Review :: Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2

Some spoilers below.

After playing Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2, I still feel the same amount of apathy that permeates the "Call of Duty Problem." (Go back! Read it! Shameless plug!) When I sit down, I know I'm about to enter a long, linear shooter that is going to thrust me through many 'exciting' environments in an effort to give me the 'coolest' experience possible. The more I play Call of Duty games, the more I'm convinced that they're not going to change. It's the same principle with the television show, '24:' watch one season, and you get the gist, the basic formula (and the enjoyment along the way). Watch any more seasons (or play any more games) and you're in for a downhill ride of repetitious scenarios that can never seem to match the original.

CoD6: MW2 is a game defined by context: the events which are going on around you. I think that's why the original Call of Duties were so successful: never before in a game did you feel so authentically like you were part of a larger-scale war. People weren't standing around like stick figures waiting for you to talk to them--in contrast, your comrades were ducking for cover, chucking grenades, pulling each other to safety, trying to advance without you. Something was always happening, independent of your actions, and that made the world feel so much more alive, the battles so much more authentic. It was new, it was fresh, and it was exciting. Flash forward to today, and Call of Duty 6 relies on the same principles, except perhaps even more so. CoD6 continually uses the same game mechanic (or rather, only game mechanic): run into an arena of enemies, tap zoom-in to auto-aim at the baddy (at least for the console version. Maybe I would've liked it if I played it on PC), press fire, then rinse and repeat for maximum fun. What changes throughout the game, however, is the context. You shoot bad guys in the same way, except you do it in different environments: in a helicopter circling a castle, in a raft roaring down a river, in a snowmobile jumping over a ravine.
Don't get me wrong, it's good to change the context--it provides variety, new environments to switch up the game mechanics in, and new scenarios to take part in. What's disappointing, for me, however, is that the designers seem to be so focused on what's going around you, rather than on what's going on because of you. They seem to be so concentrated on providing interesting settings and scenarios--icy cliffs, burning white houses, raging rapids--that what few actions you can perform no longer have as much meaning.
When you're with the terrorists who are shooting up an airport in Russia, you're not allowed to stop the attack, shoot back, or take action; you're only allowed to view the onslaught (or participate in it, for gosh's sake) until the mission is over.
When you are an astronaut in space, you can only view the impending explosion from your static viewpoint, not influence it or try to stop it.
These scenarios are interesting to be in, but you can't really participate in them. You are sitting, watching, viewing--and the only way you can participate in the scenario (if at all) is to shoot enemies until you clear a location so that the soldiers around you can hold your hand until the next story segment.

I want my actions in a game to have meaning. I want to influence the story, be a part of it, not be a passive viewer on the sidelines. I want to stop an assassination, kill an enemy leader, successfully break down an enemy outpost, and then see the repercussions of those actions. This happens in Call of Duty somewhat, but it seems to happen less and less, especially for the current game. So many things in CoD6 currently take place independently of your actions (the terrorist massacre, the EMP missile launch, the betrayal by a certain comrade), and because of that, you are reduced to more of a viewer than a participant.
Then again, that was part of the original point of the Call of Duty games: to make you feel as if you were a small piece of an ultimately larger and global conflict. It worked, in that respect, but it feels so scaled down currently, than any actions I make don't have any meaning at all--all I can do is just kill endless waves of enemies in confined and pre-determined locations, and then watch everyone else get to do the fun, important, plot-changing stuff.

The last scene in CoD6 exemplifies what Call of Duty has now become for me, in both scope and methodology. It doesn't take the game mechanics, make you exploit them in an innovative way, or challenge you to perform your best to finish the fight. Instead, you, the player, sit and watch, and watch as your ally fights the last boss as you are helpless to participate in the fight. The game restricts you to a dying position without any movement, then literally tells you to smash your SQUARE button endlessly as a quick-time gimmick. You don't have to think, strategize, or perform--you just do what the game tells you to do. After that, the game lets you aim at the final boss with virtually no chance of missing or losing. This isn't an exercise in gaming--it's an exercise in viewing and following instructions.

Games, as a medium, are different, important, fun--whatever adjective you want--because of one main element: interactivity. Without this, it becomes a passive medium, much in the same way of film or literature, which are enjoyable on their own right, but in a different manner. What makes interactivity interesting is in the ways in which (you think) you can directly impact the game world, however small or large. What Call of Duty has progressively shifted towards is a game with many moments of action, except you are not causing the action, you are viewing it. Moments like these are exciting to be in, but don't always work as a gaming experience because there is no interaction, no feedback from the player. If Call of Duty could keep the same moments, the same level of polish, but make you, the player, the instigator of the action, then it would be a much more enjoyable game.

