Review: BioShock Infinite (Xbox 360)

BioShock Infinite does what the BioShock series does best, weaving a thrilling narrative into a rich and captivating world.

Like any medium for artistic expression, video games can allow us to experience fantastic new worlds that entertain and inspire us. Unlike most other mediums, though, games also allow us to interact with those worlds. This characteristic begets an enormous challenge when creating a video game; while a novel or a film has to create a world that is convincing when experienced through the controlled environment of the page or the screen, a video game has to create one that is convincing when you walk around inside of it and poke things, often in an effort to wreck the joint.

In the pantheon of video games, one title stands above all others in terms of creating a truly fascinating and compelling world: the original BioShock. The undersea city of Rapture is one of the most vivid locations I've ever visited in a game, and while some worlds have been bigger or more detailed or rendered with more polygons, none have ever felt as real. In fact, the place that comes the closest is the floating city of Columbia, the setting of the new BioShock Infinite.

Review: Gears of War: Judgment (Xbox 360)

Though a little on the lean side in terms of content, Gears of War: Judgment is pretty good... provided you like third-person Halo games.

Shooters are the video-game equivalent of jazz music. To some people they seem like so much chaos and noise, and many have trouble discerning the subtleties that distinguish one work from another. Through practiced appreciation, though, the connoisseur learns to identify tightly woven patterns of structure and balance, a framework that allows seemingly minor creative changes to have a massive impact on the mood and feel of the piece. This dichotomy of chaos and order is why two games like Halo and Call of Duty can seem like interchangeable murder simulators to the layperson, whilst the expert experiences them as differently as one would a Thai massage and a colonoscopy.

The narrow chasms that differentiate shooters are especially relevant when we consider franchises and sequels. For example, the Gears of War series sets itself apart with combat that is far more deliberate and strategic than that of "twitchier" shooters like Call of Duty, while still achieving the kind of high-octane arcade flair not present in tactical shooters like Rainbow Six. However, when designing a new entry for an established franchise, developers face a dilemma: how can the game evolve, without changing so much that it becomes an entirely different kind of shooter?

Review: Halo 4

Although Halo 4 introduces great new enemies, weapons, and environments, 343 Industries ultimately plays it safe with this new chapter by skillfully iterating on the canonical Halo experience. 

One of the most disorienting experiences a critic can have is liking something, but not knowing why. In the context of video games it's an epistemological hazard I usually can avoid, but one series that persistently confounds my critical judgement is Halo.

For example, I've never found myself particularly inspired by Halo's militaristic, technology-driven, human-centric brand of science fiction; I instead prefer games like Mass Effect where you get to explore diverse cultural and sociopolitical relationships between advanced civilizations on a galactic scale, and also have sex with aliens. When it comes to competitive multiplayer, I usually opt for something like the deliberate, hyper-violent, highly strategic combat of Gears of War, which makes Halo and its floaty ragdoll physics look like NBA 2K13 by comparison. And in terms of protagonists, I pretty much prefer anybody to the Master Chief, a character so lacking in charisma he makes Gordon Freeman seem like George Clooney.

However, despite all my arguments to the contrary, I really do like Halo. Perhaps it's all those weapons, scattered around the battlefield with the abundance of dandelions in a glen. Perhaps it's the resulting frenzy of fast-paced combat, which resembles a firefight breaking out at the 2557 NRA national gun show. Perhaps its the panoply of bizarre vehicles, and the unfettered glee that accompanies soaring above the fray in a Banshee. Perhaps I just really like punching diminutive alien zealots in the face.

Given how poorly I comprehend my affection for the Halo series, it was with some concern that I approached this newest installment. Marking a return to the original storyline after a five year intermission, and serving as the first major development effort by the new stewards of the franchise, Halo 4 could have been the key to unlocking what I find so appealing about these ridiculous games, or it could have been enough of a misstep to finally break their spell over me.

Don't worry... even though the Chief has never seen this ancient alien weapon before, he won't let that fact keep him from killing stuff with it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Halo 4 achieved neither of these extremes. Instead, 343 Industries channeled their obvious devotion to the Xbox flagship franchise and delivered an incredibly faithful reproduction of the classic Halo experience. As far as a casual gamer like myself can tell, the fundamentals of the combat are essentially unchanged; other than a dedicated button for short sprinting and fact that the armor ability system of Halo: Reach has been retained, most of the time I felt like I could have been playing any game in the Halo library. (Incidentally, I was a big fan of the Reach ability system, and was psyched to see that the "hologram decoy" makes a triumphant return.) Halo 4 even takes pains to make sure the 10+ hours of single-player campaign include all the requisite gameplay hooks, from the frantic close-combat battles in nondescript futuristic space corridors to the epic clashes of heavy weapons platforms that are really difficult to steer properly.

