Use my brain…

Steve K Peacock wants more life in his games.  He may also be crazy.

DESPITE THEIR nature, videogames are inherently poor at being imaginative. For every genuine step forward we get a swarm of games that take that new and exciting idea and repackage it for their own ends, adding nothing but still getting away with it. I don’t begrudge them this, they’re a business at the end of the day after all and exploiting what has been shown to work is just good sense for them. But when you can boil down the entire industry to more or less a single plot line per genre, there’s only so long I can maintain this position.

The prime offenders are Role Playing Games and First Person Shooters. Both of which will claim engaging and powerful stories but fail to deliver time and time again. FPS games usually degenerate into Space Marine vs Aliens or just Marine vs Nazi/Terrorists. Or Nazi Terrorists. RPGs, on the other hand, are usually more about the mechanics of the game than the plot itself.

But I’m not trying to rant about actual plots of games, not really. It stands to reason that there will be exceptions to these rules that are astoundingly good – Mass Effect 2 immediately jumps to mind for RPGs, if you can even call it one – but even then the story itself is told in the same way. Cutscene after cutscene, taking you out of the game and stripping you of control of your character, making you watch what is – in essence – a film.

I can’t think of any other media that does this, changes itself into another at certain points. The Metal Gear Solid series has come into a mixture of criticism and praise for this, the obscenely long cutscenes being defended by the argument that “if we must have cutscenes they might as well be awesome”.

That, I suppose, is true. That does avoid the question, however, of if we need cutscenes at all. A cursory glance over the Half-Life series would contend that we don’t, that we can tell a story in a way where we don’t need to remove player immersion. While this is a step in the right direction, I don’t think that your ability to walk around while someone is reeling off exposition makes for that much of a change. Ultimately, what you are experiencing is a cutscene. You have no direct input on what is occurring other than the ability to dickishly run around the character in a circle, or stare blithely at Alyx’s arse. You, as the player, have no real interaction with these moments. That said, there’s not much further to travel to find a form of storytelling that I find genuinely intriguing.

Left 4 Dead’s approach to the story was that, while it may have had one, it most certainly wasn’t going to tell you what it was. The in-game moments of conversation between characters were there largely to do little else but establish the characters themselves. The actual plot of the game was left for you to work out. Clues were provided, graffiti on walls for instance, but if you wanted to know then you had to think. Oddly, Left 4 Dead 2 took a step back in this regard, openly stating to you certain facts about the universe and the characters’ journey.

Perhaps this is why I like adventure games so much. I like working for my story in games, the sensation of earning progression that doesn’t really seem present in so many games. And while adventure games give you only a limited way to interact with the conversation, just as RPGs do, the fact that you have got there without the need for stabbing twenty Kobolds or murdering a warehouse full of thugs gives it a slight edge. But it’s still not far enough.

Continues…

I dreamt last night.

Brendan Caldwell discusses the effect of games on dreams and the amount of control it can grant.

THEY OPENED up a world of violence, when they asked what happened to Subject #27.

“I was in a desert. I looked bad, dusty. I saw my tiny silhouette against a large sun, meaning I was watching myself, in 3rd person. While I looked bad I didn’t feel bad. I was indifferent to the “my” feelings.

“I came upon a carnival, but it gets sketchy at that point.

“Eventually I’m driving a car, again not at a real POV (point of view), but following behind the car. It didn’t matter to me that I was crashing into other cars or walls.

“My car caught fire; I saw it melt from within. I died not trying to escape.”

He was a dreamer, Subject #27 was. In the same vulgar way we all are. Anyone who spent too long a time in symbiosis with that asshole Vercetti probably dreamt of the exact same thing. Which is exactly the area that interests them. Them? The research people.

Dreamscaping

Jayne Gackenbach has done multiple studies on the effects of game playing on the way people dream. Her first study in 2006 suggested that gamers were more likely to report lucid dreams – vivid dreams in which the person is aware they’re dreaming – and observing dreams, where the person views themselves from another perspective. More interestingly, Gackenbach’s research suggested that gamers were also more likely to have a certain amount of control over their dreams, in the same way they control characters in-game.

Subject #27 displayed a strange combination of free will and stoicism. Before the inferno made shadows and dust of him.

“As the car was burning I opened the door and leaned out to leave but made the decision to stay inside instead because I was curious to see what I would look like burning alive. While I felt the heat, smelt the smoke, I didn’t feel any pain. I felt detached from the feelings, but recognized that they were my own.”

The fella was not too hassled about his skin melting, just mildly curious as to what that would be like. Subject #27 was a living (dying) oxymoron. A man composed of detached interest or attached disinterest. Such is the universal understanding of the dreamworld. It all makes sense at the time.

“He also reported that it was not a nightmare,” said Gackenbach. “He was not scared, but the dream was violent. Finally he reported that the dream was not lucid and that he had no control over it but I wonder?”

“I expect gamers do not find this in the least surprising in that they control their actions and other’s responses to those actions – to some extent – in games so that when it translates to dreams it is likely again they would not notice.”

In this profession, you have to – are supposed to – check your facts. Have to see if the story really is a story. Sure, Jayne Gackenbach has lots of shiny, shiny, scientific evidence. Psshaw. What we need more of, in this particular field, is anecdotal evidence: for any lover of empiricism, the King of all proofs. There is nothing more valuable to the learned man than to become Subject #28.

Can I do it?

Would you believe it works? If only the actual Left 4 Dead encouraged the same level of wacky creativity that plagued my dream-teammates. After barely an hour of co-op akimbo before beddie-byes – Subject #27 put in 4-7 hours of gaming plus some violent cartoons by comparison – I dreamt vividly of a zombie apocalypse. The finale was an abandoned gardener’s shed. We decided it would be best to shovel a massive pile of compost against every door and window except one and funnel them through that straight into a lawn-mower we could rig up to de-limb every z-word silly enough to come in. We also had a minigun. Each.

