Metroid Co-creator’s Romantic (And Tragic) Samus Aran Fan Fiction [Gdc10]

How does Metroid producer Yoshio Sakamoto explain his Nintendo DS megahit Tomodachi Collection—still a Japan-only release—to the non-Japanese GDC attendee? By putting high-level Nintendo execs in weird Tomodachi Collection situations, including Sakamoto’s own virtual crush on Samus Aran. More

Hell Hath No Fury Like Video Game’s Take on Dante’s Inferno [Impressions]

Hell is a place of personal sin and redemption, a torturous landscape molded in the immorality of human flesh to create dreadful warnings of what the conclusion of an unrepentant lifestyle has in store. At least that’s what four hours with Electronic Arts’ Dante’s Inferno has taught me. In unraveling what many believe is one of the greatest literary works of mankind and then weaving it back together to provide the backdrop to Inferno, developer Visceral Games is careful to tread lightly in the handling of Alighieri’s vision of hell. Virgil, luminescent in both body and mind, still serves as your tour guide through hell. As you descend through the rings, he stoically explains why unbaptized babies dwell in hell, how virtuous pagans such as Saladin never made it to heaven, why lust, gluttony and avarice can lead you to a life swimming in liquid gold or being consumed by demons. But hell is really just a seething backdrop, filled with living, squirming bas relief, peppered with a few famous and infamous lost souls. The path, the narrative is a product entirely of Visceral Games. When I spoke with the developers in the past, they said that narrative would draw from the real Dante Alighieri’s real-life experiences. That doesn’t really happen. The game opens outside the walls of Acre, Israel, one of the key cities fought over during the crusades. Alighieri is a prison guard in the city at the tail end of the Third Crusade, one of nine or so religiously-sanctioned wars of the time. The real Third Crusade, though, took place before Alighieri’s birth. While the poet was once a warrior, it was during the political wars of Florence, Italy nearly 100 years later in which he fought. In Dante’s Inferno the central story is Alighieri’s pursuit of Beatrice through hell. While the real Beatrice was an important part of Aligheri’s life, he was married and his feelings for Beatrice never extended past his poetry. In fact his unrequited love of Beatrice served as an example of what became known as “courtly love.” Despite breaking so far both from the fiction and reality of Alighieri’s life, Visceral Games’ narrative is a worthy addition to the game, delivering a complex, enthralling story that at least initially appears to be far beyond the typical rescue-Princess-Peach tale of a damsel in distress. This same deft touch of mixing known fiction with new fiction is found in the game’s antagonists. While there is an army of rambling undead and lost souls to contend with, each ring I fought through – Limbo, Lust, Gluttony and Greed – had its own special manifestations of sin. These creatures may seem trite or overboard when viewed apart from the story and your gradual descent into a place of humanity’s worst nightmares, but when happened upon in the game they are frightful, distracting foes. Combined with Visceral’s just treatment of Aligheri’s hell and a far-stretching, but immensely evocative story, these nightmare enemies breath more horror and life into the game. But Inferno is a game that will inevitably be pulled down by its Achilles Heel: It plays like God of War. That is an immense simplification. Inferno has a lot of subtleties I haven’t even touched on like saving lost souls, your own internal struggle between good and evil, but that similarity is not something you can avoid. From the button-mashing mini-game of opening every chest or vase you find, to the chain attacks and floating mid-air combat, Dante’s Inferno plays every bit like God of War. That wouldn’t be a bad thing if it didn’t deliver so much more than the God of War source material. Dante’s Inferno handily deals with deep and disturbing issues of religion, it manages to turn what was essentially a poetic travel guide of hell into a meaningful story and it creates moving, vengeful manifestations of sin that are both startling and fitting. So why did it take the easy road when it came to the core mechanics? God of War is a fantastic game, but it isn’t without its own stumbling blocks in control, camera angles and repetitive actions. Should it be the game that all action titles look to recreate in terms of controls and mechanics? This one issue shouldn’t be enough to derail what my early take on the first half of Inferno makes me think will be a potential game of the year contender, but it is a disappointment. Good thing that the next circle of hell the PS3 and Xbox 360 game has me descending into is Anger.