Film Review: "9"

Several days ago, I watched Shane Acker's feature length film "9" (based after the short of the same name). I wanted to like the film a lot, and I did; it is visually captivating, beautifully animated, and contains all the pieces of a powerful narrative. What I was disappointed with, however, was how it did not connect these pieces together in the best possible way in order to unfold the narrative to the audience.

The film starts out with the character, '9', being created by his master. This initial scene is fascinating to behold as it develops, because it handles the transmitting of information from the screen to the viewer much better than the rest of the film does.
The world of '9' is introduced through the awakening of the protagonist, who stumbles upon an open window and views this world he must discover. At this point we don't know who he is, why he is created, or why the world is in the shambles that it is in, and that is fine; in fact, it's much better that we don't know these things.

Information is best given out in controlled amounts, spatially placed for the viewer to consume at chosen intervals. At the beginning of 'Portal' we don't need to know that Glados killed everyone in the facility; we don't need to know that there were other test subjects who tried to escape; what we do need, however, is to be spoon fed just enough information (little bits of dialog slowly giving hints who and where you are, in Portal's case) so that we are hungry for the next bite--we don't need a gigantic mouthful of information that we can barely swallow in one gulp. Stories do not need to reveal everything at once; the viewer can be satisfied without knowing huge chunks of information, and the introduction of '9' does this quite admirably.

Immediately, '9' is a somewhat likable character; his lack of a voice causes the audience to sympathize with him--perhaps if they kept him voiceless for a longer period of time the addition of a voice would carry more weight with it. Shortly after he meets '2,' however, the story starts to sway from its promising beginnings.


One reason that the story loses its weight is by faulty motivations through its characters. When the character '2' is kidnapped, '9' agreeably wants to chase after him. At this point it's a bit hard to sustain a suspension of disbelief since '9' just woke up in this world, has no emotional attachments whatsoever, and seems to spontaneously bond just enough with the character '5' to convince him to disobey his leader's--for who knows how many years--orders just at the simple whim of his new buddy and pal whom he barely even knows, our protagonist, '9.'
When the characters' motivations become unbelievable, it causes a lack of sympathy, because the audience can no longer put themselves into the shoes of a character who does something unreasonable. What would have made this choice more believable for the audience is if they were introduced to the rag dolls' daily routine in their sanctuary. Instead, the audience is thrust to this new place for a brief moment to have '9' suddenly state, 'let's leave and advance the plot because we must save time on animation costs!' so they do that instead and it's much less believable. If the film spent more time with its characters, this would create more realistic motivations that the audience can sympathize with.

What I would have liked with the film is:
a) More character moments - as the director stated, the audience needed to care for the characters more, and to do that we need to spend more time with them in just simple, humanistic ways. One thing they could have done was have '8' pull out the magnet earlier in the film, get chastised by '1' for doing so on duty, and then the audience would wonder what 'the deal' was. Little quirks and mannerisms like that make characters more believable and real, so more of that would have been nice.

b) Exploiting the nature of the tiny rag dolls more - these rag dolls exist in a miniaturized version of our blown up (literally and figuratively) world. I would have enjoyed to see how their size played more of a function in interacting with their larger human counterparts.
c) Feeling of hope and desperation - this is something that the short film did extremely well: it portrayed a sincere and utter hope of laying everything on the line for one last chance at redemption after every other character had been killed by this beast. '9' only had one opportunity to destroy the beast, and it created some increasingly tense drama that is not present in the feature film, only because '9' is never put in the same desperation in the full length version.
d) More solid story goals - currently, the story goals of the film go something like this: '9' must explore this world; he wakes up in the sanctuary and now must save '2' by destroying the beast; he does this but awakens the master beast and now must do research to defeat it; somewhere along the line he decides to go back and destroy the master beast; he figures out he needs to grab something off the master beast before they kill it, and then does so. This sequence of goals sort of works, but it's quite hard to follow and to relate to the characters as they pursue each ensuing decision. I think the story would benefit a lot more from a restructure that would simplify each goal to a couple of basic concepts and then exploit those concepts to their fullest potential. For example, off the top of my head: '9' wakes up and goes back to sanctuary; sanctuary is destroyed and some get kidnapped leaving '9' to choose sides about whether to hide or go after the kidnapped people (this would give him more of an incentive since the stakes are now higher); the beast lets '9' kill him but the trade-off is somehow '9' activating the master bot; then '9' must find the missing members to set up a final trap to destroy the master bot. That's just one simple example.

