The Game Critique

I haven’t done video game reviews on this site. I also don’t intend to. I have only done video game critiques or criticism. The name in the top banner should be enough of a clue. So it is interesting that the first review I do for a blog about video games is really about a book.

I finished Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives over a week ago, before E3 started. I wanted to finish those posts on inFamous before I got around to writing on the book. Now having settled down and let the pages stew in my mind for a time, I find there is not much to say.

The book is very well written. I finished it in two days and didn’t take any self-discipline on my part to get through it, which is saying something. In this tech saturated, attention deficit age, actually sitting down and doing one thing is both a miracle and reprieve. Bissell’s words flow like nectar down one’s throat, unsweetened and unpreserved. They are the raw and natural words of a man speaking from his, if not heart, than his truth, his center, his being. Extra Lives is a deeply personal book and as much about Tom Bissell as it is about video games. But then if you are going to explain why they matter, why they culturally matter, then you can’t stick to billion dollar figures and hundred million player headcounts forever. Those numbers get people’s attention and nothing else.

I’ve read quite a bit of the material previously. The first half of the Resident Evil chapter appeared in the inaugural edition of Kill Screen. Most of the GTA4 chapter had made the rounds around the internet a few months back. But I didn’t skip any parts of the book. It was a pleasure to read again and actually much easier. One thing I notice in the transition of his words from screen to page is the ease to read them. On my laptop I found the GTA4 story intolerable and I couldn’t get through it. In the book I devoured every word.

He goes through a number of contemporary games and explains their personal significance as well as gamer cultural significance. To someone as initiated as myself the explanations of the games were a little extraneous, but they were short and I realize their necessity. Actually, while reading them I was surprised how succinctly and eloquently Bissell was able to explain Gears of War as something more than the completely horrible and void of worth violence porn as it would seem to any outsider. He is able, in the same breath, to explain Resident Evil’s horridly painful camp and distressingly evocative horror. But probably his best assertion in the whole book is found in the author’s note at the beginning. “In this book I risk…to explain why I believe video game matter – and why they do not matter more.” He can’t get away with not addressing it, no one would believe him, and he navigates head on through the swamp. (“You were almost a Jill sandwich” anyone?)

What is especially wonderful is that the book constructs a compelling argument that video games are art (Ebert is wrong etc. etc.) without ever dealing with that particular question head one, like so many of us had. He circumvents the question entirely and starts his book from a position that they are and anyone reading it is on board with it, whether or not they actually are. From this position he is able to explain and discuss games with their creators, other critics and the reader the ideas, themes and emotions behind these games. He headed the argument off at the pass, as it were.

“It seems to me that anyone passionate about video games has better things to do than walk chin-first into a sucker-punch argument about whether they qualify as art. Those who do not believe video games are not or ever will be art deserve nothing more goading or indulgent than a smile. (p.34)”

I had meant to get down my own words on paper with no influence from any other sources, to see what my thoughts were as pure as they could be with only the book in my head. They were too jumbled, so I dumped the plan and listened to his interview on the Brainy Gamer podcast. (One of the best episodes yet.) Afterwords a question loomed out of my head: Who was this book for?

While reading it I was struck with the notion that while it was superbly written and was mind opening to the idea of video game criticism and of it being an artistic medium. At the same time he wasn’t going far enough for me. I’ve read most of his assertions and revelations on , and elsewhere and they were more extensively than what Tom did in his book. As much as I enjoyed it, I was not the target audience. It was a rehash of the 101 for me.

Then I saw him explaining the individual games calmly, detailed and concisely before moving on to the deeper explanations. But as quick and well done these descriptions were, I cannot see them a grand enough argument to convince or even hold the attention of anyone not already game literate. He seemed to deliver more on the why not than the why in the middle if you were coming into this tabula rasa. While reading it I realized I could not hand this book to either of my parents and expect them to get what I get or see what I see. He also diverges this audience away from him further when he recalls as his fondest memories of Grand Theft Auto IV to be I “sniped the pilot of a zooming-by news chopper while standing on the GetaLife (read: MetLife) building and watched it whirlingly plunge down into the street and explode. (p.179)” Who not inundated with at least an ounce of the “hardcore” culture is going to read that and not have the argument undermined for them? Hell even I cringed at the implications of these moments. They weren’t and cannot be explained in any decent manner to anyone who doesn’t already get that the chaos has no meaning beyond the visceral thrill of it, even within the game’s universe.

