, and how for months now, the date of September 20th had been emblazoned with the title “GEARS OF WAR 3 RELEASE”. I remembered how I had even typed it all CAPITAL LETTERS, signifying a level of typographic excitation I almost never achieve, not even for special occasions like Christmas or National Fellatio Week. 

Fuck you, Fred Savage. Fuck. You.

I don’t remember ever being this excited about an upcoming video game as a kid. This could be because I have an absolutely terrible emotional memory; perhaps I actually was this excited about every new release, but don’t remember because the 1990’s happened more than a week ago. One of the only cases I could recall was Super Mario Bros. 3. I remember relentlessly begging my mother for a copy, a tireless saga whose finale doubtlessly involved her slugging it out with other guilt-crazed parents in a K-Mart somewhere. I even dragged her to a showing of The Wizard just for a glimpse of the game. In the end, I finally got my copy of SMB3, and learned an important life lesson in the process: watching an autistic kid play video games for 90-minutes does not make for compelling cinema. 

To be honest, I’m not even sure how (or even if) my friends and I found out about upcoming games back then. This was in the Dark Ages before the Internet, so unless we saw a television commercial or read about it in Nintendo Power magazine, we usually didn’t know about games until after they were already on the shelves. Our usual approach to gaming was to goad our parents into heading to Video World, our local “video rental store”. (For you youngsters out there who don’t know what I’m talking about, imagine Netflix were an actual physical store, except with VHS tapes and Nintendo games instead of DVDs and disgruntled customers complaining about price hikes.) Once there, we would descend into intense deliberations over which game we should get, based on esoteric criteria such as coolness of cover art, whether it came with a photocopied instruction manual, and whether they even had a copy available to rent. Then we would go to one of our houses, start playing the game, realize that it was Back to the Future and one of the worst NES games ever made, and go to bed disappointed. Good times. 

Looking back, I realize that the difference between this approach and the current pre-order paradigm is like the difference between awkward teenage sex and that crazy tantric stuff that Sting is into. For months I’ve read the press releases, watched the gameplay trailers, and played the beta, and when I finally get home from work and open that lovely little package from Amazon, it’s going to be amazing. Don’t get me wrong… like any high-school sweetheart, I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for Video World. However, I think both Sting and I prefer the status quo. 

Merry Gearsmas everyone!

PS - I just remembered, Netflix doesn't have DVDs anymore either.  I guess now it's just disgruntled customers.

Matterhorn Screamer

This weekend I went hiking in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, which proudly boast the worst weather in America. Even though we lucked out with a gorgeous day, it was still a grueling hike. We managed to hit three of the Whites’ tallest peaks (Madison, Adams, and Jefferson), covering 14 miles of rocky terrain with about 6,000 feet of elevation gain. 

Upon reaching the first summit, I perched on top of the world like a god, and gazed down at the White Mountain National Forest, spread out below me in a breathtaking panorama of natural beauty. As I sat there upon my mighty throne of granite, I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, this was a lot of work. Why did I want to do this, again??” Then I tried to refrain from coughing up one of my lungs. 

Catching my breath, I tried to remember what I could possibly have been thinking when I left the house at 5:00 AM that morning. Then it occurred to me that as a form of recreation, mountaineering and video games actually had a lot in common. Perhaps it was these commonalities that appealed to me. 

I’ve actually hiked the White Mountains in the winter, though only after undergoing extensive training using the sophisticated simulation tool shown above.

For example, both video games and mountain climbing deal in well-established and clearly articulated goals. In world where success and accomplishment are typically about as firmly defined as my sagging pecs, it’s nice sometimes to know exactly what it is you’re supposed to be doing, regardless of whether it’s “kill that bad guy” or “walk from here to that high-up place over there”. 

Second, like video games, climbing a mountain yields reliable, tangible rewards for your efforts. When playing a video game, you know that if you do everything it asks of you, eventually you’ll “beat the game”. Likewise, when hiking you know that if you keep going up, eventually you’ll reach the highest point. Just keep on putting one foot in front of the other, and eventually you’ll be able to look down on those puny trees with the same ruthless disdain that a level-30 Dragon Warrior reserves for the average Slime. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, video games and mountain climbing both understand the importance of engaging the user with visual stimulation. The capabilities of current-generation gaming systems have gotten pretty amazing, and keep getting better all the time. However, while hiking we also saw some pretty nice views... and I have to say that for an old analog system, the graphics were still pretty good.

Review: L.A. Noire

As I continue to work my way through reviewing the substantial pile of games I’ve played this year, this week I find myself encountering another Rockstar Games offering: L.A. Noire. In this interactive crime drama, you accompany detective Cole Phelps he slogs through a morass of dirty cops, corrupt politicians, and mutilated corpses in an attempt to bring order and justice to 1940’s Los Angeles.

Design 3/5

At first glance, L.A. Noire looks like a typical Rockstar Grand-Theft-Auto-style game, in that you have a car and an absolutely enormous city to drive around in. However, that’s pretty much where the similarities end. This is not a sandbox game, so anyone expecting it to be one will be sorely disappointed.

The bulk of the gameplay comprises a linear sequence of missions (“cases”), most of which follow a set structure. Upon arriving at a crime scene, the first thing you do is collect evidence, which basically involves wandering around and randomly picking up objects for Cole to stare at intensely, until he deems them either interesting or not. The second major component of Cole’s detective repertoire is interrogation. Throughout each case you will put a number of suspects and witnesses in the hot seat; after each of their responses, you must decide whether to (1) trust their statements, (2) doubt that they’re telling you the whole truth, or (3) accuse the scumbag in question of being a big fat liar.

