If you listen to our regular podcast, you’ll know that I’m much more of a fan of storytelling in games than Lewie. While we both derive a lot of enjoyment from how a story is utilised as one of a series of ingredients a designer can use, and both of us can appreciate the way a good story is told, he tends to prioritise that nebulous quality of ‘having fun’ as a core element of gameplay, and I tend to be able to forgive slightly poor mechanics in favour of something that’s well-written.

This leads to us getting frustrated at each other. He skips cutscenes, and I don’t. I talk to every NPC in a world, and he seeks out the next mission trigger. And when I lent him my copy of Red Dead Redemption, I urged him to watch the opening scenes that really lay down for the foundation for the world. I told him that it was a really smart exploration of American attitudes at the turn of the century. He told me that it was a bunch of talking on a train. And hit Skip.

It’s this fundamental difference that I think underlines why we disagree on a lot games, and why, ultimately, I think he’ll find the ending of Red Dead Redemption both boring and unsatisfying, whereas I thought it brilliant and interesting. Neither of us are wrong, of course – but I’m going to try my damnedest to prove that I’m right.

Fair warning – the rest of this post after the break contains spoilers for the end of Red Dead Redemption. If you haven’t seen the credits roll, then you haven’t seen some of the stuff I’ll be talking about.

In any other game, the idea of John’s wife and son being kidnapped would add nothing more than a layer of intrigue and a motivator to progress through the story. I don’t think I’m too far off the mark by saying that the majority of players, after the death of Dutch, expected the credits to roll after a brief cutscene with Abigail and Jack at the ranch. But, as a rather welcome surprise, you’re placed in exactly the position John’s been working toward for weeks. It’s sedate, it’s peaceful, and above all – it’s a vast difference from the guns-blazing assault on Cochinay just a few minutes before.

Beecher’s Hope is something to be treasured. John has been working throughout the entirety of the game for this moment, and allowing the player to experience it is a masterstroke – it allows both the feeling of the titular redemption to be played out, the slightly displaced nature of John in this setting to become readily apparent and allows an identification with the character that arguably wasn’t present throughout the earlier parts of the game. The player’s nature is to kill, kill and kill again, with the character’s motivations as firm afterthoughts. When presented with a town of fifty people, all of whom need to be slain before progress can be made, the player values that progress more than whether or not the character of John Marston would be comfortable with it. It’s a disconnect that we see in many game, but it’s thrown ever so sharply into light with the final scenes in Beecher’s Hope, where we realise that John, by our hand, has killed so many people just to be close to his family. It’s an emotional punch rather than a physical one, and it charges an even bigger emotional pot to spill over in just a few missions’ time.

Like any good tragedy – and make no mistake about it, Red Dead Redemption is a tragedy in the vein of so many Westerns – it can’t last. However, in order for John’s inevitable death to have any impact, we need to identify with what he’s leaving behind and understand why his death is tragic. It’s a problem that so many games face. How a player’s character dying be meaningful when they have died so many times previously and simply been able to restart?

Heavy Rain handled this rather well by ascribing death a meaning. Once a character died, there was no ability to restart and no arbitrary reason – the narrative continued along its way and every death was the fault of the player, meaning that there was a clear emotional tie between the player and the character. A death had more impact because it meant that you had failed as a player and could not recoup those losses. Red Dead doesn’t have that liberty – a player-controlled death is simply a stumbling block rather than a key event, and so to make that emotional tie, especially from a scripted event that can’t be controlled, the designer must create a strong tie between the player and the other characters that are so visibly affected.

Giving the player a second or two of Dead Eye in John’s final moments definitely feeds into this. The tiny sliver of hope when combined with the obvious fact that John is hopefully outnumbered just serves to finalise the impact – the player’s feelings mirror Jack’s when he comes across his father’s body in a way that they perhaps never did with John’s. While John seems to want to get away from his life while the player wants excitement (note that it’s possible to finish the game not having actively killed any of your three former gang members), Jack’s priorities are much clearer – simply to get revenge. The player and Jack both feel the same tie to John and while they may want it for different reasons, the character’s and player’s motivations match for perhaps the first time in Red Dead Redemption.

It allows a disconnect to happen between the player and John. No matter how you’ve been playing him, it allows John to remain John – another character in the scripted universe with his own motivations and ideals, with a full story that plays and concludes exactly how it was intended. As Jack, you can go onto a murderous rampage and be out for bloody revenge, opening up a new side to the game that as John may not have been considered. It allows for the sociopathic tendencies of Rockstar’s characters to be appropriately pigeonholed – while GTA IV’s Niko was slated for being written one way and – under the player’s control – acting another, those disparate tendencies are attached to John and Jack, and underline the final tragedy of them all; that Jack became just like – if not worse than – his father, and that in fact reflects exactly what the player wants to be.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation, you may well have seen that there’s been some changes to how you can access your content. Maybe your girlfriend used to be able to play Peggle on her account, but isn’t able to any more. Maybe two of you in the same room can’t play Crash Course when you’re not connected to Xbox Live. Maybe you have a wealth of Rock Band content that fails to load. This is due to licencing issues between the multiple consoles you’ve owned, and the Xbox trying to prevent multiple users from using the same piece of content.

But why is it doing this, and how can it be fixed? First, an explanation:

Whenever you buy a piece of content on Xbox Live, you get two licences. The first licence is granted to the console on which the content was downloaded. This licence remains intact regardless of profile, meaning that anyone can sign in on any profile on that specific Xbox and use that content, regardless of an internet connection. The second licence is granted to the profile that originally downloaded the content – this profile can play that content in any location without restriction, as long as it can connect to Live to verify its legitimacy. This means that you can throw your profile on a memory card and take it to a friend’s, redownload a game you own and play it together as a full version, while your original Xbox still keeps the rights. It also means that once you leave, the game will revert to a trial, and your friend will have to buy the full version if he wants to continue playing.

This method ensures that as long as you take your profile with you, you can use any content you have purchased, share them with friends temporarily, and allow anyone who shares your Xbox to use that content without having to use your profile. This method of digital rights management is surprisingly supple, and works rather well for the purpose it was designed. The problem, however, comes when a user purchases or obtains a new piece of hardware.

