Playthrough :: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

This article was originally written over the Summer of 2010 with the intent of a full play-through with commentary--However, that never happened, and so the article will only be published in its first part. Enjoy! -J

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The Legend of Zelda series uses a recurrent formula. Over eighteen years ago, A Link to the Past was released as the third game in the Zelda series, and since then, the Zelda formula has been more or less set in stone: Wake up with little more than the clothes on your back, find a sword and a shield, progress through several initial dungeons in order to gain power-ups, encounter a story reversal at around dungeon #3, and then complete several more dungeons to fight the ultimate boss and restore balance to the world.

Although this formula has been well-used, the fourth game in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, was the very first game after A Link to the Past to continue to build on that formula, bridging a gap between the 2D Zelda games and the then upcoming 3D Ocarina of Time.

Through particular design choices, Link's Awakening crafts a prime example of what makes the Legend of Zelda series as engaging, stimulating, and successful as it is today.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Playthrough!
(With Analysis & Commentary)

Part 1: Intro - First Dungeon

Player Motivation

How do you motivate players to do something? Why should they jump across a pit, stomp on a bad guy, or crack open a crate? The reason players do this is because they are faced with the prospect of reward, whether it is narrative progression, health power-ups, or extra ammo.

So let's say you want players to talk to NPCs in your game, either to dish out narrative or world exposition, and you also want players to explore your game world. How do you get the player to talk to NPCs out of his or her own free will and how do you get him or her to explore the game world?

The very first room of Link's Awakening uses the concept of gameplay rewards to encourage the player to talk to NPCs. How? By asking a NPC how he knows the player's name, the player receives his shield back as a reward. This sets up a correlation with the player: talk to NPC; get a reward (my shield). The presupposition of a reward through NPC conversations is thus encouraged by the game, prompting the player to continue to talk to more NPCs later, even though they may just respond with a "Have a nice day, Sir!" However, by setting up this correlation early on in the game, it creates an incentive for players in the back of their head to continue to talking to NPCs, resulting in both narrative and gameplay information relayed to the player.

What about rewarding exploration? By giving the player a map with the entire island in shroud, Link's Awakening creates a goal for the player to achieve--uncover every square inch of that map by traversing every screen on the island. When the player enters a new screen, she is rewarded with the addition of that screen revealed on her world map, creating a sense of accomplishment. Also, crucial items, such as the player's sword, are only discovered after exploring the game world for several screens--they are not found immediately without any effort. These two features set up an automatic reward/explore system that gives a small sense of achievement to the player as she explores the game world.

Thus, for both talking to NPCs and exploring the game world, Link's Awakening uses a system of reward so as to give the player incentive to apply its game mechanics.

The "A-Ha!" Moment

In creating puzzles, there is a certain "A-Ha!" moment that is so coveted to implant into a player's mind when they discover the solution. If in Portal the goal is to jump across a chasm much too long to traverse, and the player finally discovers the tiny bit of portalizeable wall that allows them to attain enough forward momentum to jump, it creates that "A-Ha!" moment when she realizes she's solved the puzzle. This occurs because the player first knew the problem (the chasm), which then prompted her brain to search for the solution. Upon discovering the solution (the extra portalizeable space) it creates the "A-Ha! I found it!" moment, resulting in a satisfying conclusion to the puzzle.

Link's Awakening does something similar by establishing a series of problems before presenting their solutions. For example, a little Bow-Wow creature wants to be pretty; a young couple needs a Yoshi doll for their child, an Alligator wishes he had dog food, etc. These problems are then implanted in the back of the player's head as a check-list of items to attain or search for. When the player finally does find an item in question, for example, the can of dog food, a light then springs on in her head, resulting in the "A-Ha! I found it!" moment, giving the player further satisfaction.

What's worth noting in Link's Awakening is that all of these needs or wants are firmly established in the introduction, much earlier than the solutions are found, giving players the room to explore and find those solutions on their own as a satisfactory gameplay goal.

