Dead or Alive 5

Landmark! 50th blog post in this blog. In celebration I offer thee a wall of text.

I have quite a bit of background in playing fighting games. I started out as a casual player like most but eventually evolved into a tournament player (unlike most). I have mostly played 3D fighters - most 2D fighters I have ever played have simply been way too hard for me to learn because of their bigger focus on technical skills. Of the four big 3D fighter series there's one that I have not really played: Dead or Alive. The series has a stigma in the fighting game community - and I mean on top of its already questionable reputation. The stigma has more to do with gameplay than boobs though. The series has generally been considered quite mash-friendly and at some point the hold system was just way too strong which made the game stupid.

Another reason for skipping the series was platform. DOA was an Xbox exclusive for a long time. However with its return to PlayStation 3 in the fifth installment, there was also talks of finally getting more serious by the developers. Again, I am not talking about the fanrage-worthy decision of generally making breasts smaller and more realistic. More serious as in more tournament-worthy is what counts. The timing for the news was also good because I had dropped Tekken when Tag 2 came around, and my main game Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown doesn't enjoy a very large community. I had also given up Soul Calibur because they kicked all my main characters out of the fifth installment.

So I was actually open to the idea of trying out a new game. Did I ever get around to it? Nope, not until I got DOA5 as a PS+ freebie last month. I've been practicing it a bit this month and played some matches, which gives me a perfect excuse to write about fighting games in general and some observations about DOA5 in particular. I will, also, eventually get to the boobs, so you can go ahead and skip to the last section if that's what you wanted to read about. The remainder of this post will contain some fighting game jargon, which I'll try to explain as I go. If you understand the concept of frames in fighting games, go ahead and skip to 3.

1. Fighting game primer

If you are ever designing a game with real time hand-to-hand or melee combat mechanics you should study a fighting game or two properly. From my perspective this is obvious because - as the genre name suggests - these games are all about the fighting mechanics. Before you can truly study though, you need to recognize that there are two vastly different ways to play these games. Most players are casuals who play for fun. From their point of view, mastery of the game means knowing the moves of all characters, and they show off their mastery by playing random characters. They may have their own honor codes like "juggles are unfair" (juggle being a situation where you hit an enemy who is floating in the air).

Playing casually is fine, even fun. Much like playing intentionally "bad" decks in Magic the Gathering, it can be a blast because when everyone is just throwing moves without much consideration to higher level strategy, matches can be quite even. Casual players can also enjoy the single player modes and mastering them. I know I did before becoming serious. You can play a fighting game for hundreds of hours and consider yourself pretty good as you are most likely beating all of your friends who don't own the game. When I hear someone's good in a fighting game, I usually assume they are using the casual player metrics. Why? Most serious players don't claim to be good.

This miscommunication becomes rather apparent when two players using different metrics for mastery face each other. The "good" living room champ will get a severe thrashing from even a "bad" serious player. They are playing two very different games and it won't be much fun for either. Where the casual player sees cool moves, the tournament player sees numbers and properties. For the former, different moves seemingly exist to create more variety while for the latter, each move is a tool with a specific purpose. Certainly even casual players can deduct uses for a move from its visual properties but the game they play is still vastly different.

In case it wasn't clear, your job is to study tournament play. The biggest distinctive factor is a tournament player's understanding of one concept: frame advantage. Frame advantage is a universal concept in fighting games and understanding it is the key to reading situations in the game. Frame of course being a measure of time inside the game's engine (usually 1/60 of a second). In its most basic form, it tells who has the advantage after a move connects or is blocked. In a slightly more accurate form, each move has impact frames and recovery frames, although the latter is only measured in relation to the hit (advantage on hit) or block (advantage on block) stun it causes.

A move's impact frames tell you how many frames it takes for the move to hit from the moment the animation starts. This number tells you explicitly how fast a move is. The recovery-related numbers on the other tell how many frames one of you will be "disabled" after the move connects or is blocked. The math is really simple. If a move is +5 on hit, it means the opponent cannot do anything for the next 5 frames. On the other hand, if a move is -12 on block for instance, you are unable to do anything for 12 frames. If the opponent has a move that comes out in 12 frames or less, it is guaranteed to hit you. This by the way is called punishment.