Whether through an upgrade from a Pro to an Elite, an Arcade system purchased to replace a broken system, or a replacement from Microsoft’s service centre, it’s highly possible that any given Xbox 360 owner will, at some point, have exchanged their current Xbox for a newer model. While all the accessories from the older system will work with the newer machine, the licences are a different matter; as the console has changed, one licence for each piece of downloadable content has been lost, and the Xbox then relies on the profile licence to verify content.

This means that all benefits of the console licence no longer apply, and the content becomes a lot more restrictive. Now, the content can only be used if the original account that purchased it is signed into Live at the time. If your internet connection fails, or your girlfriend wants to play a game when you’re out of the house, that content can’t be accessed. The Xbox is looking for a console licence that belongs to a different console, and a profile licence that belongs to a profile that is not signed in. Arcade games will revert to trials, and all other DLC will become inaccessible. Note that this applies only to the console, and not the hard drive – if you are simply upgrading to a new hard drive and transfer the data with the Data Transfer Kit, all your licences will still be intact.

In order to restore the console licences to a new machine, Microsoft has provided a tool on xbox.com. Once you are signed in with your Live ID, this tool will scan your profile for all the content you have previously downloaded and show you the console IDs to which it is attached. By signing in with your new console within thirty minutes of the scan, Microsoft will be able to associate all of your content with your new Xbox. Make sure that you are signing in on the Xbox you want your console licence transferred to, and bear in mind that this tool can only be used once every twelve months, to prevent abuse.

Now that Microsoft knows that your new console should have the licences, you need to refresh those licences on your console. This is achieved by downloading all of your purchased content again. If your content is already on the new hard drive, the download will instantly complete, but you must initiate the download or the licence will not transfer. Your Xbox can handle 30 pieces of content in the download queue at one time, so depending on the amount of content you’ve previously downloaded, this could take a while to do. The quickest way to initiate downloads like this is from the Download History page on Xbox website. Just turn on your Xbox, add items to your queue from the list, and keep adding them until you can’t add any more. If you have downloaded items from Xbox.com to your previous Xbox, you will have an extra step – on the Active Downloads tab on your Xbox, instead of downloading, your content will be pending instead, with a notice ‘assigned to other console’. This is because Xbox.com has remembered your previous console ID to prevent a licence being tied to the wrong Xbox. To fix this, select the first item in the queue and press A, and choose Download Now. When asked if you want to download only this item or all items, select ‘all items’ – this will allow you to queue up further content from Xbox.com without having to repeat this step.

After all the content has downloaded, feel free to delete any currently unwanted items from your system – the important thing is that they were downloaded to refresh the licences. After you’ve added everything to your queue, you should be done – it’s a laborious process, but it works. You’ll have refreshed all your licences for every Arcade game, theme, and map pack you own, and now any profile on your Xbox will be able to use it, online or not.

If you have any questions about the licence transfer process that I haven’t covered or that you’re still confused about, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

There’s also something about PixelJunk games which embodies some of the most frustrating gaming experiences possible. Because the games are so tightly constructed, there is often a very fine line between complete success and total failure, and it’s a line that all the Pixeljunk games dance on.

PixelJunk Shooter exemplifies these opposites in a game that forces the perfectionist in you to strive for just one more run at the level, and the designer in you to cry out in frustration at some of the choices that were made. It’s not that Shooter is badly-made, it just doesn’t seem polished enough.

The base mechanic is, as always, sound, a seamless blend of the dual-stick controls present in games like Geometry Wars and a gravity-based approach that hearkens back to Thrust. There are several manoeuvres that your ship can perform, but rather unfortunately some are never explained, and all fast become necessary to proceed. It’s indicative of a slight lack of finesse in PixelJunk Shooter – while the game is quick to detect when a player is stuck and provide hints, these can be insufficient more often than not and can require a little too much experimentation on the player’s part to proceed.

As the game progresses, and the player slowly figures out more and more of the abilities at their disposal, PixelJunk Shooter opens up to quite a sophisticated and crafted experience. Once comfortable with the suite of abilities available, attention can be focused more on each individual level, which operates like very much like a self-contained puzzle. The elements work almost exactly as you’d expect – cooled lava becomes rock, melted ice leaves water behind, and so forth. With these very limited set of tools, it becomes a challenge to use each of them to not only progress through the level but also to save your allies trapped within – kill too many of them by any means and the level has to be repeated. Soon, the caves start requiring much more pre-planning and less obvious a path to success, meting out reward very satisfactorily.

It’s unfortunate, then, that as soon as Shooter begins to pick up steam that it throws up a roadblock. At the end of each cave is a large boss fight, which while in itself is a rather welcome break from the standard game, requires a certain amount of gems found in earlier levels to unlock – and they’re easy to miss. The hunt through each of the previous levels for just a few extra gems can be very tedious, and takes a lot of the momentum out before allowing the player to re-engage in the experience.

PixelJunk Shooter’s biggest problem, though, is that it’s over before it gets a chance to begin. By the time the player has become fully comfortable with everything it has to offer, it’s already reaching its crescendo. While it might be the most accessible of the PixelJunk games to date, there’s also not enough of it to access, and ultimately leaves the player wanting more bang for their buck. It’s a missed opportunity more than anything else – while there’s obviously a very sound game underneath, it’s wrapped in a shroud of awkwardness and lacklustre signposting. For anyone willing to work at it, the rewards are there, but they’re buried very well.

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The first impression we got from Heavy Rain was that it seems a lot like a spiritual successor to Fahrenheit, in that you’ve taken the ideas you’ve had for the design for that, and built it up. Is that how the design came about?

Well, yes and no. In fact, we see Fahrenheit as the prototype to Heavy Rain. With Fahrenheit we really experimented; we wanted to know if it was possible to tell a story through gameplay and not through cutscenes. We also wanted to see if there was a market for this and if people were interested in seeing what we were doing. We got positive answers to these two questions, so we started really working hard on Heavy Rain, trying to figure out what went well on Fahrenheit, and what didn’t work, and how we could improve it. So we spent some time reading reviews and on forums listening to gamers and what they had to say – what they liked, and what they didn’t like, and designed the game accordingly.

Having done that, how much demand do you think there is for this kind of game, and how successful do you think it will be against the other more traditional titles available? It’s fair to say that Fahrenheit was critically well-received but didn’t really find a place in the mainstream. Do you expect Heavy Rain to be able to break that barrier? A very cinematic and emotional story is one people want to see told in any medium – do you see it being able to break that trope of ‘these are videogames; we shoot people’?