The Power of Limitations

Since Link's Awakening is on the GameBoy, it has many technical limitations. One of these is the small, pixelated font, which can only display about 4-6 legible words on screen at a time, until it prompts the player to press a button and scroll down to see the next part of the sentence. While this may been seen as an outdated, lo-fi, feature, in retrospect, it actually forces the designers to consolidate each message and expository point of the game into its purest, least-amount-of-words form.

Just think of games today that are able to display pages upon pages of information, but how much of that information is actually useful to the player or even relevant to the game or the gameplay? Why should the player have to read one page of contextualized exposition in order to arrive at the one message of "Go Right and Kill the Reactor!" Instead, Link's Awakening takes each bit of expository information, and distills it down to only the vitally necessary bits so as to speed the player through to her goals.

This goes to show that restrictions, although many times obligatory, are actually useful as they force designers to think around the box to come up with even more creative and efficient solutions.

Gameplay & Narrative Progression

Zelda games--and nearly all other narrative-based games for that matter--exist on two axes: story and gameplay. Both story and gameplay have their own independent structures, features, and progressions, which should be equally balanced when transmitted to the player. If a player goes through a series of eight dungeons over twenty hours, but nothing happens in the story, it creates a sense of futility, that none of the player's actions have any ultimate consequence on the narrative axis. Or, if the player successfully restores balance to the world by simply slaying one monster without even trying, then the narrative axis supersedes the gameplay axis. Games then, have to maintain an appropriate balance between their narrative and gameplay axes to complement the player's progression.

One moment in Link's Awakening that embodies this balance is when the player rediscovers his sword on the beach, which is linked with the introduction of the Owl character, who guides you in the game's story. The Owl is the one character who relays information to the player about the island, the player's goals, and the mystery surrounding the egg. By introducing the Owl with the discovery of the sword, the game correlates gameplay progression (the sword) with narrative progression (the Owl), making sure that both the narrative & gameplay axes progress at the same rate. The Owl, who orders the player to take heed to your journey, and the weapon, giving the player an attack ability, come together to move forward the story and the gameplay together at the same pace.

Trusting the Stranger

Finally, the Owl presents an interesting character, often present in most video games: the one of the helpful, insightful, yet unacquainted stranger. The Owl is first presented to the player at the discovery of the sword, and then orders the player to embark on a quest to the forest in part of a larger goal to wake the egg and escape the island. One factor that attributes to the Owl's trustworthiness is the fact that he shows up at each location he sends you to, rather than not show up at his spoken location. If the game did not do this, then the player would be less willing to trust in the character as the Owl continues to give the player advice and guidance throughout the game. Unacquainted side-kicks are often used in video games, and Link's Awakening reinforces that trustful relationship by having this new stranger follow up on each promise he makes.

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Link's Awakening, though by now over 15 years old, still contains inherent design principles that attribute to a meaningful player experience, many of which are still in use in modern games today. Whether it is a simple gameplay-story correlation, or even a technical limitation, Link's Awakening is a prime testament to the excellence of Zelda's design.

Game Review: Fallout 3

Edited for clarity - 3/7/2011

Fallout 3 is big, really big. However, size does not equal greatness. Having a dozen bad tasting cupcakes is not as satisfying as one deliciously sprinkled cupcake. In the same way, Fallout 3 certainly gets the notion of quantity right, but fails to engage the player in the aforementioned quantity of content. If Fallout 3 focused more on how to get the player to engage its world and gameplay, then Fallout 3 would be a better, albeit smaller game.

1. Story - Lack of Conflict
First, the player's narrative motivation in Fallout 3 could be improved by the earlier introduction of narrative conflict.

The beginning of the story is marked by the disappearance of your father from your hometown, the Vault, prompting you to leave the vault to find him once again. But this then leaves the questions: why do you want to find your father when he disappears? What's the motivating force?

In Monkey Island, your goal is to rescue Elaine, but you are always faced with the looming threat of LeChuck after you leave the SCUMM bar, creating a reason for you to hurry up and become a pirate. In Knights of the Old Republic, your goal is to find star maps, but you are constantly in battle with the Sith, forging a race for each consecutive star map. In BioShock, even though you must escape Rapture, there is the ever-imposing figure of Andrew Ryan, a nemesis whom you must overcome to escape.

