#0011 – Bioshock – 2007 – Multiplatform – Irrational Games – FPS

I don't know whether it's the game's fault for being different or my fault for forcing expectations on it, but Bioshock wasn't what I expected at all, even after playing the XBL demo back in the day.  As an avid FPS gamer, I've been told about a billion times I should have played Bioshock three years ago when it came out.  The underwater world of Rapture was advertised as exquisite, the plot was called subtly compelling, and everyone said the combat was liberating.  So I had high expectations from a GOTY winner and apparently revolutionary effort from Irrational.  I guess as with everything else there were things I liked and things that I didn't like - or maybe just didn't get.

On the positives list is the world of Rapture and the characters inside it.  I doubt you'll find anyone who doesn't really feel the same way.  The art-deco design, licensed oldies tunes, and whimsical retro kitsch combine to make an extremely unique environment, especially for a genre dominated with spaceship corridors and military bases.  Rapture really did feel like a genuine world that was in decay.  You could see traces of the old gilded exterior and the 'ghost replays' (mirages of now-dead citizens at the moment of tragedy) contributed a sort of mystical sense of nostalgia.  Though I'd never seen Rapture as it originally was, I felt sincerely sorry it had collapsed.  The locales you journey through - old theaters, dance halls, metros, apartments, markets, science labs - are dotted with this generation's favorite storytelling device: audio logs.  I loved these as well.  You could listen to them while you were playing the game instead of being forced to sit on a menu.  Each was cleverly written and delivered with convincing emotion.  If you play the game I suggest you pay attention to them - not only do they sometimes have passwords and key combos you'll need for precious ammo and EVE (more on that later), they're the primary plot device.  If you ignore them you're not going to have as good a grasp of Rapture and what happened to it.

Enjoying the plot and art is going to be a bit of a problem, though, because Bioshock brings the tension of survival horror resource management back to the FPS with a vengeance.  This isn't a game where you'll have more clips than you can carry and ammo restocks between cutscenes.  I swear, if I ever had more than twenty antipersonnel bullets for my pistol then I don't remember it.  Having to constantly scrounge ammo and goodies is a bit of chore and makes the game feel longer than it really is, but it definitely adds to the suspense and keeps you on your toes.  You have to learn how to use your plasmid powers (like psychic or biotic powers from other games) efficiently and combine them with your weapons for max damage, and maxing your money and ADAM is a must.  If you buy the right upgrades, keep your eyes peeled for loot, hack everything, and learn what weapons hurt what enemies then you'll be fine.  It just demanded more thought from me than I'm used to delivering.

Between the agile enemies and ever-present security systems I died quite a bit, and at first it was frustrating.  Then I became acquainted with the Vita Chambers, perhaps Bioshock's most bizarre design choice.  When you die, you are reanimated inside a nearby Vita Chamber with all of your health and ammo and gear intact.  Furthermore, the Vita Chambers aren't like checkpoints or game reload points - the game continues as if you'd never died, which means that all enemies have whatever health they had when you died.  So the harshest of fights could essentially be taken care of without a single bullet or drop of plasmid juice by whacking things with your hammer until you die, then coming back and whittling them down some more.  With Vita Chambers always so close to the action and so few ways for enemies to heal themselves, the unmotivated gamer is going to find Bioshock to be a pretty easy thing to slog through.  The final boss was a joke, too.

The Vita Chambers pretty much stole all the tension from the 'only one bullet left' resource management.  That was my main thought.  The story was solid, the atmosphere was impressive, and the game clearly had a lot of love put into it.  I'm interested to see 2K's take on things without Irrational's creative vision, so Bioshock 2 is on the radar.  But more than that I want to see how Irrational itself deals with these issues.  So bring on Bioshock Infinite, although I think we have more than just a little wait.  In the meantime, I recommend you try the first bit of Bioshock if you haven't played it yet.  I'm positive the thinking man will find some of the mechanics to their liking and pretty much everyone should get pleasure from the non-combat side of things.

#0010 – Akumajō Dracula X: Chi no Rondo – 1993 – PC-Engine – Konami – Action

Remember how Castlevania: Symphony of the Night began? You hit start and all of a sudden you were playing as this guy named Richter and it said "Final Stage: Bloodlines". This Richter definitely wasn't the guy on the front of the box, and how the heck were you already at the final stage? Where was the rest of the game? It was definitely an attention-grabbing way to start out an awesome experience, and it threw me for a loop the first time I saw it. I thought I must have accidentally loaded someone else's save off of my PS1 memory card! But after I reset the console and started over - sure enough, it began on the Final Stage. Once you beat Dracula it all makes sense - Symphony of the Night's opener is a flashback to the events that predate the game.

