Dark Souls 2

It should be no surprise that I really waited for this game. Following the weeks it got out, I played it for quite a respectable amount of hours. In fact I'm still not done with it, but I'm taking a break from it for now. It's summer in Finland and it's bright throughout most of the day, even inside my living room. Shockingly, this game is quite dark (who would've thought) so I can't actually play it because of screen reflections. Even if it is significantly less dark than its predecessor. It's just not really a game where you'd want to miss seeing something. I mean that something might just get you very, very dead. Even though it's probably one of the best - if not the best - games this year, there's not much to say. It's mostly more of the same with slight tweaks. That's enough though right, because it's more of the same best gameplay out there.

1. The tweaks

Because sequels are effectively massive iterations of the original concept, they tend to tweak things in a better direction. The basics have been largely left untouched as there really isn't much of a reason to change them. Some things have clearly been changed as an attempt to improve them; others have been changed more for flavor. Take dual-wielding for instance. It used to be pretty useless, so they've given it a buff. Wielding two weapons of the same type and having high enough stats grants access to power stance. This stance offers new moves featuring both weapons at the same time, which increases damage output quite nicely. The tradeoff, not being able to use a shield, is still significant - although I have to say less so than I'd expected. Don't know whether it's just a matter of enemy design or me having enough confidence in my own abilities, but I have mostly been playing without a shield. I do like that lighter weapons are now more useful in PVE.

One of my biggest gripes with Dark Souls has received some much-needed attention. I'm naturally talking about poise - the stagger resistance mechanic - that used to be just bonkers. This in the sense that with high enough poise there were next to no attacks in the game that could stagger your character. That's particularly stupid in PVP - which is another subject I've touched in quite some detail previously. Well, that's in the past because poise has been heavily nerfed. I think it's fairly balanced now actually. If you choose to go that route, you can still shrug of staggers from most mobs and some attacks from bosses, but not nearly everything. It is pretty useless in PVP. As a bit of a step backwards though, there now seems to exist a rather definite sweet spot for equipment encumbrance. In the past, there was a notable difference for having less than 25% load, and another huge step at 50%. Now it scales more linearly, but load only affects roll distance (almost useless) and stamina recovery speed (somewhat meaningful). The only hard limit is at 70% where normal roll turns into the fat roll.

This means that most builds can wear almost any armor without getting punished because there's very little point in carrying around anything below 69.9%. Sure, the roll distance was useful for my bow only run but that's not really an optimal way to play in any regard. On the other hand, if you're really good at not getting hit, might as well go naked for maximum stamina recovery speed I guess. Still, I feel there's less factors involved in picking armor in this game. There is however some choice involved in rolling, because rolling speed and invulnerability window length are now determined by a derivative stat. This actually caught me be surprise at first a lot because rolling away after making an attack has a longer delay than it used to (even with high stats, but especially at the beginning). I died a lot because of this. Admittedly I still die a lot because of greedy attacking, but at least now it's no longer a surprise when it happens - just the usual facepalm. Then again that's probably the biggest reason I die in a lot of games of this genre in general.

Speaking of stats, there's now more of them. Endurance has been split into two stats: one for stamina and another for equipment load. Then there's adaptability which is a new stat that affects the derivative agility stat I just mentioned, and resistances. Stat-based damage bonuses are now derivative stats, and as a bigger change, there's not just the original four but also three new ones: fire, lightning and dark damage. Well, really just two new ones, because lightning replaces faith-based damage. Yes, elemental weapons do scale now, based on different stats. Dark damage is the most demanding type, because it's defined by whichever of magic or faith is lower. Another curious scaling type is the new mundane scaling, which scales based on how high is the character's lowest stat. Interestingly enough, almost all weapons in the game can be imbued with any scaling even if they already have that damage type built in (in which case that damage type gets more emphasized). Even more importantly, elemental weapons can now be enchanted with spells.

All this means that different scaling types actually make a lot more sense now. Previously even casters often wanted to use a physical damage weapon because it would get a much bigger damage buff from a spell. Now you can cast the buff on any weapon. I think there's simply more viable builds this time. Scaling can also be imbued into shields now to change their damage blocks. Status effects, most notably poison, can also be imbued into melee weapons for some interesting options - especially since most bosses aren't actually immune to poison. Other tweaks include changes to backstab and parrying, both of which are now less dominant (bugs aside). Backstab has less invulnerability; parrying now knocks the attacker on their butt, and to get a riposte you actually have to wait a bit (and can be interrupted by other enemies in the meantime). There's also a new magic category, hexes, based on dark scaling which makes it the most demanding magic type stats wise. Pyromancy is less broken and the flame now requires materials to upgrade so you can't rush it.

Limited respecs are also now available. Matchmaking has changed too. Previously it was based on soul level, which caused an anomaly where players would focus all their souls into upgrading gear, then invade low level games with godlike equipment. It's now based on soul memory, which is a measure of all souls obtained instead, making this method of griefing impossible. The matchmaking has other issues, and pure invasions are actually very rare because the player now needs to belong to a specific covenant in order to do so. Even then it's not really worth it, and as a side effect another covenant is useless. I guess they wanted to protect players a bit more because now the only way to fully avoid invasions is to play offline. There are however certain PVP focus areas in the game where invasions happen a lot so if you really want to fight, it's easily possible. Most importantly, network code is much better now, and I've experienced a lot less lag issues - and no lagstabbing at all.

The biggest issue with this system as far as I've heard is the fact that soul memory caps at 15 million, after which you can face anyone above the threshold. This means you can end up fighting fully maxed out characters once you hit that 15M souls. I don't remember where are my characters' soul memories at so I cannot say how high is the threshold exactly. All in all I feel the tweaks are welcome, and as soon as they fix a few bugs that are getting abused, the game should be more balanced than Dark Souls.

2. Extinction

There's one tweak that's worth its own section. Partly because this is something I forgot to include in my Lightning Returns post. The biggest and perhaps most vocalized change in reviews is the limitation on enemy spawns. Whereas before there would occasionally be enemies that were there only once, in Dark Souls 2 all enemies can be killed only a set amount of times after which they will no longer respawn. This change affects the game in two ways. In one way it makes the game easier because areas can be cleared so that around the fifteenth attempt against the boss the player just runs through empty corridors to get there. In another way it makes the game harder  because everything now comes with limited availability. By everything I mean items and souls dropped by enemies. This only really applies if the player relies on farm. This was also the most discussed and criticized change.

At first it felt a bit like cheating because by now I'm used to repeating sections in Souls games. In the end though by the fifteenth attempt the section is mostly routine anyway, so going through it is neither challenging or interesting. Sometimes you might not even make it to fifteen kills on all enemies if you figure out a way to bypass them. Which is what we used to do in previous games when killing the same enemies for the umphteenth time got a bit too tedious. Now there's a choice to purposefully clear an area before a difficult boss instead of bypassing the enemies and sometimes I did opt for that. Most of the time it's still more convenient to just run past mobs, especially if you don't particularly need their drops. For new players this change can make things tricky if they are not careful with their souls. Let's say you make it to the boss fourteen times and always succeed in reclaiming your souls - except on the fifteenth run you lose them. Now you're facing empty corridors with no souls in sight, and the boss hasn't gotten any easier.

It is true that in offline play you can get screwed by this, theoretically at least. However, infinite souls are still available in the game. There's no limitation to how much you can go out as a white phantom to help out other players, and get your share of their soul rewards. If I remember this right, the reward is half of the normal amount of souls you would get. At the same time, it's a good way to scout out bosses and to avoid nasty surprises. The game also has one other tool to help players with this limited availability of souls. There's a ring that prevents losses at death. It does break when triggered, but can be repaired for about 2,000 souls. Since you always spawn at a bonfire and warping is always available, you can go back to repair it infinitely. Sure it's a bit of work, but it's a great safety net when you have massed a lot of souls. Similar rings existed in Dark Souls, but they could not be repaired.

I guess it's still possible to get screwed, but I don't really see how the mechanic in itself could be that bad. Its biggest impact is on drops if anything. It is now impossible to farm equipment upgrade materials indefinitely. it does put some weight on upgrade decisions early on in the game. Eventually, most materials will still have pretty high availability. It is also worth remembering that highest tier materials and things like demon titanite were also very limited in Dark Souls, so this is not exactly new either. In fact, the limited availability of drops is probably more consequential in Lightning Returns because of the way the ability upgrades work (i.e. you need to fuse together many copies of the same ability). In Dark Souls 2 you can still easily fully upgrade several weapons and a set of armor on one playthrough, which to me is hardly limited availability. All in all I don't know if it was a necessary change, but I am not really feeling the claimed negative impacts. I guess you could say it's against the Souls principle in a way because you are being denied learning possibilities after fifteen attempts. Color me indifferent.