So what is there motivating you--conflicting you--to find your father in Fallout 3?

Nothing, really. Your goal has no direct opposing force (there are Mutants who fight you, but their goal is to kill everyone--not specifically you) until about nearly two thirds of the way into the story. Once that happens, you realize who your enemies are and who you have to stop in order to find your father. Before that point, however, no one is trying to stop you from finding your father; no one is battling against your progress.

A lack of conflict breeds a lack of tension, urgency, and challenge to overcome any obstacle in order to reach your goal, in this case, your father. Instead, the majority of your journey to find your father stems from town-hopping, interrogating by-standers for answers, and then performing fetch quests to gather more clues--not fighting your adversary for dear life as s/he battles against your every progression and accomplishment.

Guess who's trying to stop you? Nobody!

An alternative way to begin Fallout 3 would be this: make it so that your father is kidnapped from the Vault. This sets up a mystery (who kidnapped my father?), an opposing force (the kidnappers), yet still creates the same narrative goal as before (find your father); except now you have a conflict to engage in which you must overcome in order to rescue your father. Fallout 3 eventually does this by introducing the Enclave two thirds into the game, but that is much too long to wait for this sense of a larger conflict. Before this, you are allowed to just meander around the wasteland, with no real excuse for finding your father, no sense of urgency. Introducing an opposing force earlier would have made the story much more instigating for you to find your father.

2. Gameplay - Guns vs. Swords
Fallout 3 also boasts the unique inclusion of FPS elements within its RPG table set, yet this doesn't come without some drawbacks. With FPS elements comes the fear of labeling Fallout 3 a "First-Person-Shooter with RPG elements" rather than"Role-Playing Game." So, what the developers do to alleviate this is include the VATs targeting system which essentially pauses the game, lets you choose limbs and areas of enemies to shoot at, and then the game executes those orders based on a percentage of impact. This system, while appreciative, is much less fun than the combat system in Oblivion, because it's just a simple probability roll.

VATs: A series of percentage signs.

Contrast this to an adaptive combat sequence which is more of what Oblivion had with its melee combat. What made these encounters much more fun than the ones in Fallout 3 is that you were always involved in each battle. You had to swap between a series of block/attack moves in each encounter and always had to adapt to your enemies' movements in each situation. This put a constant life or death struggle onto each enemy encounter--you had to keep your guard up in order to not fall susceptible to your enemies' blows. Also, just hearing your blade slice into your enemies' flesh was much more satisfying than the click of a bullet piercing your enemy's skin. (Moroseness! Hooray!)

Fallout 3's VATs system doesn't have this strategic balance, this level of required thinking or involvement in each battle. Instead, you can just run up to an enemy, point a gun in their face, and then let VATs calculate that you will get a 95% hit without the need for you to retaliate or adapt to the enemy's next action. It's just a simple roll of the dice, a playing of the odds.

Gameplay mechanics should be fun, challenging, and thoughtful, forcing you to adapt to each situation by requiring you to improve your current level of skill--not just a viewing of the odds and then a decision based off of a percentage point.

3. Exploration Motivation
Lastly, Fallout 3 suffers from exploration motivation--in other words, why explore this world? Why traverse through this gigantic, uninviting, mono-chromatic wasteland? This is because of three main reasons: lack of novelty, ambiguous atmosphere, and lack of challenge.

First, every location is just a copy and paste rendition of the other, so there's no real reward for exploration. You can enter any number of buildings that you want, but you're still going to find the same 2 stimpaks, 3 ammunition crates, 8 Super Mutants, and the generic toolboxes with wonderglue and hammers that come with it. Locations or quests have the same, generic items associated with them so that it becomes tedious, rather than exciting, to advance through your journey. Even though games such as Final Fantasy or KoTOR offer fewer more compact worlds, each discovery in these worlds is made all the more important because of that. You know that every treasure chest you open and every new weapon you find can be unique and different from all the others in the game. However, Fallout 3 removes this novelty of discovery by generically copying its items and environments, and because of that, the game lessens the value of its discoveries for the player.