Here, pay attention. Yes, it’s true that nobody is ever as interested in other people’s dreams as much as they enjoy their own. It’s like that inside joke people keep repeating repeating repeating that’s only funny if you were there and if you’re a dickhead. But come on, this is research. Pay attention attention attention.

We decided to leave the rescue vehicle, a white van, to “recharge” despite having refuelled it amid a rush of baddies. Like in all dreams, this made sense at the time. Dreams aren’t famed for their continuity. Neither is Left 4 Dead.

Continues…

Steam hold mega-sale, makes bank accounts cry

STEAM IS holding a massive summer sale causing hungover PC gamers worldwide to wake up this morning and acronym all over the place when they discovered their credit cards weeping on desktops.

What? You’re a consumer whore. Admit it. This is news.

The Perils of Summer sale began yesterday and includes discounts on all genres and all publisher packs. Each day there will be new games on sale for one day only. For instance, one of today’s deals saw the Unreal pack which includes Unreal 2: the Awakening, Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal Tournament 3: Black and Unreal Tournament: GOTY Edition sell for £7.82 instead of £22.99.

There is 50% off the THQ publishers pack and 53% off the Star Wars games pack. While the Valve pack, featuring Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (plus Episodes One and Two), Counterstrike: Source, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and more is 33% off at £35.50. Basically, it’s just a big sale. If Steam had TV advertising, it would star a CRAZY Heavy with CRAZY PRICES.

Steam encourages gamers to think carefully before they go to the beach or do anything dangerously summer-ish. Like looking outside.

“There have been more than 2,251 unprovoked shark attacks worldwide. There are nor reports of death or injury as a result of playing games on Steam.”

Brendan Caldwell

‘The End is Nigh’ is a weekly column by Play.tm’s Martin Gaston, pondering the nature of videogame endings and why we do or don’t choose to finish the games we play. This week: Left 4 Dead, and how fighting zombies was never supposed to be easy.

Left 4 Dead shows humanity reduced to a twitchy, gibbering mess. And that’s just the players.

The four-player co-operative zombie shooter comprises of five (initially four, but a fifth campaign – Crash Course – was added as DLC) self-contained campaigns, with each one functioning as a petite game in its own right. They’ve got definable beginning and end points, for one, with each campaign drenched in schlock B-Movie tropes and embellished as mini-movies by faux-poster loading screens and scrolling end credits after the exuberant finale sequence. It’s the finales which mark the ending of each campaign, and these moments are guaranteed to be exceedingly tense: the players must endure swarms of the undead for a few minutes before being able to escape the level and finish the campaign (hopefully) alive. It’s challenging by design, and Valve are certain to make sure death is always a possibility.

It’s also chilling because, by some miracle of design, it somehow feels like you only have one chance at your great escape. You can replay the campaign – it is only a game, after all – but this reality is frequently forgotten: you’ve come too far to die now, goddamnit. It successfully deceives you into believing you’re caught in some once-in-a-lifetime moment, partially by design – the game’s AI director, which changes enemy placements with each game, ensures that games are similar but never entirely alike – but also because the players which exist behind the recognisable faces of survivors Bill, Francis, Louis and Zoey will inevitably become so varied that each permutation will create a group of unique ability and attitude.

Generally I’d advocate playing with friends, but sometimes experiencing a finale is even better when you’re playing with strangers – it brings out the most negative qualities of the players, yourself included.

Take this recent example: I found myself frustrated after being on the receiving end of another player’s friendly fire one too many times, and further vexed when the same player refused to heal me a couple of chapters later after I had nobly used my medkit (you’re only allowed one at a time) on their ungrateful wounds. Our increasingly uneasy alliance was held up by a communal desire to survive, but the relationship was clearly teetering during the finale. As the getaway vehicle (in this instance an aeroplane) made itself available, a Smoker (a nasty special monster, complete with fifty-foot long tongue which can be fired at survivors) dragged him off into the zombie horde. There was probably enough time to save him and have us all escape together, but I didn’t even hesitate to run straight onto the plane – the other two players in the game didn’t seem to be too concerned, either. It could have just as easily been me dragged away to certain death, but it wasn’t. And that’s what made it so glorious.

This kind of ending can’t happen with a group of close friends, who tend to be determined to see each other’s continued survival. The incontestable brilliance of the game’s design, compounded in the extravagant finale sequences, is that there are too many enemies to make solo survival possible. But there is always a moment at the very end – at the precise moment the escape vehicle makes itself available – where the game descends into a complete free-for-all: an overwhelming zombie horde looms on the horizon, and all you need to do is forget about everybody else and run as fast as you can to safety.

Tension is further added to the finale sequences, and the game as a whole, by the game’s special infected monsters. The game cues their appearance with audio and visual signals, but their appearance causes panic during a campaign’s final throes because of their ability to shove and yank survivors away from their established formations. And maintaining formation is the key to success. To make matters worse, every finale demands the players fight two impossibly large, hulking behemoth Tank monsters, who can take out a player in a single enraged clobber, and as the game announces their arrival by playing their distinctive music it’s hard not to close your eyes for a second and hope you make your way out of the imminent encounter alive. Whenever the Tank fails to notice your presence in favour of one of your supposed colleagues, there is always a temptation to go and hide in a cupboard and leave it to everyone else to sort out.

That’s the emotional power of each and every one of Left 4 Dead’s finale sequences. No matter how many times you experience them, they always maintain their power to cause immense distress. And that guarantees consistently fantastic endings.