The only answer I can reach is that the book is for the game literate, but not the critical literate. There is not enough here for the “hardcore” critics and/or thinkers of video games and at the same time there may be too sparse on too many subjects to hold the minds of the uninitiated. The book focuses, and rightly so, on the middle ground. The gaming literate that might not have realized there was a critical community-like Tom didn’t realize a few years ago-and have an internal inkling or desire to go beyond enjoying the spectacle and the “just a game” aphorism. Those with the curious, however brief, question mark appearing over their heads.

If I had to call Bissell’s book anything, it would be a well polished stepping stone for the community as a whole. If nothing else he got it published and that is enough to keep hope alive for a brighter future for the gaming community and superb games on the horizon.

I know it’s kind of pointless to write anything on E3, especially after this pretty much summarizes the whole thing, but it’s my blog and I want to.

Going into E3 I wanted to see only a few things: Beyond Good and Evil 2, The Last Guardian, Dragon Age 2, Mirror’s Edge 2 and anything that hadn’t already been announced. That last one is a little innocuous, because with the exception of The Last Guardian, none of the others on my list have been announced. Well I was heavily disappointed. (You have till TGS to make it up to me.)

Other than great unity that I felt with the twitterverse during the Press Conferences I got two things. One was the announcement of the next project from the studio ThatGameCompany. Journey is visually minimalistic like their other games and because of that strikes my imagination. WE don’t know what it’s about or have even seen any video of it being played. And yet I’m more excited about it than any of the over a dozen shooters put on display.

The other thing this E3 did for me was convince me it might be time to get a Wii in the near future. The number of games I actually want to play on it has reached my threshold to make it worth it. It helps that it can play Gamecube games like Wind Waker and Eternal Darkness. With Epic Mickey, Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye 007 remake on the horizon and games (now much cheaper) like No More Heroes, Lost Winds, Zach and Wiki, Lost Winds, and Little King’s Story. I think I may have reached critical mass of quality games I want to play on the system. Good thing I waited until a time when the Wii now does what it was always supposed to.

I think a major blocking point of the system is how much it relies on nostalgia to market their games or at least get gamers to care about them. I have never played a Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, or really a Mario game for any decent length of time. So I have never cared about these franchises based on their name value and that is the only way they have ever been sold to me. I recognize them as great, but I can’t get excited about them. In fact I’ve had to wait for there to be enough non Nintendo franchise games on the system for me to start caring.

Actually going back to the Nintendo Conference nearly all their announced games relied on nostalgia to sell them to us. Plenty of people got excited about them, amazing so. I couldn’t understand it, until they revealed Goldeneye; I was tearing up. That’s great for those have been on the bandwagon the whole time, but what about us that might be interested, but have been with the non-Nintendo systems through their lives.

I didn’t mean to go on. So that’s it. E3, the biggest week in gaming, gave me Journey, a downloadable title for 2011 and seriously considering getting a Wii buying most of the games used.

Note: I am not excited about inFamous 2, more curious and not because of E3, but because of my posts.

Probably the most talked about part of inFamous is the moral choice mechanic. The idea is to split the choice between good and evil options, which can be interesting, but the criticism has been leveled at how it is handled. Reasoning in later choices makes less and less sense as you continue on. The options in the early choices are both justified, while later ones seem to prove that you have a problem with rational thought (if you choose the evil route that is). None of the choices are ambiguous (my notes say otherwise, but I cannot think of any examples and after checking the wiki my memory seems better than my notes), both options inevitably lead to the same missions and story with nary a meaningful change between them. The major options are also as smooth as a large clunk in the middle of a symphony. Using Corvus Elrod’s terminology they are closer to developer moments than player moments even if they are billed as the latter. I’d also hate to meet the person who genuinely choose to go the evil route who wasn’t trophy whoring.

