Negative Gamer

If you wanted to play Modern Warfare 2 early you were in trouble. You had to accept a free flight to Santa Barbara, be put up in a nice hotel for a couple of days and play the game with your journalist buddies. It’s hard sometimes.

Ars Technica have an interesting article up about the review day and some of the wider issues it brings up. The article is all about the review event and although stops short of passing judgement, acts as a nice eye-opener. Essentially Activison know their game is big enough that they can make some journalists bend their code of ethics to fit. To me that’s very worrying, if a little expected.

The fact some reviewers and publications went to this press day and didn’t acknowledge it in the review makes me loose my already waning faith in most gaming press. I know I’m in the minority of people who read these reviews, but to me it really matters where the game was played. I don’t so much care what’s in the game -I can usually guess that- I want to know how it makes you feel, how good it is.

Image: Flikr/tkksummers

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Dear Brütal Legend,

I don’t know of any good way of putting this so I’m going to come right out and say it: it’s over.

Believe me, I wish I didn’t have to do this. I still love you and treasure all the good times we had. You made me laugh, we had a lot of fun and even though I was never as into Metal music as you, you took me to a place where I finally learned to appreciate it. Well, almost. Still, our time together was full of moments that will stay with me for a long, long time and I don’t regret a single second – for all of these things, I thank you.

When I introduced you to my friends, some of them didn’t understand you. You were different from who they expected you to be and they shunned you; some of the others even laughed at me for wanting to be around you. I defended you every time because I know that there’s so much to love – but now I realise that it’s been eating away at me. What I’m talking about is… well, it’s complicated.

You do things a little differently, Brütal. Sometimes you seem like you’re all about fighting up close and personal, then the next you pull in all of these strategy elements. I know it must have been hard growing up with a hack-and-slashing father and a strategic mother but it leaves a lot of people unsure as to how you want them to treat you and sometimes, to put it bluntly, you’re not much help.

I really noticed it for the first time when I learned the solo that lets you plant or carry around a rally flag which tells freshly created troops where to gather. This is an invaluable tool, Brütal, the successful use of which can easily decide between a win and a loss. Yet, although the solo is easy to find, there is no requirement to pick it up – and when I did, you never bothered to explain to me how to use it effectively, or even tell me how important it was.

A quick tutorial wouldn’t have been too much to ask, surely,but what made it worse was that when I failed to employ it properly you hurt me for it. It’s almost like you wanted to hurt me, Brütal, like you were setting me up for a fall! I figured it out eventually but I had to do it on my own because you just weren’t telling.

I wish I could say that was the only time but it’s a theme that has repeated itself over and over again throughout our relationship. Remember the time I tried to play defensively? I did it because the previous time we’d played together you asked me to defend my stage from an onslaught, so I thought that being defensive was important to you. It was only natural for me to try to repeat my success, so it took me a while to work out that really you wanted me to be daring and aggressive. Once I worked that out, the Good Times rolled again but it was no thanks to mixed messages from you.

Or how about the time you made pains to explain to me how to order individual units around? For once I thought you were being straight with me but then later it turned out that you hardly ever wanted me to do it in practice; once again you punished me for taking you at your word. I’m not a bad loser, understand, but if the reason that I lose is because you weren’t being honest with me, or didn’t explain the rules to me properly, then you’re not being fair.

It felt like you weren’t pulling your weight, sometimes even like you were being deliberately confusing. I had to work doubly-hard to understand you or get you to respond well to me. It was only because those aforementioned Good Times were so great that I forgave you every time, even though at some points I needed to call up some of your ex-boyfriends just to exchange notes and get some tips on how to deal with you.

After trying so hard to figure out what you wanted from me, I thought we were going to be okay but then your designer, Tim Schafer, came out with a statement to the effect ‘you’re playing it wrong.’ I’ve got immense respect for the man, Brütal, believe me. I don’t think I ever told you this, but I used to go out with Psychonauts and Grim Fandango, both also by Tim Schafer – so it’s no wonder I was attracted to you despite your predilection for headbanging and making funny hand gestures. When he said those things, though, it hurt.

How could he say I’m playing you wrong when you never bothered to reach out to me and tell me properly how you wanted to be played? At best it was cheeky; at worst insulting.

From that moment I understood why some of my friends never had the patience for you that I did, despite everything great about you. Indeed, it took me a long time to let go – I couldn’t do it until you were 100% complete. I’ll still talk fondly of you, Brütal. I’ll still try to persuade friends of mine to give you a fair chance. Hell, let’s face it, you’re pretty hot and I wouldn’t necessarily pass up a chance to get together again some time in the future, you know – just for a fling. But I’ve moved on, for now – I no longer feel the need to practice my post-marriage signature (it’s too bad, really: Peter Silk-Legend would have been an awesome name) and I realise that there are other games I want to see.

No longer yours,

Peter “SurplusGamer” Silk-Legend

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4. Well Hello My Dear PS3, Would You Like To See My Mod-Chip Etchings?
5. Dear Gamers, Please Form Your Own Opinion

Andrew Russell’s much touted Dream Build Play entry Dark has become somewhat of an underground hit for Xbox Live Indie Games. Tagged explicitly in nearly all media coverage as an “art game”, it is with reasonable difficulty that one sits down to play and review. After Russell’s extremely formal introduction and development précis, the release notes describe the title as a “very dark, atmospheric puzzle-platformer”. With labels and genre conventions noted and in place, is Dark a clarifying rally as to the service’s creative potential, or an artistic misstep? Thanks to Andrew Russell for providing us with a review code for the game.

