Hiding the Body in Dishonored

Due to a combination of circumstances that include ill-health and the fact that I never actually had the opportunity to fully play-through the video game Dishonored on my Xbox (I played it on PS3 when I did the review), and due to my curiosity about whether it would feel different on Xbox as opposed to PS3, I finally got around to playing Dishonored on my Xbox.

Being ill sucks.  That is not a gray-area issue.  Having a video game to play that you can really and truly immerse yourself in - and especially when that game has a good story line and interesting alternate play options - well, let me just say that when you are ill that sort of thing really can go a long way towards helping you get through your day.

The mask is about the story and the protagonist shifting from protector to avenger and assassin!

Gotta Hide the Body?

The way Dishonored is engineered, there are basically two ways you can play the game...

(1) As a stealth action-adventure title in which your primary goal is to be a literal ghost, not be seen at all, not set off any alarms, not kill anyone and not allow any of the bodies you incap to be discovered.

(2) Play it as a bloodbath adventure in which you go all out, killing everybody.

While it may seem like the latter would be the more difficult method, considering the huge number of enemies and potential targets in the game, it turns out that it is the former that is really the challenge.

I have a lot more respect for CIA wetwork agents now, particularly when I consider the potential issues that are associated with hiding bodies.

What I mean by that is that it is easy enough to not kill anyone - that is basically a choice you make - while it is slightly more difficult to not kill anyone AND not trigger any alarms or be seen not killing anyone, but not killing anyone while you are not seen not killing anyone and at the same time not setting off any alarms while AT THE SAME TIME finding places to hide the bodies so that none are discovered, well, that is hard.

I say it is hard EVEN while acknowledging the mechanism in the game that causes the previous bodies of the targets you have incapped past five to disappear (basically the game will only allow you to have five bodies in a zone at any one time, so each time you incap or kill a new one, the oldest body in your collection despawns).

Game play is surprisingly fluid and the game is largely bug-free.  But you expect that from Arkane.

Remember the Hitman Series?

The whole stealth action-adventure approach in Dishonored was not a real challenge until I reached the mission called "Return to the Tower" which was, let me tell you right now, a bitch.  Really really challenging.

In fact it was so challenging due to the random patrol pattern of non-combat NPC's who somehow kept stumbling upon incapped bodies and sounding alarms - even when those bodies were on the other side of walls, hidden in shadows - that I finally came to the realization that I was going to need to really hide the bodies well.

The solution I devised was to kill the pack of rats in the Torture Chamber after incapping the Wolfhound and Torturer, and then haul every body down there after I choked each out.  Granted there was never a huge stack of bodies due to the five-body limitation (in the Hitman games I would often end up with a HUGE stack of bodies), it was still close enough to the feeling that I used to get playing the Hitman games to give me pretty decent flashbacks to that series.

I should mention that I have always been a fan of the Hitman games - it being a game series that somehow took on a subject that IRL I would never go near, but due to the approach that was used in the game and its back story, really helped to define "entertainment" for that genre.

But getting back on the subject, if you happen to have played Dishonored AND you did the no-killing and no-alarms play through AND you managed to do the "Return to the Tower" mission without staking bodies in an out-of-the-way location, would you please email me and tell me how you did it?

I am particularly interested in hearing from you if you managed to do this level in full-on stealth mode by avoiding dealing with any (or very few) enemies.

Seriously, I couldn't figure out how to play that mission without clearing the enemies floor by floor, so it took me longer to complete that one mission than it did for me to do all of the previous missions combined.  Which was really odd when I thought about it later.

While the selection of enemy types is very narrow for this type of game and its genre, there is still plenty of challenge and variety to be found in Dishonored, which is one of only a handful of games to earn a perfect 10 out of 10 review score.

Achievements in Dishonored

One of the really cool aspects of the game was the collection of Achievements / Trophies that they devised for the game.

While the Achievements are not really divided into logical groups with respect to which set of goals you ended up choosing (either the no-kill / no-alarm approach, or the bloodbath approach) what I discovered was that they really do sort of split into three distinct groups: (1) the ones you will unlock during the no-kill / no-alarm play-through; (2) the ones you will unlock during the bloodbath style of play-through; and (3) the ones you had to go out of your way and do things you would not ordinarily do in order to unlock them sort.

Actually there is a 4th type but it does not really count, being as it is the small number that are part of the story and so will unlock no matter what method you chose to play...

If you are playing the game (or are contemplating playing and I really recommend you do play if you are looking for an immersive and fun stealth game that you can replay Rambo-style after you beat it all Ninja-Ghost style), I recommend the following Achievements / Trophies logical grouping:

Note: There are 70 Achievements worth a total of 1,420G for the Xbox 360 version of Dishonored, with 50 of them (worth 1000G) from the base game, and 20 (worth 420G) from the DLC.