In Dark Souls 2 the extinction of enemies is clearly just a game mechanic with no thematic implications. In Lightning Returns it's thematically more appropriate - at the end of days, even monsters feel it. This is further signified by last ones - special bosses encountered when every other member of a monster species is defeated. In a way it makes killing monsters feel less pointless as you can go on a crusade to truly defeat every last one of them. Of course, being able to slay an entire monster species would also have rather interesting moral implications in a different context. Even in LR you can ask yourself are all of these monsters truly malicious. In the end though, you will still go ahead and kill them for your precious loot and achievements. As a concept extinction has a lot to explore - not just as a meta-commentary, but also as a farm-limiting game mechanic.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Dark Souls 2 is almost the same game as Dark Souls, just in a different environment. For me this is more than enough. Even if the design does seem a bit weaker at times, it's still more awesome than any of its competitors. Changes have been mostly rather cautious and for good reason. I guess I'm just not hardcore enough to see how DkS2 is so obviously inferior to DkS. Even if it was slightly weaker (and I'm not even sure about that), it's still an entirely new game with new challenges and environments. I mean, we used to play sequels made with exactly the same engine in the past (and I guess we still are). Sometimes I feel people are a bit too eager to declare "more of the same" in a negative tone. At times, "more of the same" is exactly what's called for. For me, Dark Souls 2 was a reason to get back to the gameplay system I have learned to love.

DmC - Devil May Cry

This article is about the 2013 reboot of the franchise. I have played all games in the original series - most of them a lot in fact. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the reboot but after reading some reviews it sounded like it might not be that bad after all. Then it wound up in PS+ instant game collection which was my cue to grab it and give it a spin. I'm sensing a pattern here... Honestly this article is almost not worth it to write. I've said almost everything before (here and here, and probably elsewhere too).

The game has gone through a lot of westernization - especially Dante. He now looks like an emo rock star, and his vocabulary has been expanded to cover clever words like "fuck". Now he's also the archetypal reluctant hero type who grows to the occasion. Wow. Such original. Amazingly enough they've managed to retain at least a small sliver of the original Dante's charm. On the plus side, the game's plot is more sensible and in all its cheesiness pretty fine. Demons are controlling the human world through media and with pacifying energy drinks. Throw in a sexy girl sidekick who gets to play damsel in distress and we have pretty much everything that's needed for a good old 'murican hero flick. It's a rather obvious social commentary, especially aimed at news propaganda. The outrageousness of all the lies in the in-game news broadcasts made me chuckle a few times. I guess that's something, right?

A lot of negative things could be said about the game's fiction but let's just skip that and move on to actually playing the game. The core gameplay of the original series is surprisingly intact and - I dare say - even better at times. Most importantly, the core dynamic is there: Dante has tools for everything the game throws at you; the question is, can you utilize them? The developers are stating this rather boldly too: the game has a difficulty where even a single point of damage kills Dante. I didn't get that far, but I haven't entirely abandoned this game yet - I might go for another playthrough at some point on a harder difficulty. Like its predecessors, it's entirely possible to play the game through in one sitting, especially after the initial playthrough. This is another thing that is advantageous to games such as DmC. If the first playthrough is effing long, it's hard to bother with a second one.

The series has always been one where mastery of the battle mechanics is the driving motivator. By the end of the game, the player has become proficient with their weapons and fairly knowledgeable about different enemies in the game. Then they get to do it again with harder enemies. The series has also always rewarded diversity: the player is awarded style points for alternating between attacks and combos. Good controls are a cornerstone for both of these drivers - and DmC hits that nail right on its head. For once I don't even feel a need to bash camera controls. The game features a free camera without target locking which should be a recipe for disaster but turns out it's not. Fast-moving enemies cause problems with this kind of setup, but DmC doesn't actually have any. All enemies also have appropriate sound cues when they are about to attack, which makes even off-camera attacks avoidable.

There's another really important game usability point on DmC. Dante is effectively wielding three weapon sets at once: in normal mode, he uses a sword and one gun or another; in angel mode he uses an angel weapon; and in demon mode he uses a demon weapon. The important point is the way you switch between these. Holding the left trigger puts Dante into angel mode while the right trigger puts him into devil mode. As soon as they're released he is back in normal mode. This is simple yet brilliant, because the alternative - one that was experienced with Vergil in DMC3 special edition - is using the same buttons to cycle through the three. There is a huge cognitive problem with cycling: the context changes. Pressing the left trigger can give you any of the three weapons depending on which one you are holding right now. It doesn't sound too complicated on paper, but it's really easy to get confused when switching weapons in a hurry. The DmC way of dealing with three modes has no such issues because the left trigger always puts Dante into angel mode.

That's pretty much all I really have to say about DmC. It's an enjoyable game and does a lot of things right. Probably Dante is a bit too powerful in this game because the devs have gone overboard with a lot of things. I think it's actually entirely possible to finish battles in the game without ever touching ground. Dante can pull himself to enemies and he can pull enemies to himself, and use combos that keep both him and the target in the air. Then again, it feels cool to do so, especially when you are able to pull five plus enemies into the air with you and keep them all there. Boss fights are surprisingly rare in this game, and I'm not sure what to think about that. I feel like there could have been more. At least the ones in the game all feel different from each other.

Remember Me

When previews about this game started to appear, I put it on my "looking forward to" list. The Last of Us took priority though and I forgot about this game - mostly because everyone else seemed to do so. I also had my month long summer vacation which I spent chasing geocaches all around. The game popped up again as a PS+ freebie later last year - around the time I was getting a bit tired of FFXIV - and this time I chose not to ignore it. After pressing buttons at a slow pace for three months, I was thirsty for some hand-to-hand action.

1. Tying it all together with a theme

As far as merits go, Remember Me has most of  them in visual design and theme. The setting makes for pretty delicious sci-fi - a corporation has found a way to manipulate memories, allowing people to get rid of bad ones and replace them with custom-made good memories. Naturally this has led to a dystopian society, as things developed by corporations are wont to do. The game being about memory and all, it's no big surprise the protagonist Nilin has lost hers. Fortunately this game here is one of the few cases where this actually doesn't feel cheap. The fact that there's a female protagonist in a dystopian future immediately draws comparisons to Mirror's Edge. The game is also reminiscent of Mirror's Edge because of its distinctive visual style. The aesthetic is very different from ME's exceedingly white visual style but the overall atmosphere is very similar.

Remember Me uses a lot of visual effects and filters to achieve its visual style. Generally overuse of filters and glitchy effects might be frowned upon, but it works in RM. Why? It's thematically appropriate. Overall, the game makes full use of the Sensen technology (that would be the memory manipulation tech). Through Sensen, information can be conveniently projected into the game world - and because everything is perceived through it, all sorts of distortions and visual glitches fit in just perfectly. It also extends its reach into gameplay in few segments of the game. By copying the memories of another, the protagonist is able to follow in their footsteps through memory projection. One example use for this mechanic is navigating through a minefield. Finally some of the protagonist's superpowers work by manipulating enemies' Sensen nodes - enemies without one are therefore immune.

Story also works well with the theme. It's not a nobel worth masterpiece by a long shot but better than most any way. It works better as an overall documentary of consequences of technology than it does as a story about people - much like the Joss Whedon's Dollhouse actually. So the plot in itself is not all that great, but the way it portrays how Sensen technology has affected everyone's lives is pretty solid. The moments when the game explores the darkest sides of Sensen are definitely the strongest. I recommend playing it through just for the atmosphere. It's not a long game either.

2. Finishing off with gameplay

While I'd mostly recommend this game for its atmosphere, gameplay in Remember Me ain't half bad either. It's not very original though. The game can roughly be divided into three types of segments: the aforementioned memory projection segments, climbing segments and of course combat. Climbing is heavily railroaded: usually there's exactly one option for moving forward - pretty much what is typical in heavily scripted games already. There's nothing difficult about it either because controls are accurate enough so mostly it's just mindless execution of a predetermined obstacle course. The saving grace is scenery. Although immersion is way weaker than in Mirror's Edge, at least the views are great. There's not really much else to say about climbing in this game.

Nilin cannot use weapons so she has to rely on her fists and feet to do the dirty work for her. The game uses a combo system that sounds interesting on paper: The player is granted two chains to start off with, and can assign Pressens to each attack in a combo. These affect what the attack does. Unfortunately the options are rather limited. The choice is basically between damage, healing and cooldown reduction. The fourth Pressen type is a more powerful version of whatever Pressen preceded it. Regardless of Pressens, attack animations for combos don't change. With more varied Pressens this system might have been much cooler, but as it stands it's very simplistic. As soon as I opened a third combo, I simply had one combo for each purpose: dishing out the hurt, healing and reducing cooldowns. Normal attacks aside, Nilin gains access to a total of five superpowers.

Although the mechanic is simple, it does grant some tactical depth. Much of this is due to clever encounter and enemy design. Nilin's superpowers are not just to make fights go faster - each and every one of  them is truly required. Especially towards the endgame battles become dances around tougher enemies while the player tries to build up meter for Nilin's superpowers and at the same time use cooldown reduction combos to make them available in decent time (default cooldowns are *long*). Finally, because healing is also only possible through attacking, the player really needs to stay on the offensive. Delightfully the game heavily punishes mashing - each attack in a combo needs to be timed correctly. It is also worth learning which combos include area of effect damage. Controls are not perfect, but overall encounters are fun to play precisely because they feel different from each other.

The game also has a few memory remixing scenes, which are kind of interesting. They involve manipulating a memory like a recording, skimming back and forward and changing small things like the position of a table in hopes of altering the outcome. It's mostly a more elaborate version of "try everything" puzzles in some adventure games, but thematically they're cool.  There's not that many things to try in each memory either. Fine additions to the game, but not much else really.