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Hell Hath No Fury Like Video Game’s Take on Dante’s Inferno [Impressions]

Dark Void Zero Micro-Review: Classic, Focused Fun [Review]

Dark Void Zero is built around not one, but two stories. One is a story of a jet pack wearing hero named Rusty trying to stop the invasion of Earth by aliens. The second is the fiction surrounding the game’s creation, a false history that claims the game is a remake of a classic NES-era title for the Nintendo DSi. The truth is more interesting. Capcom, it seems, decided to make a Game Boy-esque retro version of its third-person action shooter Dark Void , to help promote the game. Dark Void Zero features 8-bit graphics, a genuine retro soundtrack and maybe two hours of gameplay with three difficulty settings. But is the 500-Nintendo Points DSi title a commercial or a game? Loved Classic Controls: Dark Void Zero is everything good about those classic Game Boy titles. The controls are almost painfully straightforward; you move your character around with the directional pad, jump with one button and shoot with the other. That’s it. No super special moves or weapon select. No clicking on thumbsticks or tapping bumper buttons. After I got used to it, and it didn’t take long, it reminded me how much fun it is to be able to focus on the gameplay and not worry about memorizing complex control diagrams. Retro Look: Other Ocean Interactive nailed the look of a classic Game Boy title, but without the pixelation. The game’s tiny graphics pop on the DSi’s touch screen and the top screen is filled with an easy to see map and some scoring details. Bit Bop By Bear: Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary composed all of the music for Dark Void Zero using original 8-bit equipment, or so I was told. The soundtrack is a wonderful selection of upbeat original tunes the push the envelope for what you’d expect to play along a retro title. Dark Void, the more expensive console title, had its moments and I enjoyed the flight and cover systems, but Dark Void Zero is hands-down the better overall gaming experience between the two. I had forgotten just how much I enjoy these simple, straightforward games. For some odd reason, Dark Void Zero reminds me of all of the time I spent playing through Duck Tales on the original Game Boy back when plot and graphics were a distant second to fun. And that’s a very good thing. Dark Void Zero was developed by Other Ocean Interactive and published by Capcom for the DSi on Jan. 18. Retails for 500 Nintendo Points ($5 USD). A copy of the game was purchased for reviewing purposes. Played through the game in medium and easy modes. Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

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Dark Void Zero Micro-Review: Classic, Focused Fun [Review]

Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the highest rated game of the year, winner of more than a few publications’ Games of the Year awards. But that doesn’t mean it did everything right. Noah Wardrip-Fruin , assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz and author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies , pokes some holes in the game’s seeming perfection. The design of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves should make integrating gameplay and fiction easier in two particular ways. First, it’s linear, so there’s no need to worry about unexpected traversals of the fictional space. Second, it’s almost entirely scripted – a matter of how adeptly things are accomplished, rather than what approach is taken or what tasks are attempted – so there’s little chance of unexpected emergence from game mechanics coming into play in places, times, or combinations other than what the developer intended. Given these advantages/limitations, the game’s creators shouldn’t have much trouble making sure that gameplay action is solidly motivated by, situated in, and consistent with the fictional world. And it appears to have worked, at least from the game’s reception. As you probably know, the game has been getting great reviews that call it “a rollicking good yarn” that “gives up nothing to the biggest action films you can think of.” I’ve just started playing myself – thanks to winter break – but I’m actually a bit disappointed in Uncharted 2. It seems as though the gameplay and fiction have more disjuncture than even in the first Uncharted, much less a well-written movie. Consider, for example, the first major chunk of action (after the prologue in the snow). This is set in a museum, and Nathan Drake (the main character) takes pains to explain to his accomplices that he doesn’t want them to bring guns, because they’re just going up against museum guards – and he doesn’t want to kill anyone. This leads to a bunch of non-lethal hand-to-hand. Next it is revealed that one of the accomplices has brought guns. But they’re non-lethal dart guns, so it’s okay, and a bunch of museum guards get tranqed. Then, in the midst of this, Drake is hanging from a roof edge when a guard walks toward it. The game prompts the player to hit the square button – which results in grabbing the guard and throwing him to his apparent death. An accomplice makes a joke of this and Drake makes no mention of this completely out of character action. Others have also found this strange. But the associated joke (the one that starts, “There’s a guy above you!”) also appears to be one of the game’s most-quoted. The next big chunk of action has an even-odder break between the fiction and the design of the gameplay. Here the scenario involves a set of explosive charges that have been placed around a camp. The player character must arm them so that they can be used as part of a diversion. But the process of arming them requires fighting a camp of men armed with automatic weapons – an accomplice says we’ll have to “clear the place out” – and the game neither prompts nor seems to provide the possibility of doing this via stealth. So the only way to play is to have a large firefight against people armed with automatic weapons and presumably aware of the route back to the main camp to warn their fellows. This seems likely to create at least as large a “diversion” (at the wrong fictional moment) as blowing up a few explosives mounted to the sides of the very platforms around which the firefight takes place. It’s as though the fiction authors said “Let’s have them arm some charges” and the gameplay authors said “Let’s have the associated challenge be a firefight with several waves of goons” and no one checked to see if the gameplay made any sense with the context and motivation of the fiction. Starting the game this way was leaving me a bit dispirited, though wanting to press on, given the Edge review’s reassurance that the “opening chapters do not see the game at its very best.” But then I heard the questions I was asking myself. “Did they put that guard’s death in there just so they could work in that joke?” “Why didn’t even a single one of the many goons we fought think to run the short distance to the main camp, if they were cut off from their radios?” I realized – these are exactly the sorts of questions I find myself asking after seeing the same blockbuster action movies on which the Uncharted games model their experience. Arguably this is a sign that the Naughty Dog developers are right on target. It wouldn’t have occurred to me as a goal, but it might be a sign of perfection to have emulated not only the globe-hopping spectacle and history-mashing treasure hunts of well-loved action films, but also their sloppiness in integrating action and fiction. Let’s hope, however, that Uncharted 3 can reconsider this aspect of devotion to its inspirations. Reprinted with permission from expressiveintelligentstudio . Noah Wardrip-Fruin is an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches in the University of California’s first undergraduate computer game degree program, co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio in the Computer Science department, and founded the Playable Media project group in the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program. His most recent book is Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.