Hi!  My name’s Cole, and I’ll be accusing you of murder today.

As game mechanics go, L.A. Noire’s is on the more innovative side, but there’s certainly a lot of issues. With such limited options for questions and responses, the interrogations proceed fairly clumsily, and I usually felt like I was more or less choosing Cole’s responses at random. Furthermore, Cole suffers from what I call the “Renegade Complex”. (The name is a reference to a similar issue I encountered in the original Mass Effect.) Since you don’t exactly know what Cole’s responses will be, you have no idea if an option like “doubt” means “try to outwit a tight-lipped witness with some pointed questioning”, or if it means “start screaming at a 12-year-old girl who just found out her mother was murdered”. In other words, I found it difficult to play Cole in a way that didn’t make him come across as borderline schizophrenic.

These issues are exacerbated by the fact that you’re trying operate within the context of an overarching plot line. Whenever things don’t add up (and often they won’t), it’s unclear whether you missed something in the current case, or if some hidden fact will be revealed in a later one. Put all these issues together and the end result is somewhat unfulfilling, such that even cases I solved “successfully” felt more like a product of luck than skill.

Artistic 5/5

The visuals of L.A. Noire are absolutely stunning. I found the most impressive part to be incredibly detailed faces and expressions of the characters, a product of sophisticated new motion capture technology. I’m not sure exactly how this technology works, so let’s just assume it works exactly like the digitization laser from the movie Tron.

You’ll easily recognize a number of familiar television actors who lent their likenesses to the game, including Aaron Staton from Mad Men (who plays Cole Phelps), Greg Grunberg from Heroes, and the crazy old dude from Fringe.

I’m pretty sure Matt Parkman has the advantage here, considering he’s a psychic and everything.

Unfortunately, the city itself is a lot like a beautiful Hollywood starlet: breathtakingly beautiful, but pretty light on substance. Without the gamut of activities and side quests typical of a sandbox game, the world of L.A. Noire something is you merely pass through, rather than truly engage in.

Narrative 4/5

A lot of critics have compared L.A. Noire to the movie L.A. Confidential. Plot-wise I see some similarities; for example, I didn’t really follow either of them very well. There are a lot of characters, and the fact that most of them are terse, emotionally-repressed assholes doesn’t make understanding their particular motives any easier. The game also seems to presuppose a certain knowledge of historical events (such as the Black Dahlia murder) of which I was clearly lacking. However, the dialogue is well written and well acted, so individual scenes are eminently watchable, even when you have no idea how they fit together.

Gameplay 2/5

And now the kicker… despite all of its polish and beauty, when it comes down to it, I just didn’t find this game fun. The lack of enjoyment could be my fault, because I didn’t know what to expect, or it could be L.A. Noire’s fault, because it doesn’t know what it wants to be. If I had to guess at a genre, L.A. Noire is more like a puzzle game than anything… but with so many flaws in its core gameplay mechanics, it’s hard to feel like there’s any puzzle you’re actually solving.

A riveting scene from an upcoming episode of CSI: Los Angeles. Before the advent of modern technology, crime scene investigation consisted mainly of standing in a circle around dead bodies and talking.

Incidentally, I even bought the “Rockstar Season Pass” and downloaded all the DLC, but by the time I was done with the game, I didn’t feel like playing any of it. I would say that’s not a great sign.

Summary

Just because something’s new and different doesn’t mean it’s good, and just because a studio takes a chance, doesn’t mean it’s going to succeed. L.A. Noire is certainly ambitious, but I feel it falls a bit short, and I’m just not in the habit of giving A’s for effort. The best thing I can say about the game is that it looks like it pushed the technological envelope in a lot of ways, the benefits of which we may be seeing for years to come.

Happy Birthday to Me

Tomorrow I’ll be celebrating the completion of my 32nd trip around the Sun. (Though by the time I finally post this, it might be today.) In regards to this momentous event, my wife posed a question that I expect is pretty commonly asked around such anniversaries. Namely, she asked me, “What would you like for your birthday?”

I responded in the same way I have every year since reaching adulthood: “Nothing”.

“What, there’s nothing that you want?”

Hearing the absurdity of this accusation, I thought that perhaps my original one-word response could do with some unpacking. I explained:

“Of course there are things that I want, but they all fall into one of three categories: (1) things I can afford, like video games, (2) things I can’t afford, like a helicopter or a Japanese sexbot, and (3) things that don’t exist, like hover shoes or an AeroBed that actually stays inflated. Things from the first category I’ve already bought myself, and things from the second you shouldn’t be buying me. Good luck with the third.”

You see, this is the problem with birthdays. When you’re a kid, a gift is like free income, which is why you feel so completely ripped off when someone gets you something lame like clothes or a pencil case. (As my birthday coincides with the back-to-school season, you can believe this happened to me all the time.) When you’re an adult, it’s completely different. A gift from your parents merely serves to decrease your future inheritance by one ugly sweater’s worth, while a gift from your spouse is basically something you bought yourself.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I much prefer it this way, where I get to buy whatever I hell I want, whenever the hell I want it. At this point, I’ve got pre-orders stacked up through the holidays, including Gears of War 3, Saints Row: The Third, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Modern Warfare 3. In other words, I’ve ensured that Amazon will be delivering me a steady stream of gifts non-stop until Christmas.

Happy birthday to me.

PS – I’ve decided that instead of posting blog entries on Tuesdays and reviews on Thursdays, I’m going to post them on Tuesdays and Fridays.  However, I’m going to start posting them first thing in the morning (or the night before), so that you can actually read them on those days :)