My first review for GameRevolution has been posted! It covers1942: Joint Strike, a game that was quite a bit of fun. Especially when I played it with a friend, and we were drinking. Woo!

Hit up the review here, and let me know what you think!

I know it’s been forever since I’ve posted, but things have picked up for me recently. Since I’ve been so busy, and it’s not like this blog actually makes me any money, it’s kind of fallen by the wayside.

Since I last posted, I’ve taken on two new jobs. The first, as kind of a side gig, is that I’ve begun to write reviews for Game Revolution. My first review, of the game 1942: Joint Strike, should be posted soon, and I’ve been working on another one this week for Bionic Commando Rearmed. I’m just doing Xbox Live Arcade games so far, since it’s easy for GR to send me a redeemable code, and so far I’m just getting free games out of it, but hey, free games!

On a more career-oriented note, in eleven days I will be starting work in QA at Blue Fang Games. It’s entry-level, sure, but it’s a foot in the door of the industry in which I’ve wanted to work since I was five years old, drawing old Nintendo Power-style level layouts for imaginary platformers. (I created multiple concepts for a Calvin & Hobbes game of which I was particularly proud.)

Blue Fang is known for the Zoo Tycoon series, which I’ve always respected for the fact that it took the “tycoon” name, which often guarantees a game is shovelware, and actually made a quality franchise to go along with it. It joins Roller Coaster Tycoon and Railroad Tycoon in that respect, so it’s in good company.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled. Blue Fang is based in Waltham, MA, near Boston, so I’ve spent the last week or so looking at places to live in the area. At this point, I’ve missed the September 1 move-in, but I’m heading back down to the city tomorrow to keep looking.

So between everything that’s been going on, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to spend on The Literary Gamer, or even gaming, for that matter. (Although I did finally unlock all the weapons for my medic and pyro in Team Fortress 2, that was like, two weeks ago.)

Don’t worry, TLG is not dead, and I expect my posts to become a bit more exciting now that I’ve actually kick-started a career in the games industry.

In a bit of site news, I’ve added a new page at the top called “What I’m Playing.” It’s exactly what it sounds like, just a simple list of games I’ve been playing lately.

One game that’s on there that wouldn’t have been there two days ago is Team Fortress 2. I’ve had the Orange Box for a while, obviously, but TF2 is probably my least-played of the package. There’s not anything innately wrong with the game, it’s just that I’ve always been more of a single-player gamer, my twenty-one-month addiction to World of Warcraft notwithstanding. Dealing with the attitude of the average twitch gamer online isn’t really something I enjoy doing.

But yesterday, after reading about the impending “Heavy Update” to the game, and looking at all the changes that Team Fortress 2 has undergone in the last few months, I decided to give the game another shot. At about two in the morning, I looked up and realized I really needed to go to bed.

It really isn’t the same game I bought a year ago. It’s constantly evolving, which I haven’t ever really experienced in an FPS before. I admit I’m a fan of the new achievements for the medic, pyro, and soon the heavy, especially because they happen to be my three favorite classes to play. I’ve logged more time on the medic than on all the other classes combined, but the heavy and pyro are in pretty close competition for second place.

There’s something about the game now that makes it easier to deal with assholes. Maybe it’s the voice chat. I think it’s easier for someone to be a jerk online when they don’t actually speak, and obnoxious behavior like screaming over a microphone will get you booted from a game a lot faster than, say, typing in all caps.

But in addition to gameplay changes, I also found that the game itself has taken on a bit of a narrative shine. Partially as a result of Valve’s “Meet the Team” videos, the game’s classes seem to be much more distinct characters than I remember.

For example, I can’t stand the scout now. I hate him, even when someone picks him on my own team. The snarky Boston accent and arrogant personality only make it more infuriating when I’m unable to send a syringe through the temple of a Red Sox fan rushing me with a scattergun.

At the other end of the spectrum, of course, is the heavy. Part of it is the feeling that when I’m feeding my medigun to a heavy, we’re the most powerful combo on the battlefield, and I feel warm and fuzzy whenever my fat, Russian cohort thanks me with a “We make good team!”

Even the three classes without “Meet the Team” videos attached to them have developed personalities. The pyro is a psychotic maniac. The spy is a smooth ladykiller. The medic is a man of mystery. (Seriously, I get the feeling the medic has some kind of dark past.) Apparently, one of these remaining three is going to get a new video with the coming update. I’m pulling for the medic, obviously.

So now I’m going to wrap this up, because I’m going to go play some more.