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Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the highest rated game of the year, winner of more than a few publications’ Games of the Year awards. But that doesn’t mean it did everything right. Noah Wardrip-Fruin , assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz and author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies , pokes some holes in the game’s seeming perfection. The design of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves should make integrating gameplay and fiction easier in two particular ways. First, it’s linear, so there’s no need to worry about unexpected traversals of the fictional space. Second, it’s almost entirely scripted – a matter of how adeptly things are accomplished, rather than what approach is taken or what tasks are attempted – so there’s little chance of unexpected emergence from game mechanics coming into play in places, times, or combinations other than what the developer intended. Given these advantages/limitations, the game’s creators shouldn’t have much trouble making sure that gameplay action is solidly motivated by, situated in, and consistent with the fictional world. And it appears to have worked, at least from the game’s reception. As you probably know, the game has been getting great reviews that call it “a rollicking good yarn” that “gives up nothing to the biggest action films you can think of.” I’ve just started playing myself – thanks to winter break – but I’m actually a bit disappointed in Uncharted 2. It seems as though the gameplay and fiction have more disjuncture than even in the first Uncharted, much less a well-written movie. Consider, for example, the first major chunk of action (after the prologue in the snow). This is set in a museum, and Nathan Drake (the main character) takes pains to explain to his accomplices that he doesn’t want them to bring guns, because they’re just going up against museum guards – and he doesn’t want to kill anyone. This leads to a bunch of non-lethal hand-to-hand. Next it is revealed that one of the accomplices has brought guns. But they’re non-lethal dart guns, so it’s okay, and a bunch of museum guards get tranqed. Then, in the midst of this, Drake is hanging from a roof edge when a guard walks toward it. The game prompts the player to hit the square button – which results in grabbing the guard and throwing him to his apparent death. An accomplice makes a joke of this and Drake makes no mention of this completely out of character action. Others have also found this strange. But the associated joke (the one that starts, “There’s a guy above you!”) also appears to be one of the game’s most-quoted. The next big chunk of action has an even-odder break between the fiction and the design of the gameplay. Here the scenario involves a set of explosive charges that have been placed around a camp. The player character must arm them so that they can be used as part of a diversion. But the process of arming them requires fighting a camp of men armed with automatic weapons – an accomplice says we’ll have to “clear the place out” – and the game neither prompts nor seems to provide the possibility of doing this via stealth. So the only way to play is to have a large firefight against people armed with automatic weapons and presumably aware of the route back to the main camp to warn their fellows. This seems likely to create at least as large a “diversion” (at the wrong fictional moment) as blowing up a few explosives mounted to the sides of the very platforms around which the firefight takes place. It’s as though the fiction authors said “Let’s have them arm some charges” and the gameplay authors said “Let’s have the associated challenge be a firefight with several waves of goons” and no one checked to see if the gameplay made any sense with the context and motivation of the fiction. Starting the game this way was leaving me a bit dispirited, though wanting to press on, given the Edge review’s reassurance that the “opening chapters do not see the game at its very best.” But then I heard the questions I was asking myself. “Did they put that guard’s death in there just so they could work in that joke?” “Why didn’t even a single one of the many goons we fought think to run the short distance to the main camp, if they were cut off from their radios?” I realized – these are exactly the sorts of questions I find myself asking after seeing the same blockbuster action movies on which the Uncharted games model their experience. Arguably this is a sign that the Naughty Dog developers are right on target. It wouldn’t have occurred to me as a goal, but it might be a sign of perfection to have emulated not only the globe-hopping spectacle and history-mashing treasure hunts of well-loved action films, but also their sloppiness in integrating action and fiction. Let’s hope, however, that Uncharted 3 can reconsider this aspect of devotion to its inspirations. Reprinted with permission from expressiveintelligentstudio . Noah Wardrip-Fruin is an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches in the University of California’s first undergraduate computer game degree program, co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio in the Computer Science department, and founded the Playable Media project group in the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program. His most recent book is Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.