This gets the major criticisms of the system (and really all major morality systems in games these days) so now we can move on to what this particular system represents. Joe Tortuga has said that inFamous equates good with altruism and evil selfishness. This is a great starting point, but I think there is a little more to it than that. Cole has the same material motivation regardless of what he does: to get him and his friends out of the city. The moral choice system is all about how you go about it and why you do it. It’s a game looking to the morality of methods rather than what you are doing. Or it is during the story moments at least. The ludic system outside of mission rewards conflicts with this assessment, because once you’ve chosen a path you have to stick with it if you are going to get all the upgrades and you’re going to need them for the later enemies.

If I can be so bold as to asses the philosophical implications of what you are doing in this super powered conflict, the choices and role you set for yourself is one between Heinleinian co-operation and protection versus Randian domination and selfishness. The good morality is where Cole seeks a path of noble co-existence and in the face of a threat protection of the weaker race. The evil spectrum, however, seeks a path of conflict and eventual subjugation by purporting your genetic superiority over the heads of the masses. Does Cole choose to follow an ideal of co-operation to foster better results through more difficult and trying means or follow the greater good through methods of conflict believing he knows best because he is superior? Or to put it in terms more of my intended audience can understand; it is the Professor Xavier school of thought verses the Magneto one.

Or at least that is the conflict as the designers try to portray. Like I said in my previous posts, the earlier sections of the game are clearer and follow a vision while the later ones tend to get muddled and lose sight of the implied objective to the mechanic. The first two choices are prime examples of this. Do you choose share the food equally to those that need it or do you keep it for yourself because you can? Do you fight the riot cops mano-a-mano because you have the strength to do so or do you sick them on the crowd and make the fight much easier and bloodier? There is no one to force you one-way or the other. To quote Ayn Rand, “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me” seems very apt to the evil half of this dichotomy. Had they stuck to Heinlein/Rand conflict the morality meter might have made sense; it would have given us concrete attributes that we can map the morality meter to. This is a well-worn conflict, (X-Men, Harry Potter, Dragon Ball Z, Marvel’s Civil War, He-man and the Masters of the Universe) though this is the first time I’ve seen it represented within an individual instead of two opposing individuals/groups.

As it stands in the later sections of the game a host of issues come up where the morality meter loses focus of what it was representing. Why would the police help you in terms of the prison riot, after you’ve taken missions to fight and kill them? Why would people call to you for help with their surveillance problem if you’ve been indiscriminately murdering people left and right? Why would a photography student want to take pictures of you doing stunts knowing you could electrocute him just as easily? Why would you capture Alden and not kill him and remove the threat period? Why would you blow up a gas tank to weaken an enemy and harm civilians when you have already fought and beaten several of this type already? And why in the hell would people attack you, ineffectively I might add, when you could zap them into nothing?

These problems can be solved had Sucker Punch really worked out what they wanted from the morality system. At times it’s about a conflict of how you do things and at others a straight up good/evil morality play, ignoring the relativism of such a comparison. Such a good and evil dichotomy has to recognize they are two sides of the same coin differing only by margins. The margin they chose in this case is method. But they ignore that and in same cases offer two completely unrelated options. The only way for the story to reach its conclusion as scripted would be to focus on method, which is a far more interesting concept than what we ended up with. In that case when people talk to you while you are choosing the infamous path, they would focus on ends, knowing appealing to your means would be pointless. It would also bring the title into alignment with the meaning. Famous vs. infamous isn’t a question of what you do, but how people perceive you. It’s one of the reasons I find the choice about the poster to be actually meaningful rather than extraneous. Either way you are technically famous in that a lot of people know who you are. For example you can be famous for your card playing, meaning you’re really skilled, or you could be infamous for your card playing, meaning you are a known or suspected cheater. The end result is the same; it is the method and meaning of what you do that matter.

This conflict is especially interesting in light of the game’s ultimate mission. It was to make Cole capable of making the difficult choices; able to do what is needed to be done. Exploring the morality of how he does it is made even more important, because Kessler doesn’t care how you do it, just that you do. This is fine and makes him a better than average villain (for a video game). While the game’s entire premise is worked up on how you do it rather than what you end up doing. It gives you no options in that regard and recognizes the limitations of the medium, but instead of embracing that and working with it to proved an interesting how assessment, it uses it as a crutch for some subpar morality meandering.

