The CD-Rom was a big deal. In exchange for beefing up your computer's hardware and waiting 5 minutes for a game to load, you could experience something that the SNES and Genesis couldn't hope to replicate. The CD-Rom promised a multimedia experience. Everything sounded crisper, everything looked better, and hey, if that's what it can do to a game's look, what can it do to the gameplay?
Um...what gameplay? Geremy Mustard of Chair Entertainment noted in a recent essay that most of the memory used by a video game goes towards art, and not by accident: "Every time I found a way to make the game ("Undertow") smaller, the artists would find a way to increase its size again! By the end of it, they put in 15 custom environments, hundreds of effects, 5.1 surround sound, motion-captured cut-scenes with full voiceover, and subtitles in nine languages." ("Small Is Beautiful", Game Informer, January 2008) "Undertow", by the way, was an Xbox Live Arcade game that weighed in at a little under 50 MB, which was the maximum size for Live Arcade games at the time of its release. Such attention to game art has its roots at least as far back as the CD-Rom days, when full-motion video took up most of a game's memory.
The entire idea behind using full-motion video was to immerse the gamer into a game as much as possible, and there seemed to be no easier way of doing that than to have professional actors perform in front of a blue screen. They're real; they're more relatable than a pile of pixels; they look like you and me. What could go wrong?
First of all, most of the actors employed in such games sucked. Second of all, even if they didn't suck, the material that these actors had to work with sucked. Third of all, even if the actors and material were actually good, the gameplay itself sucked; most of this stuff was a thinly-concealed slideshow filled with hotspots that needed to be pressed in order to get to the next encounter.
Were any good games that incorporated full-motion video released? Well, yes; there has to be exceptions that prove the rule. "Myst" was one. "Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within" was another. "Under A Killing Moon" was yet another. But for every "Myst", there seemed to be two piles of crap. It wasn't helped by the fact that developers seemed to enjoy showing people dying. Yes, having your main character die as a way to reinforce the danger of his/her surroundings is a good thing, but there's a point when it stops being reinforcement of negative behavior and starts being about just grossing people out just for the sake of grossing them out. "Phantasmagoria" was built almost entirely around the appeal of seeing people die--but not just in parts where you've done something wrong. Throughout the game, you see visions of a previous tenant, Carno, killing each of his wives in horrible ways. Rest assured, the following link isn't the worst death featured in the game, and is actually pretty funny, but I still wouldn't recommend watching it while eating: http://youtube.com/watch?v
The wasted potential here still astounds me, especially considering what they could have done with this technology. As long as you're using live actors, why not make a live-action Choose Your Own Adventure? As it was, most companies were willing to put out live-action Choose Your Own Goosebumps, overestimating their own wit and underestimating the expectations of the average gamer. Why not make a game that's concentrated less on pixel-hunting and more on decision-making?
Which brings us to this week's DOGR. If a version of this game had come out in the 90's, it would have been hailed as a classic and a benchmark. As it is, it was released in 2005, and it's simply a great game.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...
Developed by Quantum Dream, previously known for making a game featuring David Bowie, and published by the king of good luck, Atari. The game is known to the rest of the world as "Fahrenheit", but there was some concern that consumers would associate the game with Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", so the name was changed when it was translated for American audiences. The difference in names also helps separate the censored and uncensored versions of the game. We quaint Americans got the censored one.
The game starts off with you taking control of Lucas Kane, moments after killing someone in a diner while seemingly not in control of himself. How you act affects the next scene, when you take control of Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles, two detectives that are assigned to this case. You switch back and forth between these 3 characters (and Lucas's brother Markus on rare occasions), and it never really feels like you're fighting against yourself; all of the characters that you control are good people who are just trying to get by. There's also a vicious wave of snow that's devastated New York City, which means that these characters are going on despite themselves. (It also plays into the original title for the game.)
This game needs to be played with a controller that has two analog sticks, as the action scenes require you to play a version of Simon in order to proceed. The controller also has to have 6 other buttons on it, as two of them are used for tug-of-war contests sometimes played out in action sequences, too. This goes much better with a video example, so here's a sequence in which you get to see both mechanics at work: http://youtube.com/watch?v
It's got great writing, the choices that the characters (and you) make affect the outcome, and it plays well enough. But in my teaser for the game, I said that it was only awesome for about 3/4 of it. The last 1/4 was just one big disappointment to me, as that was the point in which all of the cards were revealed, and, to quote the cool kids, shit goes down. The problem is, though, that the characters stop acting rationally. There's a two-week space of blank memory for Lucas that is given an explanation that completely lacks inspiration or originality. Oh, and when they do battle, technology kills magic. I'm a bit of a SF nerd, but that ain't right.
It gets more right than it does wrong, though, so this is an easy recommendation. It was released on the PC, Xbox, and PS2, so it's not as though it's a hard game to find. Check the used racks for this one. Also, keep an eye out for "Heavy Rain", which is supposed to be a spiritual sequel of sorts. As long as I'm posting videos, here's the trailer that single-handedly made "Heavy Rain" a big deal: http://video.google.com/vi
If you're reading this, please comment. On anything. Next week (maybe), I'll tackle another adventure game. One that involves Luke Skywalker, stealing gasoline from the police, and fertilizer. Now THAT'S a teaser.
No comments:
Post a Comment