If we go back to the situation where you have +5 advantage, it means that if you follow with an attack that comes out in 15 frames and the opponent also attacks but using a 12 frame attack, your attack will still hit because the opponent's attack starts 5 frames late, effectively becoming a 17 frame attack in that situation. Frame advantage is of course symmetric, so -5 for you is the same thing as +5 for your opponent. Knowing who has frame advantage is crucial because otherwise you cannot know what your options in the situation are. Usually moves give frame advantage when they hit, and disadvantage when they are blocked. Of course if they miss altogether, the recovery will be substantial because the opponent is neither hit or block stunned.

Just to give you an idea of how this relates to other genres, we can go back to stagger immunity. Basically having frame disadvantage from getting hit is stagger. Therefore if we grant someone stagger immunity, it means they will never be at frame disadvantage from getting hit which means the best any attack against them can ever be is +0 frames advantage. However, this would require an attack with zero recovery frames and they generally don't exist. Effectively stagger immunity would mean that against that character, every attack could be considered whiffed for purposes of determining advantage. Just for the record, most moves in fighting games are punishable if they are whiffed.

Quick sample math: you have a move that comes out in 15 frames, stuns the opponent on hit for 15 frames and recovers for 10 frames. Normally hitting with this attack puts you at a +5 advantage but against a stagger immune opponent, it would actually put you at a -10 disadvantage. Which means if they have a 10 frame attack, they could hit you for free every time. However they can also start an attack during any of those 15 initial frames with no risk of being interrupted, so every time you do this attack you potentially open yourself to a 25 frame attack. Since slower moves are usually more powerful, it is easy to see how unfair the situation is.

Being aware of frame advantage is therefore quite important for game designers and there is no place to learn them better than fighting games where frame knowledge is essential to all tournament players. As a game mechanic it's a pain in the ass because the only way to really go about learning frames is to memorize them. Some games are kind enough to actually show frame data in their practice mode which makes the entire system more accessible to even casual players. Otherwise frame data needs to be found from depths of the internet, and often it has been compiled by testing and might contain errors. It's not perfect, but it's a necessary practice if you want to be a tournament player.

Frame data can tell a lot about a character's strengths. For instance, characters who get a lot of frame advantage are strong in offense whereas fast moves with bad disadvantage when blocked ("unsafe moves") indicate a punisher type character who excels at defense. It can also reveal stupidities like infinite loops from moves that are faster than the advantage they give on hit. Once you understand how to use frame data to your advantage in game design, all sorts of things become easier to grasp. Besides, they are numbers, and game designers should love numbers.

2. Beyond frames

Of course if frames were the only property there would not be much need for many moves in a game. Obviously moves have other properties, like damage which is about the least interesting stat from our point of view. Fighting games usually involve a primary rock-paper-scissors system of strikes, guard and throws where guard beats strikes, throws beat guard and strikes beat throws. So far so simple, but of course it is never so. Guarding has two options: standing and crouching. In every major 3D fighter attacks come in three altitudes: high, mid and low. Standing guard blocks high and mid attacks but is vulnerable to lows while crouching guard blocks lows, is vulnerable to mids and avoids highs. Because crouching guard beats both low and high attacks, the basic mixup is between mid and low.

This makes high attacks sound rather useless, no? Being high is indeed a weaker property than being mid or low but this is redeemed by other qualities. Of the three altitudes, high attacks are generally fastest and more likely to give advantage even when blocked. Although you will never hit an opponent who just guards with a high attack, they are useful for interrupting slower attacks. Overall, high attacks have the best combination of other properties be it frames, damage, range or tracking. Low attacks on the other hand generally have the weakest properties because standing guard is much more common than crouching. Low attacks are very unsafe if blocked and can leave the attacker at a disadvantage even if they hit. Strong low attacks are slower, and can even be seen and blocked on reaction.