People who had played Castlevania: Dracula X on the SNES a few years earlier, of course, recognized Richter and his blue tunic instantly. But...the final stage as shown in Symphony of the Night was totally different from the final stage in Dracula X. Sure, you fought the Count, but what was with the steps outside the castle, and where were the platforms? And besides, Dracula had transformed into a flying thing before, not a stompy beast... Revisionism at work? Not really. You see, Dracula X on the SNES was just a watered-down remake of a Castlevania game for NEC's PC-Engine, titled "Chi no Rondo", or "Rondo of Blood". Konami hadn't been able to negotiate a straight port from the PCE to the SNES, so they had remade it and changed the most important parts to avoid legal issues.

Well, today I got to play the real deal, Chi no Rondo on the CD-ROM expansion for the PC-Engine. And holy crap, what a game! The SNES version we got in the United States just pales in comparison to this game, and suddenly you realize that Symphony of the Night wasn't as much of a radical leap as we had thought back in the 1990s. Sure, Symphony ripped off Metroid to great effect and changed the whole gameplay style of the franchise, but the mechanics and the assets are all right here in Rondo of Blood. The killer pop-baroque Redbook soundtrack, the slick scaling and rotation effects, many of the enemies and the artwork, even the level designs of Dracula's castle and the bosses - all taken straight from this underplayed PC-Engine game.

It probably helps that the game runs upwards of $150 on eBay, and the actual hardware to run it can get into the $500s - that CD-ROM expansion module isn't cheap. So I recommend you opt for the emulation route. I prefer a TV, couch, and controller for my old school games, so I pulled out the latest version of the Mednafenx-PCE emulator on the original Xbox. It runs like a dream, and in 720p the sprites look absolutely fantastic. So much color, so crisp and vibrant. The PC-Engine clearly isn't pushing as many pixels and snazzy effects as Symphony of the Night, but it's still remarkable how good CD-based 16-bit games can look. And the music! Good grief, the music! Many of the tracks are infectious remakes of the NES tunes, including 'Bloody Tears', and the haunting choir music at the main menu is going to give you deja vu if you've played Symphony. It's fantastic stuff - check out the OST at least if you're into old gaming synth.

Another plus of emulation is save states - dang, it's a tough game. I guess the NES ones were as well, but to be honest it's been so long since I played any of these balls-to-the-wall classics... Modern gaming challenges you in entirely different ways, and to be honest the game just humiliated me over and over in the first level until I got my fingers woken up. Luckily there's a trick to beating all of the enemies and the bosses are pattern based, so repetition is rewarded. Just don't expect a relaxing experience - do, however, expect to play through more than once in search of 100% completion and the 'perfect' ending sequence. I only got 62% my first time through...

A sweet aspect of the CD format is that there's room for fully-animated cutscenes for the important plot moments - something that was definitely hobbled on the SNES. It's all very cinematic, with an actual opening sequence and several interstitials to build up to the big showdown. Unfortunately it's entirely in Japanese (well, with a bit of German at the beginning), but if you own a PSP then go check out Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, which updates both Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night with full English localizations and revamped graphics, mechanics, and controls. It's definitely a lot cheaper than going after the original, and probably is more acceptable for some than emulation. Either way, do yourself a favor and play this game! Pure classic gaming quality here, you can't go wrong.

#0009 - Astra Superstars - 1998 - Sega Saturn - Sunsoft - Versus Fighter

So my wife was gone overnight to her sister's, which left me with some free time to pull out some games. Red Dead Redemption was obviously on the slate, but after about an hour I realized I wasn't exactly in the mood to spend ten minutes at a time riding across the landscape. I wanted something with instant gratification, something to pick up and play. Definitely something off the wall. I looked to Bayonetta but I wasn't in the mood for tons of completely obtuse cutscenes. I needed a one-on-one fighting game, the more obscure the better.

That was why I pulled out my album of Saturn games and found Astra Superstars, which fits all of those descriptions better than I had even hoped for. It made me realize just how long it had been since I'd played a game that was so...Japanese. The character designs are completely insane and feature mismatched names like "Lettuce"(???). But it works, of course, even with the singsong-y kids who introduce the fighters and the exuberantly expressive victory/loss poses. I don't know if its the fact that it's a Japanese game, a Saturn game, a '90s fighter, or all three - but again, it works.

I was also amazed at just how good the thing looks. For those of you who have an Action Replay 5-in-1 or a dedicated 4MB RAM cart, this game is one of the few that does support the technology in full for short load times and massive character sprites. What you get is a fighter that looks more like a Dreamcast game, which I guess just goes to show you how much life Sega's try-hard had left in it when it got the axe. Makes sense - I mean dang it, compare Legend of Mana on the Playstation to Dragon Quest VII or something and you'll see how much technology can progress on a single console system.