Category I: Stealth Run Achievements

These include all of the Achievements that are unlocked as a natural consequence of playing through the stealth action play through.  There are 10 in total, worth 330G and when you add the 170G from the story-based automatic ones, you get a grand total of 500G, which appears to suggest based on the other numbers that the Stealth Play is really the intended method of play.

1. Clean Hands (100G) You completed the game without killing anyone
2. Faceless (20G) After escaping Coldridge Prison, you completed a mission without alerting anyone
3. Ghost (30G) You completed all missions after the prologue, alerting or killing no one but key targets
4. Just Dark Enough (50G) You completed the game in low chaos (S)
5. Poetic Justice (30G) You neutralized all key targets using indirect means (S)
6. Political Suicide (10G) You brought about the Lord Regent's fall from grace by broadcasting his crimes
7. Shadow (30G) You completed all missions after the prologue without alerting anyone
8. Specter (20G) After escaping prison, you completed a mission, not alerting anyone and killing less than 5 people
9. Surgical (30G) You played from the first mission through Kaldwin's Bridge killing fewer than 10 characters
10. Vanished (10G) You escaped prison and navigated the sewers undetected (S)

Category II: Bloodbath Run Achievements

These include all of the Achievements that are unlocked as a natural consequence of playing through the bloodbath (killing-action) play-through.  There are 4 in total, worth 80G and when you add the 170G from the story-based automatic ones, you get a grand total of 250G, which is like half of what you got on the Stealth play-through, and that appears to suggest that this is the secondary approach at least in terms of G, and maybe the fun-factor too?

1. Cleaner (10G) You fought 5 enemies at once and none of them survived 
2. Dunwall in Chaos (50G) You completed the game in high chaos (S) 
3. Razor Rain (10G) You killed 5 characters with Drop Assassination 
4. Rogue (10G) You assassinated 10 unaware enemies

Category III: Achievements you have to actively unlock

These are the ones you will need to actively work towards unlocked, which means in theory they are missable.  There are 28 in total, worth 420G.

1. Alive Without Breath (10G) You took possession of a fish (S)
2. An Unfortunate Accident (10G) You killed Morgan Pendleton with steam (S)
3. Art Dealer (50G) You collected all the Sokolov paintings
4. The Art of the Steal (10G) You got the Art Dealer's safe combination for Slackjaw, but robbed the safe first (S)
5. Back Home (10G) You grabbed a live grenade and threw it back, killing an attacker
6. Big Boy (20G) You killed a tallboy using only your sword
7. Bodyguard (10G) You protected Callista's uncle, Captain Geoff Curnow (S)
8. Creepy Crawly (10G) You used a rat tunnel (S)
9. The Escapist (10G) After Coldridge Prison, you eluded 5 pursuers at once without killing them or leaving the map
10. Food Chain (10G) You assassinated an assassin (S)
11. Gentleman Caller (10G) You completed all the Granny Rags side missions (S)
12. Harm's Way (10G) You caused 5 unintentional suicides
13. Hornets' Nest (20G) You killed 4 enemies in less than 1 second using the crossbow
14. Inhabitant (10G) You stayed in possession of others for most of a 3 minute period
15. King of the World (10G) You reached the top of Kaldwin's Bridge (S)
16. Lights Out (10G) You deactivated at least 5 security systems on Kingsparrow Island (S)
17. Manipulator (10G) You made others kill 5 of their own allies
18. Merchant of Disorder (20G) You acquired 15 equipment upgrades
19. Mercy is the Mark (10G) You spared Daud’s life (S)
20. Mostly Flesh and Steel (50G) You finished the game without purchasing any supernatural powers or enhancements, besides Blink
21. Speed of Darkness (10G) You traveled 30 meters in less than 1 second
22. Street Conspiracy (10G) You completed all the Slackjaw side missions (S)
23. Tempest (20G) You killed 6 enemies in less than 1 second
24. Thief (20G) You pickpocketed items worth a total of 200 coins
25. This Is Mine (10G) You recovered your belongings
26. Versatile (20G) You killed characters with each weapon and offensive gadget
27. Wall of Sparks (10G) You killed an enemy with the Wall of Light
28. Well Mannered (10G) You completed the Boyle Estate mission without spoiling the party (S)

Category IV: Automatic (Story-Based) and the like

These are basically automatic Achievements unlocked as a natural consequence of playing through the story, so they apply to both styles of play.  There are 8 in total, worth 170G.