Dark is a linear, interactive experience played as the title suggests, in almost total darkness. The five levels of the full game can be traversed in one 20 minute sitting without difficulty; something made explicit in the game’s press release. Whilst there are definite conventions of narrative at play there is no character development or story arc past game start and game end. In beating its final puzzle, the player is closing the back of a thin, single chaptered book emblazoned with lavishly detailed cover art; themselves content but yearning for a little more substance. After quaffing aperitifs and wandering listlessly through the games credits, there is a clutching sigh at the knowledge that dinner itself is off menu this evening. In similar vein to the recent Flash based indie darling Small Worlds, Dark is a game of pure exploration with progression through each stage the game’s only real goal. The dimly lit aesthetics provide the source of Dark’s puzzles with dead ends triumphed by discovered paths and mechanical activation waiting patiently in gloomy shadow to be unearthed by swinging torchlight.

Should have gone to Specsavers.

Regardless of personal opinion on either Cyan World’s Myst or Riven, it is impossible to deny their success in creating atmosphere in environment. Dark can stand proud in its similarly confident audio-visual approach, with a beautifully sombre piano driven soundtrack and a simplistically minimal use of colour and shape in level build and geometry. Character design however is less than inspired with the controllable protagonist’s rhombus stare somehow inciting a sense of calculated laziness. The googly eyes are at once stiffly naïve yet constantly probing with a shifty, Action Man trademarked pupil shift. They serve up similar annoyance to that of Binary Tweed’s Clover: a great game soured by unpalatably cute, N64-era Rareware character design. The avatar, if presented as a simple end-up quadrilateral would suggest a reasoned decision making in its faceless motion; the current Simpson’s eyeball pair an aggravating cop-out.

The development difficulty here lies in the game’s draw itself. With player character casting its own algorithmic shadows and sharing colouring with the eponymous “dark”, the eyes become a necessity in order to let player remain in control of their position even with lights out. Still, it seems that it would have been possible to reach a workable solution without having to cheapen the look of the game itself with an animated Nickelodeon gaze.

An “art game” convention.

The lack of proper instruction is perhaps one of Dark’s greatest assets. On being dropped into the game proper, we assume that the rolling anthropomorphised shapes are enemies to be avoided. That these life-forms; the only living characters encountered throughout Dark’s lonely journey are immediately assumed to be hostile speaks loudly for Russell’s design approach for the title. There is no loss or consequence, only exploration.

An intriguing decision is the inclusion of glimmering baubles littered throughout the games five stages. Acting as hints as to direction, these twinkling obtainables are occasionally placed slightly out of the player’s natural derive, hinting at a purpose outside of path finding. However, there is a quandary of purposefulness in the lack of reward or acknowledgement for collection. In two trips through the games short journey, both ignoring and actively pursuing the trinkets, I found little difference in my experience. While we can speculate, as per the placement of the harmless triangular beings, that the collection (or non-collection) is a comment on gaming convention as per Braid’s infuriating star hunt, in Dark’s case the decision seems less clear-cut, lacking the conviction of Jonathan Blow’s time-manipulation puzzler.

Stuck in gum.

Particularly irritating is the game’s loose, floaty control. While precision is demanded with no great frequency, the finicky system for jumping is impossible to ignore. Your character feels sticky with its diamond complexion contributing to a difficulty in platform navigation: its midpoints sometimes sticking on hovering edges like a jumper snagged on a door handle. The avatar’s indecision as to which surfaces offer ample jumping propulsion is a strange but unfortunately common occurrence. In a niggling concern, when leaping from angled platforms, the game sometimes demands a positional shift before accepting its command. Though progress is seldom impeded by these control issues, it is worth noting the minor frustration in falling from height despite tapping A as your character careens down a moving platform’s galvanised edge.

This minor issue prevents a true symbiosis between player and gameworld as total absorption is lost momentarily. Perhaps an excusable irritant in a standard run and jump, but a jarringly disappointing shudder during such serene focus.

A few other points worth mentioning:

• At 80 MS Points, Dark is an absolute steal. Still, if short on currency, the downloadable trial allows you to experience the game’s best stage. Negotiating the colour wheel (as depicted by the box art) is by far the game’s defining moment, the move from a freezing, all-encompassing murk to a sudden influx of warm light a phenomenological joy.
• Do not play Dark on mute. In dialling down the volume you’d miss what is possibly the best implemented, most professional sound track currently featured on an XBLIG title.
• It is possible to jump to any stage from the very beginning. Although it is nice to be presented with the option, it is hard to know why you’d want to skip a section on first play.
• Dark is indeed only 20-30 minutes long. While it is difficult not to come away from the game’s conclusion with the desire for more, the negligible length should not leave you feeling short-changed. As a tightly paced proof of concept it delivers in droves.

Dark’s position as an “art game” is questionable. While quite possibly the truest example on the service of a game exhibiting an “art game” mentality, somehow it is the very absence of pretentious, textual twaddle that is both its saving gaming grace, and its title placard shun. Where a title like Time Flows But Does Not Return actively boasts of its attempt to “use gameplay as a way to express” or “communicate with others”, Dark is content to present itself as a videogame first and foremost, with any ideas or thoughts generated of clear secondary importance.

What the game does achieve is a wonderful example of a production capable only through the interactive medium of gaming. Ignoring 2D platforming archetype, Andrew Russell builds an eerily soothing space reliant on few of the genre’s rules. Though light on actual puzzles and platforming, Dark is an excellent exercise in atmosphere suited perfectly to occasional playthroughs in excited, exploratory observation. Despite being let down by aspects of art direction and control, the game remains more than a sum of its parts.

You should play this game if…

…you fancy a compositionally short but long-memorable artistic experience sans pressure and platforming convention.

Final Score

Slight criticism aside, Dark is a confident foray and gentle borderline entrance into art gaming exhibiting a rare mastery of atmosphere through its namesake aesthetic and gorgeous soundtrack.

(What does this score mean?)

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