All in all, '9' is a great film to look at, but could be improved in the story department. It was interesting to hear how the director himself said that they needed much more time than the given 6 months of pre-production to lay out the story, because once the story is set, animation is expensive, and you can't throw away money out the window. It just goes to show that story--is everything. You can have great visuals, great characters, and a great setting, but unless the viewer is catapulted on one long emotional, narrative ride, it can all be for naught.

REVIEW :: Batman: Arkham Asylum

When I hear that Batman: Arkham Asylum is a 'good' game--and while agreeing with that sentiment--it makes me wonder what the definition of a 'good' game really is. It certainly means fun and entertaining, but it is not necessarily synonymous with original or innovative. With that in mind, I agree that Arkham Asylum is a 'good,' fun game, but it is also an unoriginal, and sometimes apathetic game.
It's fun because it does what it attempts to do, and does it right--it successfully melds combat, stealth, exploration, and puzzle-solving together while inadvertently ripping off Assassin's Creed and Zelda in order to do so. That being said, Arkham Asylum is unoriginal in that everything it tries to do has already been proven.

Although Arkham Asylum is fun and tries proven methods, there is still room for improvement. I am going to put out 3 suggestions that I think could make Arkham Asylum a better game.

3 Things that Could be Fixed in Arkham Asylum
1. Addition of a Mini-Map
There is a consistent problem in Arkham Asylum in that you can't really tell where you're going all the time. Part of this is caused by the fact that the camera is narrowly zoomed into Batman's cape, and part of it is attributed by the fact that the scenery recurrently blends together with or without Detective Vision™.
What this leads to is a constant re-checking of the map screen by the player in order to figure out where he/she is and where he/she needs to go. This constitutes pressing the 'select' button, pausing the game, letting the map screen load up for several seconds, and then pushing 'select' again to return to the game--an entire process which takes several seconds and must be perpetually repeated.
It really wouldn't hurt to have some sort of mini-map or radar always available on-screen to the player. Adding a simple mini-map in the corner of the screen (Ala Zelda style) would alleviate much of this problem and prevent the player from getting irritated by re-pressing the map screen button so many times in one arena.

Twilight Princess and its mini-map.

2. Arbitrary Gameplay Rewards

Another thing that could be fixed in Arkham Asylum is the arbitrary handing out of gameplay rewards. Currently, in the game there is no definite reason as to why the rewards you get (new items, gadgets, or keycards) don't come earlier or later in the context of the narrative. For example, when you decide you need a new bat claw you haphazardly hop back to the Bat Cave and decide to improve your arsenal only at that specific time, when you could have done it much earlier in the game, if only the game let you. Another example is when the Warden of the asylum conveniently decides to give you a card which magically unlocks a large portion of the inaccessible areas in the game, only after you find him after an indeterminate period of time. Furthermore, Batman only decides to retrieve his handy zip line the second he needs it from his Bat plane by phoning it into a remote part of the island, when he could have easily called it in at any other time in the game.
By giving the rewards out to the player in this way, the game prevents the player from feeling like he or she has actually earned the rewards. In contrast, this puts the player at the game's mercy of giving out new items not when the player has accomplished a certain feat or defeated a certain boss, but instead when the game 'feels' like giving out these rewards.
This is in opposition to other games such as Zelda, in which the gameplay rewards are situated within the context of the game world and story. For example, in a Zelda game the player is rewarded with new items not when Link feels like pulling them out of his backpack, but instead when the player discovers them in a subterranean dungeon or when defeating an evil leviathan.
If the gameplay rewards in Arkhum Asylum actually depended on the player's progress and victories instead of arbitrary backpack pulling, then the game would provide a much more gratifying gameplay experience.

3. Status-Quo Storyline
Arkham Asylum's story leaves much to be desired in terms of clasping onto the player and never letting go. This is because in a comic-book world, everything revolves around returning things to a state of normalcy, back to the status quo.
No matter how much I loved Spider-Man and Batman as a kid, I always despised the fact that things would never change. At the end of every episode, Batman would arrest the villain, Spider-Man would revert to his normal self, and everything would return to the status quo, the same as it was before.
This is the exact reason why it's so hard to get involved with the storyline in Arkham Asylum when it starts out by saying: 'The Joker's escaped and set all the inmates free! What should we do?!' And then ends by saying something like: 'Good job Batman, you returned the Joker to his cell and put all the inmates back. Nothing's changed!'

Guess where he's going by the game's end.

