What to Review a Game on

I'm almost ready to write better reviews, but before I write one, I'm going to list the criteria I should consider when reviewing — that is, a checklist of qualities a game has that, when analyzing them, help me decide how good or bad said game is.

I would love for you to add ideas in the comments section again.

Here are the criteria I have so far:

1. Variety. For the amount of time I invest playing the game, does the game provide enough different experiences to avoid being monotonous? One of the problems humans have with fun is that experiencing a particular fun thing too long or too often bores them. The cliché "variety is the spice of life" is true. If God of War had not had puzzles in between its mostly homogeneous fighting, it would have been boring. The only way to keep a monotonous game, one with few environment types or mechanics or whatnot, the only way to keep that from boring yourself is to play it sparingly; games shouldn't have to be played like that (not that it's bad if you do, of course).

2. Pacing: the feeling a player has that urges them to do something in a game — the consequence of inaction being some sort of loss, like player death or loss of experience or missing out on seeing something cool happen or complete loss of the game (damn Metal Gear Solid Torture Sequence of Awesomeness Because Losing it Makes You Lose the Entire Game if You Somehow Don't Save). Level design should impose different levels of urgency on players at different times in order to be varied enough (variety has a place in pacing).

One good analysis of pacing is this feature by Jacek Wesolowski of People Can Fly (Painkiller)

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4032/beyond_pacing_games_arent_.php

3. Graphics. Crysis is not the standard, and World of Warcraft has better graphics than F.E.A.R.

This is a reflection on what the visuals of a particular game do to me. Do they make me smile? Is it pretty? Is it funny? Does it strike me emotionally? Is it sublime? What does it do? Judging whether the visual art is good or bad will be based on what I believe the developers are trying to shoot for, if there visual design accomplishes it, and how well it does it. I still have mixed feelings about this because a strong effect that I believe the developers aren't shooting for may be worth assigning awesomeness to.

4. Uniqueness. In this, I look for two things. Either the game does something new (and well), or it does something old but better than all the games before. Meeting one of these criteria is important because I don't want gamers to waste money and time on a new, expensive product when there is an older, cheaper product that does the same thing, perhaps better.

5. Bugs. Perhaps shooting up a game for bugs is unfair, since most games can be expected to be patched enough to make a bug judgement obsolete. That is why I have mixed feelings about this. If I ever get a journalism job, in which I'll most likely be expected to score games, I'll use the publishing house's policy on bugs for scoring. In general, bugs are bad because they break games.

6. Fairness. In this, I dock points for two things. If I have reason to believe that the enemy AI is cheating, (like in ArmA: Combat Operations, where players who duck into tall grass can't see the enemy AI but the enemy AI, with their developer-endowed x-ray vision, see the players) than points be docked! If in multiplayer I have reason to believe that players automatically get unfair advantages over other players based on....at least one of many things (There are so many ways to give players unfair advantages over each other) than damn the torpedoes, and get to the choppaaa!

7. Story-telling. If a game has some kind of story-telling, I will talk about how it makes me feel. If the feeling the game is giving me is weak, than I dock points. Cinematics and writing count, even if they aren't part of play.

8. Sound. Do I feel the game's sound accomplishes what I think the developer is shooting for? If not, than I dock points UNLESS I end up liking the sound.

9. Flow. Does the game put me in Flow for what I feel is an appropriate amount of time during play? Does it put me in Flow too little or too often? For those who don't know or forgot, in psychology, Flow is that state in which the task you are doing is neither too easy nor too hard (although in activities such as computer gaming, the Flow state is ideally reached when the presented challenge is just above your skill level, making you put out your 110% effort); it is a state of immersion in which doing the activity is intrinsically rewarding; you are 100% focused on what you are trying to achieve in the game world. The original idea in psychology comes from the University of Chicago's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

10. Intellectual Stimulation. Is there anything to learn about the analog world from the game. Does it make special information that I helps me understand my world or myself better? Games that do this deserve major credit. To a certain extent, all games are intellectually stimulating (even the stupid ones). Intellectual stimulation is extra credit.

