I am the Bat

Late to the party again. Last year, shortly after the hotly anticipated release of Rocksteady's sequel, I got the idea to see what all the fuss was about and fired up Arkham Asylum. Truth be told, I'd picked the game up months before on a Steam sale, but my first attempt to play the game had been stymied by mouse and keyboard control frustrations. So I reinstalled, fussed about for a while reassigning controls (nothing should ever be mapped to the middle mouse button), and donned the cape and cowl. Arkham Asylum surpassed my expectations and lived up to the hype. I was amazed by the depth of the experience, the thoughtful touches (like a codex that gives you a complete background on every character), and the simple yet addictive combat. Context sensitive controls were an occasional frustration, although when compared to the Assassin's Creed series I think Rocksteady put much more consideration into their interface. I enjoyed the story and stuck around to complete all the optional content. Pretty high praise from a gamer who often doesn't finish games at all. Coming straight off my marathon Batman session last November, I was excited to get my hands on the sequel, Arkham City. Christmas was around the corner, and sure enough, the game appeared under the tree. Batman lost an important battle right away, though: the battle for my time. With a rapidly growing list of new games to play, Batman took his place at the back of the line, and was subsequently forgotten. Until now. Batman is back in a big way. One thing you hear in almost every review is that these games give you an incredible feeling of being Batman. I find myself muttering, "I am the night," quietly to the monitor as I sneak up behind clown themed thugs. I thought Arkham Asylum had gone out of the way to include just about every villain. It turns out I don't know the first thing about Batman's hit list. Arkham City is big, but not in the same way that Grand Theft Auto IV or Skyrim are big. AC's main map encompasses a few square blocks of city with about a dozen enterable structures, but they tend to be rather densely packed with secret objectives, side missions, and (of course) plenty of enemies to beat to a pulp. While Batman may have come off as more static than stoic in Rocksteady's last tour of duty, be prepared to marvel at the license they've taken with the iconic comic characters this time around. Batman may talk about being ready to break his "one rule" in his big screen adventures, but by the midway point, you'll really start to wonder how far the caped crusader is willing to go to set things right in Arkham City. Rocksteady pushes Batman to the brink, and they weave a tale that lives up to the potential.

Cloudy with a chance of DRM

When last I posted, I discussed the upcoming re-release of Final Fantasy VII for PC. After a false start and some terrible PR, Square finally opened sales on Tuesday morning without a whisper of fanfare.

So, what do fans get for their $10 this time around?

On the positive side, the new release supports high resolution displays and gives players to option to fix the aspect ratio in software if they choose. At higher resolutions, previously obscured details on the 3D characters are visible, for good or for ill. The FMV sequences have also been cleaned up significantly (though I cannot even guess how this was accomplished), and look surprisingly sharp on high resolution displays. However, because the backgrounds are 2D mattes, there is no enhancement to the environments, which often seem pixelated and blurry compared to the characters. Controls are fully customizable from the game launcher, with decent support for both keyboard and gamepad configurations. Small, but appreciated improvements, to be sure.

Less exciting is the draconian DRM Square has forced upon us. Bafflingly, not only does this title require online activation, but Square has opted for the most hated of DRM techniques: limited installations. Each purchase of the game is tied to a key which may be activated only three times. Further activations require the player to contact Square support by telephone. Also, despite boasting recoded and improved sound configuration, Square has included the lowest fidelity music we have ever seen in this game. The music seems to be similar to the horrific midi tracks from the 1998 release, but now is also missing most of the bass "instruments" from those midi files. Fortunately, the community has already come to the rescue, releasing instructions for replacing the music files with the more appealing PSX originals (and hopefully soon some orchestral versions!)

The bizarre features announced a month ago are here as well. While cloud saves may be useful to some small percentage of the community who either switch platforms (an eventuality severely limited by the activation restrictions) or who simply experience hard disk crashes (not a frequent enough experience to worry about), the achievements seem pointless, especially considering that they exist only within the game and are awarded for mundane tasks.