Conclusion

Remember Me is a solid action adventure game that is strong in atmosphere but otherwise not all that special. Although combat and climbing mechanics are not very original or interesting on their own, both are enhanced by auxiliary means: battle encounters are designed surprisingly well, and scenery in the game is amazing. Nilin's story is not that great either, but the way the game handles its sci-fi makes it worth playing. If you choose to pick it up, do yourself a favor and play on the highest difficulty.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

Talk about unfinished business... I started Ninja Gaiden Sigma over two years ago. I stopped playing it around halfway through because it was kind of frustrating. Furthermore, Mirror's Edge happened. I never got back to NGS, and actually lost my save when my PS3 hard drive died. Yet for some reason I decided to pick it up again quite recently and managed to complete it. There's not actually that much to write about NGS, especially since not-so-long ago I did a piece on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. That piece pretty much contains the most important things to say about the genre in general and Ninja Gaiden Sigma is no exception.

The game is notorious for its difficulty and to a large extent this is true. Unfortunately, as usual, some of the difficulty comes from bad usability. We already covered bad camera. Although the problem is not as agravating in NGS as it is in Revengeance, it still gets pretty bad. Unlike Revengeance, NGS has a 360 degree block which means even stuff that comes from outside the camera angle can be guarded against. At least mostly - there's a bunch of unblockable attacks. The fair amount of unblockable attacks is also what makes a simple guard more interesting in NGS than it is in most other games. Any extended period of guarding gets punished with damaging unblockable attacks like throws. This prevents the game from getting too static. Overall, static is definitely not a word one would use to describe NGS. Staying on the move is the best defense.

It is therefore a bit disappointing that controlling movement is effing frustrating at times. For some reason it often feels like Ryu just plain refuses to register directional inputs correctly, leading to disastrous evasive moves. The feeling of being in control of the action sometimes just is not there. Unlike Devil May Cry or Revengeance, NGS also feels more like designed in such a way that taking damage is not entirely avoidable. Because of these reasons, the game just was not as sharp as those two. It is however much sharper than God of War or Dante's Inferno. Towards the end of the game it also seemed like the enemy designs mostly competed for unfairness rather than trying to provide more interesting challenges. Nevertheless, the game's difficulty peaked around midway, precisely where I quit the last time. This is where most enemies had ranged direct-hit attacks (i.e. not avoidable projectiles).

Although sometimes I felt the player's ability to control Ryu was not what I expected, Ryu's ability to control the pace of combat was pretty much top tier. This is where the game's strength lies: there's tools for everything. Ryu's ability to stay on the offensive is superior, and is achieved through a couple of means. First of all, enemies are staggered properly which makes it possible to actually control even crowds of enemies. Second, certain moves have built-in invincibility frames which allows Ryu to do stuff even when cornered. There's a downside of course: some enemies are best defeated by spamming invincible attacks. Against most enemies, even defense can be quickly turned around into offense with well-timed counter attacks. I'm not the most skilled player so I can only imagine how effective a really good player will be with these tools. My streaks mostly ended when I got tangled up with the controls.

Another thing that is noteworthy in NGS is the usefulness of different weapons. Variations aside, there's basically four different weapons in the game, and each has a distinct use. The basic sword (or the dual katana variant) is your default weapon and it excels in mobility, allowing Ryu to quickly move from enemy to enemy no matter how scattered they are. Staff is a solid choice against groups of enemies because of its wide hit areas and excellent counter attacks. Another good crowd control tool is the heavy sword, but it really shines with its ability to stagger even some of the biggest enemies in the game. Finally there's a nunchaku type flail which is superior against massive swarms of weak enemies and generally good when being static doesn't hurt Ryu too much. All in all, different weapons don't exist just for flavor - a feat a lot of games can't boast about.

Although I felt at times that the game was difficult for the wrong reasons, most of the time it is difficult for the right reasons: everything in the game - Ryu included - hits hard and goes down fast. Even bosses have pretty short life bars, all the way to the final boss. This is something we have gone through time and again, so I won't go into any more ranting about it. In conclusion it can be said that Ninja Gaiden Sigma is mostly deserving of its reputation as a difficult game and is mostly definitely a true game of skill. It might not be my favorite because ultimately it doesn't feel as thought-through as some other titles and also because it's a bit too fast-paced for me. Regardless, although I'm not looking forward to playing it again, I might at some point play the sequel.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

A lot of mixed reviews have been floating around the internet about this game and I have considered trying it on a few occasions. Although I expected it to quite mediocre, swords are always a plus. When it came available for free through PS+ in June, I decided to give it a spin. As expected, there was nothing revolutionary about it but nevertheless it was quite enjoyable to play. I'll explain how in just a bit. Let it just be said that this game lacks original ideas and its plot is the usual nonsensical teenage fantasy crap (well, R. A. Salvatore was involved in writing it so no surprises there). I am not above enjoying such plots every now and then but the one in Amalur made less sense than most. Anyway, story, not the point.

1. Busywork gaming

Amalur is the perfect excuse to write about busywork gaming. Unfortunately I have forgotten the source for the term but the concept is interesting. It explains the popularity of a lot of genres including a bunch of Facebook games and of course MMOs. Being an offline MMO, Amalur definitely employs a lot of busywork gaming. The appeal of busywork gaming is in stark contrast to what is usually understood as good game design. It is, roughly, progress without challenge. It is totally stress-free, and more or less comparable to watching television. Although Amalur has some degree of challenge on the highest difficulty, much of the game is about constantly doing some small tasks to improve your character.

As such it is a power trip much like Borderlands, but Amalur offers even less variety and space for creativity. Instead, it offers several different systems of busywork. Sidequests are just the start. As usual, there are a) too many of them and b) they are too boring. They don't really provide much of anything either - most of the rewards are just money and experience. The crafting systems are what actually hold more appeal to them because of their more immediate rewards. Amalur is a game ruled by equipment so it is quite easy to see how crafting your own has high appeal - especially when the crafted equipment is actually better than stuff you can find most of the time.

There are actually three different crafting systems, two of which kind of overlap a bit, and one that is entirely separate (alchemy, for potions obviously). This means a lot of collecting, and that is more or less what the player does all game long. Most found equipment goes into the grinder to see what components drop out. Surprisingly there is no grinding involved because stuff is abundant and naturally encountered while going through quests. As some readers might have noticed, I have mixed opinions about crafting systems. Amalur falls mostly into the light side, because crafting doesn't work with recipes. The outcome is the sum of components used, no mystery involved (well, except alchemy, that works with recipes).

It is indeed the fluidity of systems that make busywork in Amalur strangely relaxing. Basically everything is guaranteed to grant progress, be it experience (levels come with new crafting skills) or components. This is what makes it somewhat different from recipe-based crafting systems where new components are only useful if they are part of a recipe the player wants to make. In Amalur each component creates new crafting options - although they are not always actually useful. Customization also grants a greater sense of ownership over the created piece of equipment - and hey, you can name it too. In contrast, recipe-based systems always feel more like obtaining a piece of equipment in unnecessarily small pieces.

So although I do often bash various games about their busywork aspects, I do indeed enjoy it when it is done correctly. I can even somewhat enjoy large grinding efforts if they are done for a greater purpose. Busywork gaming is, all in all, still guaranteed progress. It is suitable for times when even gaming stress is not particularly welcome. We all do all sorts of meaningless things for the sake of progress in meaningless efforts to take our mind off other things. It is my belief that to work, busywork systems indeed have to guarantee progress. Grinding for items with super low drop rates (F U, Demon's Souls) doesn't fit the bill.

I'll try to find the book section or article I used as the source for this, it is more interesting than my rambling about the subject.

2. Sidequest, man, what happened to you?

Another sidequest rant, yay. They are a freaking plague though, someone has to stop the madness. As a concept the sidequest has existed for god knows how long, but somewhere along the line something happened to it. It has become a bureaucracy of faceless tasks. While some games like Borderlands 2 grant a great deal of personality to their sidequests, the whole thing is now a system. You have your quest log with its completion ratios, milestones and cute little check markers for done quests. Every corner of the world has some helpless or ten in need of your help (while you should be busy saving the world).

I don't have a problem with sidequests as a concept. The problem is their modern "quantity over quality" design philosophy. I would not be surprised to find out that some games have generated sidequests and sadly, those would not be that much worse than what we have now. Every RPG seems to want to provide 100 hours of gameplay, regardless of the length of its main content. The most disturbing thing about this pandemic is the flood of new quest logs entries upon entering every single new area. It's just overwhelming. At first you might try to do all just to be sure, then be on the lookout for ones with nice fat rewards and in the end it's just fuck-all, I want to finish this game.

Some sidequests in Amalur are however reminiscent of better days - which is why I included this section in the first place. Remember Baldur's Gate 2 where most sidequests would actually take you to an entirely new place or in the very least have an actual plot of their own? In comparison, modern sidequests are mere tasks at best. Every now and then though, there are ones that make an effort. Amalur has faction quests, a set for each of the game's six or so factions. Unlike your bread and butter tasks, these quests actually form a side plot of multiple quests. Although the quests themselves are equally bland as the rest, the continuity does go a long way toward creating better experience.