1. Capturing Genius and Madness (10G) You abducted Anton Sokolov, Royal Physician
2. Child Care (10G) You located Lady Emily Kaldwin, heir to the throne
3. Dishonored (5G) You escaped Coldridge Prison
4. Excommunication (5G) You eliminated High Overseer Campbell
5. Long Live the Empress (10G) You saved Empress Emily Kaldwin (S)
6. Occultist (20G) You collected 10 bone charms
7. Regicide (10G) You assassinated the Lord Regent, Hiram Burrows
8. Resolution (100G) You completed the game

Category V: Optional DLC Achievements

These are unlocking inside the two DLC expansions for the game - note that to obtain these you will need to spend money (well, Microsoft Points on Xbox Live anyway).  If you did not pay for these, and then download them, you cannot unlock them!

1. Assassin Vs. Machine (15G) Complete Train Runner before the train arrives at the station*
2. By My Hand Alone (15G) Get to Wave 13 in Back Alley Brawl killing all combatants personally*
3. Cleaner Hands (40G) Complete The Knife of Dunwall without killing anyone**
4. Daredevil (15G) In Bonfires, perform all the special combination jumps in 1 round*
5. Headhunter (15G) Complete Assassin's Run with 100% accuracy using only head shots*
6. Just Business (15G) You got the information you needed from the Rothwild Slaughterhouse**
7. Long Way Down (15G) Perform a drop assassination of at least 150 meters in the Kill Cascade challenge*
8. Message from the Empress (10G) You performed a drop assassination from atop the Empress statue in The Knife of Dunwall** (S)
9. Missing Pieces (15G) You obtained Delilah Copperspoon's identity from Thalia Timsh** (S)
10. Mrs Pilsen's Remorse (30G) Find Emily's doll hidden in each of the 10 challenges*
11. Natural Talent (15G) Finish Mystery Foe without using any active supernatural powers*
12. No Regrets (35G) Complete The Knife of Dunwall in High Chaos**
13. Rare Collector (15G) Find all of the collectable figurines in Burglar on Expert*
14. Rats and Ashes (10G) Attach an arc mine to a rat, resulting in a kill**
15. Redemptive Path (35G) Complete The Knife of Dunwall in Low Chaos**
16. Stone Cold Heart (10G) You spoke with the statue of Delilah in Timsh's estate** (S)
17. Time Management (15G) Finish Chain Kill or Bend Time Massacre without failing any wave, including bonuses*
18. Void Star (50G) Complete all Normal and Expert challenges with a 3-Stars rating*
19. Well Connected (10G) Purchase all of the Favors in The Knife of Dunwall**
20. Whisper Ways (40G) Complete The Knife of Dunwall without alerting anyone**

(S) Secret Achievement.

* DLC: Dunwall City Trials (10 Achievements worth 200G)

** DLC: The Knife of Dunwall (10 Achievements worth 220G)

The image embedded above is from the Trials DLC - if there is any question in your mind as to whether paying for the DLC for this game is worth it, well, yeah, it is worth it.  Big time!

Hindsight is Not Always 20/20

My first exposure to Dishonored was a bit unusual in that unlike almost all of the other AAA titles for console that released in 2012/2013, for some reason I was not on the press release and PR list for it, so my first experience was at last year's E3 (2012).

After we sat through the presentation for Dishonored I remember thinking three things:

(1) It looks like a Steampunk approach to the stealth-shooter genre;

(2) It is being developed by Arkane, and they made the new Batman series, so it is going to be a well-built, graphically sound, and very impressive tight story;

(3) I am probably not going to like it.

So yeah, it very much is a steam-punk-influenced title, and yes indeed it was made by the same studio that made the new Batman series, which means it is very tight in the story, well built, and has very pleasing graphics as well as effective use of game mechanics (which is not always the case when a game combines traditional swords and sorcery with the shooter-fusion-genres).  Ah, but as far as number three is concerned, I got it wrong.

It turns out that I liked it a LOT.  Well, there you go - cannot be right all the time, right?

If you are interested, Dishonored was one of only a handful of games that actually earned a perfect score in its review - you can read my review of Dishonored here -  and I should note that in addition to scoring high, Dishonored also happens to be an economical game (due largely to its high replay potential and score) coming in at an average admission cost of just .74 cents an hour, which is really good for a modern shooter.  Just saying.

. . . Agent 47

Regular readers of the gaming side of my writing will be aware that I recently completed the Unofficial Walkthrough / Guide for game play in the title Hitman: Absolution, which is the much anticipated and long overdue next game in the Hitman video game series, but is also oh so much more than just that.