With all these flaws, you might think twice before dropping the money on this game, especially if you have purchased it before. My advise would be that if you have the game on your PS3, or if you have a still-functioning PSX disc version and a system that will play it, you can just move right along. But if you have been wrestling with the 1998 PC release, or simply do not have a working version of the game, this is the your best bet. All the fluff and graphical nonsense aside, Final Fantasy VII has remained an iconic game for good reason. I think I'm starting to get a better handle on why exactly that is, and I'll have more to say on the subject tomorrow.

Final Fantasy 7, Again

On Wednesday, Square Enix announced another re-release for Final Fantasy VII, this time for the PC. The announcement boasts a few features nobody ever asked for (Achievements and "Cloud saves", har har) and "optimized performance", which we couldn't possibly need to play a PlayStation 1 game on the PCs of 2012, but there is no mention of any improvements.

After 15 years and more than a dozen separate releases, Final Fantasy VII still carries around some shocking bugs. The one that leaps immediately to mind is that the Magic Defense stat is completely non-functional. Oops! This is only one of several dozen glitches and translation errors which have haunted the game for the better part of two decades. I don't mind Square milking their aging cash cow for all she's worth, but its past time these issues got a little love.

For that matter, if Squenix wants to wring every last dime from the project, maybe they ought to consider a cheap graphical update for modern systems. I'm confident that both the PS3 and PC platforms can handle rendering the cinematic quality character models in real time, replacing the blocky, featureless map models of 1997. And that's a minimalist approach. For a tiny investment, they could replace every character and enemy in the game with a spiffy new high detail model based on the original design. Or, for a more significant amount of work, they could re-imagine the entire project in the graphics of 2012 and sell millions more copies of the same game.

Even if Square is dedicated to leaving the game as-is (maybe they're concerned about their "artistic integrity"), there are unexplored and completely ripe markets for a re-release that make much more sense. I carry a Motorola Razr Android phone with me everywhere I go. It boasts hardware that absolutely dwarfs the capabilities of the original PlayStation. I'd pay $20 for Final Fantasy VII on my phone and call it a great deal. Hell, I'd switch to an iPhone if they made it available on that platform.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, "WTF Square?!?"

By now most everyone who is into MMOs (and more than a few people who aren't) has heard about the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic from Bioware (now under the umbrella of EA) and Guild Wars 2 from ArenaNet. If you also happen to be a follower of Penny Arcade, you've probably also heard more than a little braggadocio regarding the innovations each of these titles claim to bring to the genre. If you're an even bigger dork yet, you may have followed some of the video releases or E3 interviews from either studio, in which design team members extoll the unique advantages of their new ideal over the boring, stagnant existing MMO standard. No need to be coy, folks, we all to whom you're refering.

Now, I want to set the record straight here. I've been an on-again/off-again WoW player since its release nearly six years ago, and I was an employee of Blizzard Entertainment for the better part of that time. I acknowledge that WoW's success does lend some credit to their design choices, but lets be honest: successful does not necessarily equal good. Madden is successful. Halo is successful. Armageddon, Titanic, and Avatar were successful. But setting aside WoW's popularity and considering its design alone, there's still a lot to admire. Like all games, it has flaws, to be sure, perhaps even more than its share.

Both TOR and GW2 have been heard to claim to revolutionize the genre by introducing story to the MMO. I'm honestly not sure where these guys have been for the last two years though: while WoW may have launched with a more or less static story, the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, definitely brought story to the fore. Blizzard went all out, introducing a new mechanic that allowed the world you play in to change based on what part of the story you were in, destroying towns, establishing forward camps, and removing vanquished enemy forces. Wrath even includes two cutscenes that play out at pivotal moments in the story.

I haven't yet had a hands-on look at Guild Wars 2, but my experiences with the Old Republic beta test have been less than mind-blowing. While it does introduce fully-spoken dialogue and Mass Effect style dialogue choice wheels, there's no storytelling revolution to be found here. I guess Bioware and EA will have to fall back on the game's revolutionary gameplay instead.

Oh, wait...

The Internet Hates Dragon Age 2

But I don't.