We certainly hope so. It’s impossible to answer a question such as that until release – there’s nothing on offer like that. We don’t know. I believe that you shouldn’t try to give the market what it expects; you should surprise them. Someone once said that if you asked people what they wanted in the 18th century that they would have said that they wanted a faster horse – no-one expected the car. That’s a very interesting point, and it’s the same thing with games today – if you asked people what they want, they say first-person shooters with better graphics and multiplayer – more of the same. But if you can go to market with something original and really surprise them, that’s very interesting too. That’s really the approach with Heavy Rain. We think there is a market for experiences for people who are maybe tired with playing the same games over and over again, and are eager for something different with more depth, more meaning, and more emotion.

We realised with Fahrenheit that some people really enjoyed the experience, but could not play the action sequences because they were too difficult. We didn’t want people not to play Heavy Rain because of that, so we needed to find a way to make the game accessible to different types of audiences and not just hardcore gamers. Everybody who enjoys thrillers and owns a PlayStation 3 should be able to play the game. While the main differences [in difficulty level] are the difficulty and timing of each event, the thought system becomes much simpler and more instructive about what to do and how to progress in each scene. So in hardcore mode it only gives you tiny clues, whereas in non-gamer mode it actually tells you what to do next. it’s a different approach that makes the game much simpler – which is the goal – but it will enable a very different audience to enjoy the game too.

Is there the option for the hardcore thought processes with the simple controls, for gamers who might enjoy a challenge but not be familiar with the controller?

Not at the moment. These are two things that really have to go together. The choice is always difficult [as a designer], because at some point it becomes a manual with many options, which ends up not making sense from a development point of view.

The controller can be a large barrier to entry for any game, and especially a game like Heavy Rain. You’ve mentioned in the past that you didn’t want Heavy Rain to be a film, but it’s very cinematic and comparison to film would not be unfair. How do you make that decision? Is is simply that the interaction with the scene is so powerful?

Yes, definitely. There is a story, but it’s a story based on your actions. You define the story as you play, which always makes a difference with the relationship you have with the experience. It’s not just about you watching and listening to a story; it’s really about being yourself as the writer and the actor and the director of the experience.

How much freedom does the player have, in that regard?

There are different types of consequences to your actions. Some actions have absolutely no consequence; it’s just a part of the roleplaying and doing things in the environment that your character would do. Other actions have local consequences that will affect the way the scene will be played and what will happen currently in the scene. Other actions have long-term consequences that may be in the next scene or even several scenes later, and some actions have final consequences like, for example, that your character can die. And of course if he does, you will miss all his scenes in the story – but maybe you’ll get something else in exchange. Maybe you will see things because he died that you would have missed otherwise.

And with that in mind, is the game set up so that any death is permanent – so you can’t go back and change it if you don’t like how a scene turned out?

Well, the goal is not to frustrate the player. It’s rather to encourage him to play it in a certain way. So the saving system is not something that’s going to prevent you from doing what you want to do, but at the same time, we would like people to play the game by the rule that your actions have consequences and that you have to live with them.

Playing the demo on the floor through a few times brought something to our attention. One of the things we noticed was that in the combat sequence, a series of successes puts your character into a position of dominance over the other. If you fail during the fight, then your enemy is in that position, but you can easily reverse that. It seemed a little against the idea that has been presented that you can forcibly change the outcome. That outcome appears to be set.

That’s specific to the displayable demo. There were things we wanted you to see there; the full game is different. Of course, don’t expect every single scene in Heavy Rain to have multiple branches, with two thousand things having a tremendous effect on the story – that’s not what the game is about. There are some scenes that are more or less linear, where your actions have more or less consequences, but that’s the way the game is structured; we’re still telling a story.

That seems difficult to portray in a game such as this, especially in a public demo.

We discussed which scene we’re going to take for that. The difficulty is to pick one scene. With every single scene being so different, I’m a little nervous that people may just pick one scene and say that Heavy Rain is seventy times that scene with a different environment, and that everything has the same mechanics and same gameplay, which is not the case. In Heavy Rain every single scene is unique and different. This is something that’s going to be difficult to convey with a single-scene demo, but we’ll try to find something.

In the public demo you gave, you earned a trophy for talking the gunman out of his actions in the scene you showed. Do you feel that the idea of trophies is an odd one given the style of this game? Looking at it as an outsider, it seems that rewarding the player for very specific actions, which are what trophies and achievements are designed to do, seems antithetical to the idea of Heavy Rain, where you can go through and experience your own story and may not even see some of these scenes for which you could get a reward.

It’s true, Heavy Rain is seen much more like a journey rather than a series of obstacles, so it may look a little weird to get rewards for things you’ve done or not done. But at the same time Trophies are a very popular system and it’s something a lot of gamers expect. You won’t get Trophies during the scenes, they just appear on the loading screens so it doesn’t interfere with the experience as you play.

And are the nature of the Trophies that you can’t get them all in one playthrough?

You can’t, no.

How do you feel about people replaying the game in that instance? Does that dilute the experience you’re trying to convey?

If people really care about Trophies then they will want to play the game as many times as possible to get all of them. Personally, I don’t think they should replay the game. They can, of course, as many times as they want! But, again, it’s the kind of game that I think will have some emotional charge to it, and it’s interesting to play the game once, to make these decisions and to never know what would have happened if you played differently. That’s just the way I see things. People will play it several times, I’m sure.

Are there any plans for downloadable content for Heavy Rain at all? Are there any parts of the story that you might want to tell later?

On this format, that is really story-based, there is a lot of potential for episodes around it that don’t fit in with the main story. That’s something we’re interested in. The story in the game is self-contained – there’s no missing part that will be delivered via DLC, that’s absolutely not the case. The DLC will be separate.

(Between the time of the interview and the time of publication, Quantic Dream have confirmed that two episodes of DLC will be available for Heavy Rain; one at launch included with the special edition and on PSN, and one sometime after on PSN.)

Are there any other projects that Quantic Dream are working on that we might be able to look to after release?

Of course, but all the company is focused on Heavy Rain right now. We’ve developed a great technology for Heavy Rain with the support of Sony, and have experienced how to tell a story like Heavy Rain, but there are other stories we can tell with this format. We see it as a format for storytelling, rather than Heavy Rain on its own. This is something we want to explore in the future. We’re also very interested in all the ways you can use online technology, but it’s only a thought right now. We want to finish with Heavy Rain first.