I call for a sidequest reform. If a quest doesn't involve any sort of joy of discovery, be it a side plot or, a new area or an exciting enemy, it should not be in the game. Want to add gameplay hours? Make the quests longer, without increasing their number. I take one long quest any day over ten small ones. Of course we all know that creating new content is expensive, which is why they don't do this. So here's a radical idea: don't have sidequests at all if there's no real budget for them. I know the reply will be "but you don't have to do them!" but there never is any indication how optional they really are. Games set different expectations, but it is usually not implied in any way.

This puts the player in a weird position. In one hand, they want to of course get any advantage they can in form of rewards - but, on the other hand, doing too many sidequests is going to make the main quest a cakewalk. BG2 actually had a good indicator for what is enough: once the player had enough gold to proceed in the main story, they were likely to also have enough levels to have an enjoyable challenge in the main quest. Of course a lot of people probably did most of the quests anyway because, you know, they were actually interesting.What purpose do sidequests serve in your game? Perhaps it is something the player would also like to know.

Another thing to consider is sidequest density. The further in the game the player is, the more likely they are bored to death with repetitive sidequests so maybe new ones shouldn't be popping as frequently. It's easy to say "don't do them", but the fact that they are there, in your quest log, is always nagging you. We don't like unfinished business after all. So consider this: after doing sidequests by the bucket, do players really feel like being showered in even more? The busywork appeal only lasts for so long, and after that there's just the nagging. At first there's the excitement of exploring a new world, and sidequests can be good guides - but this does not last forever. 

It feels like this sidequest business is for RPGs what multiplayer is to other genres. You just have to have it, says the publisher. I don't see anyone bashing a game for not having enough sidequests.

3. Ability trees and combat balance

Although an offline MMO by design, Amalur does have a surprisingly decent combat system. As far as action RPGs go though, it is fairly standard. You have your strikes, blocks, dodges and spells - the latter not too many in number, even when playing a mage. It's not a revolution, but it works. At leats on hard difficulty there's even some challenge. This is created by following the basic principles of stagger and recovery mechanics. Everything has a longish recovery time, which opens a careless player to enemy attacks. Enemy attacks stagger, so the player has to go on defensive mode. All in all, a functional system. Now let's talk about abilities.

I have talked about over-conservative skill design before. In general, it means that the designers have been too afraid of imbalances. The end result is that all abilities in the game are rather unremarkable. I did not fully explore the other two trees of course, but at least the Might tree (for warriors, obviously) had mostly abilities that were truly bland. You have your passive number bonuses and a handful of actives. You won't see the effects of most abilities. One active that is supposed to be crowd control has such a long casting time that it becomes almost useless. Another ability doesn't even work as described (which would have made it useful).

What usually happens though is that there is one ability that outshines everything else. It may sound unremarkable on paper, or it might even be disguised. In this case it was disguised by making it look weak on level 1. You can't actually see the upper levels beforehand, so there is no way of knowing. Actually my alarm bells should have rung though, even with the -50% armor penalty on the first level. You see, the ability makes the player immune to stagger. On highest level, the armor penalty is gone too. Now, stagger immunity is huge. The meaning of stagger (aka hit stun) has been discussed before, but let me remind you.

The biggest threat in games like this is often not the damage from a single attack, but the stagger. Groups of enemies are the most dangerous because they can engage the player in a stagger chain. Since being staggered typically prevents and intercepts attacks, it is a big deal. A huge deal really. Stagger is what gives fighting its dynamic and prevents it from becoming a DPS mashfest. Being immune to stagger is a massive advantage to the point that I still consider poise to be broken in Dark Souls. See, if your attacks cannot stagger the enemy, they lose all of their threat. The opponent has no reason to respect your attacks, and attacking becomes a loser's game.

Poise in Dark Souls had drawbacks and it could have been balanced with more consideration. Too few things in the game punished having high poise, and too many rewarded it. Poise made you slow, because only heavy armor granted it. Being slow was not big enough of a deal in the game but it could have been. Fighting in melee against someone with high poise in online was a game you could only win by not playing. Whenever you attacked, they could also attack and possibly follow up with more while laughing your stagger off. The best way to fight them would have been to wait for their attack and parry it, but they had no reason to attack really. So, basically no one had incentive to attack.

Back to Amalur though. So if poise, which wasn't always full stagger immunity mind you, is broken, how would you think of full stagger immunity with no drawbacks? Okay it had a 20 second duration, but that also is quite a long time. However with two linked abilities, this one became absolutely game-breaking. Here is what you can get on top of full stagger immunity, from the same skill: a chance to reflect damage back to the enemy and a chance to steal health. Not only is the threat of stagger gone, you don't actually need to care about most damage either because your uninterruptable attacks will constantly heal you.  This is honestly so ridiculous that I do not see how it got through playtesting. After obtaining this package the game does become a trivial mashfest.

This ability is so dominating that everything else in the tree becomes redundant. It solves every possible situation in the game, for free (practically at leat - there's a mana cost but you can regen it between fights). Furthermore, there is nothing interesting in the ability tree so it's not like there are even any cool alternative ways to play a fighter. There are no drawbacks, so it is impossible to design around it - anyone with full stagger immunity will be at least as good in every situation as  those without, and often better (in Amalur, always better). As I said I didn't try the other two trees but I somehow doubt their ability to compete with this insanely broken ability. It is simply impossible to die with this ability.

In closing, I want to stress this: never ever give stagger immunity to the player for free. Even if it has a cost, make sure the cost is steep enough, because stagger immunity is very likely to break your game. It's good to throw on some enemies if you want to make them really nasty though. Stagger immunity in a nutshell: Enemies yes, players no.

Conclusion

I did enjoy my trip to Amalur for most of its duration. Although the game is really nothing special, it does have enough appeal and can be rushed quite quickly once it starts to get boring. As far as offline MMO experiences go, it is not bad at all. It's got nice scenery. Very lazy dungeon design though, as I was able to recognize certain "building blocks" that were present in many dungeons, looking exactly the same. Should you play it though? If you don't mind the potential time sink factor, you are probably better off playing a solid MMO for much of the same appeal. Likewise, if you are looking for some good sword and sorcery action, there are the Souls and Witchers. However if you are like me and have actually played most of the important titles already and yearn for some heroic, light adventure then go ahead.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Primarily Revenvengeance is just another swordplay action game. Granted, it combines the familiar gameplay mechanic to a series mostly known for stealth and crazy plots. The latter is of course intact in Revengeance as the plot makes very little sense at any point. As a game it follows most of the tropes in its genre, including the bad ones.

1. The camera problem

Indeed the biggest issue I had with this game was its camera and honestly I cannot recall a fast-paced action game where camera would not have been an issue. In slower games like the Souls series camera works just fine most of the time (some bosses in at least Dark Souls made the camera go batshit though). I do find it curious that developers insist on making games with very fast-moving enemies while keeping the camera very close to the protagonist's back. If the enemies move slow enough, there is no issue because they cannot suddenly strike from far beyond vision range. Fast-moving enemies also make all kinds of locking systems a pain, because once you lock onto one, it's going to get rather nauseating.

The camera issue is quite simple: in real life, when fighting with melee weapons, people are perfectly able to glance quickly at their sides/behind to see what is going on there. So far there has been no viable way to do this in games. The thumbstick, your friendly neighborhood camera controller, cannot do both accurate and fast. If the sensitivity is fast enough to allow quick glances, you can bet it won't be accurate enough for anything else. It is also far more disorienting to do quick perspective changes in games because the player lacks body sense in the situation. The situation is worst in first person action games, which I think I discussed in my analysis of Dishonored. Moving the camera behind the player's avatar does, in a way, simulate peripheral vision and also the ability for quick glances by showing what is going on the sides.

The situation is somewhat remedied by game mechanics in some games. Devil May Cry has fixed camera angles but experts find it quite playable because of two features: one, all enemies make a sound before attacking; two, jumps and dodges have invincibility frames at the beginning. This means that even attacks from out-of-view enemies can be dodged at all times if the player is careful enough. The system in Revengeance is a bit problematic in this regard because its primary defensive system is parrying and the player is required to press the left thumbstick in the direction of the attack and time the parry correctly. The game assists in this by highlighting when enemies are about to strike, but this is of little help if they are out of view. For this reason Revengeance is somewhat more infuriating with its camera problems than most games in the genre.

One way to deal with camera issues I believe Revengeance should have taken would be to move the camera further. The downside of this of course is that as enemies become smaller, they attacks are harder to discern. However, the game already uses rather blatant highligths and discerning those should not be a problem. Unless it is a technical limitation, I don't think there is any acceptable reason for the camera being so close - especially if they are unwilling to make enemies jump around a lot less. In summary: close camera + fast enemies is a bad combination, but especially so when the primary defense mechanism relies on the player being able to discern each attack's direction. It gets even worse near walls, because the camera does sudden resets (instead of, say, making the walls invisible when they would obstruct the view).