I say "oh so much more" for very good reason, because when you read between the lines and if you are even just a little familiar with that game series you will be aware that Absolution is not only the 5th game in the main series, but also presents the wrapping up of basically all of the plot, story, and sub-plot elements for the previous four titles in the series, being intended to provide a measure of closure for series fans as well as serve a more practical function: providing the tabula rasa that is required when a studio is about to embark upon a new and previously un-hinted-at massive change of focus.

In a nutshell, the Hitman series began with a pair of games that revealed in violent detail the origins of the character after which the series is named -- The Hitman who is a legend in both the underground organized crime community and the world-wide law enforcement communities, being widely considered to be if not an outright myth, then very likely a catch-all character who has been given false credit for the perfectly executed actions, contracts, and hits of a dozen or more different men, with the end result being what most experts in both communities consider to be a fraudulent and undeserved reputation for a man who probably does not exist at best, or the outright theft of many of the most spectacular hits of the past decade being wrapped like a mantle of reputation by a third-rate mechanic with no right to that glory at worse.

The truth of the matter is not the middle-ground rationalization that is often the case in such creations, because the truth is that every one of the legitimate stories is just that -- and most of the widely embellished stories based upon unsubstantiated rumor are also true and factually laid at the feet of the man who was responsible: the ghost figure known far and wide as The Hitman, and more intimately by the shadowy entity that serves as the broker for his special talents, The International Contract Agency (ICA) as Agent 47, the true identity for that ghost.

The Tragedy of Agent 47

With all good stories there is often a bit of tragedy and poetic origins behind the story, that foundation often being lost in the noise of the events or, more likely, never being known or shared precisely because the man who it is about chooses not to share it.  Such is the case with Agent 47, who has no real name; the product of genetic engineering in a secret lab in eastern Europe, 47 lacks even the comfort of some certainty that somewhere, somewhen, there was a man and a woman whose love or relationship spawned him.  Obviously not, since the only thing that 47 can legitimately write on a Mother's day card is "My Mother was a Test Tube" and on a Father's Day card, "My Father was a scalpel."

Starting with that lack of biological bonding, the legend that is Agent 47 cannot even lay claim to the origins of many a fictional and historical hero, since he was not born in a dark corner of the world and then raised in an orphanage, but rather was born in a well-lit lab having been created by the selective culling of organic material from a single female who provided an egg that was initially stripped of all of its genetic details, intended to serve exclusively as the foundation of organics that is required to create a human being, but as a neutral foundation, offering that human no traits or other biological links with the donor.

All of the traits, and in particular what was considered to be the important traits, such as physical capabilities, mental acuity, a lack of moral compass, and a willingness to use violence as a tool to attain the ends that he is programed to attain -- the entire exercise in leveraging the bleeding edge of genetic science was oriented towards a single goal: create the perfect killing machine in the form of a chameleon of a man whose entire focus was the art of the hit.

All of this was accomplished by a defrocked physician and scientist named Ort-Meyer, who it should be noted, used his own genetic materials as the underlying focus for the mental portions of the design for Agent 47.  In the end, while there were literally hundreds of failed efforts, the success with Agent 47 -- who is if you have missed the point that I have been hammering home all along a clone -- was not simply a lucky stroke, nor was his ending up in the employ of the ICA, but all of it, including the rather bloody exit by which he parted company with Ort-Meyer, was the results of carefully engineered and executed plans created by Ort-Meyer.  

Oh, there were a few bumps in the road, and it is pretty clear that Ort-Meyer was not expecting his creation to systematically assassinate every one of the men who contributed to his genetics -- including Ort-Meyer -- but that is material for another article, for another time.

You now have a pretty clear grasp of who Agent 47 was at the start of his career as the ICA's star hitman and special field operator.  It goes without saying that the first almost 30 years of his life were spent in a densely packed series of special training, and his perfect record of contract assassinations for the ICA speak to the success of those efforts, but there is on additional factoid that you need to know about Agent 47: much of the underlying cause for his success as a hitman is thought to be the result of the fact that he was intentionally created with an extra (47th) chromosome.

The 47th Chromosome

If it seems that I am writing about Agent 47 as if he were an old friend, the reason for that is really because in a way that is precisely what he is.  Well, if not an old friend than by all means a lengthy acquaintance with whom a great many adventures have been shared.  In fact that is the point of this piece, because I have just embarked upon the replaying of many of those early adventures in the form of the just-released new game compilation that has been called the Hitman HD Collection (a trilogy consisting of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, and Hitman: Blood Money).

I will very soon be reviewing each game in the collection over at The Cape Cod Time's Game On review section, where I recently reviewed both Hitman: Absolution, and the new and related mini-game called Hitman: Sniper Challenge that was created as partly a promotional vehicle for Absolution, and those reviews have fomented the to-be-expected sense of nostalgia that one tends to reserve for events of a personal nature that while not really shared with others, still tend to have had a rather formative impact on you.