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Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the highest rated game of the year, winner of more than a few publications’ Games of the Year awards. But that doesn’t mean it did everything right. Noah Wardrip-Fruin , assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz and author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies , pokes some holes in the game’s seeming perfection. The design of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves should make integrating gameplay and fiction easier in two particular ways. First, it’s linear, so there’s no need to worry about unexpected traversals of the fictional space. Second, it’s almost entirely scripted – a matter of how adeptly things are accomplished, rather than what approach is taken or what tasks are attempted – so there’s little chance of unexpected emergence from game mechanics coming into play in places, times, or combinations other than what the developer intended. Given these advantages/limitations, the game’s creators shouldn’t have much trouble making sure that gameplay action is solidly motivated by, situated in, and consistent with the fictional world. And it appears to have worked, at least from the game’s reception. As you probably know, the game has been getting great reviews that call it “a rollicking good yarn” that “gives up nothing to the biggest action films you can think of.” I’ve just started playing myself – thanks to winter break – but I’m actually a bit disappointed in Uncharted 2. It seems as though the gameplay and fiction have more disjuncture than even in the first Uncharted, much less a well-written movie. Consider, for example, the first major chunk of action (after the prologue in the snow). This is set in a museum, and Nathan Drake (the main character) takes pains to explain to his accomplices that he doesn’t want them to bring guns, because they’re just going up against museum guards – and he doesn’t want to kill anyone. This leads to a bunch of non-lethal hand-to-hand. Next it is revealed that one of the accomplices has brought guns. But they’re non-lethal dart guns, so it’s okay, and a bunch of museum guards get tranqed. Then, in the midst of this, Drake is hanging from a roof edge when a guard walks toward it. The game prompts the player to hit the square button – which results in grabbing the guard and throwing him to his apparent death. An accomplice makes a joke of this and Drake makes no mention of this completely out of character action. Others have also found this strange. But the associated joke (the one that starts, “There’s a guy above you!”) also appears to be one of the game’s most-quoted. The next big chunk of action has an even-odder break between the fiction and the design of the gameplay. Here the scenario involves a set of explosive charges that have been placed around a camp. The player character must arm them so that they can be used as part of a diversion. But the process of arming them requires fighting a camp of men armed with automatic weapons – an accomplice says we’ll have to “clear the place out” – and the game neither prompts nor seems to provide the possibility of doing this via stealth. So the only way to play is to have a large firefight against people armed with automatic weapons and presumably aware of the route back to the main camp to warn their fellows. This seems likely to create at least as large a “diversion” (at the wrong fictional moment) as blowing up a few explosives mounted to the sides of the very platforms around which the firefight takes place. It’s as though the fiction authors said “Let’s have them arm some charges” and the gameplay authors said “Let’s have the associated challenge be a firefight with several waves of goons” and no one checked to see if the gameplay made any sense with the context and motivation of the fiction. Starting the game this way was leaving me a bit dispirited, though wanting to press on, given the Edge review’s reassurance that the “opening chapters do not see the game at its very best.” But then I heard the questions I was asking myself. “Did they put that guard’s death in there just so they could work in that joke?” “Why didn’t even a single one of the many goons we fought think to run the short distance to the main camp, if they were cut off from their radios?” I realized – these are exactly the sorts of questions I find myself asking after seeing the same blockbuster action movies on which the Uncharted games model their experience. Arguably this is a sign that the Naughty Dog developers are right on target. It wouldn’t have occurred to me as a goal, but it might be a sign of perfection to have emulated not only the globe-hopping spectacle and history-mashing treasure hunts of well-loved action films, but also their sloppiness in integrating action and fiction. Let’s hope, however, that Uncharted 3 can reconsider this aspect of devotion to its inspirations. Reprinted with permission from expressiveintelligentstudio . Noah Wardrip-Fruin is an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches in the University of California’s first undergraduate computer game degree program, co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio in the Computer Science department, and founded the Playable Media project group in the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program. His most recent book is Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.