The last thing that Astra Superstars has going for it is that it's just so easy to play. Right off the bat it's unlike any other fighter I've seen - the characters are all witches and angels and stuff, so they float in the air and can 'jump' both up and down, so crouching is gone. And these jumps aren't the gravity-hobbled little bunny hops from Street Fighter II. These guys leap half the screen in a single bound, scaling bigger and smaller as they range out to the edges of the arena. It's great stuff, especially when you start chasing each other around the screen trying to land a hit.

The special moves are worth mentioning too. Since there's no crouch there's really no way to implement QCF and DP style inputs, so instead you get the ease of just smashing two buttons simultaneously: C+Z, B+Y, A+X. Each character has two offensive specials and a 'powerup' move that builds their meters. The specials are usually oriented along a left-right or up-down axis, and the big strategy is to stun your opponent with an attack and then follow up with a special from the right direction. It's great fun, and there's an added bonus if you make the other guy block too much: pinball mode.

Once you break down their guard bar, they start careening around the screen and smashing into everything, which is the perfect time to lay in extra damage. It is, of course, hysterical like the rest of Astra Superstars. Anyway, this is getting pretty long so I'll wrap it up. Suffice it to say that I had a ton of fun with Superstars, and it makes me want to check out Sunsoft's other fighters - Waku Waku 7 and Galaxy Fight. The biggest takeaway was just how ridiculously accessible the fighting mechanics were, and how friendly it was to button mashers. Last night at 2AM, it was exactly what I was looking for.

#0008 - Red Dead Redemption - 2010 - Multiplatform - Rockstar San Diego - Sandbox

I've always had a big affection for video games set in the Old West. I grew up playing Sunset Riders on my Sega Genesis and I got a big kick out of Red Dead Revolver and Gun for the original Xbox. When Redemption first came out I was pretty pumped but not sure if I wanted to drop $60. So I tried to rent it for a while - I say tried, because not a single place in the city had a copy for about a month after release - and eventually gave up on it. In fact, I'd almost forgotten about the game and had just subconciously written off buying it until it saw a price drop. But then GameStop/EBGames did their Power Hour deal that saw Redemption going for $24, and I had to pull the trigger. An hour of crashed servers and phone calls later, I'd gotten my copy ordered.

It showed up in the mail last week and since then I have cast aside all else. Assassin's Creed II will have to wait, as will Halo: Combat Evolved for the NeoGAF playthrough event. I'm too busy enjoying the game that Gun should have been - the game that takes GTAIV, cleans it up, and sticks it in the American West circa 1910 where it belongs. The stupid dating mechanics and tedium of GTAIV have been cut out, and exponentially huge amounts of options and variety have been stacked onto what Gun started back in 2005. I hear the campaign runs upwards of 30 hours on the short end, and I'm about halfway through, but I feel as if I've seen enough to comment on it.

What has really struck me time and time again in the first half of the game is the way the mechanics allow for emergent gameplay. Rockstar has given the player such a large set of tools/methods of interacting with the game world that it enables near-real-world level decision making possible. For instance: one of the side missions involved an NPC dying in the wilderness and refusing to go back to town. Since she wasn't cooperating - and this was after the mission was done and over - I went back to finish up. Using the lasso and hogtie mechanic I was able to throw her on the back of my horse and take her into town to see a doctor. It wasn't what I was supposed to do, and I don't know if Rockstar had provided for it. But the mechanics were just robust enough that it simply...happened.

Clearly these mechanics are only there because of the stupendous amount of attention to detail in the game. The RAGE engine and the art team have crafted a lovingly meticulous world - but you can see that through any trailer or gameplay clip.

I have two gripes - well, three - that I think would have made the game even better if addressed. First, there's no flexibility in the morality system. Sure, you can do horrible things, but it doesn't really matter. The story and cutscenes are all precanned, so even if you just knifed a whore to death in the street, you're going to talk to the shop owner with the same lines, and he's not going to bat an eye at the body in a pool of blood outside his door. Sure there's bounties and warrants and posses, but I wanted my evil actions to have an effect on the game. They didn't, so I didn't bother straying from the heroic line. Second, I think the wilderness and the sense of space would have been more powerful if there was a way to die of hunger or thirst. Make me gear up before I wander into the bowels of southern Mexico! Lastly, the combat was really easy.