In the case of Agent 47 that impact was to instill in the gamer in me a decided respect for the stealth approach that can be used when playing shooter titles (whether they are intended to be stealth-based or not) and the result has been an interesting effect on my game play style.  It would be fair to say that the experience of playing as Agent 47 has had a lasting and interesting impact upon my general outlook and attitude when it comes to combat shooters in general, and the civilian mob/OC shooter in particular.

When a medical type speaks of the 47th Chromosome (normally humans have just 46) there is a very good chance that the conversation is about the disease known as Down's Syndrome -- largely due to the fact that the existence of that extra chromosome is thought to be the cause.  What you may not hear -- it is pretty unlikely -- is that the presence of a 47th chromosome does not necessarily always result in retardation or Down's Syndrome.  In fact there have been a very few isolated cases in which the extra chromosome actually served to enhance the human who possessed it rather than damage them.  Sadly that enhancement tended to be accompanied by some other undesirable side-effect, like the person lacking any moral sense or being inclined towards a career as a serial killer...

Of course those negatives did not prevent certain countries with strong military feelings to underwrite experimentation in the area of genetic science, with an eye towards creating super-soldiers by installing that extra chromosome.  The idea was, obviously, that they would experiment with it until they caught a breakthrough that allowed for a better understanding of how it does what it does, and how to get it to do desirable things.

Forget for the moment that to do this it was necessary to experiment on human beings, and forget for the moment that there are international treaties whose basic function is to prevent that sort of thing....  It happened anyway.  Hell, so does cloning, but nobody talks about that, do they?

It is rumored that the US has completed a long series of cloning experiments, and may be the second most knowledgeable nation when it comes to understanding how the process of cloning works.  You did note that I said "second" right?  The first would be Russia, or more accurately the former Soviet Union, who it is reliably reported had tremendous successes with developing a reliable system for cloning to the point that they could not only clone desirable organs with an eye towards transplants to extend life for individuals who were judged worthy of the great expenses involved, but the former Red State could also just as easily clone entire humans.  

It is even rumored that the ex-Soviet cloning programs uncovered interesting data about genetic memory, a subject that previously was spoken of in only the most basic and speculative of terms.  Today it seems that there is a wider acceptance that in addition to passing on trait-based data that is used as part of the blueprint for making a new human during the normal reproductive process, the mother also passes on a large amount of what is called foundation memory -- why hot is dangerous, the large collection of instinctual reactions to biological and animal threats, and a bunch of other low-level emotion-based reactionary types of information.

Basically the memory that is being passed on is not really memory as such, but skills, or perhaps more accurately reaction-based data, but also -- and this is where it gets interesting -- muscle memory.

It has long been thought that when one or both parents are gifted with expert skill in something like playing a musical instrument, any children that they have might also enjoy an easier process for the acquisition of similar skills.  While the Russians have not fully mapped out the genetic areas that are involved in this process, this exchange of mother-memory if you will, they were able to succeed in isolating and passing on the music part of it.  There is a rumor that they also have successfully mapped out some of the physical skills areas, including the sorts that are of interest to athletes who desire to compete at the Olympic level...

Can you imagine a generation of clones of Alexander Popov,  Anna Kournikova, or even Evgeny Plushenko?  I bet the Russians can...

While I am not sure that the folks over at IO were completely unaware of those programs, it does make for interesting speculation and an amusing notion that they were more than just a little aware of them.

Either way, when I get to the point of writing the game reviews for the new HD Trilogy you should consider yourself invited and encouraged not only to read them, but to play the games.  While they are not fully remastered (that is to say they have not been redone, but rather have been converted to run on the new platforms and in HD quality) they do offer you a chance to step back in time and experience these games in much the same way that we did a decade ago, and that is certainly worth the cost of admission...

I have to go now, there are contracts to be completed...

. . . Xbox LIVE Arcade Gamer Points, Skateboards, and the end of the Summer Doldrums

It came a little earlier this year than it has in past years, but as far as I know, nobody who is not clinically insane has complained...  I am talking about the Summer Doldrums of course -- that dry period of roughly two-and-a-half-months during which no new games are released.  I did not actually grow up calling it the Summer Doldrums - having lived in Australia for all of the formative years of my life the "Summer Doldrums" arrived in the middle of the Winter -- and we had our own name for it - the Winter Freeze.

Whether you call it the Summer Doldrums or the Winter Freeze, what it is in simple terms is a drought of no games, which forces gamers to either replay their old games or mine through the games of previous years for titles that they never had the chance to play and so are new to them even though they are old to the rest of the planet.  Personally that was how I always preferred to do it since there were, often enough, some really great games that I did not get to play.

