Review: Heavy Rain (PS3)

Developer: Quantic Dream

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment International

Release Date: February 23, 2010

Heavy Rain is being portrayed by most of the gaming media (and media more broadly) as a seismic shift in game design, something totally unlike everything we've played before, an interactive movie that is the very prow of the Good Ship Progress. Some are even implying that Heavy Rain will drag the general public kicking and screaming toward accepting the notion that video games are every bit as legitimate an art form as film.

And pretty much every bit of that is total and utter bullshit.

First of all, Heavy Rain is nothing like a fundamental shift in how gameplay is approached. Not only did Quantic Dream use virtually the same gameplay system in its 2005 title Indigo Prophecy, but also Quick Time Events (QTEs) date back to Dragon's Lair. Yeah, the 80s. So really, this game is about as innovative as saying this whole "World Wide Web" thing might just take off.

To be fair, Heavy Rain does integrate the PS3's Sixaxis wireless control capability. But that's not really anything "innovative" -- Call of Duty 3 was a PS3 launch game that also tried to capitalize upon Sixaxis. It did so terribly, mind you, but it did try. And Heavy Rain executes motion control slightly better, though the overall game's controls are still a tad too vague and imprecise for what Quantic Dream is asking of the player.

But the real point of Heavy Rain, if you listen to David Cage -- the game's writer/driector/creator/producer -- is twofold: first, it's meant to be an interactive movie, not a "game" in the traditional sense. Second, that fact, coupled with the QTE structure, is supposed to allow Heavy Rain to create a level of immersion the likes of which has never been achieved by a game before.

If David Cage were actually a filmmaker (as he so obviously burns to be), he would be irredeemably terrible. Heavy Rain's story is at best a bland, poorly-structured ripoff of any number of mainstream thriller and horror titles. From the setting to the characters to the dialog, everything feels like I'm watching a kid standing around in his father's suit:. However, this on its own wouldn't be sufficient for me to condemn Heavy Rain so thoroughly: what really does Heavy Rain's story in is how smart David Cage thinks he is. The whole game is meant to be a sort-of whodunit: WHO IS THE ORIGAMI KILLER ZOMG!!! IT MIGHT BE ME! IT MIGHT BE YOU! IT MIGHT BE THAT BUM FROM TWENTY MINUTES AGO!

Except Cage completely ignores the basic tenets of any decent mystery/thriller story, and in so doing removes any possibility of actually caring about what happens. Instead of delivering upon what it promises, Heavy Rain veers off into a contrived set of stupid plot lines and a third-act deus ex machina so massive that I was actually blown away. And not in a good way. Indeed, that same device (and indeed the whole approach to telling Heavy Rain's story) creates and is supported by a series of plot holes so massive that they actually make me chuckle every time I think of them. The story's issues are not helped by the fact that the characters are two-dimensional at best, and I cared about quite literally none of them.

Worse, all of these flaws are exacerbated by a not-so-subtle attitude of near-masturbatory arrogance on David Cage's part, one that pervades every nook and cranny of Heavy Rain: "oh, aren't I smart? See, I can make it in Hollywood any time I want!"

That said, let's move on to Quantic Dream's claims of immersion, and I can report that Heavy Rain actually is immersive... sort of. The problem once again falls in large part upon Cage's arrogance. He is so busy trying to gain acceptance as a filmmaker that he resorts to literally every cheap hook to drawn in the audience, such as the "I get killed, but it's only a dream" and "camera-cut faux-character-death" to name just two. Do they work? Kinda, especially since it was revealed in advance that any of the four main characters you play as can die.

But it doesn't leave a great taste in my mouth, especially since I discovered that there are only a few points in which you actually have any serious input on the game's progression. Past that, you can basically screw up every input the game throws at you and still get a pretty good ending.

What's more, even in the few times that Heavy Rain actually succeeded in creating a sense of immersion in the game's world, I was strangely aware that it was artificial. When I was feeding an infant a bottle, I wanted to get it just right... but that wasn't because I actually cared about the kid. When I had to find one character's missing child, I wanted to find him... but not because it was important to me. When these precious few moments of "immersion" occurred, I knew on a level that's difficult to describe that this was all fake. I knew I wasn't really immersed, but instead experiencing a temporary, bootleg version of actual immersion. And at best, the few instances in which I was dragged into the game world were a product of the (serviceable, if unoriginal) soundtrack and my own occasional-anal-retentiveness.