Unfortunately, Halo 4's commitment to consistency means that a lot of opportunities for innovation are lost. For instance, even though an entire new civilization is introduced—and with it, a wealth of new enemies and technologies—the resulting gameplay changes remarkably little. The new Forerunner weapons reprise the same well-balanced collection of roles already filled by the existing UNSC and Covenant ordnance (e.g. assault rifle, battle rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun), and despite the few novel twists and tricks they throw at you, any new foes you encounter can usually be dispatched with the same old tactics.

Cortana is pretty much naked at all times, whereas John never even takes his helmet off. And that's the least odd thing about this couple.

I'm not really going to offer a critique of the plot of Halo 4, because frankly the entire mythology of the Halo universe confuses the hell out of me. Over the past 10 years I've managed to grasp that the Master Chief (a.k.a. SPARTAN-II commando John-117) is a biologically-engineered super-soldier whose girlfriend is an artificially intelligent computer program that was modeled after his mother and lives in his head. Also, they've saved the universe a few times. Beyond that I'm fairly lost, so if you're the sort of person who plays these games for the story and you've read this far, I've nothing more to offer than my apologies.

Although the campaign is certainly worth playing, as with past Halo games (and pretty much every other first-person shooter), folks are likely to spend most of their Halo 4 quality time in competitive multiplayer. After haranguing all my regular gaming buddies into dropping a bit of their precious pre-holiday cash on this particular title (as opposed to, say, Black Ops 2), I suppose I was relieved to find the multiplayer was as conservatively designed and incrementally innovated as the campaign. Of course, this means that while Halo 4 does well what Halo games typically do well (e.g. robust matchmaking and well-balanced competitive combat), it also does poorly what Halo games typically do poorly (right down to the clunky menus and the litany of arcane, ill-explained game modes). Then again, one of the multiplayer maps is a visually stunning remake of the Halo 3 favorite "Valhalla", so how much can one really complain?

Home of the gods.

Beyond competitive multiplayer, there's also been a general trend this console cycle towards more cooperative multiplayer game modes in shooters. In terms of quality, they typically range from paragons of game design like Gears of War's "Horde mode" to hokey half-assed pandering like Call of Duty's "zombie mode". Unfortunately, Halo 4's "Spartan Ops" cooperative game mode, which consists of episodic collections of co-op side missions, tends more towards the latter. Most missions are essentially glorified shooting galleries, and since you're free to respawn as much as you like, the primary challenge is how long you're willing to mop up the seemingly endless waves of enemies before you grow too bored to continue. If you're really looking to spend some quality time with your friends murdering aliens instead of one another, then playing the campaign in co-op mode is a much better bet.

In closing, I hate saying that Halo 4 is "basically another Halo game", but no matter how I run the numbers, that's the answer I keep coming up with. In other words, if the whole space marine thing has never really been your cup of tea, then Halo 4 is unlikely to be the game that changes your palate. However, if you're an old-school Halo fan looking to get back in the game or a current Reach regular looking to re-up your multiplayer, then Halo 4 is everything you need it to be, and maybe even a little bit more.

Review: Borderlands 2

At times tightly designed and brilliantly executed, while at other times uninspired and juvenile, Borderlands 2 is an idiot savant of a first-person shooter.

On the lawless border world of Pandora, four "vault hunters"—a soldier, an assassin, a brute, and a powerful sorceress—are on a quest to find an legendary alien treasure. Guided by a mysterious artificial intelligence and assisted by a bizarre cast of supporting characters, these four brave adventurers battle feral creatures, psychotic bandits, and the forces of an evil corporation as they search for the mythical Eridian Vault and its promise of immeasurable wealth and power.

This little tale was the premise of the original Borderlands, and having sunk a lot of time into the first game, it is a story with which I am quite familiar. Consequently, I was somewhat disappointed when I realized a few minutes into the introduction of Borderlands 2 that this was also the premise of the sequel.