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Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the highest rated game of the year, winner of more than a few publications’ Games of the Year awards. But that doesn’t mean it did everything right. Noah Wardrip-Fruin , assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz and author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies , pokes some holes in the game’s seeming perfection. The design of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves should make integrating gameplay and fiction easier in two particular ways. First, it’s linear, so there’s no need to worry about unexpected traversals of the fictional space. Second, it’s almost entirely scripted – a matter of how adeptly things are accomplished, rather than what approach is taken or what tasks are attempted – so there’s little chance of unexpected emergence from game mechanics coming into play in places, times, or combinations other than what the developer intended. Given these advantages/limitations, the game’s creators shouldn’t have much trouble making sure that gameplay action is solidly motivated by, situated in, and consistent with the fictional world. And it appears to have worked, at least from the game’s reception. As you probably know, the game has been getting great reviews that call it “a rollicking good yarn” that “gives up nothing to the biggest action films you can think of.” I’ve just started playing myself – thanks to winter break – but I’m actually a bit disappointed in Uncharted 2. It seems as though the gameplay and fiction have more disjuncture than even in the first Uncharted, much less a well-written movie. Consider, for example, the first major chunk of action (after the prologue in the snow). This is set in a museum, and Nathan Drake (the main character) takes pains to explain to his accomplices that he doesn’t want them to bring guns, because they’re just going up against museum guards – and he doesn’t want to kill anyone. This leads to a bunch of non-lethal hand-to-hand. Next it is revealed that one of the accomplices has brought guns. But they’re non-lethal dart guns, so it’s okay, and a bunch of museum guards get tranqed. Then, in the midst of this, Drake is hanging from a roof edge when a guard walks toward it. The game prompts the player to hit the square button – which results in grabbing the guard and throwing him to his apparent death. An accomplice makes a joke of this and Drake makes no mention of this completely out of character action. Others have also found this strange. But the associated joke (the one that starts, “There’s a guy above you!”) also appears to be one of the game’s most-quoted. The next big chunk of action has an even-odder break between the fiction and the design of the gameplay. Here the scenario involves a set of explosive charges that have been placed around a camp. The player character must arm them so that they can be used as part of a diversion. But the process of arming them requires fighting a camp of men armed with automatic weapons – an accomplice says we’ll have to “clear the place out” – and the game neither prompts nor seems to provide the possibility of doing this via stealth. So the only way to play is to have a large firefight against people armed with automatic weapons and presumably aware of the route back to the main camp to warn their fellows. This seems likely to create at least as large a “diversion” (at the wrong fictional moment) as blowing up a few explosives mounted to the sides of the very platforms around which the firefight takes place. It’s as though the fiction authors said “Let’s have them arm some charges” and the gameplay authors said “Let’s have the associated challenge be a firefight with several waves of goons” and no one checked to see if the gameplay made any sense with the context and motivation of the fiction. Starting the game this way was leaving me a bit dispirited, though wanting to press on, given the Edge review’s reassurance that the “opening chapters do not see the game at its very best.” But then I heard the questions I was asking myself. “Did they put that guard’s death in there just so they could work in that joke?” “Why didn’t even a single one of the many goons we fought think to run the short distance to the main camp, if they were cut off from their radios?” I realized – these are exactly the sorts of questions I find myself asking after seeing the same blockbuster action movies on which the Uncharted games model their experience. Arguably this is a sign that the Naughty Dog developers are right on target. It wouldn’t have occurred to me as a goal, but it might be a sign of perfection to have emulated not only the globe-hopping spectacle and history-mashing treasure hunts of well-loved action films, but also their sloppiness in integrating action and fiction. Let’s hope, however, that Uncharted 3 can reconsider this aspect of devotion to its inspirations. Reprinted with permission from expressiveintelligentstudio . Noah Wardrip-Fruin is an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches in the University of California’s first undergraduate computer game degree program, co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio in the Computer Science department, and founded the Playable Media project group in the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program. His most recent book is Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.