Despite the game needing a story to motivate the player's goals, this is about as one-dimensional as the narrative can get. Playing through the game, I'm not compelled to pursue each goal, because I don't care about the inevitable outcome of the story. What I want from a story is change, tension, things to go wrong, mystery, suspense--things that the film 'The Dark Knight' all did admirably, but fail to apply to Batman's video game counterpart.
If Arkham Asylum attempted to create a more challenging, multidimensional story, it would provide an incentive for the player to keep playing the game and it would create a more satisfying experience in the end instead of containing the detached and apathetic feel it currently has.

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In conclusion, Arkham Asylum is a fun game, but it's too safe. It doesn't offer anything new, challenging, or unique. Even though Mirror's Edge is a game that has remarkably more frustrations, I would say Mirror's Edge is still more fun than Arkham Asylum because it offers something that Arkham Asylum does not have: an original, exhilarating experience. When it comes down to what I want in a video game, it is all about providing a unique 'experience'; the feel of being able to do something in another world, to journey through a compelling story, to challenge myself in new ways. Arkham Asylum doesn't fully offer an original experience such as that, and so, despite its accomplished design, the game eventually remains more to be desired after its completion.

Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge is like a Jackie Chan stunt: exhilarating when pulled off correctly, but frustrating and irritating the five or six takes it demands before it's done right. For that reason, I would not say that Mirror's Edge is a bad game, but just a failed game. It has the right ideas and direction, but fails to pull them off in the correct execution and/or presentation.

There's no question that the game does something right: it offers the chance of freedom, exploration, and the thrill of the chase across city rooftops and narrow corridors. However, it has an equally fair share of problems that diminishes this enjoyment from being the centerpiece of the game.

What I am going to do is discuss what Mirror's Edge does wrong, and how it could be improved to create a tighter, more accessible, and less frustrating experience.

Things That Need to be Changed

1. No-Error Policy

People are always going to make mistakes, especially when learning new ideas. If the penalty for these mistakes is death (and a quick load dozens of second prior) like it is in Mirror's Edge, then it becomes annoying and frustrating to the person making the mistake. This is an unavoidable pitfall, because making mistakes is an essential part of the learning process.

In Mirror's Edge, if the player jumps slightly to the left too much, a tad too short, or lacked a tiny bit of momentum on a wall crawl, then that player is punished with death, which becomes frustrating as a recurrent penalty.

How can this be fixed?

The first thing you can do is to create a gentler learning curve so that the player can master the essential game mechanics before being exposed to a more dangerous environment. This is what Portal did. It allowed the player to learn all the core functions of the Portal gun and its mechanics in a controlled environment where they weren't threatened by death at every corner. If Mirror's Edge extended it's "safety net" for the player, then that would give the player more time to become comfortable with wall running, kick-jumping, and the like before the consequences of failure are death. This can be accomplished by removing the pits and deadly drops below each wall run or failed climb. If the player can make mistakes without having to worry about dying, then that player can master the game mechanics much more quickly.

The second thing the game can do to alleviate its "no-error policy" is to create a series of safety nets for the player. This means that the game will catch the player from falling whenever he or she makes an innocent mistake. A game that does this well is Assassin's Creed, which also prodded itself upon the aspect of free-running. In Assassin's Creed, if the player walked off a nearby edge accidentally, the protagonist would fall off but catch onto the ledge to avoid certain death. This avoided many frustrating scenarios of dying by careless mistakes. On the other hand, in Mirror's Edge, if the player walks off nearby edges many times, he instead falls off to his impending doom every time. It would be much less stressful if the game "caught" the player in instances like these instead of allowing him to die. Little features like these allow the player to make tiny mistakes without having to face dire consequences.

The third thing Mirror's Edge can do to become less frustrating is to add gameplay "indicators," letting the player know when a jump is attainable or not. Many times in the game the player faces obstacles or gaps in which he or she is unsure that it can be crossed. For instance, there is a zip line hanging over a ledge which is just out of reach. If the player knows for sure whether or not a jump would reach the zip line, then she would not have to guess after every jump if she will land at her destination. This indicator need not be on a HUD, but could just be a simple display of the character's hands in a certain 'ready' position. By using these indicators, the game prevents the player from performing many blind leaps of faith in hopes of reaching the other side, a feature which will lower the stress level of the player if implemented.

2. Abrubtly Flowing Gamepay

The second main element that would benefit from a change is the abruptly flowing gameplay. As it stands now, the gameplay in Mirror's Edge runs akin to something like this: Enter a new rooftop; run to the edge and scout for possible exits and/or paths to progress to the next area; jump across the correct path (after failing several times) and land in the new area; stop, turn around, and then scout again for the next path.

Because of this, the current flow of the gameplay is somewhat jarring and abrupt. There is rarely a free-flowing feeling of continuous momentum, which unfortunately ruins the free-running aspect of the game.