However, after spending a lot more time with the second game, I realized how wrong I was. Borderlands 2 isn't really about vault hunters, nor is it about "Handsome Jack" (the game's narcissistic, sociopathic, endlessly chatty villain), nor is it a commentary on imperialism and corporate greed, nor is it about murdering lots of dudes to snag color-coded loot. (Well, maybe it's a little bit about that last thing.) Rather, Borderlands 2 is about expectations, and why you should put yours aside when you play this game. It's also about an inbred chubby-chasing mechanic named Scooter.

I'm convinced that understanding this man is the secret to understanding Borderlands.

Like the original, Borderlands 2 is a self-styled "role-playing shooter" (RPS), combining the gameplay of a first-person shooter with the kinds of leveling systems, random weapon drops, and quest structures more traditionally found in role-playing games. Throughout the game's fairly linear mission structure ("go to point A, kill thing B, repeat") you'll encounter a variety of bizarre characters, such as an unbelievably annoying and foul-mouthed tween of a demolitions expert, a cyborg anthropologist who comes across more or less like a black Rudyard Kipling (how's that for irony?), and the four vault hunters from the original Borderlands (formerly a bland collection of nearly mute player characters, now somehow infused with distinct personalities).

However, the character I found most intriguing was Scooter, who reprises his role as the redneck proprietor of the "Catch-A-Ride" vehicle creation system. Scooter is friendly, talkative, funny, secretly romantic, and likely quite inbred, which is unsurprising given the occasional allusions to his incestuous urges. Despite his affable nature, he's got a casual murder or two under his belt, indicating that he's achieved the same level of moral flexibility exhibited by everyone else on this brutal wasteland of a planet. Also, he's a savant when it comes to engineering, and he seems to be one of the only people around capable of dealing with Pandora's incredibly advanced technology. In short, Scooter is Borderlands 2: an uninspired, frequently predictable stereotype full of crass behavior and juvenile dialogue, but one that also exhibits flashes of true technical genius, genuinely funny comedy, and uncharacteristic emotional depth.

Borderlands 2 may be the smartest dumb game I've ever played.

All of this brings me back to my original point about expectations. It would be easy to say that Borderlands 2 is simply "more Borderlands", because on a certain level that's the truth. It would be similarly easy to view it as yet another first-person game with RPG elements (à la Mass Effect, Bioshock, Fallout, or Deus Ex), with a repetitive mission structure and too much hand-holding. Likewise, it would be perfectly reasonable to take in the game's gratuitous violence, meet its over-the-top characters, and listen to their many jokes that fall flat more often than not, and then find yourself turned off by a title that seems like it is simply trying too hard.

A better approach, though, is to put your expectations aside and leave yourself open to the true moments of brilliance that can be found in Borderlands 2. It can be found in the expertly balanced combat, the amazing diversity of weapons (with their impressive array of custom reloading and firing animations), or among the many subtle improvements Gearbox has made to the enemy AI. It can be seen in the franchise's unique "concept art" graphical style, which feels more lovingly hand-drawn yet stylishly hyper-real than ever. It can be found in a ninja assassin who speaks only in haikus and emoticons (which is who I played most of the game as), and in a villain who turns out to be a much more complicated brand of douchebag than he originally seems. And of course, sometimes that brilliance can come from a porn-addicted hillbilly mechanic and amateur poet named Scooter, who helped me save the world of Pandora while making me laugh out loud more than once.

The Best Hangover Cure

As should be obvious from the date of my last post, my blog has been on a bit of a break while I finish up my Ph.D. degree. However, I hit a major milestone this past weekend when I turned in a nearly final draft of my thesis to my committee. After doing a bit too much celebrating on Sunday night, I nursed a brutal hangover on Monday using an old family remedy: fluids, aspirin, and the Gears of War 3 beta.

My initial reactions are pretty positive. As one might expect, not much of the game is fundamentally different from its predecessors. I was able to jump in and play as though I’d never left, like these months of pretending to love Black Ops were just a bad dream. It seems like they refined the button overloading a little bit; for example, you now have to hold buttons down to do certain things, which reduces the chances of your character absently rifling through an ammo crate when you want him to be assisting a dying teammate instead.

Also, there appear to be two new default weapons. The first was a “Retro Lancer” which has a bayonet instead of a chainsaw. I think the balance here is a faster instant-kill melee, at the cost of a lower shooting accuracy. Instead of your standard Gnasher, there is now the alternative of a sawed-off shotgun, which can instantly turn anything into a pile of bloody chum, but can only do so one shell at a time.

You must get a tax break if you include a mall as one of your multiplayer maps, because it seems to be all the rage these days.