–

Heavy Rain is out in the UK on February 26th for the PlayStation 3.

Sled Storm, PS1 – July 2000
By my memory, Sled Storm was the first game in which I ever felt competitive. When I was watching the Matrix for the first time (well after its release, mind), Rob Zombie in the background of the club scene made me nostalgic for playing Sled Storm with my brother. We’d make up what we thought were the lyrics to the song as we blasted through the snowy tracks.

It was the first racer of its kind that we played that allowed customisation of vehicles, and I still remember several of the tracks vividly. One of us would find a shortcut and keep it secret from the other until the one race where we really needed to use it, and we’d reappear later on in the course laughing all the way. There were shortcuts available that were only useful if you had a certain tread and weight, because the snow was deeper, or some that were blocked off by an ice wall that could only be accessed if you were going a certain speed. I remember snowmen, and rabbits, that were worth points if you ran them over.

For us, long before Motorstorm or Pure, Sled Storm built the niche they would fall into so comfortably.

Vib-Ribbon, PS1 – September 2000
For a long time, whenever I bought a new album, I would listen to it first through Vib-Ribbon. There’s something about interacting with the music that really grabbed me – perhaps that’s the reason I’m such a fan of music rhythm games today. Vib-Ribbon took any music CD you owned and turned it into progressively harder 2D levels to traverse, matching the mood of the track perfectly while still providing a superbly engineered and natural difficulty curve.

Tsurugi (Blade of Honor), Arcade – 2001
I don’t remember when, but at one point, my mother took us on a trip to Scotland. Partly, it was to see my father’s family, but mostly because she was doing research into our family tree and wanted to go hunting around graveyards. My brother and I would have been more than a little bitter about trudging around churchyards after a long car journey at the best of times, but for this particular break we managed to catch Scotland in the most blustery, wettest, coldest period we could have done. In one particular camp we stayed in, we were pitched directly on the coast, and the side of the tent bowed inward so dramatically that I could barely move without the rain soaking through onto my face. I probably would have complained a lot more, if it weren’t for Tsurugi.

The camp we were staying in had a small arcade, far too overpriced for what it was, but for me at the time, the only decent gaming I could get. After a few rounds of Silent Scope, Tsurugi caught my eye – it was, to me at the time, the epitome of technological advancement. This thing is still, in my mind, the precursor to the Wii – you held a sword hilt that positioned itself with a pair of accelerometers and an IR camera. It had one button, used to initiate a special move, and a pedal to step on in order to lunge forward. In every other respect, it was an on-rails slash-em-up, and I absolutely adored it. It was a level of interactivity I’d not before seen, and I put pound coin after pound coin into its slot until my money for the day was exhausted. It’s a crime that there has not been a Wii port of this. I would buy it immediately.

Go! Go! Beckham! Adventure on Soccer Island, GBA – August 2002
This is possibly the weirdest licenced property ever. David Beckham is stranded on a desert island; an island whose inhabitants happen to use balls for every purpose imaginable. The evil Mister Woe has stolen all the balls and turned animals into monsters to form his own football league – monsters known by such names as the Strika, the Winga, or the Keepa. Yes, really.

Behind all this ridiculousness, though, lies a really solid and unique platformer by Denki. Essentially, you are useless without the various balls in every level, which allow you different powers – whether it’s the standard ball that you use to knock out enemies, the cannonball that’s much heavier and more powerful, the rubber ball that bounces, and so on. Each level plays like a puzzle to be solved, along with the twitch response and preparation that you’d expect from a platformer. A really solid title that’s unfortunately difficult to find right now.

James Bond 007: NightFire, GCN – November 2002
Another entry that defines itself, for me, by the multiplayer. Long into the night, my friends and I would set up randomised weapon matches on Skyrail, grappling to buildings halfway across the map and flying over each others’ heads, and controlling Sentinel missiles into each others’ faces. One of our favourite modes was one of indirect kills on Snow Blind – through trip mines, remote detonation, and when all else failed, a pistol. I can’t tell you exactly what held us so much about Nightfire – it wasn’t the most balanced game, although it did better than Goldeneye with the characters having different stats – Oddjob was impossible to hit, of course, with his homing hat as a secondary weapon that got far more kills than it should have. Jaws, though, had more health than others. Some of the standard soldiers were extremely well-camouflaged for different levels, giving an advantage that was far too significant, and of course whoever was wielding the Golden Gun would streak ahead without any recourse. There was no real reason we should have loved it so much, but the first time I flew a remote-control helicopter into a friend, I was hooked.

Nightfire’s also worth mentioning just for the territory it broached with the single-player campaign. For the first time, a Bond game tried to survive on its own merits and story without just a film licence and Pierce Brosnan to back it up. For the most part, it worked, with all the cheesiness and considerably more action than a film, and set a very respectable stage for 2004’s Everything or Nothing.

The Chzo Mythos, PC – 2003-2007
When Yahtzee rose to internet fame with Zero Punctuation a few years ago, it was long-deserved. Having been introduced to Fully Ramblomatic in Sixth Form by a friend, I’d been following his ridiculous brand of wit for quite a while. His breakdown of how Wind Waker is about a young boy struggling with issues of homosexuality and incest and the imagery therein is still an article I recommend whenever I get the opportunity, and the Silent Hill sketch ‘A Big Red Shiny Helmet’ is still one I would like to see produced. However, the reason I loved Yahtzee was that he was a competent game designer as a team of one.

Using Adventure Game Studio, Yahtzee built a point-and-click adventure with his own pixel art and script to accompany it, called 5 Days a Stranger. Over the next few years, he released three more games – 7 Days a Skeptic, Trilby’s Notes, and 6 Days a Sacrifice, all of which combined top-tier puzzle gameplay that was never frustrating, with his brand of gallows humour and sardonic wit slipping perfectly into the guise of the main character, Trilby. The Days games have legitimately been some of the most creepy and exhilarating games I have ever played, especially Trilby’s Notes, a text parser game that very rarely misunderstands the input, the final act of which is simply superb.

Special mention also goes to the non-Days game Teddy Murder, an alphabet shooter which unfortunately seems to have been removed from the internet entirely.

Rockstar Presents: Table Tennis, 360 – May 2006
Table Tennis is famous for being the test-bed for Rockstar’s RAGE engine before it reappeared in GTA IV, but it was a decent game in its own right. It was also hard as nails.