Those things aside, I think we're going to be seeing Red Dead Redemption again at the end of the year on a whole bunch of "Game of the Year" awards. It took them way too long to get it out the door, but Rockstar has presented us with a lovingly detailed, revisionist take on America's favorite era. They've further cemented their position as the world leader in sandbox games, and they make me excited to think what their next-gen products will look like. You know at some point these guys are just going to reach critical mass - the games will be so huge they'll just never come out...

#0007 - Halo Wars - 2009 - Xbox 360 - Ensemble Studios - Real Time Strategy

Over at NeoGAF there's a sort of group-style "Let's Play" even going on in which Halo fans are playing through the entire franchise to commemorate the release of Halo Reach this September. I signed up along with a lot of other people, but I was one of the few to opt into starting off the marathon with Halo Wars. The game is (chronologically) the first in the series, and sets up much of the backstory of the Covenant vs. UNSC war by letting the player run through the adventures of the Spirit of Fire, one of the first UNSC cruisers to engage the Covenant invasion force. Though the story doesn't directly feed into Halo: Combat Evolved, you get a few passing references to some of the ships and people central to that game.

It's pretty illustrative of Halo Wars' place in the fan community that almost none of the guys over at NeoGAF were willing to play it. And I don't think that this is because Halo Wars is in any way a bad game, but rather because it's sort of the natural result of making an RTS out of a FPS franchise. It's hard to think of two genres of gaming that are more dissimilar - or have less overlap in fanbases. (Maybe pachinko games and Action RPGs?) On the contrary, I can unequivocally say that Halo Wars is the best console RTS game I've played, and that isn't just because its competition sucks. Ensemble got the controls right, they got the menus right, and they got the pacing right. I can't really tell if they got the difficulty right because I suck at these games, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Navigating the radial menus with the thumbsticks is a dream come true, and the different contextual uses of the (A) button make handling units efficient and functional, if not highly precise. Playing this game made me remember nightmarish times with earlier console efforts - Warcraft II and Command and Conquer on the Sega Saturn, Dune on the Sega Genesis. This game is a major step forward - heck, it was the first time with a console RTS that I couldn't blame my losses on anything except my own lack of skill. And if that's not the sign of a well-made game, then I don't know what is.

Not going to lie - the game was probably to short for fans of the genre. I have a pretty brief attention span with this sort of thing, though, and by the time the final credits rolled I was ready for it to be over. That's purely the FPS gamer in me speaking, and I feel guilty for it. I know that Ensemble did something great here: they laid out the final word on how to make an RTS for a controller, for a living room, and for a class of gamer not accustomed to the rigors of PC gaming. Is it dumbed down compared to the Red Alert games or Supreme Commander. Damn straight it is, and if you check around that's what you'll find to be the source of almost 80% of the complaints from the PC-born guys. "Too slow, too simple, too watered-down."

From my experiences, though, that was pretty much what had to be done, and Ensemble really stepped up to the plate to do it. I wish that they could have done it outside the Halo series, perhaps, as the Halo community probably wasn't the most appreciative of their success. So here's a word to those of you out there you hate/dislike Halo and have ignored Halo Wars for that reason: give it a shot! This game wasn't made for us, and that should definitely interest you. With Ensemble Studios disbanded and shuttered, Halo Wars stands as a eulogy to the makers of Age of Empires and a testament to their ability to innovate until the rug got pulled out from under them.

#0006 - Assassin's Creed - 2007- Multiplatform - Ubisoft Montreal - Action/Platforming

Assassin's Creed was so hotly anticipated that it seems almost impossible that it could have met expectations. The scope was huge, the promises were equally so, and the hype matched both. What we expected was a sort of Grand Theft Auto: Crusader Edition - mission structure set within a dynamic ancient world with its own life cycles. More importantly, we were supposed to have choice. (Choice, of course, being the great illusion in video games.) We were promised the ability to interact with a living, breathing city population. What we got, and this is of course no surprise to the jaded gamer, is a game that was basically a prototype for the mirage that was the Assassin's Creed concept.

I still had fun with it, and it seems impossible to not even have a little bit of fun with a game where you can roam around cities killing targets at will. But it only takes an hour in to see that it's all a sham. Behind the Anvil-powered glimmer lies a puppet show where NPCs have only one line recorded with at max two different voice actors, there are only two or three real approaches to combat, and the entire six-hour length only offers about five different mission types. This is literally the progression that Assassin's Creed follows every thirty minutes: enter a city, go to mission hub, complete three of six available submissions that are always drawn from the same handful of types, and complete the final assassination. Engage in a cutscene, repeat. And that's it.