A few other new weapons I found scattered about were an incendiary grenade and a “Digger Launcher”. The latter adds a nice twist to the cover-based combat, as it can burrow under walls to explode an enemy hiding on the other side.  If you have a terrible sense of direction like me, then you’ll be pleased to see that the loading screen includes a map of the current multiplayer level, complete with locations of where to find these precious toys. Just don’t expect to be the only one making a beeline for the nearest Mulcher.

Although not much has changed on the surface, that doesn’t mean that a lot of new work hasn’t gone into the game. I get the impression that designing a good multiplayer experience is kind of a thankless job, as people only notice when something is unbalanced, such as when a map is poorly designed or a particular weapon is too powerful. Though things look good right now, it will take some time to see whether Gears of War 3 gets it just right.  Of course, that’s why they have these beta tests… and if it means I don’t have to wait until the fall to get my Gears on, then I’m certainly happy to help.

Review: Bulletstorm

In the supper of video gaming, first-person shooters are the red meat: bloody, delicious, and unlikely to be dethroned as our dominant form of sustenance, no matter how many heart attacks they cause. Our latest helping of hamburger is Bulletstorm, an FPS from People Can Fly (makers of Painkiller) and Epic Games (of Gears of War fame). Following the adventures of Grayson Hunt—a former military assassin turned space pirate and part-time Christian Slater impersonator—Bulletstorm invites you the abandoned resort city of Elysium, where you get to carve a brutal, limb-strewn swath through waves of mutants as you “kill with skill”.

Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops is the seventh installment in the Call of Duty series.  Set this time in the 1960’s, it shows that the only thing with more longevity than the Call of Duty franchise itself is American nostalgia for the Cold War. I’d say things have gotten pretty bad when game developers start to think, “You know what people might enjoy fighting again? The Vietnam War.”

Like the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 single-player campaign, you play as a variety of characters, though most of the action centers around Studies and Observation Group (SOG) operator Alex Mason. During the campaign, you attempt to uncover a Russian plot to... ah, who are we kidding? Anyone who plays this game either (1) got it for the multiplayer, or (2) accidentally purchased it because they got it confused with a Splinter Cell game.

Shooting Up

I recently jumped on the Call of Duty: Black Ops bandwagon. (Or maybe just I fell off of the “I’m too cool to play the new CoD game” bandwagon—either way, I’m certain there was a wagon involved.) Regardless, the irony of this choice is threefold, because that’s as many fold as I feel like discussing right now.

I prefer to take the coward's way out, but I usually get executed first.

Irony the First: I typically avoid first-person shooters, largely because I’m not very good at them. I feel like there was some special gym class in high school or something where they taught everyone how to be good at shooters, and I happened to be absent that day. (I was probably pretending to be sick so I could play Final Fantasy II.) Sometimes in multiplayer my opponents don’t even shoot at me; they just point and laugh. In past years, however, games like Half-Life and Bioshock have worked to subvert my disdain by exploiting my love of RPG’s and trying to win me over with their amazing characters, environments, and story arcs. Slowly but surely, these games have paved the way for me toward more typical FPS’s.

Irony the Second: whenever my ego is feeling robust enough that I’m willing to subject myself to an FPS, I usually tend towards ones with more of a sci-fi flare. To me, games like Call of Duty seem like little more than the following: choose one from a collection of nearly identical guns, and then use it to murder a bunch of nearly identical guys in a series of nearly identical environments. I prefer the greater variety offered by games like Halo (where you fight against an invading alien force called the Covenant, which is trying to wipe out all of mankind), or Half-Life (where you fight against an invading alien force called the Combine, which is trying to wipe out all of mankind), or Gears of War (where you fight against an invading alien force called the Locusts... okay, so maybe the variety argument isn’t a good one).

Irony the Third: I only just got Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 a few weeks ago, despite repeatedly telling my friends I wasn’t really interested. I actually only got the game because a friend of mine saw it in a used games store in Virginia and mailed it to me. Now, instead of not playing MW2 with them because I don’t own it, I’m not playing MW2 with them because I’ve moved on to Black Ops. What an asshole.

Anyways, I have to admit that the Black Ops multiplayer is addictive enough that I foresee myself playing it for quite some time. Maybe with enough practice I can graduate from “guy who gets knifed in the back while running around like a jackass” to “guy who gets knifed in the back while hiding in the corner trying to drive a stupid exploding RC car”.