Down these mean streets a man must go--
but oh well, they're all the same.

Second, Fallout 3 suffers from atmospheric ambiguity in its environment. Part of the fun in exploring any environment is to be immersed in it--to truly feel as if you are there. For post-apocalyptic environments, this is most often a feeling of solitude and isolation--the lonely realization of humanity's self-demise. However, in Fallout 3, this feeling is consistently destroyed by lonely robots, mutant zombies, or an annoying, chattering voice screaming "Free dawg! Owwooooooot!" Before the player has a chance to become immersed in any one specific feeling (isolation, humor, danger), the game consistently flips itself upside down. This changes the game's experience from a lonely, post-apocalyptic world, into a awkwardly heterogeneous world.

Think of a game like STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl--this game lets you run along vacant roads and hills for what seems like miles, encountering few or no enemies; and when you do finally encounter another living being, the impact is made all the more forceful, thanks to the amount of solitude you just experienced. In Fallout 3, this feeling of solitude is constantly destroyed by haphazardly trotting mutants, brain-bots, zombies, rabid dogs, and scavenging wastelanders, decimating the atmosphere and discouraging exploration in the process.

Thirdly, and lastly, a lack of challenge in Fallout 3 removes any need to further explore new environments. Fallout 3 is too easy, which is the exact opposite problem that Oblivion had. This is because Fallout 3 does not contained scaled enemies (in contrast to Oblivion), meaning that when you level up in Fallout 3, your enemies do not level up with your progress. Non-scaled enemies make sense, because if they leveled up with your progress, it would reduce all cause to improve your character, as your enemies would increase in strength at the same rate, which was one of the core problems of Oblivion. However, because Fallout 3 removes scaling-enemies, the game becomes ridiculously easy during the latter half.

The second half of Fallout 3: Hi-tech power-armored Gatling-gun wielding super soldiers vs. defenseless Zombies

Because players can already destroy most every enemy opposing them, this removes rationale to keep exploring because there is no reason to obtain better weapons and items since enemies are not difficult enough to make obtaining those items necessary. Enemies start to drop without any real challenge, and health never becomes a concern for the player, thanks to the endless amount of Stimpaks found scattered throughout the world. Since enemies are easily defeated, there is no reason to gather more weapons, items, or health packs via exploration, thus removing a whole purpose for exploration. Even though having non-scaled enemies is a good thing, there should have been some kind balancing factor or reason for players to continue to exploring the world, gathering more items.

Conclusion
Players need reasons to do things--goals to achieve. Goals drive players--they give them a reason, a motivating factor to guide themselves through a meaningful experience.
If the player doesn't need ammo, there's no reason to scavenge new areas for crates of ammo. If the player doesn't need to upgrade his weapon and can defeat every enemy he faces, there is no reason to try and gather new weapons. If the player already owns all the best items in the local shops, there is no reason to gather or look for any more gold in each dungeon.
Fallout 3 contains a massive, very-well constructed world, yet lacks the incentive to drive players to explore it. Why should players explore open-ended worlds? For the reward? For the story? Games can have the most inviting, detailed, and rich worlds, but unless there is a reason to explore these worlds, then the players will never do so.

Review :: STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl

There are games that create stories and there are games that create worlds--the truly greatest games are ones that do both. Games that create worlds exist independent from any situated narrative; games that create narratives are locked on that narrative's rails, usually restricting the player from exploring that world. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is a game about a world; it's not about a linear narrative, moments of high-escalating action, the illusion of morals and free choice, or all that other nonsense. Instead, STALKER drops you into an environment: the post-apocalyptic fallout of the Chernobyl power plant, and you are put at its mercy and rules until the game promptly ends.

In that respect, it is a convincing world with a desolate atmosphere. You can stop walking along the barren roads, observe the sun beaming through a patch of clouds, see the trees and grass swaying ever so slightly, uncover a briefcase in an abandoned, rusted, truck, and then notice two mercenaries on an upcoming road heading towards you with guns ready. In much the same way of Oblivion, this is a world that you have entered, which happens to contain a narrative in it. It's not a narrative you enter which happens to contain a world around it. The difference between the two is that you can enjoy being immersed in a world without having to do some specific task, but it is much harder to enjoy being in a narrative without any specific task.