Table Tennis was the game that I was playing when my first 360 started to crash out of games. Maybe I associate it with it being difficult because when I was doing well, it would crash and make me redo the tournament all over again, but it was worth replaying the tournament and risking more damage to the console because it was just that good. It tapped into that annoying part of the gamer brain that will suffer defeat and frustration over and over again just in search of that elusive win. it was so simple, but it enthralled me for months.

Super Rub-A-Dub, PS3 – September 2007
Super Rub-A-Dub was the first PS3 downloadable game that I bought when I got my PS3. For me, it was the first game that really sold the idea of motion control for the system.

I originally played it at a friend’s, it having been his first downloadable title for the system as well, and the idea of competition with him drove me through the game to get gold medals on every stage and every duck available. It’s still a shame that there’s never been any DLC for it – I’d buy it in an instant.

Afrika/Hakuna Matata, PS3 – August 2008
Afrika was promised for the PS3 since before launch, and when it arrived in China in 2008 with full English support I jumped on the cheapest import copy I could find. While it’s oddly inconsistent – the animations of the animals polished to near-perfection, but the vehicle physics barely extant – it’s one of the most unique titles available for the system. Perhaps it was a little romanticised by how hard it was to obtain and how long it had been promised, but for me, it was Pokémon Snap, a game I adored, with more freedom and much more grounded. It’s rumoured to arrive in the West at some point soon, but I recommend picking up a copy from anywhere you can if you are able.

It might seem a shock at first, but as soon as any gamer considers their collection it becomes clear. How any games have been bought from word of mouth, or from a slew of enthusiastic reviews, only to be superseded by the next big thing? How many games, just by a minor flaw in their design, have turned off a crowd of people who were, until that point eager to enjoy the experience? A quick chat with any gamer about the software on his shelf will reveal that the percentage of them that he’s completed is miniscule.

I’ve got a similar problem. Maybe mine is a little worse. I buy games for the same reason anyone else does, and I fully intend to enjoy them, as I’ve been ensured I will on many occasions. And yet, I’ve a pile of games at one end of the shelf that I bought at launch, maybe read the manual, and laid aside because I was engrossed in something else. I just haven’t got around to going through them. It’s a pile that contains Beyond Good and Evil, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus and two copies of Deus Ex, for example. It’s a source of shame. But there’s one section that cries out for attention.

Despite owning all three PlayStations and all four games, I’ve never really played Metal Gear Solid.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve played half of the first one. I’ve done that three times. I’ve played some of the opening of MGS2. I’ve watched someone play a bit of 3, and been confused by the Ape Escape monkeys everywhere. I’ve played the first level and a half of MGS4, but stopped. Because I hadn’t played the first three.

Every now and again, I pick up MGS1 and I get part way through it, and then I’m distracted by someone else. I can go through the first few rooms almost like a speed-run, now. But I don’t know how it ends. I’ve never found the card keys. I only know what Metal Gear looks like from press material; I’ve never had that big reveal. And so, in an attempt to finally catch up with gaming culture circa 1998, I’m going to play the games. I’m going to play all the original releases, in order, for at least two hours every Monday, more if I am willing and able. And periodically, I’ll be posting my impressions right here on the site. I’m not going to let my attention wander this time, and by the end of it hopefully I’ll understand what millions of people enjoy so much.

Now, I’m not expecting this to be a solitary exercise. If there are people out there in the same boat as me, I recommend finding a copy of Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 (or on the PS3 PlayStation Store), MGS: The Twin Snakes for GameCube, or MGS: Integral for PC if you can. I’ll be posting my thoughts on the game here for people to read along with if they choose, and I’ll be discussing it on Twitter with the hashtag #MetalGearMonday. If you just want to replay the series, come along and join in.

I’ll see you all here soon for the first Metal Gear Monday chronicle.

“I remember watching a [fan-made] trailer for a Halo film,” says Peter Cooper, director of the upcoming Halo fan-film Operation Chastity. “[It] said ‘970 billion dead’. And you think – how many are left? Maybe 30 billion, maybe 100 billion – but 970 billion people have been killed. What is the story of those 970 billion?” It’s a number too big to comprehend, and the Spartans are a symbol of that war and those deaths. “Some of [the ones who are left] see the Spartans as being lifesavers, heroes. But one of the things that we’re looking at in our film is the possibility that someone might see a Spartan as a bad thing – as a bringer of doom rather than a bringer of hope.”

He wants to concentrate more on the secondary stories of the war, the soldiers who fight without the comfort of two tons of armour. It’s a big step to take the focus away from the Chief, but it’s not as if Cooper is the first to try it.

“ODST was fantastic, because the one game that I wanted to play was one which didn’t have the Chief in. [In Halo 3] you’re the Chief, you’re invincible, you are destined to win that battle. There’s no way you’re just going to [flat-out] die and that’ll be it. You’re going to win. It’s what’s going to happen. I always wanted to see what it would be like to be one of those guys who always walks around with the Chief, the guy who when the Chief is running around and killing everything, kind of ends up being left behind and then getting blown up by a Wraith or something. I was one of those people who always tried to keep all my Marines alive, because the Marines were cool! I always wanted them to survive every single engagement that I had, and of course it was always impossible because they’d always end up getting killed one way or another. And I just wondered what it would be like.

“But I didn’t want to create another fan fiction. Where someone goes ‘yeah, and we have the main character, and they meet the Master Chief, and then -’ and it’s just NO! That’s one of the main reason that game movies just don’t work – for example, Resident Evil Apocalypse. You have Milla Jovovich as Alice, and then she’ll meet Jill Valentine. And the some other characters that are made up, and then Carlos Olivera turns up. He’s cool and everything, and the actor has greatly improved on the character,because Carlos in the games is just fucking annoying, but even then, they’re not the main characters. It’s still Alice, who for some reason has turned completely superhuman. It completely missed the point and ruins whatever distance it had from the original story. If it had kept its distance from the games and not tried to interact with them, then it would have come out a hell of a lot better, because then Paul WS Anderson could have kept his blank slate, and wouldn’t have had to mess around with any of the characters.