Although the camera problem is rather ubiquitous in this genre, that doesn't mean it should be accepted. Here's why: bad usability is a shitty way to make a game challenging. I highly doubt that Platinum Games wanted to make camera control into a central mechanic in Revengeance - and since it's not part of the core gameplay, it should not get in the way. Some people have excused things like bad controls in Silent Hill because they somehow add to the game's feeling of helplessness. I say we should stop excusing things like this - there are other ways that don't rely on frustrating the player.  

2. Feedback matters

If you have not read it yet, this article does a lot to explain Revengeance's appeal. In short, the violence itself is not the source of the appeal. The violence is just a graphical metaphor for the truly appealing force: feedback. The messy headshot is a very clear indicator that you did well. Revengeance pretty much takes this to the extreme. It is indeed hyper-violent, but not for the sake of violence. The most violent stuff happens in cutting mode, where the player is allowed to literally cut stuff to pieces with rapid slashes. This mode can be used to instantly kill any normal enemies. Furthermore, if you make a cut in the right angle and hit the enemy's power core, Raiden will grab it from the splitting body and instantly refill his health and the energy meter you need to do these cuts. That right there is a very powerful indicator of success - a positive feedback loop even.

So the game reinforces your behavior of scoring instant kills not just with a cool visual effect which in itself is rather satisfactory - it also gives you the power to do more instant kills quicker. Perfect parries are similarly rewarded: you get a cool effect, your meter refills and you get an instant kill option right there. Overall, anything that the player does "right" gives satisfying visual effects in the least, and often gameplay rewards that enable the player to do even more cool stuff. Other important things like stagger have been well implemented. All this makes the game a very satisfying experience. The over-the-top attitude shows not just in cheesy cutscenes, but all over the gameplay. Lesser action games could learn a lot from Revengeance. Platinum Games definitely have a knack for making the player feel empowered when they succeed.

Dante's Inferno is one example of a game that could learn a lot. I'd also throw God of War to the lot, although I'm risking a lot of flak doing so. The games share a lot of genes. Most importantly, battles in both of these games feel very stagnant compared to Revengeance. It just feels a lot more like attrition where the player slowly chips life away from enemies. The weird thing is, these games share most of the mechanics with Revengeance. They just do so in a manner that is several magnitudes less satisfying. They have instakills, and they reward instakills too, but the oomph factor is severely lacking. One key difference is pace. Revengeance is wicked fast. The player hits hard, as do the enemies. Enemies fall left and right, often in mere seconds. It feels like the game is constantly moving forward whereas Dante's Inferno in particular feels like you are forever stuck in every single fight.

Conclusion

Revengeance - even with its flaws - is definitely one of the better games in its genre. It's up there in the company of Devil May Cry (original series) and Ninja Gaiden. It doesn't have any revolutionary mechanics. Rather it just does the basic gameplay in a manner that totally reinforces good play. Although I did compare it to God of War, the games are actually in slightly different categories in my opinion. God of War is more oriented towards casual audiences who might not be as interested in mastering every technique in a game. The difference is quite subtle because on the surface these games feel very similar. Revengeance is purely devoted to one thing: fighting enemies with style, whereas games like God of War throw in a fair bit of exploration and trivial puzzles for a more varied experience. Revengeance is much more suitable for the DMC/NG crowd.

Nier

I do not usually write all that much about game plots. Yet I find myself compelled to write my thoughts about Nier's story. I totally dismissed this game at the time it came out because on the surface it looked like a very mediocre action rpg, and I wasn't such a big fan of Square-Enix at that time either. Much more recently I picked the name up from this article after deeming the list quite credible since it featured Valkyria Chronicles (a marvelous game I have played) and Trails in the Sky plus Radiant Historia (games I was planning to play at the time anyway - I have now started Trails in the Sky). Nier's description promised interesting story and dialogue - both valid reasons to play games for me.

So let's get a few thing out of the way: as a game Nier is not very interesting. Its battle system is a poor imitation of games like God of War and among all the spells in the game I ended up using mostly three. The game is also ridiculously easy on normal difficulty and very frustrating on hard because encounters with normal enemies last a better half of an eternity. Boss fights are quite cool so there's that and the game is at least quite tightly packed. Gameplay is not very inspiring, but it also doesn't get in the way. The game also features a magnificent soundtrack that manages to pour a lot of emotion into different environments. Finally: this post will contain spoilers that will most likely destroy the entire experience for you. There is a reason the writers want you to experience the latter half of the game twice to get the whole picture.

So if you think you will ever be playing this game, do yourself a favor and don't read this post. Let's just say that the game comes with my full recommendations - I hope that's enough for you to pick it up.


1. It is all about the characters (again)

One goal for the creators of Nier was to create a more adult RPG story. Surprisingly they have succeeded in their goal, although the attire of Kainé might suggest otherwise...

I mean we talked about this, right? Kainé is prancing around in her underwear pretty much literally - even other characters in the game comment on this. It does seem quite contradictory to the game's goal but actually, because of the game's sometimes rather strange sense of humor, I am going to put this one down as parody. Kainé is nothing like your typical female companion. This is one angry woman, and has a mouth fouler than any other character in games as far as I recall. I bet her voice actress has had a blast - I also thought she sounded kinda familiar and was absolutely flabbergasted to find out I had previously heard her as Serah in FFXIII(-2) - talk about contrast! Kainé also has a whole lot of resemblance with Annah from possibly the most applauded RPG story ever written: Planescape Torment.

I took Kainé here as an example because the game is pretty much driven by its three defining characters: the protagonist, Kainé and Grimoire Weiss. There is a great sense of bonding between this odd group of rather strong personalities. Most importantly, the game doesn't fail to capitalize on this. Most of the dialogue serves only one purpose: to portray the dynamics of this group to the player. The game wants you to like its characters and care about them. It certainly doesn't hurt that it has some of the best dialogue that's been written for games. I am actually just going to place it in the hall of fame in the company of the likes of Planescape: Torment and Persona 3/4. One important lesson to learn from Nier is that these characters comment on pretty much everything, That is actually the best reason to do sidequests in Nier: to hear Weiss complaing about the pointlessness of the effort.

None of the characters are quite normal. Well, the protagonist maybe but even he is very set on rescuing his daughter. Then there's Kainé and a floating, talking, sarcastic book. Finally we have a boy whose gaze petrifies living things (spoiler: he gets weirder than that). Most of the chatter also takes place during gameplay while the player is making their way towards the next objective. This is something that was already mentioned in my last post. It is a technique that I simply would like to see a lot more. The only complaint I have is placing some key dialogue into boss fights. It works on the first playthough just fine, but on the second there is a high risk of actually killing the boss before the dialogue ends. Which means the player will just run around in circles until talking is definitely done. It doesn't help that there is much more dialogue during boss fights on the second time around.

2. And now with the spoilers

On the surface Nier is about a man facing monsters called shades while desperately trying to rescue his daughter from a deadly sickness. Aided by his weird companions, he eventually encounters Shadowlord, and finally defeats him. This is most of the experience you will get on your first playthrough of Nier. The game does hint at various things and drops a lot of unanswered questions but doesn't really reveal its hand until the very last dungeon in the game. So far so boring. After the true nature of shades has been revealed and the game completed, the player is encouraged to start the game from halfway through to experience another level of the story. On this second playthough, the game contains more dialogue and additional scenes that let the player experience the story with the knowledge they received at the very end.

This is pretty much where the game just pulls the rug right out. Although the knowledge of what is truly going on is shocking in its own right, the game really pushes boundaries by encouraging the player to experience it again with all-new eyes. This is mostly achieved by allowing the player to hear the words of Tyrann - the shade that has possessed Kainé and is giving her strength. Furthermore, because Tyrann understands what the shades are saying, their words are now also shown to the player. Even on the first playthrough there is a point where the protagonist seems to be too far gone. Although he goes on about how it is important to help people it is made rather clear that when it comes to choosing between his daughter and the lives of an entire village, he could not care less about innocent lives.

On the second round of the game, the player is very explicitly shown that the protagonist's heroic actions against shades are in truth sheer mass murder of sentient beings. On the first time through the player is implied this when the full truth is revealed. However, it is an entirely different matter to know in retrospect that you have been murdering innocents than it is to fight them with full knowledge of what is truly going on. When you swing a sword at what you as the player know to be nothing but small children, the chilling effect is quite overwhelming. You will do it, because you are willing to see how far the tragedy reaches - but you will not be happy about it. This power of portraying tragedy is unique to games. Much like the shocking revelation in Brenda Romero's Train, you are forced to face the fact that you are not the good guy.

In a sense this is not the protagonist's tragedy though, because he remains oblivious to the plight of his victims. Instead it is Kainé we should really be looking at. The fact that the second round is called "Kainé's story" does hint that we are experiencing the events from her point of view. This leads me to believe that Kainé can also hear what Tyrann is saying and also what the shades are saying. Therefore she is fully content with murdering them. After all, Tyrann did not just possess her, they struck a bargain: Kainé will be allowed to control her body as long as she keeps brutally murdering shades and pretty much anything else. Although Tyrann is portrayed as the murderer, it is Kainé who chooses to take on his bloodlust in exchange for a chance at revenge. Furthermore we don't see her fighting reluctantly - it is more the opposite. While the protagonist thinks he is slaying monsters, Kainé knows the truth from the start.