11. Does the game always reward the player with something? Even when the player loses? (for example, in the Call of Duty series, when you die, you're shown an interesting/snarky quote about war) Reward in both victory and failure is important because people who like happiness don't like being punished for playing. Paradoxically, this doesn't mean there should be NO punishment; it's just that, even in the punishing, the player should get something they can consider fun or meaningful or both.

And that's what I use, as of now, to decide whether a game is good or bad for consumers.

Here are things I won't deem good or bad about a game:

1. Agency/Effectance. This is an essential element of computer games. For those who don't know or don't remember, it is the idea that you can make things happen on screen. If you can't make anything happen in a video game world, you have no agency/effectance; it might as well be a painting or a movie or a novel. If a "game" does not give you agency, than it is not a game, and I won't review it as if it is one.

2. It has Agency, but is not a game. Here is Jesper Juul's definition for the word "game":

"A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable" (P 36 Juul, half-real).

Undoubtedly, I will review non-games in my video games journalism career, (like the Sims 6, which will probably be a computer toy instead of a computer game). Maybe I will be an Interactive Electronic Entertainment Journalist.

Things I will review but won't go into detail about are the concrete details that reveal plot I feel are important for the player to experience in the game.

And that is all I can think of for now. When I restart reviewing next week, I will consider all these but not explicitly state them in reviews unless I believe I should. (And I haven't forgotten about "immersion." I'll discuss immersion in another article.)

Feel free to add ideas or dispute my definitions in the comments section. Teach me. Me like.

In the meantime, check out this old Gamasutra.com article about games that make players happy; not just provide mere, transitory fun/bliss/orgasm.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3675/the_pursuit_of_games_designing_.php?page=1

Some questions, some updates, and some announcements.

Those of you who made your spot checks before you read the blog might have noticed the new layout. I've been playing around with the various Blogspot aesthetic layouts, looking for one that was a bit lighter and more cheerful looking than the one we were previously using. I like this new one out of most of the options available, but I hope it's only a temporary fix. What I'd really like to do is get some nice game related pattern for the background of the blog, but sadly my artistic/photoshop skills are minimal at best. Is there anyone out there who would be willing to contribute something or even give me some pointers on how to design one myself?

In other news, I just wanted to let everyone know that I've started working at Calit2 again doing more video game research. The difference is that this time they're paying me! :D If I can, I'll occasionally post some excerpts from the work I'm doing for discussion or critique. First up on the agenda is examining the use of cutscenes in video games. More on that as I continue my research.

But now, on to the actual reason why I'm posting this blog:

I'm playing World of Warcraft again.

...I'll pause for a moment so you can gasp, cry, or yell at me.





Finished? Excellent! Let's continue.

WoW has always been an unusual game for me. Before you ask, no I've never been addicted to the game. I'll have sudden bursts of desire to play it followed by an extremely long period of time in which I forget the game is even installed on my computer. Since buying the game about three years ago, I've approximately played the game less than 24 hours, which would explain why I never made a character that leveled fully from 1 to 60 (or 70 or 80 as the expansions were released).

Part of the problem was that I never had anyone to play with. I have two main characters on two different servers. The servers I picked were based on the social potential of those servers. For my human mage I chose a server a good friend of mine played on, while my undead warlock was assigned to the server my old Warcraft III clan had moved to when WoW was first released. However, I eventually ran into problems. About a month after I started playing my friend on my Alliance server (you know who you are) suddenly moved to a different server, leaving me stranded to level my mage alone. Meanwhile, my warlock was suffering the same problems. I was an active member in my clan during the Warcraft III days, playing games/griefing with them on a weekly basis, and posting on the clan forums as often as possible. But I was late to the party when it came to WoW; two years too late to be precise. By the time I started playing, almost everyone I knew from Warcraft III was gone. They had stopped playing, or left the guild either for real life issues, or personal issues with the management of the guild. All that remained were new recruits that I never connected to as well as the old members.

As a result of these setbacks, I never played. I would log off for about six months to a year before I got the urge to play again. After a month and $15 down the drain, I remembered that having no one to play with was boring, and I stopped playing again.