(*minor spoilers*)

While the story of inFamous is told through the standard methods of cutscenes, found messages and calls from allies and mission handlers, it adds aftermath commentary. In the form of propaganda the game provides story related and world building feedback on your actions. The messages only relate to the main story missions so the words don’t change, but the effect they have on you as the player as you relate to your in game character is different.

The first of the two main propaganda machines are the USTV acting as the government mouthpiece with its all too peppy and creepy anchorwoman assuring the public that everything is all right. It’s an obvious fact that we as a city are not the intended audience for these news reports, because anyone with working eyes can see they are lies. They display everything as sunny and keep to the script. All the credit of any good Cole has managed to accomplish is given to military efforts. The picture of the city is painted rosy, saying that things have almost returned to normal within the quarantine. It subtly leads the player to realize that no one will ever leave Empire City to make sure no one can contradict the government. It is truth control.

The other voice is the Voice of Survival, who starts as a teacher and motivator on how the people can survive their new circumstances and in some cases acting as a public service announcement as in the case of the children needing coats and blankets. He later turns into a propaganda machine himself, creating panic and subverting any good being done in the city by deliberately misappropriating credit and painting Cole out as the enemy regardless of Karma level. The turning point begins when Cole gets out of bed and steps into the public, right after the food drop. Through most of the game we think of him as popularity hog, noting that fear and panic causes more people to listen to him. But he is not a propaganda machine for himself, but was working for the First Sons the whole time. Here good intentions gone awry.

The dichotomy between them is not really right wing vs. left wing that so much of our modern news networks have become about. Truth control and keeping to the message is not unique to the right as American political news channels would have you believe; it has been used extensively by the left in communist dictatorships. Nor is the anti-government, rabble rousing anarchy movement so entrenched in the left as European history would have you believe; if Texan governor calling for secession and the many militia cells around the country are any indication. Instead the dichotomy on display is one of power. USTV instills power into the hands of the establishment as a faceless entity (again not a construct of communism and the left). The Voice of Survival instills the power into total opposition of the others’ messages regardless of idealistic consistency. (I know I’m going to get flack for this) Think of it is as Lawful Evil vs. Chaotic Evil. The dichotomy is not in purpose or method, but in who benefits.

USTV is far more obvious in both its purpose and backer (I wonder if it is because of their more structured nature and obvious lies to anyone in the quarantine). The Voice of Survival not so much. Only at the end when we see him as a pawn in the hands of Kessler and the First Sons does his motives make any sense. He isn’t anything, but anti-Cole and anti-government. Grievances and ideals do not matter so much as personal motives for the propaganda. His lies are not as obvious, because anything happening on one island has no way of informing others on the other island or even other parts of the same island. The Voice of Survival props himself up as the news hound of Empire City against the obvious lies of USTV. He becomes more credible regardless of his lawlessness.

Of course that is not to say Cole does not participate in his own version of propaganda. He has no TV stations or broadcast equipment (although I don’t know why not with what else his electricity powers can do). He has the advantage of being on the ground. His actions speak far louder than either of the propaganda machines. If you stop out of your way to save a fallen person by electro-shocking them back to life, you have changed that person’s mind about you. If you suck out their life force, then those around you will see you for what you are. The selfish and violent verses the altruistic and precise and which one you let the citizens of the city see. Additionally, one of the side missions is for you to choose which poster a design student will plaster all over the city. Neither has a message in anything but what the art conveys. ‘Do you want to be seen as a savior or as a dominator?’ the game asks? These posters will be with you until the end of the game and will subtly alter the perception of you. They are your propaganda as you try and disprove the TV talking heads or confirming what they’re saying.

Like the milieu of inFamous, propaganda is something else that gets shuffled to the sidelines. In the opening chapters it is a constant thorn in your side and a major plot point. It is what starts the riots. Later It becomes nothing but an in game commentary of how different parts of the world take the unfolding events, omitting your actions in them, so Sucker Punch didn’t have to record two different videos, but it has none of the impact or worthiness it did in the beginning. Once my posters were plastered on every wall of the warrens I never felt threatened or othered by the city regardless of what these two sides said about me. Again a great chance for commentary or uniqueness lost on the developers.