When games create their own worlds, it is an ambitious undertaking, and oftentimes the narrative can suffer as a result. Here are some ways that I think the narrative could be improved in STALKER.
Ways to improve the narrative in STALKER (the game, not the profession)!
1. Introduction of Conflict
There's a certain element that is needed to maintain interest in a story: conflict. This means there is an opposing force to your action: you try to do something (rescue a princess) and somebody tries to stop you (the evil Koopa king). What's the conflict introduced in KOTOR? The Sith attack the Endar Spire in order to capture Bastilla; you have to stop them. In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion? The evil council of bad guys kill the king as you try to escape; you need to save his son. What about in Half-Life²? The opening scene in which the Combine have enslaved mankind; you need to rescue them.

All of these stories introduce conflict either in the opening scene, or very, very shortly after.

The sooner you introduce conflict in a story, the better, because it introduces an obstacle to overcome: a goal, and with that, a chance of failure, challenge, and victory. When I awoke in STALKER, there wasn't a sense of conflict. There was no power-push intro in which to establish an opposing force who would try to destroy me for the rest of the game. When the game started, I was in a little homey town in which I could wander and explore endlessly. This wasn't like the intro in Oblivion or KOTOR, in which I knew there was a larger goal at hand, a narrative which I needed to return to, which propelled my motivations forward even in the most mundane dialogs.

However, when I finally ventured out of my starting point in STALKER and encountered a group of loners fighting off mercenaries, that's immediately when the story (or world) became interesting to me. I finally felt that sense of a larger battle, a sense of an opposing force that I had to overcome, a goal to which I had to aspire. When the conflict was introduced, that's when I finally started caring.

2. Heart

I once saw somewhere that the "BioWare method" for side-quests was something akin to this: Make the player compelled to act because of an emotional connection to the character giving the side-quest. Why do we care to perform a "quest" for a non-player character? What's our motivation? In film and movies, the audience needs to sympathize with a character in order to care about that person. The same principle can apply to games. For example, don't just have an NPC come up to a character and say "Hey, can you kill these two bandits at this shed and I'll give you some gold?" Instead, give the NPC an emotional context in which to engage the player: "Hey, can you kill these two bandits because I'm a pilgrim and they stole my loot and murdered the rest of my family and now I am homeless and this evil gangster lord is out to kill me because I can't pay him back?" Which of the two is more engaging and compelling for the player to act? With the emotional back-story, or without?

As STALKER currently stands, there's not much of an emotional connection--there's not much heart to it. All the characters in the game exist as pointless mercenaries just sitting, waiting, guarding; shooting anything that enters their territory. That actually makes contextual sense, I guess, because why would there be any heart in the midst of bands of mercenaries in a desolate and mutated fallout region? Despite that, I still believe there should be more substance, more life to the characters in STALKER. They need to have more dreams, aspirations, lives, or cares; not just be sitting around waiting for something to happen or to shoot the next guy not on their patrol. Giving the characters more heart would give me more of reason to care for them (and then carry out the side-quest they give me!).

3. Player-Control
Rather than going into the myriad of problems associated with the second half of the plot (amnesia, wish-granting, meta-physical scientists, plot-twists) I'll just discuss the one of the player's control over the narrative.

The final scene in the game (depending on which ending you receive) takes place in the form of a granted wish (don't ask what this means in a science fiction story). You spend hours killing mutants and other mercenaries in order to get into the core of the power plant and approach the "Wish Granter," when suddenly the game takes over in a cut-scene showing you, the player, saying: "I wish... I could be rich/powerful/not-an-emotionless-loser!" and then the ceiling collapses on you and you die. What makes this so frustrating is that you spend all this time embodied in the protagonist (who up to this point was totally 1:1 with your actions) only to have him independently grant a seemingly arbitrary wish at the end which subsequently leads to your demise.