“It’s very difficult taking characters that people already have their own set of perceptions about, characters that have already been created. They know how they act, they know how they sound, they know how they look. I wanted to be able to start in a position where I can go – okay. This is my story, I can develop this how I want. There’s no set rules. I can’t have somebody, however far down the line, say I got the character wrong. There’s only one character in our film that’s appeared in the Halo mythos before, and that’s Maria-062, who’s showed up in the Halo graphic novel, one of the Spartans. And she appears for ten pages, and that’s it. Again – blank slate. She’s a gung-ho soldier, but she’s a professional. She’s a Spartan. And that’s all you know. There’s something very appealing about keeping a Spartan as a faceless hero and being able to pretty much do what you like with it.

“It’s a massive universe, one that has so much scope, you’ve no idea what happens in most of it. Let’s just play a while.”

But far from taking the universe and taking it in an unfamiliar direction, Cooper is very keen to keep the film as true to the source material as possible.

“As a Halo fan I’ve pored over our script – I’ve given it out to a select few Halo fans, and they loved it. They said the action is incredible, the story itself is great. If we can pull it off, then it’s going to be amazing. But of course we’ve got to get into a position to pull it off, first. You can’t cast a whole load of people, get their hopes up and say ‘we’re going to do a Halo movie, awesome!’ and then just go ‘okay we still need to find £30,000, crap.’ And just completely disappoint them that way. I wouldn’t want to do that.”

Without a reliable source of funding, it’s a big undertaking for the first-time director.

“Yes, it’s petrifying. But if I’m going to direct something, it’ll be something I want to direct. And working with my own material, with this vision of how I see Operation Chastity being in my own head – while I wouldn’t say I’m the most qualified director, I am the most qualified person to know what my story is and how I want to see it portrayed. I’m not saying directing a movie is easy, but I’ve written the film. I know how it plays out. I’ve already seen it, so to speak. And I hope that when it comes down to it I can just say ‘okay – this is what I want.’ I’m recreating what I’ve already seen, and if I’m lucky, and if I have the right crew around me, I’ll be able to tap into their talent and their experience and go – okay. This is how I want to do it. Can we do that? Yes? Let’s do it.”

It’s clear, too, that what Cooper may lack in directing experience is made up for in spades with his love of the Halo universe.

“The first time I experienced Halo, one of my oldest friends from school’s sister had just bought a classic Xbox with the massive Duke controllers – loved those things – and I’d just been told about this game called Halo. It seemed very Aliens-esque, very cool. We sat down and set it to the hardest difficulty, because that’s just what we did. Because we were stupid. And within five minutes we had died a hundred times, and it was like ‘argh, This game is so hard.’

“But seeing that intro where you see the Pillar of Autumn come in from Slipspace, and you see the Halo, it’s a fantastic setup. It’s got that whole sci-fi military thing going on which I have a fascination with anyway. It’s that whole grim future, massive war, ultimate hero – there’s just so many elements to it, it really all came together and cemented itself in my mind as something I was going to love forever.

“It does have a very deep story. It’s hard to look at [Combat Evolved] and see anything that says it’s not worth playing. I know that there’s the whole repetitive element where you have to go through the Pillar of Autumn twice and go through the massive Library, and while some gamers have named that as the one thing that put them off Halo, that’s the one thing that actually gets me the most excited. Because it’s intense, and it’s long, and its hard. I just love that.

“Combat Evolved, for me, is timeless. I can play that game over and over again. Some people are turned off by the ‘bad’ graphics, but it’s not bad, it’s just slightly dated. Like Clash of the Titans – horribly dated, but people watch the movie because it’s a classic. People should play Combat Evolved for the same reason. It’s just the ultimate game and I absolutely adore it.”

Given his adoration for the lore, it’s no surprise that Cooper wants to keep as much as he can authentically Halo.

“We’ve got a fantastic team. Ed Woodward, he’s doing some great work with the armour. We’ve got Matt Worsdell in the States – he is a master with resin. He’s a qualified armourer, he knows guns inside and out, and he has designed some beautiful weapons for us. His SMG that we released the pictures of recently, it’s been a long time coming, but it’s been worth the wait. That thing is a thing of beauty. Everything he’s going to churn out, the Magnum, the Assault Rifle, the Battle Rifle – every one is going to be better, one by one. I can’t wait to see his Assault Rifle. It’s going to be amazing. And we’ve got some ODST armour coming from Sean Bradley in the States, and we’ve also got another American, Emil Smicklas – his Spiker’s well known, it’s been seen on Bungie.net – he’s actually making some even bigger ones, so they’re properly in scale.

“That’s the one thing I really wanted, because a lot of prop-makers scale everything down. If you want to be a Spartan, but you’re only six foot tall, it doesn’t quite work, so you see a lot of prop makers make 6/7th scale weapons. So you’ve got an Assault Rifle that’s still big – but it’s not full size. One of the prerogatives for our design for every single thing from armour to vehicles to weapons, was that every single thing had to be as close to the original scale as possible. It had to be big. Because that’s Halo. It’s just how it is. I want it to be as authentic and to feel and look as Halo as possible. That includes 6′2” long sniper rifles. It’s big stuff.

“There’s so much stuff going on from America, from over here. The original concept art we had done in Singapore was phenomenal. That really got us going, because people saw my vision of Halo. How I would interpret the warzone in Argentina – they saw that and thought ‘that’s pretty cool.’ Fans love that, and as a fan of Halo I love that too.”

It’s unfortunate, then, that Cooper appears to have little contact with Microsoft or Bungie.

“So far it’s been none. It’s been a completely independent feature. But if Bungie [or Microsoft,or 343 Industries] called me up today, and said “We’ll take a pass of your script, and say what we think is right and what we think is wrong,” I’d rather they do that now than in six months’ time, but I would instantly hand it over. Print out as many copies they want, and ship it over to Washington state. Because the one thing that I want to do with this film, which while it’s fan generated and low-budget compared to the original $200 million Halo movie will be, I want something that people can look at and say – that’s Halo. It looks like Halo, it feels like Halo. It’s a Halo story. Even if it isn’t necessarily the Halo story, it’s a Halo story. It has to feel like it. And in the same way that you watch the Neill Blomkamp shorts, it feels like Halo, it looks like Halo. If Halo was real, that’s what it would be like. And I want people to look at what I’m trying to do and what the rest of my team are trying to do, and go ‘yeah – yeah, I can go with that.’ I think that would be the biggest achievement of all.”