The usefulness of lows depends on the game because throws also beat standing guard. Lows are generally more used in Tekken, because in theory all throws can be escaped on reaction (a feat I am definitely not capable of, and therefore am quite disadvantaged in tournament play) whereas in Virtua Fighter throws are impossible to escape on reaction, and you always have to guess between three throw escapes. They also do more damage. So, depending on the game, the basic mixup is either mid/low or mid/throw. However, guarding is not the only defensive option. All games have movement options, and as we may have learned the best defense is to not be there at all when an attack lands.

In 3D fighters, as the 3D there suggests, characters can also evade moves by depth movement. Evasion generally beats linear attacks. Tracking moves beat evasion, but are often generally weaker. Tracking moves, especially those that give full tracking, are also very often high attacks. Likewise, range determines how easy it is to avoid an attack by moving back. Although all games have movement options, it gets different emphasis. Tekken is the series that emphasizes movement most for a few reasons. Most throws do not track in Tekken for instance, and movement is overall safer. In VF and Soul Calibur, being hit during movement causes a counter hit (more damage, usually more advantage, can lead to combos). Tekken also rewards movement more with easier whiff punishment.

There are more game-specific special cases for pretty much all of this. All of this stuff is involved in mind games when playing, and move properties define what are your options in each situation. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of every character's move set is definitely helpful. Some characters can have insanely good strikes, but they might turn out to be horribly linear which makes evasion strong against them. A character with good lows and mids can play a nasty mixup game in your face. Some characters have a lot of solid long range moves, which makes them perfect for playing keep-away (especially in Soul Calibur where weapon reach is a factor).

3. Finally, Dead or Alive

Now that we have establised a common ground for discussing fighting games we can take a look at what defines Dead or Alive 5. It is being said that when playing DOA, you might as well forget what you learned in other games. Although I do not find this to be entirely true, I will go through a couple of reasons why this could be the case - especially for Tekken players. The system that defines DOA as a series is its hold system. Some characters in other games have holds (called reversals) but in DOA, every character has a hold for all attack types (high, mid punch, mid kick and low). Holds are defensive moves that do damage to the attacker.

Holds are the reason why DOA has been disregarded because they (used to) make attacking very risky. If you guess what attack the opponent will go for at any time, it can be countered for guaranteed damage. If I recall correctly, in the past holds were a bit too powerful, which made attacking a losing strategy. That makes for a weird game as you might guess. While some holds on some characters are still very powerful, most holds have reasonable damage numbers. Throwing holds randomly is also a bad idea, because it is a four-way guessing game (whereas guarding high or low is a two-way mixup).

The dynamic created by holds is that being predictable is very easily punished in DOA. Especially strings that do not have many variations are very risky to throw out because they are very likely to be held. It is not the holds themselves that make the big difference though. DOA5 has a somewhat different approach to the frame game. In general, attacks give less frame advantage on hit and are more often unsafe when blocked. Especially since in DOA5, the fastest throws are 5 frames, which means a move that is -5 can be punished with a throw. Fastest strikes are 9 frames, although most characters have to do with 10 frame attacks. Sounds like attacking sucks again, huh?

Well, not so fast. DOA5 has a stun system quite unlike anything else. The less frame advantage on hit applies only to attacks that do not stun you see. Attacks that do stun can grant massive frame advantage, so that the next attack becomes guaranteed. Stuns are not uncommon in games either, but in DOA5 every character has a ton of stunning moves. It is very rare to not get stunned in a match because even basic mid attacks can cause a stun - hell, even low attacks sometimes do. Unlike other games however stun doesn't make a character entirely helpless - you can get out of a stun by doing one of the four basic holds. Stunned characters cannot be thrown either.

With each stun we enter what is called the stun game. It is an ongoing mixup, typically between highs, mid punches and mid kicks because lows generally don't give enough advantage to continue the chain. However, if the defender holds out of the stun, they can be thrown for increased damage. After being hit for enough damage, the defender will go into critical stun after which any attack knocks them down, ending the stun game. This is however a chance for the attacker to land a critical burst, which leads to an unholdable stun and therefore a guaranteed combo. There is only one CB for each character though, so the defender can avoid it every time by holding against it but this leaves them open to other attacks.