That has all changed though. Recently, a group of my friends harassed me enough that I decided to start playing again. Except this time, I transferred my mage character to their server. They also let me into their guild: The Knights of Arcadia, which is a guild originally founded by Gabe and Tycho of Penny Arcade.

I can safely say that since the move, playing WoW has actually become fun. Having the social connection has helped exponentially. Not only do I have friends to talk to and who can guide me, but the guild itself is comprised of quite a number of entertaining people. Because of this, I am now determined to finally experience WoW from 1 to 80.

And I'll be writing about it too.

I'm going to start a semi-regular series of articles detailing my experiences within the virtual space of World of Warcraft. These articles will cover everything from my opinions on questing to the role of narrative within a persistent world, to important milestones in my character's career. I'll also occasionally talk about the people in the guild including the few members that introduced me to The Knights of Arcadia (who will be referred to as Mathne, Squibbie, and Karami unless they don't care if I use their real names). So be prepared to see a lot of this guy:

This is Lizezul. Also know as Lee, Liz and Lizezuzlzulele (long story). I'll be playing him on this journey to level 80 and beyond. Along with him will be Lizezul's pet turtle Speedy:

Adorable, isn't he? He provides no inherent bonuses to my mage other than to sit there and look cute while I'm killing random creature X. You'll be seeing Speedy a lot too.

I'm not exactly sure where I'm ultimately going with these WoW articles. The game is such a case study already I'm not sure what to say that hasn't already been said. But my goal is to point out something interesting about the game in each article. Some will be more thought provoking than others, and some will be more entertaining than others. Either way, it's an experiment and I hope to learn something from just being a part of the process.

I can't make any promises, but I hope to have the first article up within the next week or two. The topic? How people play WoW when they're not actually playing WoW. Until then, I'll be on the docks with my turtle:


Speedy really likes the water.

Gears of War 2 (XBOX 360): Review

Gears of War 2 takes itself too seriously. Even though the game features dinosaurs that wear machine guns and missile launchers, even though one of the game's Non-Playable Character teammates talks about everything in terms of basketball, says bitch a lot, and is black, even though it has assault rifles that have chainsaws (because grenade launchers aren't bad-ass enough), this game manages to be too much stuck up its anus.

Take the protagonist's friend/co-op buddy or Non-Playable Character: Dominic Santiago™. The game makes one of the goals to search for his wife (the game doesn't say so until later, but you see it coming). Cutscenes try to make you actually care about her, and they fail.

It would have been way, waaaay better if Epic Games had instead made Dominic obsessed with finding his husband, and gave the protagonist, Marcus Fenix™, an IQ of 3.

Just imagine...

First lines by lead characters:

Dictator Richard Prescott™: Shiver me timbers! There be many a locust horde ready a waitin' to board our sanctuary!

WENCH!!

Anya Shroud™: Yes sexy?

Wiener Richard Prescott™: Where be Corporal Dominic and Sergeant Marcus?!

[Scene changes]

Dominic Santiago™:

O woe!

Where art mine gay lover [Developer must come up with creative, yet politically correct, name]

Johnny Depp™?

Shalt see him I again?

[Marcus Fenix™ stares at him and drools]

That would be the best introduction to a game about steroid-using men who save humanity from orcs ever.

Now, I'm not trashing the story-telling. I'm just saying it could have been way more fun and way more insulting to women and minorities. The lead writer, Joshua Ortega, did an excellent job making the game's lines entertaining and the plot conducive for varied gameplay scenarios, and he and the lesser-human writers deserve cookies and beer. Some critics give hate to the seemingly unconnected-to-the-main-plot research facility part of the game. To that, I remind everyone that the story isn't to be taken seriously. Gears of War 2 is not the video game equivalent of Pride and Prejudice, and it's not trying to be. (Okay, so it tries to be Pride and Prejudice for a bit, but, some how, it fails.)

So what I'm really trying to say about Gears of War 2 is that it should have been (and the sequels better be) a comedy.

Could you imagine the box art of GoW2 if they had done this?