The showpiece of this effort is the converted Land Rover Defender that Cooper and his team have unveiled to crowds of fans recently – a fully-working, authentic Warthog, emblematic of Halo, built single-handedly by one man over the space of a year.

“Daniel Carey-George, through all the troubles we had, having to relocate it, having the original company who agreed to make it pulling out – he stuck by the project from start to finish, and he is absolutely commendable for that. And I’m so happy with how it turned out. It’s so beautiful. I cannot think of the vehicle turning out any better than it did. And when I pulled that sheet and people were clapping and for the rest of the weekend people weren’t saying ‘that looks like a Warthog’, or ‘a cool Warthog replica’, they were saying ‘the Warthog’ – that shows that we’ve done it right. That’s an amazing thing.”

Given so little contact with the owners of the IP, it seems a risky move for Cooper to tackle such a large property, especially after investing so much time and man power into creating the Warthog he has on display. It’s especially risky considering the history independent projects have with Microsoft. Cooper, though,is surprisingly genial about the whole thing.

“If they feel that I’m endangering their IP, in a way that’s kind of a compliment. In the same way that Halogen was seen to be a potential threat against Halo Wars, for example. If they said that my small fan film, my £30,000 movie, was a potential threat to a $200 million dollar movie? That says a hell of a lot. I’d take that as a personal compliment. I’d cry into my tea for a while, if they did shut me down. It’d be tragic if they actually decided that. But if they took that decision, I’d understand, take it as a compliment, and hope that it could be solved in as swift and amicable way as possible.”

“At the end of the day, they as much as anyone else want to see a Halo movie done right. And if Microsoft wanted a pass, it might not be a bad thing, it might be a good thing. I’d hope they wanted to support our film.”

It isn’t as if they aren’t aware of the project. Bungie has featured Operation Chastity multiple times on their community website, and 343 Industries has been posting updates on the production through the Halo Waypoint Twitter account. It certainly seems that if they wanted to force the project to close, they could have done so. And it doesn’t appear that Cooper is about to stop.

“I’m dedicated. My entire team are dedicated.” And as for the games themselves? “I play it on Legendary,” he says. “Because I’m not a pussy.”

It seems that the characters in Wet are torn directly from a film-makers’ archetype handbook, with a broad smattering of accents and each one firmly in the roles you’d expect from a movie of its type – the old crime syndicate boss struggling to keep up with today’s business, the wisecracking but streetsmart contact with his ear to the ground, or the slightly crazed henchmen who specialises in one particular brand of combat to the point of excellence. It’s all here, and it brings to mind the thought that Wet perhaps wants to be a film more than it does a game.

A case in point – the idea of quicktime events is to allow a cinematic sequence to be interacted with in some way, to allow the player to have some element of control over something that ordinarily they would not be able to do. The car chase sequence, present early on in the game and in the demo, is a great example of how QTEs can work in this context, with free aiming and combat around a core mechanic that is nothing more than the game being on rails with the odd button prompt. It’s exciting, cinematic, and skill requires concentration and skill in order to pass the sequence. Later in the game, however, there’s a transitional cutscene in which Rubi shoots a window in order to jump through, with no controller input at all. It’s not as if the action is even far out of reach of the usual mechanics in the game, either – it appears perfectly possible for the player to be able to shoot the glass and leap through on their own, but one many occasions Artificial Mind and Movement have opted for the non-interactive, film-like approach.

This motif of film and of traditional cinema underscores every aspect of Wet, from the film grain running over the visuals at every point to loading screens ripped straight from pre-screening lobby advertisements – after one particularly bloody sequence, the player may be invited to hop to the concession stand and grab a Chilly Dilly: “No muss, no fuss; the ideal snack for all of us!” – a constant reminder that Wet is aware of its own ridiculousness, that it’s intended to be tongue-in-cheek and that some of its more elementary missteps should be forgiven. It’s hard, however, to write off certain aspects of the game as intentional missteps. The fact that the voice acting, while excellently performed, never quite matches up with the animation of the characters on screen is distracting, and that the combat system and collision allows for an unexpected fall from a ledge during combat more often than can be blamed on the player.

It’s unfortunate, because otherwise, Wet’s combat system is its crowning jewel. In many ways, the game seems to be constructed to allow bridging points between combat arenas, locked-off warehouses or courtyards where enemies stream at Rubi continuously until their entrance doorways are blocked. At all points in Wet, killing enemies provides a points multiplier, but in these areas, managing this multiplier is critical to survival – the higher the multiplier, the faster Rubi’s health will regenerate, and therefore the most efficient way to ensure survival is through flamboyant, acrobatic and consistently violent play. As the game progresses, and the player comes across more complicated and challenging combat arenas, unlocks for both Rubi’s weapons and abilities become available, which slowly moves the bar from simple jumping and firing in slow-motion into (for example) a slide, to wall-running, strafing along the wall, leaping off to a horizontal pole and chaining two swings together, constantly firing the whole time and landing gracefully on a platform with destruction behind you.

Nothing is quite so satisfying in Wet as these perfectly-executed moments of fluidity, especially when using the incredibly well-chosen soundtrack as a backdrop, but they’re infuriatingly hard to accomplish due to the aforementioned unforgiving control – there are far too many moments in which a planned run through a room will fail multiple times through no apparent fault of the player. One particularly consistent frustration is Rubi wall-running horizontally because the wall was approached at anything less than a 90-degree angle, ruining any route that was planned and invariably dropping the character into the middle of three enemies she was trying to shoot. It’s a problem that could be overcome with any other mechanic than the aforementioned kills-to-multipliers-to-health scenario – without the perfect run, Rubi dies almost immediately due to the lack of opportunity to learn multipliers in slow motion acrobatics, but with a well-executed performance throughout a run the player loses very little health and as a consequence the room seems far too easy. There’s very little middle ground, which leads to an odd set of difficulty spikes, in which any given area’s difficulty relates directly to whether or not the game interprets the player’s actions as expected or not, which ultimately leads to irritation.

Every now and again, these combat arenas are altered slightly, providing a cel-shaded, viscerally themed stage for Rubi to rip apart enemy after enemy in a blood-fuelled rage. These moments could easily become tedious were they over-used, but they’re placed in such a way that they are a relief and a pleasure to unwind with after a particularly lengthy platforming section or gunfight. The simplicity of the environment and colour scheme lends itself very well to enabling the fluidity and constant motion that Wet relies on, to such an extent that every rage-triggered scene rides that edge of difficulty and cinema almost perfectly. It’s unfortunate, then, that there doesn’t seem to be any way of replaying these sections after completing the game, because they seem ideally suited to speed runs.

