Bioshock: Infinite Podcast with Marc Price and Javy Gwaltney

This weekend, I had joined a discussion with two friends of mine, Marc Price and Javy Gwaltney, over the recently released Bioshock: Infinite. All three of us had finished the game at least once and we all had our own thoughts on the game. (Warning: There were a LOT of spoilers.)

The resulting two hours conversation was a delight. I hope you guys out there enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed having it.

You can listen to it, here:
http://www.vgrevolution.com/2013/04/behind-the-bits-bioshock-infinite-spoilercast/

#47: The Dilution of Game: A Close Look At Assassin's Creed 3

Judging by my previous bodies of work, you may assume that I play only RPGs and very little else. This is a perfectly logical assumption and one that you would be forgiven for making, yet it is not exactly true. I play a variety of games of diverse genres and with different expectations for each one. Recently, I purchased and beat the third main installment of the Assassin's Creed franchise. In the early writings for my blog, I had a few things to say about the franchise, and it is about time I returned to it. While I am a huge fan of the series and enjoyed my time with the new protagonist Connor Kenway from the time of the American Revolution, I noticed that the game was not without flaws which may pose a danger to the series going forward. This is not intended to be a review of the game, rather a collection of thoughts about it that have a general theme. Also, I will not be discussing multiplayer in any shape or form: Assassin's Creed will always be a primarily single player game to me, with an added (but welcome and enjoyable) multiplayer component. Lastly, I intend this to be spoiler free, yet I acknowledge that what I say may come with implicit spoilers, you have been warned. With that in mind, here is my critique of Assassin's Creed 3.

The first thing I really began to notice towards the middle of Assassin's Creed 3 was the vast quantities of side stuff to do. Normally, I would be all for the inclusion of more content in a video game to help justify the $60 purchase price. However, in this game many of the optional missions feel decidedly arbitrary and pointless. Many of them are, and I mean this quite literally, a series of checklists of tasks to perform in order to build rapport for various factions in the game that the player will rarely see or interact with. Things like “Kill X amount of enemies with Y weapon,” “Perform a Leap of Faith X times,” or “Use Z gadget to perform X perfect hunts.” The game asks the player if they want to perform these tasks, yet offers no incentive to do so. While I have not actually completed the tasks myself, as far as I am aware there is no reward besides a useless achievement/trophy for completing them. Players are also invited to explore the underground network of tunnels built by the Free Masons in Boston and New York to unlock fast travel locations. However, the game already offers a sizable number of fast travel locations by default, so this again seems like an empty, pointless gesture, even if the tunnels themselves are very interesting in their own right. There is also an optional moneymaking mechanic in the Davenport Homestead. Connor has to renovate the Homestead and bring enough people to come to live there in order to build a thriving community. The characters and subplots introduced through this quest-line are very well done and help to flesh out Connor as a character (and I have to stress that this does wonders for making Connor a much more relatable protagonist). The problem with this is that the ultimate use for the Homestead is to craft goods and make money by shipping them to various vendors. While players can use this money to purchase new weapons and equipment for use on missions, it is ultimately superfluous because Connor's initial inventory is more than enough to take the player from the start of the game to the end of the game. Lastly, the player can take part in a series of collection quests. They can gather up feathers from the Colonial Frontier, open treasure chests scattered throughout the game world, and reclaim the pages to Benjamin Franklin's legendary almanacs. Yet again, these do not seem to manifest into any tangible gameplay benefits: Collecting feathers nets the player a Native American tribal outfit, opening chests grants the player money and recipes for the Homestead they do not need since the economy confers no real benefit, and the Almanac's again give more recipes. All of these extras are included in the game and provide extra length, yet they all (with the exception of the Homestead) feel tacked on and serve no purpose in the context of the game besides lengthening a playthrough's running time. An average player will have no need to do most of this.