So how can this be fixed?

Part of the problem with this lack of awareness on the player's part (which requires them to stop and check their surroundings so often) is due to the first-person nature of the game. However, the first person feature is partly what gives the game its unique quality: to put the player directly in the shoes of a free runner, not in the position of a detached third-person camera.

An alternative way of solving the problem of brevity--without changing the camera view--would be to somehow distort the camera so that the player can see a wider view than currently possible. This would allow the player to see more routes and pathways than just a narrow tunnel vision ahead of him. With this feature, the player can then make decisions about where to go without having to wait to reach the very edge of each roof.

A second way of solving the problem of abrupt flow is to include a map feature, however arbitrary this may be. This would allow the player to see where she is going without having to stop at every edge and peek over before deciding the next course of action.

Lastly, a third way of solving this problem is to massively expand the amount of available routes in each level to make the game much more non-linear. This would mean that there is no one direct route for the player to progress through a level, and can instead jump off to any which way that he or she desires. Expanding the available routes would mean less time searching for the one way the designers' intended the player to go, and instead more time jumping around and free-roaming the accessible rooftops, improving the flow of the game.

3. Lack of Complexity/Progression

Finally, Mirror's Edge also suffers from a lack of complexity and progression in its gameplay. There's only so much you can do with the same gameplay mechanics re-used over the course of an 8+ hour game. Assassin's Creed is a prime example of this; it keeps the same ideas and mechanics that it uses in the first two hours, and then repeats them over and over throughout the rest of the game, with little variation or development. This creates a stagnant gaming experience primarily instigated by repetition.

Mirror's Edge suffers from a similar quality, in that it never grows beyond the mechanics it establishes in the beginning of the game. At the beginning, the player is presented with crawling, jumping, wall-running, double-wall jumping, and several varieties of combat options. By the end of the game the player has not gained any new abilities, items, or weapons, which makes a somewhat lackluster gaming experience.

Even a bit of variety beyond the free running mechanics would have made the game somewhat more interesting. Currently, the majority of the game is spent running to and fro from various locations. If the game managed to chop up these running sections with something else (for instance, assassinations?) then it may become more interesting (but then it would be copying Assassins' Creed, as well).

What Mirror's Edge can do to make the latter half of the game more interesting is to introduce new abilities, such as the already incorporated increase in speed during the last levels. If the player got new acrobatic abilities, or boosts in their current attributes (running, jumping, crawling) then it would provide some much needed variety and development in the game.

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That being said, Mirror's Edge is still not a bad game despite these problems. It has some truly innovative and unique ideas and experiences that make it stand out from the rest of the conventional brown, murky, space-marine-infested insipid shooter crowd. If you can endure the many hardships of failing the same jump over seven times, then you will be rewarded with an exciting free-running sequence that is rarely found in another game. For that reason alone it is still worth playing.

In conclusion, what is the main game-design lesson that is to be learned from Mirror's Edge? I would say it's this: Don't punish the player too severely for making mistakes, especially early on and when learning, for this can cause an annoying amount of player frustration (but alternatively, it also makes a challenging game, which also forces the player to continue to play and get better). Players need to be able to learn without being afraid of dying every several seconds. It doesn't matter if a game has the best, most innovative concept in years, unless it can execute it in the correct way for the player's enjoyment.

Braid

Braid has been critically acclaimed (and rightfully so) for doing what it does right: innovation in conventional platforming (through a nifty time manipulation mechanic), beautiful hand-painted graphics, and an excellent soundtrack that all come together in a tightly polished package.

There's no question that Braid is an innovative, fun, and challenging game. However, where it fails, in my opinion, is by not meshing the story cohesively with the gameplay.

In Braid, the player is presented with a series of worlds with individual stages where the player must solve puzzles. These puzzles usually relate to collecting a piece of a larger puzzle that correlates to finishing each world and progressing onto the next. With this, there's no real connection between any sort of narrative and each puzzle the player solves.

The only exposition the game gives is before each world in the form of symbolic excerpts about love, loss, mistakes, and regret. The only way that this connects to each world and subsequently its puzzles is that Tim, the protagonist, is attempting to find the princess discussed in these excerpts by reaching a castle at the end of each level.

Thus, the only relation between the puzzles and the narrative is the player unlocking a further door to reach the next stage, and next stage, and then the final stage where the princess may finally be.

This doesn't detract from the value of each puzzle at all in hindsight. The player still receives the same joy and benefit from solving each puzzle, no matter how decontextualized it may be. What the puzzles DO lose however, is the emotional connection that is correlated with solving a puzzle, advancing a narrative, and progressing through the game.