There’s a new gameplay video for Dead Space at 1up’s GameVideos, and for the most part, it’s another great showcase of the game’s diegetic interface. The avatar’s health is displayed in a series of lights along the spine of his armor, crosshairs are laser-projected from the weapon itself, and there’s even an “upgrade bench” with a pop-up holographic menu where the player can upgrade weapons.

There are some good scares as well, and the trailer ends with a fantastic sequence of a player getting dragged down a hallway by a giant tentacle, before shooting it off it and making a narrow escape. It’s a great bit of gameplay, but just as it finishes, right before the trailer ends, the severed tentacle fades away.

The horror! For all of EA’s claims that they want to boost the game’s immersion to help it become scarier, seeing the corpses of enemies fade away is one of the most glaring ways a game can say, “REMEMBER, THIS ISN’T REALLY HAPPENING!” It ruins an otherwise brilliant sequence, and I’m hoping it’s just triggered to happen while the game is in development and will be changed for the final product. Since the corpses of other monsters killed in the trailer don’t fade, I don’t think that’s entirely unlikely.

For a game about time-travel and changing history, it’s appropriate that Braid seems to come from some alternate timeline in which Super Mario Bros. was a collaborative effort between Vincent van Gogh and H. G. Wells.

At its core, Braid is a platformer. You play as Tim, a dapper gent in a sport coat and tie who travels through bright, colorful levels while jumping on the heads of enemies, avoiding carnivorous plants that pop out of green pipes, and trying to save The Princess, who is always in another castle.

Does any of this sound familiar yet?

What distinguishes Tim from a certain plumber, however, is his ability to stop, speed up, and rewind the flow of time. If you’ve played Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, you’ll be pretty familiar with how the system works in Braid. Yet Braid’s time manipulation is more versatile and is the focus of gameplay instead of just a way around death, (although it’s used that way too.) It’s easy to learn and dead simple in practice, but you’ll find yourself pulling off increasingly complicated strategies as the game progresses.

And by “progressing,” I don’t mean just getting through the levels, which are distributed between six different “worlds.” (I really wasn’t kidding about the Mario references.) Surviving a level isn’t that impressive when your time-warping ability means you can’t die. The real point of the game is to collect puzzle pieces scattered throughout each world, which all have their own specific themes. There’s no lava level or ice level here, though. Instead, you’ll find a playroom/ancient ruins level, or a swamp/furniture level. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’ve got the right idea. Braid’s eye-popping graphics defy definition, looking almost like an oil painting, but not quite, and the level design looks like the absinthe-induced hallucinations of Shigeru Miyamoto.

There’s method to the madness, though, as the art design of each world ties in to the deeper themes contained within. Worlds possess titles like “Time and Forgiveness,” or “Time and Place,” and there’s a story corresponding to each one. In the first room of each world, you’ll find a number of books on pedestals. Walking in front of them will reveal the story piece by piece in the form of floating text, a seemingly unimaginative device which nevertheless works, as it fits perfectly into the game world. The puzzle pieces you collect must also be assembled into a series of paintings, one per world, that reveal more of Tim’s history.

Noting that the game revolved around collection, I expected it to use the time-honored design choice of making the player return to earlier levels with the skills acquired later. Amazingly, I was wrong. Although Tim does get more powers later, they can only be used in the world in which he gets them; not in earlier worlds, and not even in later ones. The result: any time you see a puzzle piece, it’s possible to reach it, no questions asked.

Well, except for, “How the hell am I supposed to get there?”

Yet, if you spend just a little while thinking about any of the game’s puzzles and try different strategies, eventually solutions will just click. While the game’s fiendish difficulty can be frustrating, each puzzle has an elegant solution. If your strategy involves lightning-fast reflexes and a series of precise jumps, you’re probably doing it wrong. In the end, when you finally figure out a stumper and hear that satisfying chime that says you’ve collected a puzzle piece, Braid provides a level of satisfaction that I haven’t encountered since Portal. I think that’s one of the highest compliments you could pay a game.

Besides all the puzzle pieces, the game also has eight twinkling stars hidden throughout its levels, and when I say they’re hard to find, I mean hard. However, while most of these stars require awareness and dexterity, a couple are just a pain. One in particular requires only that you wait for two hours in one level. Find something else to occupy your time while waiting; I wrote this review. Still, besides bragging rights, the stars don’t seem to give you anything. There’s not even an achievement for finding them, so only die-hard completionists need bother.

Special praise must also be given to Braid’s soundtrack, which incorporates everything from pastoral violins and harps to more ominous cellos and tinkling, distorted lullabies. It fits the visual atmosphere of the game perfectly, and while the song for one level might seem to be repeated much later, close attention often reveals some distortion, creating a darker environment. It’s a testament to the quality and subtlety of Braid’s score that I had the game running in the next room for two hours while writing this, yet never got tired of the music.