I don't want to play through a game, able to control my player's actions for the entirety of the time, only to have this control yanked away from me at the very end for the very last and crucial decision of the game. I don't want to play Half-Life 1, only to watch myself reach the final stage in Xen, then witness a cut-scene where Gordon falls into a pit because that was the presupposed ending the designers wanted you to have. I want to be able to control my actions, especially at the end, because that is when my actions (usually) matter the most--that is when I can resolve the conflict, and end the story.

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Interesting and compelling worlds in games are great, but there also should be something to direct a player's actions: a narrative. It should compel the players forward, encourage them to explore this world, and remind them of their goals, no matter how far astray they may run off. STALKER still stands on its own as a world, but without a strong enough narrative, it is not the complete and engaging experience that it could have been.

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.

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.

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.

The Call of Duty Problem

The continuing Call of Duty series suffers from three main problems:
1) Repetitiveness
This is not just confined to one specific area of the game. How often can you take the same setting, the same battles, the same situations, the same weapons, the same screenplays, the same levels, and repeat them in each game, and then make five games exactly the same? With Call of Duty 4 being the exception, all the Call of Duty games have been set in World War II. Many of them contain the same battles (Stalingrad, Berlin, etc), and have you doing the same things as in the other games (raiding houses, shooting people, not being allowed to open doors, waiting for your slow comrades to continue). Each game virtually has the same weapon list since the beginning (Thompson, M4 Garand, Mp40, Sniper, etc) with few exceptions. Wrap it up in the same generic levels of "shoot respawning enemies from a variety of locations in a variety of environments all while your teammates are useless," look down on the battlefield from below in a plane mission, get on a tank in a vehicle mission, drive a car in a chase mission, and then get giddy in the good ol' grab a sniper rifle and shoot limitless enemies from a battlefield safe location. Even the individual games repeat their own missions and gameplay concepts, so how does it make sense to repeat those games over, and over, and over? It already gets tiring after the second game.
The FEW--and I must stress FEW--exceptions to the Call of Duty formula are where the games truly shine. In the first game, there was no established formula to expect, so all the situations and ideas were unique and fun. In the second game, the formula was repeated, but they still had enough variety in the missions to maintain a level of interest. The few things that Call of Duty 5 does differently (flamethrower, solo sniper missions) are the only interesting scenarios in the entire game. Looking back, it's been that way for each Call of Duty game, since the standard combat formula that constitutes the majority of the gameplay is just plain repetitive and boring. The unique missions where you do things other than just kill respawning, endless clones of Germans are where the most fun lies.
When a game sticks to a strict formula, it might work the first time (because you don't notice it), but then it ridiculously hampers enjoyment from then on if it is the meat of the entire game's core--which it is, in Call of Duty's case.
2) Lack of Strategy
The Call of Duty gameplay formula for individual battles goes something like this: Confront the enemy, shoot him with your rifle from a distance, advance on him by rushing to cover spots, throw a grenade to kill him if you can't shoot him, if in close quarters use an automatic rifle, if in really close quarters use melee, and finally... when your enemy is dead move on to the next enemy.
You are always given the same weapons and the same environments and the same enemies. You approach every battle with the same mindset, the same strategy, the same plan to what you are about to do. This reduces the game to a chore--a "to-do-list" of things you know you have to do. You already know what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and there are few spontaneous events that truly force you to adapt to a situation and use the game mechanics at your disposal in order to solve that problem.
This is what separates games like Bioshock and Team Fortress 2 from Call of Duty. The first two have you constantly adapting, thinking, and analyzing every new combat situation in order to get out of it. You are always engaged in the battle. On the other hand, in Call of Duty, every battle unfolds the same way, with the same set of tools to overcome it. There's no strategy here. Just mindless reflexes, timing, and pacing--which is fine if done right, but Call of Duty has just repeated it so many times that this mindless combat can't survive on its own.
3) Lack of Challenge
Games should be challenging. On one end of the spectrum you have the "Win Button," where the solution is in front of the player, and all he or she has to do is click it. On the other end you have whatever you can imagine to be the most frustrating, inane, and difficult game you can ever conceive of. Games (and the word "challenging" for that matter) should fall somewhere in between the two.
Call of Duty has progressively moved into a zone where it's not challenging because of the design of its combat. You are always given the objective to kill the random Germans, and you are told how to do it, where to do it, so all you have to do is go out and do it. Everything just becomes a matter of when--not how, where, or why. When is the endless respawn wave going to end so I can move on to the next arena? When am I going to have to use this Panzerfaust on the inevitable tank that will appear? When am I going to finally kill enough Germans for this area to be designated "clear" and this mission victorious? It's not how am I going to do it, or why am I going to do it, or where. All of these things are given to you, so the game just waits for you to do them.
This is not a matter of challenge. It's more like a matter of how fast can you beat the current level, rather than how do I figure out how to destroy these enemies in the most efficient way?
Without this challenge, the gameplay becomes stagnant and unmotivating.