To provide a counterpoint here, it is possible that Heavy Rain would have been a better game had it not been hyped so completely and relentlessly, but I want to note that I didn't actually pay a great deal of attention to this game's marketing -- I already knew I was picking it up, for reasons I'll get into later.

Put simply, Quantic Dream's vain, half-assed efforts at drawing the player into the story made Heavy Rain an exercise in detachment, cynicism and blessed shortness, rather than a meaningful pursuit that was over too quickly.

Heavy Rain does do something different, at least insofar as the game isn't a standard action/RPG/shooter title, and deserves some credit for that. Indeed, that's the whole reason why I bought this game new, instead of waiting three days for it to appear used on store shelves. That said, I can't think of a single type of person that I'd recommend this game to. For almost everything Heavy Rain tries to do or (more rarely) succeeds in doing, there are any number of different games that do it better. Ultimately, Heavy Rain is little more than an over-budgeted, over-priced vanity exercise, a vaguely-interesting notion thoroughly ruined by its creator/writer/director. Which is actually quite sad, because there are a few moments in playing Heavy Rain that I got glimpses of what might have been, and those just amplified my frustration at the rest of this trainwreck.

In one sentence: Heavy Rain is the dictionary definition of hubris.

(Nerd's Note: A lot of this echoes what Anthony Burch and Jim Sterling have been saying on Destructoid for the last couple weeks, though they've definitely said it better than I; it's worth reading their musings on this game [even Sterling's blatant trolling following his review]. Anthony Burch's discussion of Heavy Rain in the context of Roger Ebert's quote about video games is also worth investigating.)

Review: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (Wii)

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: January 26, 2010

It’s hard to believe that I’m reviewing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, since I never actually thought this game would be localized for the American market. This was A) because Tatsunoko isn’t necessarily a well-known among Americans (especially the more mainstream audience the Wii targets) and B) because of licensing issues. But I’ll get to that later.

The Capcom Versus series is a hardcore 2D fighting franchise that pits fan-favorite Capcom characters from Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, and any number of other Capcom series (including Megaman) against favorite characters from other universes, such as SNK (King of Fighters) and Marvel. Yeah, that’s right; in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (the last title in the series released in the US) you could pick a team with Gambit, Resident Evil’s Jill Valentine, and the Servbots from Mega Man Legends. The rosters were always huge, odd, and a ton of fun. As for the mechanics, they were what you’d expect from a stubbornly 2D fighting series that appealed to hardcore gamers: fucking ridiculous.

Incidentally, I have never met anybody who could actually execute those mechanics. Like all franchises of this genre, there are two tiers of player: the people who know everything about how to play these games, and the rest of us (who sucked).

But I’ve always made it a point to pick up every title I can in the Capcom Versus series, because even if I do suck at them they’re still a blast to play. Particularly over a few drinks with some friends.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a different sort of beast, however. Yes, drawing characters from the Marvel and SNK universes is an obscure move, but they were always treated as fairly obscure titles: fairly limited-run games on consoles known for attracting hardcore gamers. For example, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 would never have been ported to the Gamecube. The PS2 was the optimal choice for that title, and its cult status means that copies of it still go for truly obscene sums on eBay (i.e. above the original list price), despite it being available as a downloadable game on the PlayStation Network for something like $10.

As for Tatsunoko: a lot of the awesome old-school anime I grew up with, such as Gatchaman (AKA Battle of the Planets/G-force), Macross (Robotech) and Speed Racer were all the product of Tatsunoko. But herein lies the rub: all of these different shows were brought to the US at different times, and by different localization studios. So when this game was released in Japan, a lot of American fans despaired: in order to release Tatsunoko vs. Capcom here Capcom would have to negotiate with each of them to secure licensing rights. And while Capcom was pushing Wii development very heavily at the time, the consensus was that the company was focused on casual games for the platform: i.e. ones with a broader appeal than to the demographics of Otacon and the San Diego Comic Con. The fact was that all the different cultural and legal junk just made it easier for Capcom to keep in Japan, so I treated any noises I heard about a US release as bunk.