What I mean by this is that in Braid, the player is solving the puzzles just for the fact in itself--to solve a puzzle. In Half-Life 2, the player's actions are always contextualized in the narrative. When the player kills an enemy guard, he or she knows it is to help liberate the fellow citizens of City 17 and continue the revolt. In Portal, when the player begins to break out of the facility by escaping through unauthorized areas, he or she has an emotional connection to each action, because the player's very freedom is at stake.

In Braid, there is never such an emotional connection that these--among other games--achieve when progressing through the game. Each puzzle is just an isolated afterthought to reaching the end of the game. The only time that Braid nearly achieves an emotional connection with its gameplay is in the end sequence, when the player finally sees the correlation of their actions and how it actually affects another character and subsequently the narrative. For this reason, the ending sequence of Braid packs a much greater emotional punch than the entire previousness of the game combined. If the designer(s) found same way to connect each prior puzzle to the narrative, rather than just "find key to unlock door to reach princess" then Braid would have been a much more powerful game.

As it stands now, Braid is still an excellent game thanks to its innovation and presentation, but it will never contain the same emotional connection that other games, such as Bioshock contain. What can be learned here is that there should be some correlation between gameplay and story, because the player needs to feel that he or she is influencing the narrative. If the actions that the player performs are independent of the narrative, then there is a lack of indentification and connection to what is going on. Instead, the player's actions should directly instigate the narrative to provide the player with an emotional attachment.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

"Battlestar Galactica: Razor", a two-hour mini-movie as an extension of the series, is quite simply, a history lesson. History lessons--although this is a large generalization--are boring. Assuming you know history, history lessons are not exciting, tension-filled, or suspenseful because they contain an outcome already known by the audience.

When the audience watches the attack on the Battlestar Pegasus in the opening scenes of "Razor", they are not fearful or worried about the characters because they know the characters will be "okay" in the end. The characters aren't going to die here, they aren't going to kill "so-and-so" because the audience has a window into the future that tells them who is going to live and who is going to die. This creates a lack of sympathy with the protagonists because the audience can't worry about the characters, they can't put themselves in their shoes. Instead, they are watching them from a distance, through a history book. (This was also the same problem I had with LOST season 4 and its use of flashforwards.)

So what's the point of creating a history lesson, then? In this case it would be to explore the differences in morality and ethics between the crews of the Galactica and the Pegasus. What makes this pointless, however, is that we already know these things from the 3 episode arc in Season 2. All "Razor" does is put a face to the stories we have already heard before.
For example, in Season 2, Colonel Tigh asks the Pegasus colonel about how the Pegasus survived so many months in deep space. The Pegasus colonel, drunk and intoxicated, tells Tigh about how the Pegasus crew killed civilians and stole their supplies.
This was a great bit of exposition. It worked because this short snippet of dialog in itself provided all the information we needed to know that the Pegasus and its crew were ruthless in their survival. By leaving out certain details, the show lets the audience ponder what actually happened and speculate on the true nature of the Pegasus' past.

Now, "Razor" comes along and what does it have to add to this story? Nothing, actually. It just creates a visual record to reinforce exactly what the Pegasus colonel said in season 2. Entire scenes are devoted to restating what we already knew, which makes them pointless. The show is not making any new point, or revealing any details we did not already know. Instead, the show makes us sit through dozens of minutes of exposition in order to arrive at the same conclusion which was reached in a simple line of dialog in season 2. Effective? No, just boring, and redundant.

The other thing that "Razor" suffers from is being a one-dimensional story. The entire film is centered around the idea that Pegasus had to dehumanize themselves in order to save mankind. This is a fine idea, and it was already explored in season 2, but it is not substantial enough to devote an entire two hours of film to it.
One thing that makes the new series of Battlestar Galactica so successful is that it explores every aspect of its concept of the human race on the run. It is not concentrated on just the military element of the escape. Instead, the show also explores the maintenance crew's lives, politics, a traitor scientist, enemy Cylons, personal relationships, and more. Razor only focuses on the military aspect of the show, and because of this is not as "multi-layered" or interesting as the show it attempts to emulate.

If there's one thing you can say about Battlestar Galactica: Razor, I would say that it shows that portraying the entire backstory of a character is unnecessary. You don't need to visually communicate a whole character's history in order to reveal his or her qualities. Simple lines of dialog suffice just as well. Creating entire scenes to just reinforce one point about a character is a waste of the audience's time and attention span when there are much more efficient and quicker ways to relate the same idea to the audience.

Firefly

I like Firefly. It's a fun show. But not the best show.