I’ve held off on explaining what Braid is actually about because it’s an exercise in futility. Still, I imagine I should make some kind of effort. More than a simple rescue-the-princess story, Braid is a game about separate realities, (or are they all the same one?) in which the laws of time and space work differently, and how each relates to various aspects of Tim’s mind while he searches for a metaphorical “princess,” in reality being an ultimate dream he possesses. At least, I think that’s right.

While sounding unbelievably pretentious when I say it, the masterful writing behind the game makes it a complicated but fascinating tale, which all leads up to possibly the most brilliant final level I’ve ever seen in a game. Ever. It’s emotional, it’s exciting, it’s even disturbing, depending on how you look at it. More than just being a “twist” ending, it will turn your entire interpretation of the game on its ear. That final moment of realization is indescribable, really. You simply have to experience it.

Braid can be purchased on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace for 1,200 Microsoft Points ($15). Yes, that’s higher than usual, as most Marketplace originals go for 800 points ($10). Still, it’s worth it; although Braid is relatively short, (I finished it in about six hours,) it’s incredibly polished and awe-inspiring even when compared to many triple-A releases.

It seems cliché at this point, but to anyone arguing in favor of games as a narrative medium or as art: you owe it to yourself to play Braid. For fans of platformers or puzzle games, this should be a no-brainer. For everyone else: play it anyway. It really is that good.

Yesterday I discovered The Brainy Gamer, and reading through some of its most recent posts, I’m wondering what the hell took me so long. Its Vintage Game Club post discussing Grim Fandango alone instantly upgrades this to one of my favorite blogs, and it doesn’t hurt that the writing is excellent

In any case, I found the blog through a link from Kotaku, highlighting a number of different essays on gaming narrative that all seem to have coincidentally appeared at around the same time. Blog author Michael Abbott proposes that these essays are the beginning of a kind of manifesto concerning narratives in gaming:

Perhaps “manifesto” is too strong a word for what I’m describing, but at the moment I can’t think of a better one. Most dictionaries define the term as a public declaration of intentions, motives or views. Beyond that simple definition, however, manifestos are intrinsically anti-status-quo. Regardless of its framework -  politics, ideology or art – a manifesto is a defiant call for change and an implied “Who’s with me?” All of the people I’m about to describe are plugging into something that sounds very much like a collective manifesto to me.

I won’t go into much more of it here, save that one of the authors Abbott quotes is Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid, a game that recently hit the Xbox Live Marketplace. (A full review of which is forthcoming, but in short, a brilliant game that everyone should go play.)

Abbott’s post is an excellent read, and although I haven’t yet been able to delve into the links he provides, I expect I have several hours of reading ahead of me. Go check it out.

So my post two days ago decrying Square’s treatment of Chrono Trigger made me really, really want to play the game again. So I’ve put my Fallout 2 playthrough on hold while I tear through CT a couple of times. (Gotta love New Game Plus.)

Note that this post is going to contain game spoilers, so if you still, for some reason, care about the plot of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, or Call of Duty 4 being spoiled for you, it’s probably not a good idea to click past the jump.

Every time I play it, it amazes me just how many aspects of the game were so successful, yet still aren’t often encountered in game design. The best example that I can think of, and maybe this is because I just finished playing that part of the game, is that the semi-titular main character dies mid-game. Yes, you can get him back, but it’s a completely optional quest; you can finish the game with Crono still dead. For all the hype over Final Fantasy VII killing off Aeris, I wonder why Crono dying didn’t spark the same reaction. I guess specifically because you can get him back.

Even so, Aeris wasn’t the main character of the game. A loved character, yes, but not really the player’s avatar. Off the top of my head, the most recent game I can think of that attempted something similar is Call of Duty 4, which has the American soldier you play for much of the game die horribly in a nuclear holocaust. So it’s even more surprising developers don’t try that kind of plot twist more often, considering how much critical praise that scene got.

So yeah, anyway, if you’re wondering why it’s taken me until now to post today, you can blame Chrono Trigger. Oh yeah, and there’s also this big thing starting tonight called the Olympics. I’ve been watching the opening ceremonies too.

Dead Space gets more and more attractive each time I hear about it. The most recent delicious piece of news, as reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, is that much of the game was written by comic writer Warren Ellis. On his most recent mailing list release, Ellis revealed his involvement:

Oh, I got released from an NDA the other day, so I can finally say that I wrote a bunch of the groundwork, backstory and structure on the forthcoming EA videogame DEAD SPACE, which recently got a comic prequel from the hands of Antony Johnston and Ben Templesmith. I believe there was at least one other writer on the project, but I’m sure there’s some of me in there somewhere.