-- The Summer Doldrums 2012 --

 This year was different.  The same period over the course of the past few years was filled with non-gaming activities, so it was not like I was actually bored, but still...  The Summer was filled with taking the kids to the beach, slowly rolling through antique shops and tag sales looking for bargains, and then there was the week we spent as Boy Scout Camp, with my Son as the Scout and my wife and I sharing the week as adult supervision.  I would not want my son to know this, but I suspect that the adults actually had more fun than the kids in many respects, as Summer Camp was a chance for us to -- for the most part -- get away from literally everything.

No Summer Camp this year -- my son needed to make up a class that he had too many tardy marks in, so it was Summer School for him and that meant no Summer Camp.  Sigh.  There is also the point that I had to work since we did not take off the week of Summer Camp for holiday but that is besides the point...  The games that I chose to fill in for the lack of new titles were as follows and in no particular order:

• Gears of War (The original)
• G.R.A.W. (A disappointment but more on that in a bit)
• Assassin's Creed (Revisiting the original)
• Mafia II (Revisting)
• Dead Island (Revisiting)
• Madagascar 3 (Shock!  A new game release!)
• Toy Soldiers: Cold War (Revisited)
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Dawnguard (Work Game - I wrote the guide)
• Doom (Revisited)
• Minecraft for Xbox 360 (Revisited)
• Modern Warfare 3 (New to Me!)
• Scrap Metal (Revisited)
• Battlefield 3 (New to Me!)
• Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed (New to Me!)
• Age of Booty (Revisited)
• Call of Duty Classic (Revisited)
• Crackdown 2 (Revisited)
• Hasbro Family Game Night: Sorry (New to Me!)
• Kung Fu Strike (New LIVE Arcade Title - for work)
• Puzzle Quest (Revisited)
• Wolfenstein 3D (New to Me!)
• Damage Inc. Pacific Squadron WWII (New - for Work)
• Jane's Advanced Strike Fighter (New to Me!)
• Risen 2: Dark Waters (New release for work)
• Zuma (LIVE Arcade Revisited)
• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD (New LIVE Arcade Title for work)
• Final Fantasy XI (MMO, Revisited, it turns out you CAN go home again)

You may have noticed that I ended up playing a LOT of different games...  Well, the ones that are marked Revisited I actually owned already so that is not such a big deal...  There are a handful of new titles for work, but hey, that is for work, it does not count...

Tom Clancy's GRAW was a major disappointment and even more so because I was really looking forward to playing it -- but it turns out that after the second mission it is so badly bugged that it is not playable -- hence the disappointment.  I think if it had not been bugged I might have spent a few weeks on that game alone -- as I like that series and genre.

Crackdown 2 was a good revisit -- and a great game though you have to pace yourself and not get too much time in at any one session because it is a tense sort of play...  The Achievements for it are really brutal too -- I have owned my copy for something like two years, and I have only unlocked 12 of the 70 Achievements!

-- The End of the Doldrums --

Yesterday was my birthday and no fewer than five new games were released -- the two most notable being Sleeping Dogs and Darksiders II, both of which will factor as important games in the first half of the new gaming season I am convinced.  A glance at the release calendar shows that from here on out things only get better, so yeah, the Doldrums ended early this year, and that is reason to be happy!

I am going to go be happy now...  If you are a gamer on Cape Cod and a regular reader of the paper's game review section and blog, NOW is the time to start emailing your review requests -- so you know, go do that?






 

. . . Judging Video Games

Considering that part of what I do for a living is judge the relative merits and the "goodness" of video games, you would think that being asked exactly how I tell whether a game is any good or not would be a question that I should be able to instantly snap off a brief answer that is to the point and easy to understand, right? Well... Not so much, really.

This morning among the two-dozen new email messages that I usually get on a Saturday was one that asked me simply how I can tell when a game is any good? I should explain that I have a fairly complex set of filters and scripts on my email program so that the messages are sorted before I ever see them, with games related mail going in one folder, email from friends and relatives (and flagged as such) into another, with a cascading list of other folders sorted by the information in the subject line.

That filter system is why I always instruct the readers of my game guides to include the name of the game in the subject, since otherwise my email program is very likely to put their email into the "general > unsorted" folder, which is also where a lot of the span and unsolicited mail goes and which is the last folder I read each day, if I read it at all...

Back on the subject, the email was from a regular reader of my newspaper column, but they also read my game reviews and my articles on Gaming Update, and they mentioned that they liked my guides on SuperCheats and GameFaqs, so I either have a stalker or they really are simply following my writing...