What makes it so fun is its originality, or its skewing of cliches. The show takes what you expect in a certain situation, then flips it upside down in an entertaining way. It's original because it does things that you don't expect so that you don't know what's going to happen.

So what does Firefly do to be original?

First, it flips dialog upside down to break from cliches. It takes the standard dialog exchanges that we all know and loathe and turns them into an entertaining and unusual experience.

Case 1:
Mal and 'Jerk' are about to get into a bar fight because Jerk said something that Mal is not fond of. In a typical, cliched scenario Mal says, "Say that to my face," then Jerk repeats his comment by facing Mal, who then punches Jerk out of aggravation--boring. Here's what happens instead:

Mal: Say that to my face.
Jerk: I said, you're a coward and a piss-pot. Now what are ya gonna do about it?
Mal: Nothing. I just wanted you to face me so she could get behind you. Zoe hits him from behind

Yep. Fun.

Case 2:

Another example: Mal and his nemesis are in a fist battle, locked in an epic struggle of will power over a careening and deadly pit. Mal's friends come in to save him whereupon Zoe, Mal's first mate, intervenes and says that this is something Mal must finish for himself. The cliched outcome? Zoe and his friends let Mal almost die and then Mal defeats his enemy and calls it a good day. Here's what happens instead:

Zoë: Jayne, this is something the captain has to do for himself.
Mal: (Struggling) No! No it's not!
Zoë: Oh! (Zoe shoots the bad guy who was about to finish Mal off)

Wooee.

Case 3:
Last one: Mal is trying to comfort his accidental wife into being an independent person. Normally, this would constitute a bunch of positive, cliched talk about free will and happiness. Instead, here's what happens:

[Mal is alarmed about his new bride's expectations and attitudes.]

Mal: Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back! Wife or no, you are no one's property to be tossed aside. You got the right same as anyone to... live and try to kill people.

Mmmhmm.

There are two main ways the show treats its characters to reach these creative dialog exchanges.

The first method to get creative dialog is breaking from cliched characters by mixing them up from their orthodox roles. Instead of having the first mate of the ship be a cocky, young male, the first mate is a battle-hardened woman. Likewise, the mechanic of the ship is not a dirty old man who resembles a trucker, but an energetic and perky girl. Then you have the preacher who is not a stereotypical pacifist but instead adept with violence, weaponry, and the criminal way of life. The show thinks of the traditional way that the characters of 'captain', 'pilot', 'first mate', 'mechanic', and 'gunsmith' are portrayed, and then changes something about each character that makes them different from what is expected. This makes the situations the characters are put in much more fresh and interesting.

The second method the show uses to get creative dialog is by having deeply contrasting character traits. Jayne, the intellectually challenged gunsmith is contrasted with the smart and uptight doctor, Simon. Inara, the morally questionable "companion" is contrasted with the morally upright (and most times nameless) preacher. Kaylee, the young socialite is contrasted with the socially inept Simon. Inara, the polite and upper-class woman, is contrasted with the jovial and laid-back Kaylee. By having contrasting character traits, it creates some hilarious exchanges due to the differing backgrounds in terms of social status.

Case 4:
This exchange illustrates the intellectual gap between Simon and the rest of the crew (Simon is teaching the crew doctor jargon in order to pose as orderlies and infiltrate a hospital):

Mal: "Patients were cynical and not responding and we couldn't bring 'em back-"

Simon: "They were cyanotic and not responsive."

Simon: (to Jayne) "What about cortical electrodes?"

Jayne: "Oh..." (obviously doesn't know the answer) "We forgot 'em."

Mal: "Pupils were fixed and dilapidated-"

Simon: "Dialated-"

When you put contrasting characters in a situation that explores their differences, funny things can happen. It's the disagreements between the characters that create the hilarity. If all the characters were from the same background, social status, or moral-standpoint, they would all agree on everything and act the same. Instead, opposing views make each conversation a joy. Conflict is good, right?

--

So, Firefly is a pretty fun show. Fun, but not as gripping as LOST or Battletar Galactica, partly due to its lackadaisical attitude. After some episodes, it does become a bit cringe worthy to see this mishapful crew of nine to jovially engage in laughter after all their space journeys of danger. There's never as much tension or drama that you get when dealing with "The Others" or the Cylons. However, Firefly's great dialog and original ideas make it a sometimes more enjoyable show.

Worth watching?

Yes, definitely. You will have a fun time.

Creating Satisying Goals

Last week I was climbing up a gigantic piece of granite rock by the name of "Lembert Dome." This experience taught me some things, the least of which is related to game design, which is why I am referencing it.