Title: Pony Princess of Depressing Death 2: Bigger, Badder, and More Bad Ass

Description on back of box: "Humanity's baseball players must save humanity from a race of orcs who use steroids so much that they look terrible. This game features guns, chainsaws, and dinosaurs."

Rated eC for Early Childhood.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot to discuss the gameplay part. The gameplay is good. It is mostly comprised of running into cover and shooting things from behind that cover. You can always run up to the enemy and chainsaw them to death, providing that you can get close enough and providing that have a chainsaw.

The reasons why the gameplay is good is because of two things:

One: the game puts you in manifold shooting-from-cover situations, so the core gameplay experience is not monotonous.

Two: when you aren't shooting from behind cover, you are riding things, driving things, carrying boxes (woo!), and shooting things while doing those three.

This game is a lesson about the importance of variety in games and the importance of shooting things. Even an achievement highlights that (use every weapon and you get the "Variety is the Spice of Death" achievement).

But the gameplay isn't perfect. While playing co-op split screen with my Danish flatmate Carsten Hoilund, he told me that switching weapons using the D-pad was difficult. I myself had no problems, so I assumed that the reason he couldn't select the desired weapon using the D-pad was because he was Danish. [Note: playing co-op with someone you don't hate is more fun than playing with yourself (lololol), and co-op is easier since you lose only if BOTH of you die. Extra Note: if you're a hardcore gamer, you will probably enjoy this game most on the hardest difficulty since the casual and normal modes are easy; insane difficulty is unlocked only after you've beaten the game on another difficulty mode.]

Later, after my Danish roommate had moved back to Vikingland, I began to have problems fingering the d-pad. Obviously, this meant I really missed my friend and that part of his Danish spirit had become part of mine, making me eat healthier food and suck at switching weapons in Gears of War 2.

The friendly AI, however, is pathetic. Only when you have three friendly NPCs shooting beside you does the AI feel like it's helping you fight more than being live-duck-in-mouth annoying. You can consider the NPCs as an extra challenge :)

My only other complaint against the campaign is the very last gameplay sequence. I beat it by holding down the trigger button for around fifteen rubber-ducky-pounding seconds (You don't want to know).

The last parts of the game are easy compared to the other parts, but I'm not complaining. If every game made the ending the hardest part, games would be even less interesting, no?

The best way to play Gears of War 2's campaign is to play it with a friend in the same room with two screens and two XBOX 360s (and two controllers and two chairs and two sets of clothes — unless you really like each other — and etc.).

Now for the multiplayer. The competitive multiplayer is boring. It's all been done before, and better. To console gamers, all the modes may still come as novel, but to the PC gaming master race, it isn't. It's also annoying that at the end of competitive matches, the game talks about your team's awesomeness or suckness as if you're twelve.

The multiplayer mode that can be lots of fun is Horde (the non-competitive multiplayer). What happens in Horde is five players (you want five) start a map and work together to survive increasingly challenging hordes of AI-controlled, steroid orcs; ideally, the team survives for all 50 rounds (which wins a self-esteem-boosting achievement). If you die during a round, you respawn the next round. Every time you beat a round, the game tallies your team members' scores, and every score is accompanied by a gun shot sound, except for the total round score which comes with an explosion sound. This is much more eloquent than the annoying announcer at the end of the competitive matches.

Every ten rounds of Horde, the game resumes sending small hordes at you but increases their efficacy (health, aim, sexual performance, etc.). Usually, players decide to defend one area. You will not survive unless your team uses teamwork, and well.

And that is the problem.

I don't think beating Horde is impossible when no one communicates (sometimes, on XBOX Live, that's preferable). And often you can just tell what others are trying to say when you see their chainsaw going through an enemy's body. What makes teamwork a problem is that PEOPLE KEEP DROPPING OUT. And unlike Left 4 Dead, people can't drop in on a match that has already started.

And that's it.

Pros:

-It's not going to win a pulitzer prize, but the silly plot and most of the dialogue are a win.

-Varied gameplay experiences and environments in the campaign; good pacing.

-Features guns, chainsaws, and dinosaurs.

-Horde mode can be very fun.