The stun system basically creates a mixup that is more disadvantageous to the defender than a normal frame advantage mixup. They have to choose between 3 or 4 options for their defense, and they cannot even try to attack until the stun ends. However it is clearly more advantageous than a stun combo which is entirely guaranteed. Furthermore, the attacker's options are also somewhat limited because the only attacks worth doing are ones that can continue the stun or launch the defender to a combo. Air combos in DOA5 do less damage than in other games too. When the defender does guess correctly and holds an attack, damage is always guaranteed (unlike other games where you might only get a mixup).

Because every other attack in the game engages the stun game, getting hit can very often lead to a serial mixup that has the potential to take over half of your life bar. This has the potential to create quite huge swings and makes the game generally somewhat faster than at least Tekken. It definitely does not make the game more buttonmash-friendly because stun chains require a lot of thought and experimentation in practice mode. Ideally, you want to find as many variations as possible for your stun chains to keep the opponent guessing. Some otherwise good moves might push the enemy back too much and so on. It's also kind of a greed game: how long will you continue the stun before launching.

Guarding is quite strong in DOA5 largely because not a whole lot of moves outside slowish guard breaks give advantage on block, and a whole lot of moves are punishable on block. However, throwing is also more powerful then usual because basic throws aside, all throws are unescapable. Fastest of these throws are 6 frames I think but attempting a throw is also very risky because it opens you to attacks. Remember that you don't get that much normal (non-stun) frame advantage in DOA5 so the mid/throw mixup is somewhat harder to get into. Throws can also do a ton of damage, but powerful throws are always slower.

Admittedly I have not fully explored the system, and I have not played against any tournament players (the game is not very popular in Finland) so these are my still somewhat initial impressions. It does feel like a legit tournament game though, and is fun to play. Whether the stun game makes it better or worse doesn't really matter, because at least it indeed does play very differently. I have also enjoyed coming up with stun chains for my main characters because unlike learning combos, there is more room for experimentation.

4. About the girls...

Normally there would be really no reason to draw attention to how women are represented in DOA because that's pretty clear. I do however need to update a particular opinion. Earlier I stated that I do not mind skimpy impractical dresses and impossible physique of female characters in fighting games because it's not like there is any character in them to ruin with unnecessarily sleazy appearance. Especially since fighting game plots tend to be... yeah, pretty ridiculous. Read a few character biographies for some serious facepalming if you haven't already. That being said, DOA5 did make me somewhat uneasy.

I guess Tekken and Virtua Fighter have gotten a free pass for their treatment of girls because they don't overdo it anyway. Soul Calibur, a series that I think might have actually passed DOA in sleaziness at some point also seems to get away with it, perhaps because the style is so far-out anyway. So what is it about DOA5 that makes me change my mind? Although I'd hesitate to call the new and improved boob physics realistic, the fact that girls do look more natural overall somehow makes all those jiggling breasts all the more embarrassing. So although they don't really have much personality, the fact that they look more natural likens them to real girls more.

On top of that, some characters have costumes where they are actually dressed to fight with the very important exception of forgetting to wear a sports bra (or whatever you would wear to get enough support there). It highlights the problem even more. With impractical dresses these things are kind of easier to dismiss because the entire notion of fighting in a gown is stupid anyway. But the actual fighting gear brings the wearer one step closer to being more real and suddenly the jiggly bits seem to send a very different message. The message from the designer seems to be that no matter how sensible and ready to fight, this girl still secretly wishes for male viewers to undress her with their eyes.

So here's how I see it: there exists an uncanny valley for video game girl sexiness. It seems that usually as long as the girl in question seems unrealistic anyway (i.e. they are not a person), it doesn't really matter how absurdly sexualized they are - they will be considered what they are: escapees from someone's fantasy. Likewise, when they are very realistic to the point that any sexiness actually feels to belong to the character, it also is acceptable - after all, sexy girls and women do exist. However between these two is the valley: girls that are made to feel realistic but then oversexualized - and this is where suddenly the treatment they get just feels wrong. It is here where everything the person is, is violently reduced to a sex object.