It is delightful to see that the writers have not chickened out. There is no redeeming factor at the end - you have simply climbed a mountain of corpses to reunite one man with his daughter. None of the monsters were truly your enemies but rather just bystanders in the rivalry between the protagonist and the Shadowlord.

3. Artistic finishing touch

One last thing to talk about in Nier is its fourth ending. Although it does feel a bit tacked on, this ending is one of the most powerful ones in gaming history. Once again it is also something that only games can really do. There is a choice for the player in the very end of the third round (a bit excessive, including this in the second one would have been enough in my opinion), and one of them is the rather usual "sacrifice yourself" choice - only Nier does it with much more flavor. The option is not just for the protagonist to die: it is for him to be fully erased from existence - history included. What happens in the ending is the interesting part: the game will literally erase your character by removing every saved game associated with that character. Upon choosing the option, the game starts erasing your items from your inventory, one by one. Every tab in your menu gets cleared item by item until only a black screen remains.

Although the effect sounds like at technicality, it once again has a lot more meaning to the player. It tears down the wall between the player and their character, effectively implying that the character is even being erased from the player's "memory". Nothing remains on your hard drive, the character is just gone. It can also be considered as some kind of solace because it allows you to erase that extension of yourself who you used to commit mass murder. All evidence is gone, but of course in your mind the memory is very likely to remain. This ending is pretty much the perfect way to put a game like Nier to rest. What the ending is saying is that the experience was so strong that you will never need to go back to it. This describes Nier perfectly.

Still, I have to complain about this ending because it does seem a bit like an afterthought. The choice is kinda just tacked on. Unless I seriously missed something, nothing during the game hints at such a choice might come around. Much like the final boss in Final Fantasy IX, it just pops right at you when you thought the game was done. I still think it is a great thing to have, but I cannot give it full points because of its disconnectedness.

Conclusion

I don't know if this piece was actually useful for anyone. If you read it and have not played the game, I have pretty much now ruined the experience for you. If you had played the game, you probably know all that. Still, I do enjoy reading similar pieces by other people, so there's that. I also think it is important to highlight the awesomeness of Nier because it breaks free of a lot of stereotypes - a very strong feat indeed in the JRPG genre. The gameplay is still crappy, but the story simply would not have worked so well in any other medium. For an RPG it's not actually that long or huge, I think you can get the whole experience in about twenty hours (that is, two rounds of the second half). It's also an important reminder that artistic games with a lot to say are not always made by indies.

Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs was initially one of those games that I just picked up because I had finished one game and the next titles were still on their way in the mail. Ultimately it turned out to be quite a bit more than just a snack. For those not in the know, Sleeping Dogs is a GTA-like that was initially supposed to be a part of the True Crime series. For some unknown reason the original publisher rejected the game, thus the name change and another publisher. Because I have not written about any GTA yet, I am going to include some wider points from the genre's conventions.

1. Backstory matters in gameplay - to an extent!

Sleeping Dogs features one important backstory difference to GTA games: the protagonist is not a criminal. He is an undercover cop who has been tasked with infiltrating a triad in Hong Kong. This sets a different tone to the entire game. Although the mechanical punishments for driving over civilians are quite small, they bear much larger emotional impact on the player if they identify with the protagonist's dual identity. Although I am not particularly happy about killing bystanders in any of these games, Sleeping Dogs puts a lot more emphasis on the ethics of the player's actions. In GTA I hijack cars for leisure with no second thoughts but in Sleeping Dogs I found myself wanting a really pressing need before I could even think about hijacking a car.

There is no in-game punishment for breaking the law, unless the player is on a mission (and then it just lowers their cop score a bit). The mechanic, and also the reaction of the car's original owner are exactly the same in both GTA and Sleeping Dogs. The only difference is the protagonist's identity. Protagonist identity has its limits though, as is also evidenced by Sleeping Dogs: when asked (by a criminal contact) to hijack a specific car, hijacking the car actually feels less bad. This may be because the player can push the responsibility for their actions onto the game. After all, the game gave them the goal to hijack a car - even though they were responsible for taking the mission in the first place (hijack missions are optional)!

This is actually a fairly common ethical conflict in games: the conflict between in-game rewards and the ethical concerns of an action. Game characters do indeed do all sorts of nasty things under the player's control. This picture highlights this particular issue (in a rather parodical way - but it does get a point across). Typically gameplay incentives override any ethical concerns the player might have about the action - especially if the game does not confront the player about their actions. Therefore, although they are supposed to be the ideal hero, players controlling Link in various Zelda games will happily hack away at civilian property. This happens in part because no one cares in the game world. Thus the game is not actively confronting the player.

In Sleeping Dogs repercussions for actions are situational (score is only counted during missions). Even then they still somewhat reinforce the protagonist's identity's ability to control player actions. Furthermore, the rewards for hijacking cars at random are also quite low: garages where the protagonist can summon their own car are quite common. Later in the game they even get the ability to have a valet deliver a to them. Therefore it is not that necessary to hijack cars in order to get some wheels. This design decision is sound; if the game had actually forced the player to hijack cars just to get around, it would have a much harder time to get anything out of the protagonist's dual identity. Of course we can argue that the ridiculous bodycount also conflicts with this identity. However, this is once again a case where the game is forcing the player's hand. It also has its limits; just like I did in L.A. Noire, regardless of crashing into traffic and other property I usually did not choose to control my speeding.

The dual role of the protagonist is also present in the game's structure. The storyline consists of both triad and police missions, all of which need to be completed to advance in the story. All in all this play on identities does distinguish the game's story from a bunch of competitors to its advantage. It also makes it "easier" for the writers to create a more complex and conflicted protagonist. Easier in the sense that certain amount of complexity is already present in the character concept and game structure.

2. The Hong Kong experience

I love GTA titles - Vice City in particular - but there is one major and commonly accepted defect in the entire series: action is typically effing lame, and further destroyed by bad controls. This is commonly forgiven because Rockstar has a tendency to do a marvelous job on every other front. GTA V might not get away so easily though, because Sleeping Dogs has shown how things can be with proper effort. The game takes its inspiration from Hong Kong action movies - a genre of action movies famous for their insane stunts. The illusion would really break with GTA style static combat. Fortunately action sequences in the game are far more diverse. The game puts less emphasis on gunfights for starters. It includes close quarters combat all the way until the end of the game.

Adding more variety is just icing on the cake though. Both types of combat have been made simply a lot better than in any competitors I have played. Hand-to-hand takes its influences from games like Arkham Asylum and Yakuza, and the system is actually very functional. Winning fights against multiple opponents doesn't come down to just one strategy and most combos and other moves have their uses. Some have  been thrown in just for flair of course, but they succeed in creating more diversity. Shortly put, combat stays interesting throughout the game. Gunfights are also more dynamic than usual. The addition of bullet time while vaulting over obstacles gives the player a lot of incentive to stay on the move. It is also easy to switch to close combat at any time - the player can even disarm opponents through grappling.

Hong Kong action wouldn't be Hong Kong action without more dynamic movement. Parkouring is quite easy in Sleeping Dogs but it gives the player better movement range. In particular it makes chase scenes on foor a lot more interesting. If there is one weaker category in terms of game controls it is cars. They behave somewhat weirdly in Sleeping Dogs, and car controls are a bit shaky. However, the driving experience is also enhanced with some Hong Kong flair. The player can ram cars on either side more effectively. The coolest trick in car driving is action hijack, where the protagonist jumps from one car on another to hijack it while it's moving. While this feature is not very commonly used, it adds an important bit of flavor to the game.

In addition to enriching the game's action quite a bit, Hong Kong also acts as a superb setting to the game. Although the game is technically (very) poor on PS3, the city looks impressive and - more importantly - very different from American cities often seen in games. It made me actually wish that there would have been even longer distances to drive just looking at the scenery and listening to the radio. The radio has some weird asian stuff on some channels which is a plus.

3. Travel experience and dialogue

In my last post about Journey, I talked about how simply traveling can be a powerful gaming experience. Journey had a very silent and elegant way of creating that experience. Sleeping Dogs also achieves good traveling experiences but through different means. This is something that I noticed quite a while ago when playing GTA IV (or maybe Vice City even) but haven't written about it yet. The experience of driving changes drastically as soon as the player gets a passenger in their car - not because a companion is present but because they are actually talking. I swear I could play a game of this genre where the only thing the player ever did was drive interesting companions around the place while dialogue is going on. Then again, this is coming from a guy who drove around in circles in Vice City when a good song was playing instead of going straight for the objective.

In a way using dialog in this way during transition draws the player's attention from the fact that they are just doing a transition from point A to point B. In GTA-like games the transition is typically more fun than some other games (such as RPGs where you just walk) but the player still speeds through as fast as possible - unless their avatar is having a conversation with another person. The feeling of there being another person in the car changes the way I drive in these games. Although there's no punishment (other than the occasional shriek of terror) for reckless driving, the presence of a virtual person somehow makes me drive way more carefully. In games where transition is boring by nature, having virtual company makes the experience feel more like a journey. I liked this in Nier for instance where NPCs commented on side quests while I was making my way towards quest objectives.