Another observation I made when playing Assassin's Creed 3 is that the game has many different gameplay types, to the point where it may seem somewhat scattered and disjointed. Throughout the game, the player is introduced to a number of different mechanics that are only used once or twice and then never used again. Players will be asked to direct Patriot troops in battle in the middle of a Loyalist siege. In another mission later on, they are tasked with firing a cannon into Loyalist troops in order to stop them cold. At another point in the game, players are forced to cross through no man's land in the middle of a shootout, learning the timing and ducking from cover to cover avoiding the shots. All of these gameplay styles are only used in their respective sequences and never make repeat appearances. While they serve their purpose in breaking up other sections and providing a bit of a breather, the side quests and other missions should be doing that while the main quest sticks to reiterating on their core mechanics in interesting ways. There is one last mechanic that deviates from the standard Assassin's Creed gameplay style, but it is more ingrained into the game: The naval missions. As a part of the story, Connor gains his own ship with which he can sail the sees in pursuit of the Templars and other things. Ship combat sections appear a few separate times in the story and there is an optional quest-chain surrounding naval combat, and they are all very well done and deserve praise. However, it again seems like a distraction from what should be the main mechanics of the franchise. All of these side mechanics seem to get in the way of what should be a game about stabbing dudes in the throat.

Speaking of killing dudes, the arsenal Connor has with which to do so is a fairly decent one. He has access to Hidden Blades, Swords/Axes/War Clubs, Tomahawks/Daggers, Pistols, Bows, Rope Darts, Poison Darts, Trip Mines, Muskets, Snares, and Smoke Bombs. This is quite the inventory. But the problem is that most the this equipment feels completely useless. In my playthrough of the game, I basically only used the Hidden Blade and Tomahawk in combination with Smoke Bombs and Bows. I rarely used the Pistol and NEVER used any of the other pieces of equipment. The game bills Connor's inventory as a toolbox the player can use to solve any problem in any manner they please. However, this is not the case. Due to the optional objectives and constricted, occasionally linear level design, any decision the player might have made with tactics is immediately thrown out the window. Due to the nature of the story, with the player playing as Desmond Miles, who is reliving Connor's memory through the Animus device, the player is given optional objectives in order to improve synchronization with Connor's memory by doing things how he did it. It will give players objectives like “Kill X amount of enemies from a hiding spot” or other such tasks to complete mid-mission. So while the player in theory has a multitude of way to go through many missions, they will in actuality only have one or two “best” ways of successfully pulling it off. Also, many of the missions have the player moving from waypoint to waypoint to waypoint in a decidedly linear fashion. Even without these constraints, just going in and having an all out brawl to kill everyone is generally a tactic that works. The way levels and set-pieces are arranged, there is either very little challenge or a great deal of challenge (depending on whether or not the player chooses to go after optional objective and what those objectives are at times) without much of a middle ground or room for experimentation.

When all of these points are combined, it results in a game that, while well-intentioned, feels like it does not truly know what it wants to be. The game is lacking in an underlying core than binds everything together. It feels like it is juggling too many balls at once and is destined to drop a few of them as a result, even if the vast majority remain in the air. These mechanics dilute the game and keeps it from shining in the way it really should. For future Assassin's Creed games, I recommend making a return to the simplicity and purity of the first game where the goal is to kill targets in creative and sneaky ways, but with the advancements made in the systems by subsequent games. The first game allowed players to research their targets and learn all about their habits and routines, giving them the information to plan their assassinations. I would love to see them weave this investigation into the story-driven plots the series has come to be known for. The story would take players through the investigation, but loosen the leash during the actual assassinations, giving players much more freedom in that respect. It may be wise to kill the concept of optional, mid-mission objectives as they tend to hinder the game more than they help. Go back to the core of the franchise. For all the talk of Assassins vs. Templars, there is very little in the way of assassination that goes on in more recent games in the franchise. Assassins apparently tend to do more faffing about then actual killing.