Also one last note to developers: If you have audio tracks that are unrepeatable and interesting, DON’T PLAY TWO OF THEM AT THE SAME GODDAMN TIME.

I would place the introduction of inFamous as one of the better opening levels in open world gaming. I say this because it sets the stage to not just for the game, but also more importantly for the milieu. Milieu is the French word for environment or setting, but it means more in literary theory and in stories where it is about creating an evocative setting as much or more so than characters, it is treated as a major character. It becomes as important if not more important than those whom the story follows. We see the explosion and then experience ground zero. It is a tutorial of the platforming, but at the same time it creates a sense of place. We are in a parking garage, now destroyed and crumbling. A metaphor for what will befall the city, both physically and societal.

Then the next cinematic paints a picture of a pure Thomas Hobbes style society arising from the isolation and the destructive factions making a grab for power. Life becomes nasty, brutish and short. The first two missions further emphasize this by placing you in a context where you are fighting for survival. Both the mad dash to the food drop and then the desperate attempt to escape the island show the effects the breakdown of society have had. These two missions give the impression of desperation and need. It was these moments that sucked me into the world of inFamous. I could put aside the floaty controls and the imprecise fighting mechanics. Despite what happens after those two missions in regards to milieu I still felt a connection to whatever dim representation of the setting remained. The game from the end of the second mission onward does all it can to undermine its own setting.

There are too many structural inconsistencies that I constantly see. Only when enemies show up and start shooting does panic break out. There isn’t even a subdued panic from people of having their world turned upside down. The citizens are not used to this world, why would they act calm and collected in the face of starvation, plague and death. They wander about blissfully down the sidewalk as if nothing is wrong and their tax returns are already in the mail. Even when enemies do show up the citizens don’t always behave accordingly. They will run in a panic to get away, towards the firing gangs. They will antagonize them by throwing rocks at the machine gun and shotgun toting bad guys. I was promised a closed off, fish out of water refugee like city and I get a New York surrogate with a convenient reason I can’t take the Holland Tunnel out of there.

The impression I was given was that we were in a metropolis turned third world outpost due to the tragedy and blockade. Apart from citizen stupidity let me list a few things that do not ring true with the milieu established. Off the top of my head:

-cars are still running with plenty of gas and people with a desire or apparent need to use them
-generators can restart themselves and are out in the open instead of heavily defended and concealed
-police being any force of law and order rather than another faction vying for control or else not having broken down completely without any governmental support
-the trains being of any use or people having anywhere to go using them (the mission where they are used as a prison for hostages actually makes sense)
-being able to restart an entire city’s power regardless of what Cole is capable of, because there is no such thing as a self-sustaining generator
-not speaking about AI specifically, but why are people out on the streets at all if there are roving gangs of death squads about

Given the intro, none of these make any sense. Cole outright told us all law and order was shot, gangs had risen up and installed anarchy. People were being killed and raped left and right. No one was allowed in or out of the city, enforced by a military blockade. Why aren’t the police effectively another gang, but instead going about business as usual? Where is all the gasoline coming from, because it doesn’t seem to have run out after two weeks? This is for both the cars and portable generators. Plus who would waste it on a car in the first place? Speaking of which, where was the city’s power grid getting its fuel? If there is so much crime, killings, rapes and perpetual darkness, then why are people out and about? Shouldn’t they be holed up in their houses most of the time? Why are people excited about the trains running when they can’t go anywhere?