We can argue about the width of the valley, but if we accept this theory, the correct place to start hacking at the problem is at the bottom of the valley. Trying to destroy all oversexualization at once (the entire left side that is) will simply be met with too much resistance. I don't have much attachment to the left side of the valley; however I do like to have realistically cute/sexy/beautiful girls in games, so I will rise to defend the right side of the valley. Besides, we like to look at attractive things so it makes bloody little sense to have a crusade against them.

On a lighter endnote, I have to wonder: if breast sizes were generally made smaller in DOA5, how massive they were before?

Conclusion

Wall of text, done! After what I have experienced, I do think Dead or Alive 5 is a welcome addition to 3D fighting games on PlayStation 3. I really cannot say whether it is more friendly to beginners than the others, because the stun game does require quite a bit of studying. I think it actually puts slightly more emphasis on knowing every character's move set than the other games because of the four-way hold system. Most importantly, it is different enough. In hindsight writing the fighting game basics was perhaps a little bit excessive but then again, it does seem to be quite arcane knowledge for many gamers. It is just one of those genres where each title is really two very different games - where the "real" game is hidden from casual eyes lest they be frightened by its complexity.

Right now there's not much activity around DOA5, sadly, so I cannot say much about how it plays as a tournament game. Perhaps with the release of DOA5 Ultimate there will be a burst of activity that lets me get into the game a bit more. There will be a free-to-play version of it, so that might attract more people to try the game. I somehow feel that they are not going to add the option to have the girls wear more supportive bras, but if they did that would be awesome.

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.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

I have tendency to lament the present state of JRPGs as a genre. They have mostly escaped to handhelds because of budget issues and new, promising titles are few and far between. There's a definite silver lining though. I actually have time to dig into some less known titles and (remakes of) classics. Trails in the Sky is one such game. It is actually part of a franchise I have absolutely never ever heard of but one that I am willing to look into some more. I only heard about this game through blind luck - it was bundled together with Persona 2: Innocent Sin. We already know how that part of the purchase turned out, but what about this half? I finally ran out of more urgent games and downloaded Trails from the Sky. After about 40 hours of playing the game, I am ready to give my judgement.

1. Low-key story? In my JRPG? Unpossible!

Game writers often seem to think that their story lines need to be larger than life. This is especially true of the JRPG genre where almost every single title has you facing down a god or something with equivalent level of power (usually they are capable - or even about - to destroy the world). After rummaging my brain for a good few minutes I came up with one JRPG where the story is not ultimately about saving the world from some superhuman beast. One (that's Resonance of Fate by the way, and I might remember wrong)! Not that I mind too much, I am all for epic narratives and some of the best ones are indeed massive (think Xenogears). I just find it a wee bit odd that no one's ever considered how to make do with less. Almost no one anyway, because the writers of Trails in the Sky apparently have.

There's a clear upside to not having a cosmic plot. When a game story deals with human issues, it opens up all sorts of possibilities to handle, well, humans, in much richer detail. It also somewhat remedies the usual JRPG credibility problem of sixteen year olds saving the world because they in fact don't. What I mean by handling humans is essentially fleshing out the characters. Trails in the Sky has a ton of dialogue and - pay attention - most of it is just banter. From the perspective of fleshing out characters, the most important dialogue is usually that which doesn't advance the plot. And no, it doesn't mean that characters should be talking about themselves either (I am looking at you, Mass Effect); it means they should be talking about whatever is going on around them or in their minds.

Oh and for the record, Trails in the Sky spends a lot of time doing just that. There are segments in the game where you can go on for more than an hour without having to explore or fight anything at all. You just read, and then read some more. I would not be surprised if I actually spent more than half of those 40 hours reading dialogue. Most importantly, there was not a single moment I felt bored with it. The overarching narrative is also quite thin. The game is divided into a few chapters, and each has a clear story line of its own. It is much like watching a series of connected movies. It is a growth story in a sense, with the protagonists on a quest to complete their training.

The game also handles its pace very well. Here's another thing to take note of: a suitable duration for a dungeon (or equivalent) is not counted in hours. One hour is still fine, but any plural form is most often too much. It's not a hard rule and some dungeons can easily entertain for longer times. It is however highly applicable to maybe 99% of JRPG dungeons. Because most of the game takes place in human establishments, Trails in the Sky features very few dungeons altogether and those few are short enough. Only the final dungeon breaks this rule and does feel rather lengthy. It is also the only part of the game where the story fails to remain in check and goes on the side of cosmic a bit.