The reason I think this is important is that it goes to show how story content can change the gameplay experience. Thus it reinforces my stance that prewritten story content should not be treated simply as content that can be separated from gameplay. Disruptive ways of including story content such as cutscenes are kind of so-so, but injection story elements into gameplay parts - like conversations while driving - does affect the perceived gameplay experience. It does nothing to the mechanics but it changes the environment in which gameplay takes place. I think this is something that is not easily achievable without voice acting because text tends to be too disruptive.

Conclusion

At its core, Sleeping Dogs is yet another GTA clone. However, through clever decisions in both story concept and gameplay design, it in many ways surpasses the original. The biggest issues in the game are quite minor. The biggest problem the game had was its framerate on the PS3. It was simply abyssal during cutscenes. Fortunately it stayed quite good during actual gameplay. The game also had some hilarious bugs. My favorite has to be the bus trap: I got into a bus by accident and, opting to cancel instead of choosing my destination, was trapped inside with no way out! I actually left the game running for quite some time and when I came back, I was still in the bus. There were also some (quite common) oversights. It is cool and all that the protagonist's clothes get soaked and bloody. It is however quite less credible when no one reacts to it. Case in point: putting on good clothes to get onto a casino boat - I just couldn't get into a boat to get there without taking a little dip. Of course no one questioned my entirely soaked expensive suit. This oversight is very common in games but somehow I found it much more hilarious in Sleeping Dogs than usual.

Anyway. If you like the genre, play this game.

inFamous 2

This game has been sitting in my collection for some time. Mostly because there were more urgent games to play. I did like many aspects of the first inFamous. Most importantly the game was very enjoyable to play. I realized that I haven't actually written about inFamous yet (I played it way before starting this blog) so I will touch it a bit as I go.What I remember of it anyway. In short, inFamous 2 is a direct sequel which in video game terms often means "improved version of the first" and I have to say that this is mostly true - again.

1. Being an electric man

Much of the strength of inFamous comes from factors that are very similar to Assassin's Creed. It allows the player to feel how it is like to be a superhero. This is achieved through efficient controls and design of powers that are simple to use yet highly impressive. Curiously the greatest feeling of power in inFamous is not how easily the player can defeat enemies but the various methods that allow them to travel across the city rapidly. It is a game where movement has been made highly enjoyable. Indeed out of somewhat similar games, only Mirror's Edge clearly surpasses inFamous whereas games like Assassin's Creed fall behind. Of course the comparison is a bit unfair - the protagonist Cole McGrath has a handful of movement-related superpowers after all. The biggest mistake in the original game was to give out these powers quite slowly. In inFamous 2, Cole starts with all movement powers from the first game.

He does get even more powerful movement abilities towards the end of the game though. In addition to being able to float in the air and "grind" (move very quickly, like on rails) on electric wires, by the end Cole can launch himself high into the air and use a lightning-themed grappling hook. I actually have no idea how one would do this stuff with electricty (the launch is ice-based though) but it doesn't really matter. What matters is how effectively the player can guide Cole through the city. In a sense it is these feats of movement that truly make Cole feel like a superhero. This is partly due to the surprisingly unimaginative design of combat powers. My biggest issue with the first game was that most of Cole's combat powers worked exactly like firearms. You have your pistol-like basic projectiles, electric grenades and electric rockets (with or without guidance).

inFamous 2 is not much better in this respect. New combat powers are mostly variations of old ones and while they are satisfying to use (especially the redirect rockets) they don't convey the feeling of electricity as well as they could. Sure, electricity courses through steel fences and instantly kills enemies standing in water but that is more or less all there is to it. Although combat powers themselves are perhaps the weakest link in this "electric man simulation", fueling them again enhances the experience; Cole gains his energy and health back by draining it out of nearby electric devices and power sources. This means that the game has an abundance of recovery available. More on this in the next section.I really don't know how electricty-based powers should work, but I'd imagine they would be quite a bit less controllable than firearms.

2. Combat pacing and healing

One interesting topic about game design is how healing affects the overall experience of combat in the game. In the past most games were exercises of sparing limited healing resources and this created a certain suspense but also caused some frustrating save/load sessions. The modern approach on the other hand is to allow players to regain health by simply resting for a while. This approach makes damage less permanent. Neither approach is very realistic, but that is the way of getting damage in combat. The tabletop RPG Hunter: The Reckoning makes a valid point: if a character actually gets injured from a weapon, they often spend weeks or months in the hospital bed. In a tabletop roleplaying game this can be made to work, but obviously it is not very desirable in action packed video games.

This means that once again we can disregard realism. Realism is overrated anyway. Both approaches have their uses, and indeed both are still present in modern games - the resting approach is just much more common. The issue with that approach is that it leaves out the suspense element entirely. It is simply not possible to use limited access to healing as a game design element because healing is ubiquitously available to the player. In inFamous, healing is abundant but not ubiquitous. The city is usually full of sources of electricity - often healing is just around the corner or even already in sight. Indeed, if the player has upgraded Cole's drain speed, he can become almost invulnerable if connected to an infinite power source. Infinite power sources are only available in a few specific missions. However this does mean that Cole can actually heal under gunfire.

Searching for power sources is usually not a desperate effort but rather like pit-stopping during a fight. Just a quick drain and off again. To counterbalance the abundance of healing, Cole actually takes quite a bit of damage from enemies. Staying in open space for too long is quite deadly. This means that the player's health changes very rapidly; taking damage is fast and so is healing. This also translates into how combat flows in the game. When combined with all the movement-related powers, the combat experience is one where the player changes position constantly - hiding to quickly recharge, and popping up from an unexpected direction to unleash a burst of electricity. Cole can easily take out a bunch of enemies quickly if they haven't spread out - but if they have, the player has to switch positions rapidly.

The system works fairly well because no one has a lot of health. At least not in the beginning. The game drops the ball a bit towards the end when it introduces rank-and-file enemies that can take way too much punishment before they drop. The game doesn't really need this either - the increase in difficulty could have been achieved by increasing numbers, or using nastier enemy positioning.

Conclusion

At its base, inFamous 2 is a fairly typical modern game. It uses a lot of the same tropes that are becoming ubiquitous and adds its own twists. Where the game succeeds is in creating the superhero experience for the player. Superpowers in the game are enjoyable to use, although some of them are rather unimaginative re-themings of familiar concepts. As a sequel it is a pretty straightforward iteration in the sense that it has more refined game mechanics. While better as a game, I felt that storywise it was rather lacking. The first game had an interesting story - the sequel really can't keep up to any expectations. I also found the npc role reversal in the final mission of the game a bit cheap. A very minor spoiler here: the bad npc is your ally in the good final mission while the good npc is your ally in the evil version. It felt a bit like they wanted to do a twist so badly, but they really couldn't come up with anything even remotely credible.

Borderlands 2

One interesting and sharp contrast between the video games industry and the film industry is that game sequels often surpass the originals. In the movie industry sequels are often obvious cash grabs but in the games industry it is more common for a sequel to raise rather high expectations. The reason for this is relatively straightforward to see: the first game is a risky gamble with a certain budget. Within the confines of a budget and a production time it is not possible to gather the sheer amount of player feedback that is gotten after the game's release. Furthermore if the original sells, the sequel is guaranteed to have a solid budget. Additionally since the concept has been proven, the sequel only needs to enhance it. It almost seems like a lot of games need that second iteration to really shine. Sometimes the second iteration is called "enhanced edition" but in the current market situation, more often than not it is called a "2".

Such is the case with Borderlands, a conceptually very sound and mostly importantly fun game that nevertheless had a bunch of gaping flaws. Uninteresting plot, repetitive scenery/quests and rather colorless character abilities were the three primary complaints about the game. Being a long game, even though it had four different characters, its replay value was quite low. At least for us single player types. Thankfully the game got a load of attention and a sequel was guaranteed. It was indeed one of those games where you could instantly see how much better it can become. Not least because of the DLC quality: 3 out of 4 DLC adventures were significantly better written than the game itself!

1. Goodbye generic side quests

For me this improvement is perhaps the one with the most impact. In the first game, side quests were dull. Your run-of-the-mill MMO stuff: farm or kill things with a an entirely irrelevant text description of why exactly this should be done. Almost none of the side quests in Borderlands 2 are collected from bounty boards and even the ones that are still involve NPC communication throughout the quest. Moreover, side quest assignments range from mildly weird to absurd. This combined with the well-written humorous dialogue during the quests makes most of them just as memorable as the main quest itself - if not more so! On the first play through the game side quests are not done just to obtain rewards - you actually want to experience them in all their wackiness.

The importance of meaningful side quests is often overlooked by game developers. The rationale probably goes something like "people who do side quests do them anyway" which to some extent is likely to be true. Quality does trump quantity here. Advertising that your game contains a thousand quests is a clear signal that these quests are going to be generated and repetitive in nature, done only for the sole purpose of obtaining the reward. Granted, sometimes there is the element of challenge involved too but that seems to be the rare exception. At worst, such games are mere skinner boxes where the player is pressing the lever repeatedly in hope of a reward. I highly prefer the Borderlands 2 way where some quests are rather lenghty and they are fewer in number, but they all form an experience that can actually be called content without feeling cheap.