That’s not to say that the game’s difficulty is entirely scattershot, however. As the game progresses, Rubi is introduced to various different archetypes of enemies to fight, such as the swordsman who can block bullets, or the bullet sponge with a minigun, and in order to combat each of these, the player has access to an upgrade system. The points that are earned for stylish kills and kill chains can be spent on new acrobatic moves and health for Rubi, or for upgrades to damage and clip size for each of the four weapons available – unlimited pistol, SMG, shotgun and crossbow. While leaping through the air and landing on an enemy sword-first is visceral and appealing, the practicality of it is that once Rubi has the ability to shoot from anything she’s moving across, the combination of acrobatics and pistol is adequate for most situations, even without augmenting the damage or capacity of the gun. It’s just another thing in Wet that seems like a nice idea, but not quite well-rounded enough to be of any use.

That’s Wet in a nutshell – a game that seems to have missed its potential due to good ideas implemented without enough thought about the whole experience. At its best, it can be a game that just works, a rhapsody of violence and acrobatics, and at worst, its clunky controls and inconsistencies in plot and difficulty will drive you to frustration or confusion. At its core, Wet wants you to enjoy it, and it’s clear that there is something there to enjoy, but struggling through the interface to get to one of those rare moments of bliss almost isn’t worth the effort.

One of the private military companies in MAG is named S.V.E.R. Think of something this name could stand for.

The codes will be given to the most creative entries – they can be funny, clever, whatever you think is best. To enter, send an email to willeth@gmail.com with the subject line MAG BETA CONTEST. One entry per person – if you send multiples, only the first one will count. The competition ends at 6PM GMT on Saturday, September 19th and is open worldwide.

UPDATE: The contest is over. The winners are as follows:

I felt that these two entries really captured the idea of what one of these factions would name themselves. Plus, something about the word ‘rapscallions’ entertains me greatly.
Joe C:  Some Very Energetic Rapscallions
Pete C:  Stealthy Vagrants Exacting Revenge

I really like Rob’s idea of using the initials as a motto. This reads very much like a sound battle strategy.
Rob G: Shoot, Venture, Evade, Repeat

I found the mental image that coupled Ryan’s entry simply hilarious. With an entry like this I couldn’t not give him a code.
Ryan S:  Sombreros Visually Excite Raticate

And finally, the crowning glory of the piece.
Russ G: Sony Values Every RROD

All winners have been sent an email with their code to the address with which they entered. I was inundated with entries for this, and it was hard to cull some of them from the winning pile – a special mention goes to D.C.’s Sonic Vs. Eggman Robotnik, which was very clever but unfortunately not quite structurally sound enough to warrant a win.

The beta runs, on and off, until November 8th – if you won, hope to see you online, and if you missed out, keep an eye on my Twitter feed for a chance to win over the next few weeks!

As I watch the in-flight display inch ever closer to my destination, I’m forced to wonder why I’m so excited to be among their number; why I’m here at all. My first answer is a simple one – I’m a gamer. It’s an answer that immediately feels a little weak. Why, then, was I not present at E3, arguably still the biggest trade show for the industry and a guaranteed venue for fresh announcements and exclusive hands-on time with the biggest upcoming titles? Why was I not at GamesCom recently, a convention in Leipzig, Germany that is far easier to reach from my native England? For each, I was perfectly content to sit at home and watch the feeds roll by, soaking up the news without having to be physically present. What makes PAX worth the expense and exhaustion of the twenty-four hour round trip?

Looking at my schedule, I realise the answer, perhaps perfectly worded for an advertising sting – it’s because it’s not about gaming. It’s about gamers. The first day of my schedule is packed with community-organised events, before the convention even officially opens. My fondest memories of PAX 2008 aren’t of queueing to play Left 4 Dead, or getting a preview of the then-new Xbox dashboard. They’re of the Rock Band party with twenty people packed into a hotel room, that lasted until two in the morning. They’re of watching educated experts in the field opine on the hobby I love, and of discussing it with them afterward. They’re of constantly meeting people from all different backgrounds from all over the globe, from students to people in military service, every single one of whom shares my passions and many of whom I would consider friends after only knowing them a single day. And the more I think about it, the more that I realise that’s how I codify my experiences with gaming as a whole.

Everywhere there’s a venue for it on the web, the same conversation has to be had. Which is better; Call of Duty, Halo, Killzone, or anything in between? Objectively, of course, it’s a conversation that simply can’t have a satisfactory resolution, and I’m not here to debate the bullet points in favour of or against any of them in particular. My personal penchant for Halo doesn’t really stem from the weapon balance, or the visual design, or the map layout, or anything but the most simple and critical of ingredients. It’s due to the same aspect of every game that causes so much tension between factions, and it’s largely out of the control of the developers. It’s the people you play with, and the relationships you build.

I play Halo as opposed to having my choice of any other shooters out there because I have a group of people whose company I enjoy, and who I can support and be supported by in the game. Looking back through my game history with a group of these people, I don’t see a single match that we lost. As a result, when I relate the stories that affected me in that game, and others, I don’t describe the same plot twist that everyone else experienced, and either thought was predictable or revolutionary. It’s the occasion where an objective game had been a stalemate for fifteen minutes, and in the last twenty seconds all five people in the team planned, coordinated and executed the winning capture flawlessly; that chain of exhilarating moments skidding around laser fire with the right combination of teamwork, skill and luck that every match has the potential for. It’s moments like these that forge friendships and give meaning to any experience, and largely it doesn’t matter about the game itself – just that it’s shared.

So I’m heading half-way across this little planet of ours, to meet and share experiences with new people, people that I have never met but with whom I feel I have a strong bond nonetheless. That’s how this weekend will be defined, I think – rather than the inevitable wordlists that Scribblenauts didn’t bat an eyelid at, or the deconstruction of Diablo III’s minutiae, the reason I’m here is to witness the electricity in the room as a thousand people hold their breath as someone slides a wooden block from a tower, or to grin incessantly as I tap plastic frets with new friends.

For that, I’d pay twice as much and travel for twice as long. And, if PAX East in Boston early next year is anywhere near the calibre of PAX Prime, I will be.