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Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the highest rated game of the year, winner of more than a few publications’ Games of the Year awards. But that doesn’t mean it did everything right. Noah Wardrip-Fruin , assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz and author of Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies , pokes some holes in the game’s seeming perfection. The design of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves should make integrating gameplay and fiction easier in two particular ways. First, it’s linear, so there’s no need to worry about unexpected traversals of the fictional space. Second, it’s almost entirely scripted – a matter of how adeptly things are accomplished, rather than what approach is taken or what tasks are attempted – so there’s little chance of unexpected emergence from game mechanics coming into play in places, times, or combinations other than what the developer intended. Given these advantages/limitations, the game’s creators shouldn’t have much trouble making sure that gameplay action is solidly motivated by, situated in, and consistent with the fictional world. And it appears to have worked, at least from the game’s reception. As you probably know, the game has been getting great reviews that call it “a rollicking good yarn” that “gives up nothing to the biggest action films you can think of.” I’ve just started playing myself – thanks to winter break – but I’m actually a bit disappointed in Uncharted 2. It seems as though the gameplay and fiction have more disjuncture than even in the first Uncharted, much less a well-written movie. Consider, for example, the first major chunk of action (after the prologue in the snow). This is set in a museum, and Nathan Drake (the main character) takes pains to explain to his accomplices that he doesn’t want them to bring guns, because they’re just going up against museum guards – and he doesn’t want to kill anyone. This leads to a bunch of non-lethal hand-to-hand. Next it is revealed that one of the accomplices has brought guns. But they’re non-lethal dart guns, so it’s okay, and a bunch of museum guards get tranqed. Then, in the midst of this, Drake is hanging from a roof edge when a guard walks toward it. The game prompts the player to hit the square button – which results in grabbing the guard and throwing him to his apparent death. An accomplice makes a joke of this and Drake makes no mention of this completely out of character action. Others have also found this strange. But the associated joke (the one that starts, “There’s a guy above you!”) also appears to be one of the game’s most-quoted. The next big chunk of action has an even-odder break between the fiction and the design of the gameplay. Here the scenario involves a set of explosive charges that have been placed around a camp. The player character must arm them so that they can be used as part of a diversion. But the process of arming them requires fighting a camp of men armed with automatic weapons – an accomplice says we’ll have to “clear the place out” – and the game neither prompts nor seems to provide the possibility of doing this via stealth. So the only way to play is to have a large firefight against people armed with automatic weapons and presumably aware of the route back to the main camp to warn their fellows. This seems likely to create at least as large a “diversion” (at the wrong fictional moment) as blowing up a few explosives mounted to the sides of the very platforms around which the firefight takes place. It’s as though the fiction authors said “Let’s have them arm some charges” and the gameplay authors said “Let’s have the associated challenge be a firefight with several waves of goons” and no one checked to see if the gameplay made any sense with the context and motivation of the fiction. Starting the game this way was leaving me a bit dispirited, though wanting to press on, given the Edge review’s reassurance that the “opening chapters do not see the game at its very best.” But then I heard the questions I was asking myself. “Did they put that guard’s death in there just so they could work in that joke?” “Why didn’t even a single one of the many goons we fought think to run the short distance to the main camp, if they were cut off from their radios?” I realized – these are exactly the sorts of questions I find myself asking after seeing the same blockbuster action movies on which the Uncharted games model their experience. Arguably this is a sign that the Naughty Dog developers are right on target. It wouldn’t have occurred to me as a goal, but it might be a sign of perfection to have emulated not only the globe-hopping spectacle and history-mashing treasure hunts of well-loved action films, but also their sloppiness in integrating action and fiction. Let’s hope, however, that Uncharted 3 can reconsider this aspect of devotion to its inspirations. Reprinted with permission from expressiveintelligentstudio . Noah Wardrip-Fruin is an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz, where he teaches in the University of California’s first undergraduate computer game degree program, co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio in the Computer Science department, and founded the Playable Media project group in the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program. His most recent book is Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies.

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Uncharted 2’s Sloppy Fiction [Art]

The Sims 3: World Adventures Review: A Form Of Manifest Destiny [Review]