Honestly, I've tried to understand the horrendous backlash against this game; the vitriol that spurs asshats from across the web to give it a 0/10 rating on Amazon or Metacritic, and I'm still not getting it. Sure, its not Dragon Age: Origins 2, and I understand that many people feel that it's been "dumbed down" for the console crowd (spoiler: it has), but neither of those factors equate to: "This game has absolutely no value" for me.

Which isn't to say the game is perfect. Far from it. But I'll go out on a limb here and say I think I enjoyed it better than DA:O.

The break down:

Story:
Ask ten different people what they thought of the story in DA2 and you'll likely get 10 different answers. That's probably high praise in and of itself; there is enough to the story that it bears interpretation. For the most part I loved it.

Despite the presence of a journal menu which labeled various tasks as "Main Quest", "Secondary Quest", "Companion Quest", or "Side Quest", all narrative quest lines blend rather seamlessly together. Most of my companion quests fed into the main quest in an essential way, as did a healthy portion of the side quests.

The story is segmented into three distinct acts (and a prologue), each bookended by a frame jump back to Varric and Cassandra (who are retelling the story in the "present"). Quests carry over in meaningful ways from act to act, and often left me wondering what would have been different had I made another choice earlier. Its clear that the major elements of the plot are largely unaffected by your choices, or rather that while they occur as a result of your interaction, you only have control of the "how and why".

Each act is also largely defined by a single over-arching plot element. Act 1 is dominated by an expedition to the Deep Roads and preparations for said expedition. Act 2 revolves around the Qunari who have taken up residence in Kirkwall, and Act 3 deals with the central conflict (which should be clear to anyone who has played for over an hour, but I'll omit for the sake of anyone who hasn't picked DA2 up yet or is simply slow on the uptake). Acts 1 and 2 each establish key elements of the final showdown in Act 3, both by setting the stage for the conflict and by explaining Hawke's involvement.

With all that said, you'll notice that there isn't a clear goal laid out in the beginning of the game ala DA:O. Indeed, your final opponent will probably not reveal themselves as such (or at least not in the "end boss" way you'd expect) until the game's closing moments. DA2 chooses to focus instead on a theme and a larger, more generalized conflict. And this is where you'll find the largest variety in opinions. I truly enjoyed the way nearly all your choices play on a central theme, asking the player to answer a question that has as much value in our world as it does in Thedas: "At what cost do we purchase our safety?"

Reviewing Reviewers

It's not abnormal for publications which depend on advertising revenue from the industry whose products they are rating to "play nice" with their reviews. Beyond the incentive of advertising, a publication is unlikely to get exclusive first coverage of an upcoming game after they trashed the studio's last one. Publishers give sneak peaks and early reviews to generate sales, not to scare customers away. And while many of the more popular reviewers exist in cyberspace today, most of these sites are similarly driven by ads and rely on traffic generated by previews and early reviews.

Consequently, most video games recieve scores between seven and ten on a ten-point scale, or three and five on a five-point scale. To add further articulation to the system within such a small range, it has become common for reviewers to rate to the tenth of a point (implying 100 distinct points of articulation on a 10 point scale). I acknowledge that reviewing is always a subjective process, but for me the idea of a 100 point review scale is absurd. To further confuse issues, most of these points are never used by reviewers; the same reviewer that has issued 60 scores of 8.7 has never issued a 4.9.

Of course, many reviewers reserve their actual criticism for the body of the review, offering insight into a game's crippling flaws across the page from a score which is said to represent an "Excellent" game. Ponder that for a moment: what does "excellent" really mean when 50% of all releases by major publishers receive such a rating? In any case, fear of reprisal often prevents legitimate scoring from occurring. Even on sites and blogs which are not affected by this "review backlash" we see the same inflated scores. I once believed that this was due to a sort of standardization that had been led by major game news sites and magazines, but I've spoken to more than a few fans and amateur critics who have assured me their scores are heartfelt.