As I sat and re-read the question I felt the urge to giggle in a very unmanly way. How do I tell if a game is good? How do I tell if a game is good?? To be fair that is an interesting question. It is also a difficult one to answer as I soon discovered.

If email was like writing on real paper, what you would have seen if you had come into my office this afternoon was me sitting at my desk surrounded by crumpled up balls of paper that represent the dozens of attempts that I made at trying to answer the question. Of course it is not like real paper, so there were no balled up torn-off sheets of paper surrounding me, but you get the idea.

How do I tell when a game is Good?

The easy answer to that question -- and a total cop-out -- would be to paraphrase United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his answer to the question of how to describe his threshold test for obscenity, which he wrote in his summary of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964): "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

That explanation has become one of the most famous phrases in the entire history of the Supreme Court, and even distilled down to a bare quote of "I know it when I see it" leaves it easily identified as Justice Stewart's infamous words.

It would be so easy to say I know a good game when I see one and leave it at that, but doing so would not only be disingenuous but it would also be avoiding answering the question at all.

Judging a Games "Goodness"

While it is by no means an official road map to the determining if a game is good, the right place to start is always with evaluating the story, plots, and the sub-plots that make up the story portion of the game. A good, well-constructed main story line is always a plus, even for games whose story is not its strongest point. Characters and their development is next -- obviously we are not very likely to end up immersed in a game when there is nothing for us to care about in it, and liking the character that you play (the protagonist) is a great place to start.

The next obvious point is the challenge level of play. It should be interesting, it should be original, and it must not simply recycle the same basic play over and over because that is the fastest path to boredom that I can imagine.

Every game is not going to have the depth of Final Fantasy XIII or the immersion of Fallout: New Vegas, but that does not mean that it cannot find its own way towards those two goals. It is interesting to note that sometimes when a developer is making a game that they know will not be able to hold up any story or plot using the foundation of its characters, the most obvious alternative is to find a gimmick to rely upon.

Take Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball as an example (AKA DOAX) and you have a game that relies almost completely upon a gimmick (near-nudity) as its primary vehicle. That it is a complete and total departure from the games in the DoA series that proceeded it to the point that it is largely viewed with rampant speculation by gamers the world over as something of a scam, and who not surprisingly, are convinced that its release as part of the DoA series was really a bald attempt at capitalizing upon the previous successes of the series to take what would otherwise be a lackluster beach volleyball game whose only attraction when it is judged purely on its own is the very well-drawn umm... Scenery?Well, you see the point?

It should be noted that the DoA series is a game series solidly embedded in the Fighting genre, and its following was largely teenagers into fighting games. Viewed that way, it makes complete sense for Tecmo to take this sexually-focused beach volleyball and present it to the traditional audience for the Dead or Alive games! The fact that DOAX is the first game in the series to obtain a Mature rating from the ESRB pretty much tells the rest of that story.

For the record what little actual nudity there was in the game occurs very early in the opening scene and is not an interactive part of the game. The ability of the player to zoom in and out, and position the center focus of the screen where they like when combined with the characters of the game who, save for a few exceptions, all pretty much sport uniforms that consist of the skimpiest of bikini’s pretty much illustrates the prurient focus of the game.

So here we have a game that uses a gimmick -- sex and scantily clad young girls -- and whose focus is not what the previous games in the series focused upon. It has a story -- the player selects a character and plays them through the two weeks of the fake tournament that the focal character Zack has organized in order to surround himself with scantily clad women athletes, and whose plot largely comes in two parts -- the awkwardness of the situation that Zack engineered followed by surviving the eruption of the volcano on 'Zack Island' immediately following the end of the fake tournament.

Is this a good game?

Well, reviewers and players overwhelmingly thought that it was! I never had the opportunity to review it because our reviews are reader-driven, and the readers evidently did not see the need for it to be reviewed and so never requested it, but games journo Aaron Boulding writing for the website IGN gave it a rating of 9.2 out of 10 with the note "Amazing" while Gamespot gave it a less enamored 6.0 out of 10 with the comment that it was "Fair."

A quick and dirty review of the reviews that the game received that contributed to its Meta ranking as well as its cumulative ranking on the website GameRankings.com reveals that the title was one of those games that tended to get favorable reviews, with most of the reviewers agreeing that it was a pretty good beach volleyball game. Add in the nearly nude girls and the guns, and it is pretty obvious that the International Amateur Athletics Union that oversees the criteria used to judge the standards for games in the Olympics has clearly missed a sure thing. Yeah, that was rather sarcastic humor...