That is not to say that Assassin's Creed 3 is a bad game by any means. In fact, after the Ezio trilogy, it is a step in the right direction. The game has returned the series to the interesting gray on gray dynamic between the Templars and Assassins over the Chaotic Good vs. Stupid Evil conflict of Assassin's Creed 2. In fact, the plot in general is very well written, even if the rewrites to history done in order to shoehorn Connor into the American Revolution feel a little like Forrest Gump. The improvements they made to the parkour systems really help to improve the overall game. This is a very good game. I am just somewhat disappointed as a long time fan of the franchise that it may be falling victim to the sin of trying of please everyone. This franchise can work, but it needs to be planned more carefully. I do not want to see it fall to the wayside.

#36: Game Reviews and the Gaming Press: Why Do They Suck?

The gaming press is a pretty powerful entity in this industry. The consumers go to them for the latest in gaming news, including what is about to come out, what companies are partaking in less than consumer-friendly business practices, and other news a gamer might want to know. The publishers rely on them to get information to their customers and effectively spread the word on projects they are working on. However, the press also has one critical function to serve: To review video games. Game reviews are supposed to be an important part of the gaming ecosystem. It is, theoretically, immensely helpful when contemplating the purchase of a game to have a collection of opinions regarding it. They should help to distinguish between bad games, average games, and good games, but how effective are they in that capacity and why do they sometimes get called into question? This week, I attempt to figure out the answer.

Before we get to that, we need to understand the process behind most reviews on major game review websites. More often than not, major review sites receive copies of the games they are to review a couple of days to a week prior to the scheduled release date. The reviewer in question then has to use their free time (I am not aware of a review outlet that actually allots time for its staff to play games on the job since they have other duties to attend to, though I am sure they exist.) to play far enough through the game to get a good understanding of it (since it is rare that they play through to the end) yet leave enough time to gather their thoughts and write a review about it. The pressure will be on them to finish the review as quickly as possible because the faster it gets uploaded to the site, the more page views it will get and more advertising money the site recieves.

Obviously, this style of reviewing, which is commonplace in the industry, is not very condusive to writing reviews of the highest quality. One of the biggest issues in this is time. Reviewers are rarely given an adequate time to write very good reviews. First off all, games nowadays usually take around 10-12 hours to beat (30 or more for an RPG). For someone who has a job, a social network of people they communicate with regularly, and many of the responsibilities life throws at us, playing through a game that long in so short a time while trying to analyze it critically is asking for a lot. It is not likely that the person in question will be able to throughly explore a game and look for pros and cons beyond what is immediately obvious. Any extra moment they spend playing the game reduces the amount of time left over to gather their thoughts and write the actual review, which is already lacking enough. In the remaining days before the deadline, they need to structure their thoughts on the game and all of its aspects. Then they need to plan out and compose a written review that encapsulates all of those thoughts as best as it can. Considering the timeframe often required to write these reviews, it is a miracle that they are anywhere near coherent. The amount of time to write and proofread those reviews is nowhere near enough to do anything more than list-off what the game does and whether they think it is good or bad. Going into any real detail is almost completely out-of-the-question.

The less obvious, yet more critical problem is the window in which the review is released. Many people would, quite logically I might add, say that the best time to release a review of a game is somewhere around 3-4 days before/after it is released. However, I disagree with this for a couple of very important reasons. The first reason for this is that a review published within the release window for a game will not sway people who are on the fence about buying the game. When a game is released, the only people who buy it on the very first day it comes out will be people who were already eagerly anticipating the game. Regardless of how positive or negative the review will be, they will buy the game. All the review will do is reinforce the decision in their head (even a negative review will be seen as a personal attack and will not be recognized as a legitimate opinion). The same can be said about negative reviews and people who will not buy the game. Anyone who is on the fence regarding the purchase of a video game will not be immediately swayed. They will often wait for anywhere from a few weeks to a month because of my second point regarding the window of time: Real good conversation on a video game only arises in the weeks after its release. It is only then that people have bought, fully-played, and digested a game and all of its parts. This is when people can critically analyze the minutiae of the game in question and figure out exactly why the game is as good or bad as it is. We saw this with the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy. Most reviewers, in a rush to get their reviews out on release date, did not get the chance to play through the entirety of the game and reach the ending. A few weeks later, after the game was out, many people actually had the chance to experience the finale of Mass Effect 3 and... react to it. It was only then that people were able to look into it and think about what worked/did not work about it. People do not form opinions in a vaccum. Since we are social creatures, we think and form opinions by talking with other people. By gathering information from different viewpoints and perspectives, we gain intelligence and form better opinions. This is why I do not think releasing reviews on the same day a game comes out is a good idea. It is difficult for a reviewer to form detailed, well-informed opinions when they have not had the time or even the ability to discuss the game and gain the necessary prespectives of other people nor have they the time to fully comprehend and analyze their own prespective. It is a recipe for disaster.