I can excuse the generators since their ludic and narrative purposes are too intrinsic, but at least give us perpetual rolling blackouts. I felt unease and minor terror when I wandered into areas where they didn’t have electricity yet, because it was dangerous for Cole. Once the power was up and running there was no threat anymore to the avatar or to any of the story elements. You can only feel society’s fear and unease if at points you feel it yourself because of how it affects your avatar in the game world. As long as there was a light switch around, I never felt threatened. The few moments where the game seems to know what it should be doing with its milieu are undoubtedly the best of the game. As I said before the opening is pitch perfect, additionally the introduction of each new island presents a sense of terror of the unknown and of unrelenting chaos. When you stepped out of the tunnel or made it over the bridge you get that sense of dread. The lights you worked so hard to restore are gone; you are at ground level and are being shot at before you can even get your bearings. For a fleeting instant you ask yourself, what have these people been going through while I was fixing the other island? A third point was a mission where you protect the engineers who are fixing the bridge between the first and second island. You actually feel like you are making a difference and getting things back to normal. Everything else seems superficial compared to this mission because squads of the Reapers and Dustmen trying to stop you for it would affect their territorial control. Finally the side mission called Gang War simply for unleashing a level of chaos on the screen that you don’t see anywhere else in the game. It was so volatile I could not see what I was shooting and may have only done half the work as the two gangs proceeded to kill each other. These instances reinforced the degradation of society promised by the game.

Empire city is presented as such an important place and in the need of a superhero. The city was hurting and it was up to us to try and put it right. That was the most interesting part of the game: the restoration of society from chaos. The story, villains, and conspiracy were passable, being primed from a comic book aesthetic. I have no problem with the comic book aesthetic, but the intrinsic promise- the set of rules the beginning of a creative work puts down that are the core of the experience that creative work intends to deliver- is betrayed and not lived up to by taking it’s cue from the wrong comic book. It tries to copy the structure of Spiderman when it should have looked to the world building of Brain Wood’s DMZ.

At the time I was playing infamous I was coincidentally reading Brain Wood’s DMZ, the comic series where new American civil war has turned Manhattan into a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). No one is allowed out and only specific people let in, like the main character Matty Roth as an embedded journalist. Gangs have carved out territory for themselves, these new nations measured in blocks. Electricity is only accessible for an hour a day and only from certain buildings. The island is stratified with no one daring to go past   st street. The two setups are too similar for no one to have not noticed. It wouldn’t have been hard to slightly adjust certain things for the presence of super humans. In fact doing so merely exacerbates the conflict already there. It becomes a test of wills only with the strength to back it up contained not within numbers, but individuals.

The similarities continue into the details. The two news organizations in DMZ and inFamous are practically identical, both have become docile mouthpieces of the government and not based off of stupidity and laziness like in real life, but stooges that understand where the power is. Then there is the opposing mouthpiece that pretty much exists to counter the “legitimate” news program. Both Matty’s girlfriend from DMZ and Cole’s from inFamous are medical professionals in training. In DMZ this is used to give Matty and the reader a glimpse into the unsanitary conditions and hardships of the people. InFamous uses it to suggest and imply what DMZ shows and represents. Power struggles are a common theme of the two works, both on the inside and influences from the outside. Rooftop living arrangements become necessary, because street level is no longer safe. Though the rooftops aren’t used as much by inFamous’ citizens. But then I’ve already told you they have as much survival instinct as a suicidal tightrope walker.

I am not saying inFamous should have been DMZ. That is stepping beyond my realm as a critic, but I am going to point out the faults of one work, especially in light of someone else doing it better in another. It’s even more a missed opportunity since inFamous apes the comic book aesthetic and DMZ is, wow, a comic book. InFamous takes too many of its conventions from the wrong sources. It sets up the bad guys and the controllers of chaos and anything bad can be traced to them. Everyone else is a non-entity with no sense of survival instinct or power. Somehow there are no “little” bad guys trying to scrape their tiny slice of the pie when the main psychic villains fall.

InFamous sees itself as a superhero story in a metropolis turned Wild West town, sort of. When really it’s a story of a DMZ (both comic and real world) setting where super powered humans have arisen. They looked to Spiderman, X-Men and the rest of Marvel’s cannon when they should have looked to Brain Wood’s work, Escape from New York and hell the real-life New York blackout of ’77.

The game was a missed opportunity and given the game’s ending I get the feeling the sequel will have a different milieu, even if it takes place in Empire City. It seems like the designers didn’t quite get what made me want to keep playing the game. It wasn’t the side missions, or the characters, good lord no. It was the city itself and the what-if the game presented about society, which doesn’t seem too much like a what-if anymore.