There was an idea that was Assassin's Creed, but it was lost somewhere amidst corporate deadlines. The game needed more time in both pre-production design and development. As I said, there is an element of fun here, and I certainly didn't gripe much on my way through the campaign. The story is original and compelling - a breath of fresh air in a generation of console gaming that is wildly derivative. The characters are realized in a powerful way, and the ascension of conflict to climax is about as well done as could be asked for. There's even some great twists on the way. I have no complaints with that.

The problem is that there's not enough of a compelling reason to stay in the game world for even the length of the campaign. After the first 'chapter' you've seen everything that can be done in the game. It's mostly downhill from there. Sometime in the future I'll cover Assassin's Creed II, but you can't talk about one without the other. Creed II is the game that the first was supposed to be. It delivers on the promise for a near-real world that drags you in and changes up the pace enough to keep you there. It's a symphony of varied experiences and free choice - the first Creed in contrast is a two-note Phillip Glass piece that just doesn't last.

What's great is that - more than almost any other developer I know of - Ubisoft Montreal demonstrates an ability to learn and modify their games to meet criticism. They refashioned Prince of Persia twice in the Sands of Time trilogy to result in Two Thrones, arguably the most refined iteration of the formula. They tried something new and unique with Assassin's Creed, accepted what was wrong with it, and moved forward with a bigger and better sequel. That's the sort of flexibility that I respect, and the sort of development dynamism that I think the game industry needs going forward.

#0005 - Night Slashers - 1994 - Arcade - Data East - Beat 'em Up

Seriously, this is what video games used to be about. It's hard to think of a genre that's more dead and gone than the side-scrolling beat 'em up, but in the late 1980's and early 90's they were super popular - Data East and Capcom alone must have cranked out about a hundred each for the arcades and home consoles: Final Fight, Double Dragon, Dungeons and Dragons. Later in the decade, a little studio called Treasure reached a climax of gameplay depth and innovation with Guardian Heroes for the Sega Saturn, but after that it became clear that there wasn't much wind left in the genre's sails. Versus fighters had won the arcades and 3D was starting to loom over the home market.

It's hard to really put God of War, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta in the same category. 3D changes the formula too much to retain any of the feel of the retro arcade originals, and the new focus on character progression is certainly the antithesis of the arcade philosophy. In that sense, I think it's fair to repeat that the beat 'em up is dead. Thanks to technology, however, we can say in the same breath "long live the beat 'em up".

Really the best place to get your groove on with some old-school bruising is with a MAME emulator. That's how this started for me - I was browsing around and saw that CoinOps Reignite had gotten support for Night Slashers from R4 onwards - I believe the very first emulator on Xbox to do so. I'd been waiting for the OpenBoR imitation project Night Slashers X to get ported, but after two years of waiting and with the original suddenly avaliable I couldn't say no. They're all the way up to R10 now on CoinOps (officially called X - confusing enough?) - search around on Snesorama and you should be able to find the thread.

It'd been a long time since I'd played the arcade cabinet. Years, in fact, and if I'd forgotten anything it was definitely how massive the sprites were. The game is gorgeous and the hand-drawn animations are detailed. It was those little touches and that larger-than-life scale that used to make arcade games stand out from the home consoles, and I have to say it put a smile back on my face. With my most recent experience on beat 'em ups being Streets of Rage 3, the three-character selection on Night Slashers is a little restricting but at least all the choices are fun.

You've can select a brawny American cyborg, a lightweight Japanese chick, and a middle-ground dandy-man with a good balance of speed and power. The cast of enemies is an eclectic mix of every horror trope out there: vampires, werewolves, zombies, marionnetes. Name it and it's there, with huge amounts of gore and blood in the Japanese revision or the typical "sweat" for the US and European gamers. What's funny was that I played this as a kid I thought that the white junk was intestines, guts, bile, and brain matter - making it just as awesomely gross for me and my friends as buckets of plasma.

To be honest it's hard not to become nostalgic when you play Night Slashers. It represents an approach to gamemaking that is only really replicated in the indie and arcade titles on XBLA and PSN - an approach that obviously doesn't favor story or features or depth, and really doesn't focus on gameplay too much either. I mean face it - Night Slashers is pretty simple compared to Guardian Heroes. But what it does right is just giving you a ton of action from the getgo. You can enjoy yourself without any investment (well, on an emulator at least) and without any commitment - there's no tutorial, no difficulty curve, no noobie-friendly stages. Just pedal-to-the-metal right out of the starting gate - a junk food fix in a video game format.

In a generation that is obsessed more than ever with an hour-long front end before you're really set loose inside the game world, Night Slashers is a retro beam of light that just treats you like an adult and dumps you into what matters without holding your hand. I respect that, and I wish more games today would cut the babysitting and bring the pain.