Cons:

-Some of the writing sucks, especially most of the "wife" stuff. Ironically and sexistly, the part where something really bad happens to her ends up being the most effective sequence with her.

-The only fun, not-too-cliché multiplayer is Horde, and the only way to enjoy it is to play with people who won't drop out (AKA your non-dropping-out friends).

-Friendly NPCs in campaign mode have lettuce for brains.

-It is hard to switch weapons if you are Danish.

-The ending sequence will come off to many as laziness on the developer's part.

-Shadows and texture quality in the game show the XBOX 360's obsolescence. (PC GAMING! RAWR!)

Worth getting? Yes. But not for $49.99.

Mini Review: Ninja Gaiden Black (XBLA)

Today (three months ago), I beat Ninja Gaiden Black, an improved version of the XBOX game Ninja Gaiden by Japanese developer Playboy Mag-I mean Team Ninja.

Ninja Gaiden Black is a 3rd person action game in which you play as Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja. For most of the game, you wear a black jump suit and kill everything except for an old man and two hot-sex ninja women who help you by giving you tips, coating themselves in liquids, and putting themselves in danger so you have to rescue them (the old man doesn't do some of these things; he does offer you services for a fee, if you know what I mean).

The game has a story, but it’s only an excuse for moving you to different fights in different environments. You're on a revenge quest against a bad person who something about a sword that something something end of the world must prevent. Romance avoided. Not enough porn.

The story mode offers you 10 melee weapons and 5 projectile weapons and a few magic attacks (assume I'm right). Assuming you decide to play this game no more than once because you don’t have brain damage, the only melee weapon you’ll use for most of the game is the dragon sword, i.e. a katana.

Bad things about the game. Many people claim that the game is too difficult: that the enemies do too much damage; that you have to memorize visual cues and react to them quickly (And there are different cues with every kind of enemy, and many save points are not placed close enough to the hardest battles). I agree that difficulty is a problem, but not for those reasons. The real difficulty problem is that you have to manage the camera a lot or die 2 billion times instead of just 1 billion times. If you don’t press the right trigger button more than all the other buttons combined, your view of your enemies won’t exist well. Another morally bad thing about NGB is falling to your death due to the camera moving a lot - and fingering the right stick in the right direction ALL THE TIME becomes impossible and unorgasmic. Another annoying thing about this game is that the writing and voice acting blow. But they don't suck in a laughter-inducing way; they just blow. A missed opportunity the story is; they should have made it a comedy. Also, enemies respawn. Maybe the developers put this in because an endless supply of enemies provides an endless supply of the-thingy-that-is-used-for-money-in-the-game, but because the average enemy will kill you if you finger the buttons wrongly, re-fighting enemies is tedious.

I found the puzzles tediously easy. Most of them make you go from one place to another collecting stuff and squirreling it to other places. They, like the story, are just an excuse for moving you to different fights in different environments.

Good things about the game: Many colors. Varied environments. You fight everything from tanks to dinosaurs to Arnold Schwarzenegger to the skeleton ghosts of fish. The challenges that stretch you to your limit, in which you just barely win or lose, are awesome (however, they don’t occur as often as the battles in which you may-most-certainly suffer 50% damage). And mission mode is arguably more fun than story mode. (Mission mode was introduced in the Black edition of the game.)

Conclusion: I'm not sure if this type of game is dying, games that are penis-mashingly hard. I say, skip it (unless playing a game that makes you feel like a super ninja who dies a lot is one of your childhood dreams). Prefer getting your master-difficult-game-for-increased-button-pressing-skills from completing achievements in games that do achievements right, like games by Valve Software.

Note: I read somewhere that you can activate easy mode (which is merely hard) by dying a lot on the first level. (Only in the Black and Sigma editions)

Dammit Paul.

STOP SPAMMING THE BLOG WITH ONE SENTENCE POSTS OR YOU'RE GETTING A BLOG TIME OUT! >:(

BAD-ASS E3 ANNOUNCEMENT

XBOX LIVE IS GOING TO HAVE TWITTER!!! HELL YEAH!!!