David Merrett

Randomness and chance have always been key parts of game design. The coin, dice, and deck of cards are the dynamic cores to countless games that were around way before computers. 

These are but a few of the comments that graced Matt Lees’ video about Killer is Dead’s Gigolo mode. “Whydon’t you actually talk to these ladies” It’s gigolo mode, not feminism mode

There’s no right way to do zombies; fast, slow, infected, resurrected, they all have their place, but the key appeal of all types of zombies, for me at least, is their relationship to their past human forms. If a zombie doesn’t have a semblance in its look or behaviour of its past life, then its just a monster. 

It’s been said before that stealth games are more about the planning than the execution. I love hiding in a crowd, the shadows, or a cardboard box while I plan my next move. But for some, all that waiting doesn’t feel like much fun. To combat this there has been a trend in stealth games to increase the visual information available to players and to speed up player movement.

There’s something memorable about being given a choice in a game.  It makes you stop and think about the world, the characters, and the consequences.  They’re empowering, even if you know the results are limited by the development budget.  The Bioshock games are about many things but a key theme is agency and choice. 

I’ve found myself on many nights sat with my Vita playing the original Tomb Raider; in part because of the upcoming reboot, but also because my Vita felt underused. For those that haven’t had the pleasure, you play as Lara Croft, the bucksome, inappropriately attired, pistol wielding, video game sex symbol of the nineties.

Whenever a game has a metric for tracking morality or gives you patronising choices between good and evil they end up as aesthetic choices, not moral ones. You don’t feel tested on a moral level by these games but rather use them as a way to enhance the roleplaying.

Repetition is both the heart and bane of video games. There are the delights of gradually improving our skills, getting comfortable with reliable systems, and the moments of triumph and emergence that come from them.

Dishonored is probably my favourite game of the year, or perhaps Journey.  I’ve still yet to play Mass Effect 3 or The Walking Dead as well a bunch of others.  I always find picking a “best of” difficult until I’ve played the main contenders so I won’t.  This has been a year where I’ve intended to play many games, but ended up spending hours on titles I just couldn’t put down, which is a testament to their quality and somewhat distinctly, their addictiveness.  These are the titles that have stopped me from making an informed game of the year choice; the games that have taken up most of my time in 2012.

Dishonored was great. It emphasized stealth, exploration and choice, which combined with the stark, painterly vision of a plague-ravaged London meant it was consistently engaging, despite its numerous flaws.  Like Deus Ex before it, the thrilling sense of freedom in the moment to moment gameplay overrides its wider structural problems; silly AI, unfleshed out powers, somewhat broken and shallow mechanics, and a moral system at odds with the freedoms given.  Who cares if it’s sort of broken though? 

Book 3 is amazing.  Animation, character development, etc, all thoroughly brilliant.  Fire does everything the previous series did but better and has an astounding finale…but you knew that already.  By now it’s no surprise that the show is exceptional so rather than repeat myself endlessly by going through the series I thought I’d mention a few things that I particularly enjoyed about Fire and the show as a whole.

Part of me was wondering if I should just put off this entry and do a piece on both series 2 and 3 together.  I finished season 2 yesterday and almost immediately after ripped the cellophane off box set 3 and began watching.  One slightly blurry, overly caffeinated day later and I’ve nearly finished disk 3 of 4.  Whoops.  However, series 2 deserves it’s own discussion as it really does improve upon series 1 dramatically.

There’s a series out there you should watch.  It’s ostensibly a kid’s television show but has so much more to offer.  It’s a story about the balance of the world being upset, about friendship and growing up, with distinctive characters and some truly heartfelt moments.  The animation is beautiful and the writing is deft, handling its themes with a lightness of touch rare in children’s cartoons.  But after you’ve watched My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, you should also probably watch Avatar: The Last Airbender.  It’s really rather good.

When playing a game I spend an awful lot of time tinkering around in the menus.  It might look like I’m having a disjointed experience, but those moments where I stop actually enhance it.  What I find most satisfying is to pause and look at the map.  I love to see where I am in the world and to plan my route.  Maps are often essential tools for player progress, but they have value far beyond that.  They’re the bridge between the real world and the virtual one we’re about to explore, and when done right can be integral to our experience with a game.