Granted, Trails in the Sky is just the first part of a trilogy and its ending does hint at more of an epic scale in the making. Still about 35 hours of it is a very refreshing experience. It is an important lesson too: yes, it is possible to write a captivating JRPG story without destroyers of worlds and insane gods.

2. TRPG? JRPG? 

The game mechanics in Trails in the Sky are a hybrid of more traditional JRPG mechanics and tactical RPG mechanics. In combat all characters move on a grid which opens some tactical considerations. Being out of attack range is of course an important factor, but when overall strategy is considered, it is area of effect that matters the most. One curious attribute of this system is that when attacking enemies, the player does not get the option to choose where their character will move to perform the attack. Instead the character will always move the shortest possible distance. This means that movement (without attacking) does come with a price: nothing else can be done on the turn.

The player will usually want to avoid spending turns moving. However, AoE abilities and spells change this tendency. Against enemies with strong AoE attacks, it makes sense to quickly disperse - especially in the early game when there is no AoE heal available. In the later game with AoE heals and buffs available it can be more beneficial to stick together. This is however pretty hard to do against enemies that won't come to you because even ranged physical attacks are quite short-reaching. Of course the player can choose to only cast spells but as a strategy it is quite costly. There's no cheap mana regeneration available. Spells also have casting times which makes them slower to use than physical attacks.

The most important implication of this system is that positioning matters. The player needs to plan ahead a bit in order to get the most out of their buffs or to avoid insane AoE damage. It becomes a meaningful decision because the battle fields are quite small, and movement has a steep cost - it is one action where you don't heal, buff or attack. For major part of the game enemies actually are able to dish out some serious damage, so using time effectively is often desirable. On top of this, the game also introduces some timing considerations through bonus turns. Some turns in the turn track have a bonus attached to them - whoever acts on that turn gets the bonus.

This might sound a bit random. However, turn order can be manipulated to some degree. Most importantly, there's a CP meter which is consumed to execute techniques. If there's enough CP in the meter however, the player can also choose to expend all of it to jump to the front of the turn order and perform an s-break. This is the rough equivalent of Final Fantasy limits or similar systems seen in approximately one JRPG out of two. This is the easiest way to steal a bonus turn. Casting spells with short casting times can also be used to manipulate the turn order to get more bonus turns for the player. Enemy turns can also be delayed by certain abilities.

All in all the system works remarkably well. It doesn't get slow at any point because much of the movement is built into attacks and abilities. At the same time it offers a good deal of the core experience of tactical RPGs in the form of positioning. On top of it, there's the turn order manipulation that is inherent to active time battle systems from the Final Fantasy series (particularly FFX which has a very similar turn order system - just without the bonus turns). The game also reminds us how small things matter. One such thing is the ability to see where AoE spells will hit while they are being cast. This allows the player to react, and also perform some interesting plays like centering a heal on a character and then moving that character into the middle of their own formation.

3. Lines in an orbment

One last thing I would like to mention about Trails in the Sky is its ability system. It features something called battle orbments, which contain slots to put quartz in. This system serves dual purpose: each quartz grants bonus effects like increased attributes but they also grant "spellpoints" (no real name was given for them) of different colors. The latter determine what spells the character is able to cast - each spell in the game requires the character to have a certain combination in their orbment. However the shape of the orbment also matters because spellpoints are only combined per line. Therefore characters who have been profiled as spell-casters have orbments with long lines - the most potent casters have every slot of their orbment in one line. Fighter types on the other hand have really short lines which denies their access to the more potent spells.

The dual nature of this system is what I consider worthy of applause. There are two dimensions to consider when making decisions about which quartz to equip. I also think it is interesting that characters never learn spells permanently - spells are just "equipped", alhtough not directly. Trails in the Sky is not a unique game in either of these aspects. Dual-natured systems have been witnessed in other games, and spell-equipping systems are relatively common. In most systems though spells are equipped direclty, whereas in Trails the player equips enhancements that define which spells become available. Fortunately the game has a built-in list of spells that shows their requirements so the player does not have to try out different combinations blindly.