Ellis is the madman behind the comics series Transmetropolitan and Planetary, as well as plenty of other work for Marvel, DC, Wildstorm, Image, and others. Planetary being one of my favorite comics EVER, this announcement makes my fanboy gland pulsate in anticipation.

I’m sorry, that was gross.

I don’t get it. What exactly is the reason for Square Enix’s treatment of Chrono Trigger over the years? The only “sequel” to the game did away with all of the characters everyone loved in the first place, and then nothing for years. In 2004, a fan-created game, called Chrono Resurrection, was announced, in an attempt to recreate the original game in a 3D engine. Obviously, Square’s lawyers beat it down like a red-headed stepchild, earning more ill-will from fans of the franchise.

Finally, last month, a ticking clock appears on Square’s homepage. But no, it wasn’t a new game. Square is simply re-releasing the game as a full-priced cartridge for the Nintendo DS. And now Square’s announced that Europe, which never even saw an SNES release of Chrono Trigger, will have to wait even longer than the U.S. to play it on the DS.

This isn’t anything new for Square. Sure, Chrono Trigger would have made a great Virtual Console release, and would surely have been more graciously received than its announcement for the DS. But Square already re-released Chrono Trigger for the Playstation, and has been re-releasing the older, 2D Final Fantasy games for years; first for the Playstation, then the Game Boy Advance, and now the DS. Since FF fans keep snapping them up, why sell for anything less than full price? I’m sure sales for Chrono Trigger DS will be just as strong, since fans of the game have been starving for anything new for it for years.

Still, why does Final Fantasy keep stretching the definition of “final,” while Chrono Trigger gets neglected? I tried playing the FF games, I really did, but random battles drive me absolutely insane. If it hadn’t been for Chrono and friends, I likely would have dismissed J-RPGs altogether.

I’m not alone there, either. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard from a friend, “Yeah, I don’t really like most Japanese RPGs. Except Chrono Trigger, that was great,” or some variation. It’s got nearly universal acclaim, and is one of the most beloved games for the original SNES. A boxed and sealed copy went for $1,217 on eBay in February. Can any FF game say that?

With all this universal praise and adoration for the game, I just don’t understand why Square hasn’t seen fit to continue the series. I understand that the original development team was a “dream team” of sorts in the Japanese game industry that would fetch a high price these days, but there are members of the team, such as composer Yasunori Mitsuda, who are eager to reunite.

I’m crossing my fingers and praying that Square will be using the sales of the DS re-release to judge public demand for a true Chrono Trigger sequel. I know that, for all my ranting, it might be enough for me to finally get a DS.

Andrew Vanden Bossche has written an excellent piece over at Gamasutra about barriers in gameplay and how they relate to the suspension of disbelief. Players are willing to believe any law of a game’s universe, or any limit that the designers put on the player, as long as it remains consistent.

Players will, for the most part, happily accept limits like these. But when a restriction contradicts the very logic that has so far applied to rest of the game world, you run into situations where a character that could previously bash the brains out of a zombie with a lead pipe cannot use that same lead pipe to break an ordinary glass window.

Essentially, the article is another argument against the Insurmountable Waist-High Fence phenomenon that is such a common trait of lazy level design these days. Such obstacles aren’t just detrimental to the game in the sense that they’re annoying to the player; they actually remove the player from the game world, jarring her out of the story by reminding her that she is in a game with arbitrary laws.

Where Bossche covers some new ground, however, is in his suggestion that games can actually be more believable when they are less original in their use of obstacles.

He uses as an example the first Silent Hill, where the player is impeded by one of the oldest obstacles in the video game handbook, yet its existence follows the rules already laid out by the game.

Early in the game, the player is exploring the town of Silent Hill, and finds that in the middle of otherwise ordinary streets, enormous chasms have opened up and completely blocked where the protagonist player needs to go.

These holes in the ground enforce the boundaries of the game world just like the piles of cardboard boxes, but they differ substantially in the effect they have on the player. Because they are mysterious, scary, and unexplained, the holes are also instrumental in creating the sense of fear that is key to survival horror games like Silent Hill.

It doesn’t take much creative thought to come up with holes as obstacles in a video game; Mario was jumping over bottomless pits in arcades when I was still in diapers. Yet in later games in the Silent Hill series, (Bossche uses Silent Hill 3 for his example,) the developers seem to have gotten too creative for their own good, resulting in the unfortunate use of cardboard boxes as immovable objects.

Although I’ve quoted a fair amount of it here, the whole article is worth a read. I’ve argued for years that games need to get rid of inconsistent level design if they ever hope to be taken seriously as a narrative medium, so it’s always nice to see someone else tackle the issue.