Call of Duty 1 was a great game. Call of Duty 2 was just as good, except it was more of the same. Call of Duty 3, I will not talk about. By the time we hit Call of Duty 4, this formula had been repeated too many times, with too little variation. Call of Duty 5 was just worse.

Many of today's successful franchises rely on repetitious formulas. The Zelda or Half-Life series, for instance, are prime examples. What those series do differently however--for the most part--is disguise the repetition through different environments, storylines, and characters. Call of Duty currently lacks that, and because of this, its future as a series looks like to be more of the same. Unless it can solve these problems, each game will progressively become more and more generic.

Chatroom: 15th Best Freeware Adventure (2008)

Indiegames.com posted their list of the best freeware adventure games of 2008, and Chatroom made #15 out of 20! Hooray!

Chatroom was a game that some people either 'got' or didn't 'get.' Overall, I would still consider it a semi-broken experiment (due to that vast amount of responses that give incorrect feedback) but it's nice to see people that appreciate the concept and the current state of the game anyway.

This came as a bit of a surprise since La Croix Pan (which remains the more popular and IMO, better work--it took 3-4 months to make compared to one week!) didn't get listed anywhere last year, but now Chatroom did, despite its not-as-popular status on the AGS forums.

Anyway, this was a nice little sign of appreciation. So, Hooray?!

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots :: Tactical Espionage Action

MGS4 is an experience that can only be judged based on its predecessors (dating all the way back to 1988) and the MGS story as a whole. Since I don't have that, I won't review it. Instead, here's a list of some nice things that Metal Gear Solid 4 does that makes it not a sucky game!

- Short, brief loading screens: Although its a minor issue, loading screens can become exceedingly tedious in some games today (Assassin's Creed and Oblivion being two culprits), especially games where you must go through them constantly. MGS4 on the other hand, has relatively few loading screens (for the most part) and they all range from 5-10 seconds, which is great considering how admirable the game looks. Another nice thing they did with the loading screens was have the music carry over from the previous scene. This adds a nice flow during action scenes, that prevents the momentum from dropping.
- Gameplay Gimmick explanation: Previously mentioned in the Assassin's Creed review, that game uses the story element of "reliving your ancestor's memory in a computer" to explain how they highlight interactable objects in the background, something which many games (can and should) do. MGS4 doesn't have to rely on some kind of story gimmick--instead, it uses the concept of the Solid Eye, a device hooked up to the player that identifies weapons and items on the battlefield. The player must use the Solid Eye to find items, but it can run out of batteries, returning you to your normal vision. This is just one way that you can explain these "gameplay gimmicks," and a better way to do it than Assassin's Creed.
- Game Over Screens are given a narrative spin by having Oticon scream "Snake? Snake...?! SNAAAAAAAKE!" and flashing images of your life. This reminds the player of the larger narrative at hand, and what the consequences of dying are, rather than just quick-loading them back again with a black screen. The current game over is made much more effective because of this choice.
- Locked weapons are conveniently handled in the game. Instead of not allowing, or even not revealing powerful weapons like RPGs early in the game, the game shows them and allows you to pick them up. BUT--You can't use them because they are locked with a kind of nano-machine ID, which you can only unlock by talking to Drebin later. This allows the game to use high-powered weapons early, without letting the player get the best weapons in the game too quickly. Good design choice.
- Gameplay doesn't rely on the same few mechanics; there's tons of variation and variety in-between the missions, so you're always doing something different than before. You start off with the standard Sneak/Shoot approaches, and then you continue to get more options to that scenario, including: flashbangs, grenades, claymore mines, tranquilizer pistols, silenced guns, m249s, grenade launchers, etc. Then you have different mission goals that range from: Get through the level by killing or evading your enemies-->Try to navigate the way out of a broken building-->Track a missing person by their footsteps trail-->Tail an informant back to his hideout without being seen-->Participate in a car chase by riding shotgun-->and the list goes on.
- Character sympathization: I almost forgot what it was like to actually care about characters in video games. Solid Snake is actually a nice character to play, because you can sympothize with him in a variety of ways. His life is cut short by a premature aging process, so he is a generation older than all his friends. This process will eventually kill him off, leaving him to carry out his remaining days trying to fight to save the world. And then he gets kicked around, beat up, breaks his back, and walks around liked a tired corpse, muttering about cigarettes and whatnot.
- Music: Lastly, the music in this game is quite excellent. That is all.