Games might be better placed to frighten us than other media since in many ways it is “you” who is in peril when playing.  But the medium also has unique problems which can present barriers to scaring us.  We have to be able to complete them; if we die we can come back, undermining the sense of danger.  Also, the connotation of death isn’t always that horrifying, often representing failure more than any real sense of death, likewise limiting our fear response.

Silent Hill Downpour is a deeply flawed game, in both its design and technical execution.  However, it has some interesting ideas and sequences which, while not fully explored, manage to compensate somewhat for these problems.  I would go into more depth and review the title properly but what struck me most were the numerous small issues which sapped tension and broke immersion.

We are all pretty aware of stereotypical representations in video games.  We have played as so many muscular, shaven headed white men that they all blur into one dull heroic mass.  Any time we see someone middle eastern, we’re pretty sure the only interaction with them will involve a squeeze of the right trigger.  Then there are the women; so many princesses rescued, so many unrealistically large breasts, tiny waists, pouting lips, come hither eyes, and jiggle physics.  The representation of women is a well worn but important topic that comes up time and again.  But one area where I always thought women were positively represented was Sci-fi video games.

I love stealth. Ever since I first played Metal Gear Solid the idea of sneaking around undetected has appealed to me. One of the reasons is that I find it so captivating is that stealth, along with survival horror, can make you feel truly underpowered yet gripped because of it. You are weak and if they find you you are going to die. So when you do avoid, outwit or toy with the enemies the resultant joy is enormous.

The main God of War Trilogy had breathtaking spectacle and visceral combat, but as a narrative experience, only the first felt meaningful. For a more in-depth deconstruction on the series and the problem with God of War 2 and 3, I highly suggest watching the Extra Credits on the series called No Redeeming Value (http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/no-redeeming-value). However, as much the core series is problematic, the prequel the first God of War, Chains of Olympus is the most coherent and well judged addition to the God of War canon.

Fez has recently been released to almost unanimous acclaim. Over the months and years, between the tent pole shooters and RPGs, it’s been lingering on the horizon; a beautiful curio with an intriguing world twisting mechanic. Now it’s finally here and of course it’s magnificent. Although the core twisting mechanic adds complexity, the game’s appeal is very simple; to explore. Doors lead to more doors, which in turn lead to more doors, and all to densely detailed worlds.

I haven’t played Mass Effect 3 yet. I’ve been replaying the series before the third installment and am currently about half way through Mass Effect 2. Clearly it’s taking longer than I planned. I got a new 360 hard drive and didn’t feel like spending money on a transfer kit purely to carry over my pious Vanguard Jennifer Shepherd (named after the voice actress of course).

There’s a well known observation about the Uncharted series. Nathan Drake is a funny, charming and genuinely likeable character, but he’s also a despicable mass murderer. The Uncharted games are lighthearted adventures in the same vein as Indiana Jones but the shift from Drake chatting amiably with Sully to the third-person shooting is a seemingly jarring one for Drake’s character.

Moral choice in video games has been the subject of a great deal of debate. Much has already been said about the relative merits of different systems and metrics, or whether games should have them at all. So rather than talk about the subject systemically I thought I’d share a few examples from a popular (if old) game where moral choice has been done effectively, more so than games which purposely try to explore morality through moral choice systems.

At the time of writing this it’s a couple of days after the reveal of the debut trailer for The Last of Us, the new game from Naughty Dog of Uncharted fame. It’s too early to know anything real about the game, other than it will be pretty, post apocalyptic and include zombies (or a creature with similar societal consequences). But nevertheless it can already be filed as part of a long lineage of games which deal with some form of zombie-like creature and of games set in an environment where society has broken down, distinct but overlapping categories.

Sonic Generations has been released to mixed, but mostly positive reviews. To celebrate the 20th anniversary the game goes back to the series’ 2D roots in re-imagined levels from the classic games, with 3D levels running parallel to them. In some ways it’s a fair game, the 2D levels going by in a blur of HD nostalgia, even if the added detail makes the experience somewhat headache inducing. The 3D levels still aren’t right though; they seem, and all always have seemed like 2D levels unnecessarily extruded.

Regenerative health is alarmingly popular these days, pretty much every shooter that comes out uses some form of regenerative health system. Some think that the mechanic is intrinsically worse that other health systems in games, while I personally think that while the system is brilliant, the fact that it has become the standard for almost all shooters is problematic.