Expansions are to The Sims series as pimples are to puberty: they’re going to happen, so embrace them and try to avoid nasty pit scars. It’s just part of growing up. The Sims 3: World Adventures opens up three new remote locations your Sim can visit: China, France and Egypt. The purpose of visiting the exotic locations is to give your Sims the chance to complete adventures inside local tombs and temples. The gameplay in these sections is very much like old school point-and-click adventures where your Sim needs to explore nooks and crannies to find keys, treasure and secret locks to hidden doors. Completing these expeditions nets your Sim Visa Points so they can stay longer in foreign countries and eventually purchase vacation homes. In addition to the gameplay, however, World Adventures also augments the Sims experience with a bunch of new skills, traits and Lifetime Rewards to update your ho-hum Riverside or Sunset Valley gameplay in the core game. But is it an adventure worth taking? Loved Adventuring: Taking your Sim into a temple or a tomb for some exploration turns out to be a pretty intimate and oftentimes hilarious experience. In tombs, Sims encounter all kinds of danger that they don’t normally back at home — like mummies that can infect them with a fatal curse or traps that can burn them alive. This makes you anxious for your Sim in a way that encourages bonding — I totally reloaded a game once when my Tenzing Norgay got charred in an Egyptian pyramid puzzle. Aside from that aspect of gameplay, the Sims themselves entertain you with their own feelings on the adventures. If you’ve got a Sim with a good set of traits (Adventuring, Bravery, etc.), getting through the winding passages and around dangerous traps is a healthy challenge that sometimes really makes you think like a puzzle game. Sending a Sim in with bad traits, though (Cowardice, Loser, etc.), while frustrating for treasure-hunting definitely yields laughs when your Sim flees from a mummy. New Skills: World Adventures adds Photography, Martial Arts and Nectar Making to the Sim skill set. I spent most of my time on Photography and Martial Arts — making Tenzing Norgay something of a photojournalist monk in the process. The Photography skill gives Sims access to different types of camera (crappy, decent and awesome) and lets them take pictures from the first person perspective pretty much anywhere in the game. Depending on the subject of the photo (and you can tell what you’re capturing via little labels in first-person mode), your Sim can score major money by taking pictures of foreign landmarks. Martial Arts, meanwhile, is exactly what it sounds like. Your Sim can learn Sim Fu and compete against other Sims in karate tournaments or just sit around and meditate until they float in the air. Lastly, Nectar-Making builds off your Sims’ gardening skills by letting you combine various fruits to create original nectars that you can sell for mad bank. Elements of Multiculturalism: The native Sims in China, France and Egypt actually look like Chinese, French and Arab people. This alone is a big step for The Sims in terms of multiculturalism, but there’s also a lot of little things about local Sims you start to notice that keep up the foreign facade. For example, every location has a set of songs that people sing to themselves in the markets or at their homes. There are also local books and recipes your Sim can pick up (like Dim Sum and Frogs Legs) to read or make at home. My all time favorite little touch, though, is still the part where children with at least one Asian parent eat with chopsticks. So cute! Hated It’s A Little Bit Broken: There is a major gameplay bug I encountered that should never have made it to retail. Sometimes when sending your Sim abroad (and usually when they’ve got a child or a teenager Sim with them), the game makes your family vanish. Like, completely disappear both from the foreign location you were sending them to and from the home location. In my case, I sent Tenzing and his teenage son to China while his wife was laid up at home with twin girls. Mid-load into China, the game suddenly deposited the camera view into China — only there was no family there and no Sim in the control bar to keep track of. I could do thing — not even edit the town. So I quit out and went back to Sunset Valley expecting to find them there, but the same thing happened. The wife and babies were gone and in the family viewer, there was only a placeholder graphic of a dotted outline where the Norgays should have been. I was able to fix the problem after consulting a fan forum, but it wasn’t a simple solution (having to move around backup files and save files) and I lost data. Loss of Continuity: A big selling point of The Sims 3 was the persistent environment. Sims around your Sim grew old and died and the world moved within the same time frame. World Adventures wrecks the continuity by making China, France and Egypt into stagnant environments. It’s like time stops when you go abroad and your Sim doesn’t age and life back at home freezes until you come back. On the one hand, this is convenient when you want to dodge an age transition without just turning aging off. However, on the other hand, it also creates weird situations. Take for example my French mistress’s “abortion.” I had invited her from France to stay with Tenzing and then Tried for Baby. She got pregnant and when the morning sickness started, she ended her vacation and went home early. I followed her to France the very next day, expecting to visit my pregnant mistress. However, when I got there, she was no longer pregnant and there wasn’t a baby anywhere. I contacted the developer to make sure I hadn’t encountered a bug and they told me that because infants and toddlers simply can’t exist in the foreign environments (for all kinds of development issues), the child should have been “aged up” automatically to childhood when the mistress went back to France. What I should have seen was a child Sim in the mistress’s household with her last name that the game would still recognize as Tenzing’s kid and “the fiction” would be that a significant amount of time has passed between the time my mistress left Sunset Valley and the time Tenzing arrived in France. This kind of continuity is not only confusing, but also kind of against the persistent environment The Sims 3 is popular for. The Sims 3: World Adventures is an experience that deserves the title “expansion.” It adds a lot to the core experience of the game, it offers an alternative style of gameplay and it’s pulled off in a way that blends pretty well with the game (with the exception of the hiccups mentioned above). If you’re a Sims fan, though, you’ve probably already guessed this having played the game for the last month solid. But if you’re not really a Sims fan, or you were one of the skeptics who were holding back because the rampant expansions of the Sims 2 tired you out, don’t hold back. There’s a whole wide world out there for your Sim to explore (three of them, in fact) and you won’t want to miss it. The Sims 3: World Adventures was developed and published by EA for the PC. The game released November 17 for $40 USD. A copy of the game was given to Kotaku by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Created Tenzing Norgay as a young adult and raised his Visa level to at least eight days’ worth of travel in each country. Maxed out the Photography and Martial Arts skills. Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ .

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The Sims 3: World Adventures Review: A Form Of Manifest Destiny [Review]

The Meta-Narrative That Pulls Back the Curtain for All Games [Weekend Reader]