So, Metal Gear Solid does some nice things. As a whole, it works together well, but it's a tailored experience. If you want this kind of experience in a game, this is the best kind you can get, from perhaps one of the most experienced and dedicated teams in the video game industry. However, this experience isn't for everyone, compared to a game like Portal.

Two thumbs up! Watch it!

10 Minutes of Portal Prelude

Portal Prelude is a fan-based MOD created to tell the story of Aperture Science's testing facilities before the invention of the all-knowing and loving supercomputer Glados.

In the first 10 minutes of the game, Portal Prelude does two things wrong:
1) It stammers on itself by using unnecessary dialog to prolong play time.
The game starts out the exact same way as Portal does; you wake up in the isolation (relaxation) chamber, ready to go out and conquer this world of white. But Portal Prelude mars the introduction of its game for one reason: the lengthy dialog sequence.
Portal (not Prelude) introduces you to the game by having Glados provide you with a brief synopsis of your state and what you are supposed to do. If my memory serves correctly, this is done in less than a minute or so.
Portal Prelude however, decides to use two (European accented) scientists as your observers, and they yammer on endlessly about extraneous (and unfunny) material for what seems like an eternity before you are allowed to exit the test chamber. They ramble on about some kind of test procedure, your goals, and everything else, but none of it is really necessary--assuming you have played Portal (not Prelude!). They also continue to do this--unnecessarily--before every succeeding test chamber--which for the first ten minutes only counts as the next test chamber.
The general rule here, is you want to use the minimum amount of dialog as possible, in order to get the player playing the game, and not reading a book or watching a movie. Every line of dialog should contribute to some kind of story or atmosphere, and Portal Prelude fails to do this.
2) The game forces you to use a complex gameplay mechanic, and imposes death on the player much too early, allowing frustration to set in and perhaps cause some people to quit the game.
The game crawls along to the first test chamber and gives you the first version of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device which can only shoot orange portals, and leave you at the mercy of wherever the game desired to put the blue portal.
In the first test chamber, you are stuck in a square room, enclosed by glass walls, and required to jump out with an orange portal. The trick here is: the blue portal--which you cannot move--is situated in the center of four laser turrets, all of which can kill you. Thus, you are left as the player, to use the orange portal in only way one possible (because you have to shoot it on the wall next to you to exit the room) to get yourself killed because you can't move the blue portal.
Portal Prelude happily throws you into the first test chamber where the majority of players will frustratingly die about 5 times before figuring out the puzzle which requires you to use a gameplay mechanic only introduced in the second half of Portal (NOT PRELUDE).

It would be understandable to take a slightly different course than that of Portal (not the prelude), but starting the first test chamber on such a high ramp of difficulty is not engaging or fun--just frustrating if you don't "get it."