Conclusion

Trails in the Sky is an interesting game. Much of its appeal comes from its story or, perhaps more accurately, its storytelling. The way the game handles characters is what brings it to life. All in all, the story is surprisingly relatable for a fantasy RPG. Although charming, it is not a game to obsess over. A few hours at a time was the most I could play it. While the combat system is interesting by design, random encounters do get quite old quite fast because there is not that much to gain from battles. All resource gain happens kind of in the background, so the player does not at any point really feel they are gaining anything special out of the battles. They are just gaining resources of many variaties but that is all. It's just point points points. Likewise equipment in the game largely suffers from the stat boost syndrome (i.e., a better sword is just that - more stats).

Recommended for anyone who plays JRPGs for their stories. I just hope we will one day see parts two and three of this trilogy in English.

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.

Journey

My ability to put off playing certain games is sometimes amazing. Considering how much I liked Flower and Flow, it is pretty much a miracle that I took this long to play Journey. I actually intended to play it as soon as it was published but ultimately I just didn't. There is this thing with me and artistic experiences - including games, movies and music - that I really do very often enjoy them a lot, but still never seem to find "the right time" to do so. We didn't come here for my self-reflection though - we had enough of that a few posts back - so let's talk about Journey.

I spend a lot of time talking about game mechanics and different systems in games. It might feel that there is not much space for such discussion in Journey. However, Journey is a spectacular example of one particular design principle: consistency. In part, its unwavering consistency is what allows the rest of the experience to exist. This consistency is created by theming every action in the game world similarly: pieces of cloth that are clearly distinct from anything else. Their significance to the player is clearly shown by including one such piece on the player character model. They do a variety of things in the game but because of their consistent design the player does not need any tutorials to figure them out. The familiar design theme of these gameplay elements is an invitation to interact and see what happens. As a journey, the game is ultimately about moving forward. The reason this sensation is so marvelously achieved is precisely this: the player does not need to scratch their head searching for interactive elements.

Journey is entirely about movement through enchanting landscapes. Although visual design is also a large part of its appeal, the sensation of different forms of movement is at least equally important. The player gets to frequently fly though the air and slide down sand dunes; they also get to drift in a stream of sand and to fight against a chilling wind. The atmosphere in the game shifts through both visual cues and gameplay. The biting chill of a snowstorm towards the end of the game is possibly the most powerful experience of weather in any game I have played. Although the player is simply moving through spaces, the continuous discovery of new landscapes and new forms of movement keeps the game fresh. By creating powerful emotion through gameplay mechanics, Journey is a central game in the "games as art" debate - to be truly recognized as an art form, games need to be artistic through what they have that other art forms do not: gameplay.

A post about Journey would feel rather inadequate without mentioning its multiplayer component. The mechanic bears some similarities with Demon's/Dark Souls because the player has no control over meeting other players. They will simply occasionally bump into others during their journey. What makes these encounters spectacular is that they serve no actual purpose in the game - it can be finished entirely without any help. Other players are there simply as traveling companions - and they are silent. Meeting others is just another piece of the Journey experience, sharing some of the digital miles with a stranger. It is a mere chance encounter of two travelers headed for the same destination. Although entirely meaningles and even void of communication, these encounters invoke similar experiences as chance encounters do in real life. The entire encounter is defined by its unpredictable nature.

Journey is a magical journey through mysterious landscapes but at the same time it is very much like a real journey. The game does not get in the way of the journey because of its transparent nature. Instead, the various gameplay elements enhance the game's artistic impression. In some ways it is the equivalent of The Straight Story - a surprisingly ordinary film about one man's journey - only Journey is about the player's journey. Instead of creating atmosphere through words, Journey creates it through actions. The person traveling through landscapes and meeting strangers is you. Games that truly create the experience of being on a journey are few and far between. A lot of times the experience drowns in a mound of side quests and endless action/puzzles - all of which distract the player from feeling the journey.

I recommend playing Journey and preferably doing so in one sitting as to not distract yourself from the experience. It is a short game - about the length of a movie - so this is entirely doable.