Still this is a good game to use to illustrate the question -- because it was a game that gamers (and critics) either really liked a lot, or despised. When you read the negative reviews that it received very few of them actually addressed the game play, simply because they could not get past the near-nudity and obvious objectification of women to see the game play.

The critics that were able to see past the obvious and offensive nature of the presentation of the characters agree that it is a pretty good beach volleyball game -- though of course this was in 2003. I played it recently and I can say without reservations that the stilted and very simplistic game engine would instantly get this game slammed by players and critics alike, and thanks to modern video games like the last few games in the Grand Theft Auto series, the last Duke Nukem game, and even the last few Tomb Raider games, the near-nudity of DOAX would simply not be enough even as a gimmick to save the game rating today.

. . . I Judge . . .

Since the end of the Summer Doldrums there have been some really good games hitting store shelves and gamer consoles, not the least of which are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Driver: San Francisco, and Gears of War 3, and some notable DLC expansions like The Lonesome Road (for the established dashingly successful Fallout: New Vegas) and a few interesting expansions in the form of additional cases for the cult classic L.A. Noir.

With respect to the DLC, these were good game expansions laid on top of good games, though just because a base game is classified as a AAA title does not necessarily mean it is a good game or is going to be one.

One interesting system for determining whether a game is good or not is the system that is used by one of my good friends Jeremy Clark -- a veteran games journo who has been writing about and reviewing games for nearly 30 years. His personal system is very simple:

"If I have a hard time saving and quitting the game, then it is a good game. If I cannot bring myself to stop playing no matter how exhausted I am, it is a great game!""

Sadly that system and most of the one I use largely brings us full circle to the words of United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: I know it when I see it.

And there you have it. Now if you will excuse me I am going to get back to finishing up The Lonesome Road so I can write the review for this very good DLC Expansion to a Very Good Game!

. . . a Good Read

The 4th of July Holiday is upon us, which means that the relatives are set to arrive -- have arrived actually -- motoring up from Connecticut to spend the week with us and the kids.

I don't know about you and your in-laws but I am always happy to see Yvonne's mum and da -- I genuinely like my in-laws and I enjoy their company -- plus whenever they come up for a visit Yvie's mum always brings me a stack of books, and that is mostly a to-be-looked-forward-to event to be sure!

This time she delivered some most excellent entertainment in the form of:

• Agatha Raisin and the Case of the Curious Curate by M.C. Beaton (ISBN 0-312-20768-9) a mystery and one of the Agatha Raisin series.
  
• American Son - A Portrait of John F. Kennedy Jr. by Richard Blow (ISBN 0-8050-7051-6) a biography.
• Murder in the House by Margaret Truman (ISBN 0-679-77435-1) a mystery.
  
• Rebel by Bernard Cornwell (ISBN 0-06-017713-6) historical fiction.
  
• Spider in the Silk by Celestine Sibley (ISBN 0-06-017515-X) a mystery and part of the Kate Mulcay Series.
  

I often find it difficult not to grab a book and dive right in, because usually by the time they visit us I have already burned through the books from the previous visit and, unless there was a recent trip to the library or Hyannis, I don't have a "current" book to read.

At the moment thanks to the readers over at Game On the list of games pending play for review (and sitting in a stack on my desk) includes:

• Alice: Madness Returns (Xbox 360)
  
• Crysis-2 (Xbox 360)
  
• Dissidia 012 (PSP)
  
• Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox 360)
  
• Dungeon Siege III (Xbox 360)
  
• G.R.A.W. (Xbox 360) an oldie but it was requested
  
• L.A. Noire (Xbox 360) -- the DLC as we already did the main game
  
• Naughty Bear Gold Edition (Xbox 360)
  
• Shadows of the Damned (Xbox 360)
  
• Trucks & Trailers Sim (PC)
  

Most of the books I have read from Cornwell consist of his Sharpe's Rifle sereis, which I was turned on to by Geof, but Beaton, Sibley, and Truman are all solid entertaining writers, so those will be good. Not too sure about the JFK Jr. bio -- the bloke who wrote it was one of the editors at George, so presumably he has some personal experiences to add to the mix in addition to the usual bio-matter...

The video games are something of an eclectic mixture - but that has more to do with the fact that we do not actually pick the games that we review for Game On, where unlike the vast majority of review sites we are guided entirely by the readers, who email us with their requests for games to be reviewed. I actually think that is a better system anyway since it is more responsive and serves the community rather than dictates to it.

It is not like I don't have anything to do, if you see what I mean? No, there is plenty to do, so I had better go get to it!

Happy 4th of July and 235th Birthday USA! I hope you have a safe and satisfying holiday and you don't lose any fingers, toes, or limbs when you play with your illegal fireworks!

Cheers!