By the time I reached the final stretch of the hike, the sun was about to set and the peak was still ahead of me. With a little help from my friends, I made it to the top, and learned some valuable lessons about goals and what it means to achieve them.

How does this apply to game-design? I would say that in order to have satisfying goals, you need three elements: Payoff, Originality, and Failure.

1: Payoff
Why do people do things? Why do you endure struggle, pain, and hardship? The obvious answer is because it will be worth it, but the end goal must be gratifying enough that it is worth the struggle. If you know the payoff will be high enough, you can endure many difficulties in order to reach it.
What's the notion behind hiking to the top of a giant dome? The 'explorer' answer is for the view--you get to a see an aerial perspective that is not available from down below. As you're climbing, in the back of your head you know that there is a great view waiting for you, and that motivates you to keep going. This is the reason why you would exert force and endure the pain to reach the peak--because you know that there will be a payoff, a reward for your efforts.
In game design, there should always be a payoff to every task that requires the player to struggle. Why should the player explore a giant underwater, mutant-infested Utopian residential section? Why not just sit in the corner and not doing anything? In order to motivate the player to explore, there needs to be some sort of reward, and in this case it would be extra health, ammo, items, or power-ups. What's the reason for the player to defeat the gigantic cyclops boss in the Earth temple? To gain an extra heart container, advance the story, and unlock new areas of the world. Whether it's fighting a boss, or just exploring a level, there needs to be a reason as to WHY the player should be doing it. If there were no rewards for completing a given task, it would be pointless to do so. In game-design, there should always be a payoff to each of the player's accomplishments, whether they are big or small--the payoff will be adjusted accordingly. The greater the promise of reward in each specific task, the more incentive the player will have to reach it and the more intrigued he or she will be to keep playing the game.

2: Originality
The second item required in achieving satisfying goals is originality. When given the choice of hiking two places, one already hiked and one never traveled previously, which one will a given person choose assuming that both hikes have an equal payoff? Logically, most people will probably choose the hike they had never done before, because it provides a new experience.
When hiking Lembert dome, I had never seen the top before, so it was a new experience for me. If I had already experienced the view before, it would have not been quite as magnificent.
Likewise, with game-design, goals should be new and original in order to be satisfying. If the goal of every level in a game was the same (interrogate the traveling merchant, pickpocket a thief, then eavesdrop on a conversation) then it will become stagnant and boring. When you achieve those goals, it is not as rewarding because you've already done them before. If goals are new and unique (become a Big Daddy, liberate City 17) they will be more fulfilling because you have never done anything like it before. Goals should be original as much as possible in order to provide the best experience for the player.

3: Failure
The last element necessary for satisfying goals is a chance of failure. When reaching the peak of Lembert Dome, I saw the tall granite cliff wall and wasn't sure if I could scale it to the top, especially since it was dark and the sun was setting. Also, since this was an original goal, that added to the difficulty since I was not sure I could do it. If I knew I could have made it to the very top before I even started hiking, that would not have been as fulfilling. Instead, since there was a chance I could not do it, that I could fail, that made it much more rewarding when I got to the peak.
With game-design, an element of failure helps to motivate the player to give her best to complete a task. If a game is too easy, there is no satisfaction when reaching a goal. If you already know you can kill these two-hundred Germans because your health respawns and you quickload when you die 5 seconds prior for each death there is no chance of losing at all. This makes the completion of each goal unsatisfying since it was a matter of when, not how to complete the goal. In contrast, if you don't know how to defeat an enemy and may die in the process, it makes the success much more enjoyable. When the Big Daddy comes around a corner, and you are not sure if you have enough health, ammo, and leeway to destroy him while staying alive, it is very fulfilling when you fire the last bullet into him and he thuds to the ground, giving you a payoff of money and more. When you jump onto the final dragon boss and hookshot your way across several flying pedestals to reach the dragon's neck with only several hearts remaining, it is much more satisfying to destroy him while almost dying than to have beat him without losing a single heart container. It is the chance that you can fail, that you can die, that makes something so much more fulfilling when completed.

Conclusion
When I reached the top of Lembert dome, there was a feeling of mutual victory, thanks to the fact that I had some fellow hikers. In the same way in games, victory is just as sweet when shared with fellow players.
On last stage of Goldrush in Team Fortress 2, when the cart is several feet away from the drop zone for the first time (originality), and there is only several seconds left (chance of failure), victory is mutually satisfying when you push the cart in and get to kill your enemies while seeing the gigantic hole explode (payoff). A shared victory always holds something slightly more than an individual victory, but both still benefit from a payoff, originality, and chance of failure.