Was GLaDOS, the artificial intelligence in 2007’s critically acclaimed Portal, in fact a game designer? And if so, what does our relationship to the computer, and its abuse of our trust, say about the other games we play? Guido Pellegrini at Playtime Magazine raises that point, among many others, in examining not just the meta-narrative of Portal, but also that of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Portal gets a deeper treatment, but both games deliberate puncture the illusion of control game players feel they have. In the end, Pellegrini writes, we are still following commands, taking cues and completing tasks in order to ultimately complete the game. Sons of Liberty in its way, and Portal to a much larger degree, are completely open about such manipulation. If you haven’t played or finished Portal and feel like you might want to some day, this essay should be treated as one long spoiler (the same for Sons of Liberty). Ultimately, Pellegrini raises this question: Within games is any restriction antithetical to one’s freedom to act, or can there still be freedom within those boundaries? It is a question that extends well beyond the immaculate walls of Portal’s test laboratory. Portal and The Meta-Narrative Maker [Playtime Magazine, Oct 23.] GLaDOS, then, is part adversary, part game-designer, guiding us across levels in an effort to finish the game of portal gun assessment. This antagonistic artificial intelligence is a diegetic representation of the creator or director, shaping up a fiction for the players to complete, providing context, giving orders, outlining our path, introducing complications, playing around with our expectations, intentionally misleading us, and so on. GLaDOS is our ruler and general, our boss. Meta-narrative elements are not terribly common in video-games, although they are not alien to the medium. We need only look at Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty to find an especially blunt and grandiloquent example of meta-narrative. In that game, a video-game player – a covert operative who has been trained solely through virtual reality simulations, or so he believes – ultimately realizes that his first official field-mission has been yet another simulation: every battle, death, and confrontation has been meticulously planned by an advanced artificial intelligence hiding behind the human façade of an iconic military general whom the protagonist has only communicated with through Codec, a sort of radio coupled with images of talking faces. The end of the game is infamously weird, culminating as it does with the advanced artificial intelligence commanding us to finish the game by killing the final enemy in a sword-fight atop the Federal Hall. Being coerced into finishing the game by the evil, back-stabbing computer that constructed the narrative we have been playing for the past twelve hours is surprisingly repulsive. We do not have a choice to do otherwise, unless we prefer to shut off our game system. But is this lack-of-choice a departure from other video-games? Every video-game compels us to complete certain actions in order to reach the finish line. Every video-game controls us and directs our behavior through strict parameters. Even an open-ended video-game is not completely open-ended, only open-ended in the manner and to the extent decided upon by the game-makers. Our immersion into the fiction veils our status as prisoners. Yet we are no more than prisoners, forced to do what the dictator-storyteller demands of us. Now, this admittedly makes the whole business sound much more sinister than it necessarily is – we willingly pay money to be manipulated and led by the game-makers, after all – but it is interesting to note how foreboding and uncomfortable it can be when a video-game opts to make our dependency upon the game-makers a literal part of the plot. In most any game, we would not mind having to accomplish certain feats, and more importantly, we would certainly not complain about having to kill the final enemy, since that would bring upon the much-desired denouement. Alas, in the vast majority of games, these commands are gentle, imperceptible, implied through environmental and contextual cues. Thus, we receive the commands without protest. What Sons of Liberty and Portal do is to actually tell us these commands out-loud, through an in-game director, and suddenly the conceit of freedom that video-games tend to propagate is destroyed. Most games force us to do this and that. The above two games are honest about it. If there is one divergence between Sons of Liberty and Portal, it is that the former provides no true escape from the fiction of the in-game director. To the very end, we are following the commands of an artificial intelligence. The closing cinematic (a movie-like animation that furthers the story using film language) suggests future freedom only for the fictional protagonist. As far as our interactivity is concerned, we never oppose the computer’s authority. Our last action is to kill the final enemy, just as the computer has ordained. Portal, on the other hand, gives players the opportunity to walk backstage – to view the machinery behind the fiction – in order to confront the neurotic puppeteer. We must constantly observe the architecture that traps, annoys, hinders, and informs us. Only by doing this can we find the opposite end of the labyrinth. Just as the architecture might facilitate our flight, it is also a participant in our entrapment. This double-edged quality makes our interaction with the environment a passionate endeavor. Equal parts savior and jailer, the environment is the middle-man in the tug-of-war between computer and human guinea pig, as each uses the same landscape to claim victory over the other. It is this battle that is the soul of Portal. The game-designer and the player are constantly at odds with each other. One tries to control, while the other hopes to achieve independence. One tries to dominate through a precise architecture that delimits movement, while the other explores his or her possibilities within this supposedly constraining architecture. The player’s performance can flower inside a confined milieu. This happens in every video-game, but this one makes it literal and readily visible thanks to GLaDOS. We wake up inside a game and subsequently form a hostile relationship with its designer. Walking beyond the walls of this game, we find a parent game with more objectives and more puzzles. We wonder if the hostile relationship does not continue, despite our perceived escape. We turn off Portal. We play something else. We keep wondering about the hostile relationship, now in a new context. Video-games allow freedom of movement while restricting its degree. In a sense, Portal is about whether this restriction is enough to stifle any sense of freedom or whether there can still be freedom within restrictions. It is a dilemma that expands to the medium at large, if not beyond even that. – Guido Pellegrini Weekend Reader is Kotaku’s look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

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The Meta-Narrative That Pulls Back the Curtain for All Games [Weekend Reader]

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