Another serious issue, though one I suspect is blown out of proportion, is the fact that game reviews are supported by advertisers within the games industry. Everybody knows that major game publishers like Activision or EA buy ad space on review hubs like IGN or Gamespot. Because of this, there is a perception that these reviews are being bought by publishers in order to make their games look better. It is not that hard to suspect when sites like IGN release an article titled “Why Do People Hate EA?” and only ask Peter Moore, Chief Operating Officer of EA, the reasons behind it instead of asking the aforementioned people. Again, I do not believe this is as serious an issue as people make it out to be. I think that the people who write these reviews generally stand behind them. However, it is still a issue worth bringing up and discussing as it does have the potential to impact reviews and how the gaming press thinks with regards to the games they talk about. There are well-known cases of reviewers being forced into embargos as a result of receiving review copies of certain games, like how Konami forbid mention of the cut-scene length and install times of Metal Gear Solid 4. It is not an easy problem to solve and there is no simple solution beyond not showing game advertisements, which would cut into profits.

One last problem that I am far from the first person to make note of is the over-inflation of review scores. A scale of 1 to 10 is often used to indicate the overall quality of a game in comparison to other games. On this kind of scale, 5 is often denoted as average simply because it is in the middle. Anything above a 5 is above average and below a 5 is below average. This makes sense and is intuitive for the most part. However, this is not necessarily how review scores (which are a terrible way to handle reviews, but have been accepted as commonplace simply because of the fast-paced nature of today's society) work. If you were to go to review-aggregate site Metacritic, you would find that there are many more average or positively-reviewed games than there are negative ones. This is simply not possible mathematically. If there are more positive reviews than average or low reviews, then the praise becomes the new accepted standard for average and the review scores should be placed back in equilibrium. We are not seeing this and I think I know the reason why. The reason for this inflation of review scores (and resulting decrease in credibility and weight that reviews carry) is that the fans of franchises cannot tolerate reviews that are neither perfect nor near perfect. We saw this when fans of the Uncharted series lashed out against reviewers for giving the upcomming-at-the-time (as in, they had not played it yet) third game an 8 out of 10, which is well-above average on a 1 to 10 scale. The game was not ever released, yet people claimed that the reviewers had “no clue what they are talking about.” It is a huge testament to the source of many of the problems with game reviews.

In fact, upon very close scrutiny, many of the other problems that plague game reviewers and the reviews they write come down to the fans who read them. The reason they are rushed to finish these reviews before a game is even out is because fans do not want to wait. They want to see opinions on upcomming games as soon as possible. Fans cannot wait until popular consensus has arisen and critical analysis can be had because fans do not want that. It is a desire for instant gratification and someone to support their opinions of the serieses they love and hate that drives them. A critical eye and valuable insight into the fine details of a game is not wanted by the masses. The request is for a “You are right” or an “I think you are wrong” (which will be preceived as a “selling out”). The only problem that does not come down to the fans is the issue of advertisers, and that is complex enough as it is. This is frustrating for people like myself who want insight and critique of the medium. To improve the quality of reviews from major gaming journalists, we need to fundamentally alter the culture driving them. This is not an easy thing to do as it would require much work and be met with much resistance. I do not even know if the effort would be worth it. But at the very least, this is discussion worth having. This is something that needs to be said.