Of course it takes resources to write quality quests. Each quest in Borderlands 2 has most likely required some effort from an actual writer, and of course from the quest designer. They didn't come out of a spreadsheet. The tough truth about resources and effort in regard to side quests is that if you don't have what it takes to do good ones, how about not doing them at all? Why spend any effort at all into making some ridiculous attempts to make the game longer when you could spend all your limited resources on the core game? Each quest should provide something to the player: real gameplay and/or content. By real gameplay I mean gameplay that is unique to this quest, something that makes the player feel they are actually doing something meaningful or challenging.

Borderlands 2 mostly provides meaning through dialogue content and that is fine. The actions that are taken during side quests are more or less the same stuff that the player keeps doing throughout the game: shoot and loot. That is what we came here for anyway. Another approach that I wholeheartedly approve is the opposite: no dialogue content, just challenge. Post-game dungeons and bosses fall under this category. The connecting factor is that both of these approaches provide meaning to the player. In the Borderlands 2 approach the meaning to the player is to enjoy the more or less insane ramblings of the eccentric NPC cast of the game. Although we may look at this additional story content as a reward for completing the side quest,  I would argue that it is more meaningful to the player to do the side quest because it grants the quest giver more personality.

I care a whole lot about NPC personality. Whether they are believable or not is of no particular consequence as long as it is entertaining to listen to their banter. Because I care, it is also more meaningful for me to complete an assignment for a character. Although them liking me for it is just a piece of code inside the game's logic, the effect persists. Even research shows that humans project a personality on products even when one is not desgined into it, so it is no wonder that products that do have built-in personality can affect emotions. Since the interpersonal context has been made meaningful, there is more motivation to complete the given quest. I could go on about the personality of video game characters for another blog post or two, but we've gotten quite sidetracked already. The conclusion of this rambling is that the side quests in Borderlands 2 are successful because they are written in a way that enhances the quest giver's personality.

2. Dem skill trees

A big issue in the first Borderlands was the inability of skill choices to affect gameplay. Most skills were merely simple buffs that gave a bonus percentage to something - usually damage with one weapon type or another.While this does have some consequence (primarly, which weapons to use) it doesn't really create different styles to play. The fact that skill tree choices do not have a huge effect on gameplay might be seen as positive in more action-oriented genres, but Borderlands has strong RPG roots. And in an RPG, the way you build your character is supposed to have a large impact on how you play the game. It is about creating a character that suits your own play style. If it is not possible to emphasize play style through skill selection, the character is bound to lack identity.

This is actually of particular consequence in more action-oriented games like Borderlands because player skill is a significant factor in choosing a play style. A player who is a great sniper is likely to be more successful with a skill build that emphasizes high, single shot, long range damage even if strictly mathematically a short range assault build would be better. Because the choice of optimal play style is affected by game-independent factors (player ability), there is less inclination towards the infamous cookie-cutter builds that are plaguing a lot of MMOs. Since there is an opportunity to create interesting skill choices even without a completely balanced skill tree, the developers of Borderlands should have felt obligated to do so. It is not a surprise then than one of the most anticipated changes promised for Borderlands 2 was an improved skill system.

On the surface the skill system looks alarmingly similar to its predecessor. Each character has one active special ability and three specialized skill trees which modify stats and the special ability. Again a lot of these skills are numerical increases to some aspect or another. Skill trees are divided into levels, and taking a total of 5 assignments in a tree opens up the next level. There are definitely more skills to choose from though. While there are no additional active skills, there are a whole lot of conditional skills, some of which stack. The important difference is that a lot of skills now do clearly affect play style and that they combo with each other. Another interesting aspect is that since the game is so action-heavy, skills often work differently in use than what they look like on paper. This would be horrible without respecs, so fortunately the game offers an inexpensive way to do so. Now it is actually interesting to experiment with different builds.

Dividing each character's skills into three specific trees is a good solution in at least one sense: for players who do not want to bother with experimenting, it is easy to see which tree to build for a certain play style. At the same time, a more adventurous gamer may find that their build can be improved by taking skills from two separate trees or even all of them. The only limitation is that such a diverse skill build cannot involve any skills very deep in the trees. This might be good for reducing the possibility of overpowered comboes, although during my playthroughs with two different characters I didn't really come up with any. Regardless, one tree is likely to by any build's primary tree which defines the core play style. There are basically 3 hard play styles for each character, creating a total of 12 options (15 with the DLC character). Most importantly, builds now really feel different to play.

3. Apply polish - lots of

The improvements are not huge but together they make for a much stronger game. However it doesn't stop there. Borderlands 2 also has its share of smaller improvements, most of which are tied to giving the game more distinguished character. One of the best ideas is to give different equipment manufacturers their own identity and manufacturer ability. This guarantees that weapons in the game behave in a wider variety of ways than they would with just randomly generated stats. It is different from unique special abilities because after trying one weapon from a manufacturer the player can project how different guns from that manufacturer would be like.Ultimately it is still the hard numbers that define which weapons to use but in case of somewhat equal stats, weapon manufacturer can be a large factor in decision-making.

Another thing I liked is that there is now a lot more variation for what special abilities shields can have. The decision of which shield to choose now has more factors then its sheer stopping power. Many shields have offensive qualities which can be used to counterbalance their weaker protection. The addition of more variation also extends to enemies. On a less game mechanical note, environments are also way more varied. No more endless wasteland; we have snow fields, grass, industrial complexes and towns. Finally, the game has been finished with a lot of care paid to the details. Everything is consistent with the game's slightly disturbed character. This shows in more or less everything, loading screen tips included. Simply put, the entire package is very charming.

The game also has increased challenge built into it in the form of a new game+ and a "raid boss" which I have yet to defeat. The first DLC brought another similar challenge. I'm looking forward to killing them all at some point. Another strong point is the improved co-op play that has been made quite effortless and better supports players who are at different stages of the game.

Conclusions

Borderlands 2 is a prime example of a second iteration that really brings an already functional concept to blossom. It addresses all the flaws of its predecessor in an agreeable manner. It also goes beyond, with more effort put into writing in particular. While predictable, the main plot is enjoyable to follow and, as noted, the side quests have been superbly written. All the strengths of the original have been retained and really the only thing I missed was Lilith's phasewalk ability. Another "problem" with the game is that getting to know all characters does take a lot of time. I have yet to manage this feat but I got a strong feeling that I am not yet done with this game.

Vanquish

Another game that I played while waiting for Borderlands 2. Vanquish is on speed or something. The amount of stuff that's happening on the battlefield combined with the speed at which it is happening is pretty breahttaking. At its core it's just another third person shooter, but oh boy have they done things right. Some things that should be forgotten from the start include things like plot and characters both of which are ridiculous. That aside, it is really easy to see where the game gets its praise.

A typical sitatuation in Vanquish involves a lot of soldiers on both sides of the battle. The player is usually not alone so friendlies can draw some enemy fire. This is good, because it doesn't take a whole lot of damage to get killed in Vanquish (I played on hard, my new default for any game). It's this deadliness combined with the vast amount of projectiles flying all around the battlefield that separates the game from most third person shooters. One too bold move is all that is needed to get killed. Although staying in cover and carefully shooting from there is basically a sound strategy, your allies will start quickly falling if you take your sweet time. Quick elimination of enemies is the name of the game, and Sam has just the right tools for that. He is armed with an unfortunately named combat suit (ARS) and a weapon system that is mostly a lame explanation for how he can carry exactly three guns at once.

In particular there are two special abilities that empower the player. One is a massive speedboost that allows Sam to quickly travel across the battlefield in a sliding position. He is not immune to damage, but enemies have a really hard time hitting him. This ability allows the player to hit'n'run, flank or even rear enemies effectively and also to reach enemy positions quickly. Using this ability is the key to both eliminating enemies quickly and avoiding their fire. The other skill is just a simple bullet time, which is activated by making a dodge roll. This ability is often necessary to survive encounters with multiple enemies and also to shoot down enemy missiles. Some bosses in particular like to shoot out hundreds of missiles (literally). Both abilities drain the suit's battery and overheating is a serious thing because it makes the player very vulnerable. If cover is not immediately found, death is almost certain.

As far as special abilities go, the ones in Vanquish are fairly limited. The same goes for weapons that are mostly standard stuff with a couple of more exotic exceptions. They are however all that is needed to create one of the best shooter experiences ever. This is largely because the encounter design in Vanquish is top notch. The battlefield is always a living thing and each encounter is clearly distinct. There's next to no filler in this game. In this sense it is quite a lot like Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner that featured excellent mission variation throughout the game. Both games also have their share of tough boss battles. Just when you think one boss was particulary nasty, soon enough you are facing two of the same bastard at once. The environment also has a heavy impact on how battles turn out. There's a lot of variation in every aspect that define the game's encounters.

The enjoyment of playing Vanquish doesn't quantify into single elements. It is simply a really carefully designed whole. It underlines two things: difficulty is good for your game and games should go on only as long as they can. Once Vanquish runs out of real content it just ends. No prolonging, no repetition, just a tight package of high-adrenaline missions with lots of variation. I am looking forward to finishing this game again in the future and, unlike most games, I think I actually will because it is not just that long a game. Furthermore with games like this it is often the second playthrough that is actually more fun because that is when some degree of mastery starts to show.