It is, of course, nonsense. While it may be legitimate to hand out a few "5/5" scores each year, "10/10" probably comes along once or twice in a decade and "100/100" never has. If the top score obtainable represents perfection, and the bottom score obtainable represents utter failure, these extremes should be virtually unobtainable. There has not been a game yet in which no fault can be found. The vast majority of studio releases are deserving of middling scores; they are truly average, mostly forgetable works that have some merit to fans of the genre or particular style. A significant number of games, at least as many that receive above average scores, deserve lower than average scores. These are games which are seriously flawed, either in concept or execution or both, with little value except to die-hard fans of the genre or style. On top, you have the cream, in the 7-9 point range. These are memorable games with broad appeal, or perhaps exemplars of a particular style or genre. While the number of titles represented here should be few indeed, this section probably accounts for almost as many units sold as the rest of the scale combined, as these are often the four or five "must have" titles each year.

The Daily Imperative

A flurry of activity descended with the holiday as we mingled with family from near and far. My wife and I were happy to host my immediate family for Christmas Eve dinner, and over the course of the next several days our holiday activities took us away from home often. Consequently, I have had little time to play games and have not spent any of it with Torchlight, which may be the most potent argument yet that Torchlight is no true heir to the Diablo franchise. However, fault may lie not chiefly with that game, but with another.

I long ago chastised myself to ignore the compulsion to complete daily quests in WoW, but it seems that I am unable to heed my own warnings. Their design is ingenious, providing a multitude of benefits to the game, but I find their pull to be insidious as well. It is as though each day is a window of opportunity forever lost should I fail to complete the appropriate daily quests. And while, certainly, the same quests will be waiting there tomorrow and each day thereafter nigh unto eternity, yesterday's rewards will remain forever lost to me; two Emblems of Frost, one Cooking Badge, one Jewelcrafter's Token, and a small mountain of gold which I allowed to slip through my fingers. These treasures will be available again tomorrow, it is true, but they have value only in their accumulation, and their accumulation is, by necessity, quantized by the daily system. Relative to the player who performs these duties diligently, I will have fallen behind.

The result is that when I have time enough only to play one game, that game is WoW by default.

To many, this system may seem a cruel marketing ploy to hook players and keep them coming back, but I do not believe that this is so. The opposite is more likely true: only a player already dedicated to continuing to patronize the service finds any value in the regular pursuit of daily quest rewards.

This dedication is itself the necessity that birthed this damned invention. In any game that provides content updates from ongoing development, there exists an underlying inequity: content is consumed hundreds of times faster than it is created. A new dungeon that can be completed in 45 minutes likely requires thousands of man-hours to create, test, and deploy. In order to combat this, MMO developers create repetitive content: items with low drop rates, high cost purchasable items, and rare currencies. These obstacles may be frustrating for the average player, but an even larger dilemma arises when one considers the most dedicated players. Such a person will simply repeat the new content until they have all the desired rewards. Historically, players have in one or two days obsoleted content that was months in development, farming new instances, enemies, and repeatable quests in a single marathon session, after which they are left with no challenges for the period of months it will take to create more content.

The ubiquitous reaction to this behavior is indifference. Indeed, early in the life of World of Warcraft, I believe that developers did not concern themselves with this phenomenon. But regardless of who is to blame for this behavior, it does have troubling consequences for Blizzard. MMOs are, by their nature, often competitive games. Even when direct competition is not involved, there are economies of many sorts which tie all players together. In order to make new rewards desirable, new content grants greater bonuses to the player's power. Massive inequities in gear result in substantial advantages in player-versus-player competition, as well as increasing economic dominance, and both work to the detriment of the enjoyment of the majority of players. It does not make good financial sense to alienate 95% of your customers to please the top 5%, and this goes double when one considers that the top 5%, having completed all the available challenges, quickly grow bored and quit the game for greener pastures. To make matters worse, this hardcore community offers more than direct subscription revenue: they are also the most effective and least expensive form of advertising available.

The solution is a design concept referred to as "gated content". Gated content is arbitrarily restricted in order to limit the maximum pace at which players may proceed. The daily quest is perhaps the most visible example of this concept, but this design can be seen in raid and heroic dungeon locks as well as deliberately delayed rollouts, as we have experienced with Icecrown Citadel. The trouble with gated content is that it establishes a pace at which the game will run, and those who do not keep up will be forever behind the pack. There is no making up lost daily quests, and so, when I have only one hour of free time, I feel compelled to log into WoW and race to finish my dailies.