Then I actually got confirmation that it was coming to the US, and immediately halted plans to sell my Wii. I even bought it on release day, along with Mass Effect 2.

So, all that background out of the way, how is the actual game?

Well, if I’m being honest, that depends completely and entirely upon how much of a nerd you are. If you love Tatsunoko, you probably already own this game. If you love the Capcom Versus series, you probably already own this game. If you love either and don’t already own it, you must A) not own a Wii, B) be a moron, or C) be highly offended by something dumb, like maybe your favorite character wasn’t included or Megaman Volnutt’s hair is one pixel out of place and as a result you have to boycott this game while you go do foul things to your Cammy love doll. So all those people might as well just depart now.

For those who remain: this game is absolutely fantastic. Yes, it’s button-mashy unless you play pretty much nothing but 2D fighters. Yes, you may not recognize all the characters unless you are as pathetically devoid of a life as I am (in which case, again, you probably already own this game). And yes, the online component doesn’t work too well since the Wii’s wi-fi is horrible (I have yet to complete a full match online, and my router is an AirPort Extreme less than five feet from my Wii).

But here are the upsides. You get a huge roster of fighters, including two US exclusives. Yes, that’s right, US exclusives. While you lose the party-style minigames for each character that the Japanese got, you gain a much more fully-featured version of the schmup that was a brief minigame in the original. It’s actually so fully-featured it probably could have been released on its own as a PlayStation Network or Xbox LIVE Arcade title.

You also get a proper, hardcore 2D fighter: my biggest complaint with the Wii is that pretty much every game that gets made for it forces the player to use the Wiimote in some bland, unoriginal, played-out way. Yes, you can use any configuration of Wii controllers you want (Wiimote, Wiimote + nunchuck, Classic controller, Gamecube controller), but there's no motion control at all. The very concept of this genre is by nature old-school and retroish, and to not try to attach new tech to it unnecessarily in order to appeal to a broader audience is refreshing.

If you were to cut out all the fanboy drooling and reminiscing, then the above two pages or so would actually be the previous four paragraphs. It would be the shortest review I’ve ever written for anything, except Fantastic Four (“Like getting cockslapped by Stan Lee”). Hell, I can shorten my review for this game even more: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a game I absolutely adore, but might have trouble recommending to anybody who doesn’t at least sometimes feel a strong retroish, nostalgic tint to their nerdiness. But to keep a review for this game so short feels like I’m doing it a disservice.

And that’s the thing: this game’s mere existence in the US is an act of love. And all the different tweaks, the possibility of DLC (yeah, for the Wii [!], and I hear it might be Phoenix Wright [!!]), the translations, everything… this is a gigantic work of love by some very dedicated people in Capcom’s US staff. This game just oozes a certain sort of joyous pluck, an odd sort of character that highlights the odd sort of character already present in the Capcom Versus. And as anyone who has ever heard me mention the British auto industry knows, I am a total slut for pluck and character.

Brain Droppings: Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)

[Beware: Here there be spoilers!]

First things first: this is NOT a retraction of my review. Mass Effect 2 is still a jaw-dropping experience, and if you like either shooters or RPGs and own a 360, you should own this game.* Rather, this post is meant to supplement and revisit my previous review, now that I’ve beaten the game once and am working on a second play through. Because, you see, this game got two to three times better after I posted my review. And, unsurprisingly, it’s all down to the suicide mission.

The great thing about the way BioWare released information about Mass Effect 2 is that you knew there was going to be a suicide mission against the Collectors, but that wasn't really a spoiler: Shepard knew that by the end of the first hour of gameplay. And like Shepard, you weren’t exactly sure how this was all going to play out: oh sure, the ship upgrades and loyalty mechanic meant that you probably knew pretty early these were going to be big factors, but BioWare sort of banked on that. After all, I went in with a completely loyal characters, all upgrades done as thoroughly as I could, and so on. I swore up and down I wasn’t going to leave a single character behind.

Two died.

I was heartbroken. Quite possibly as much as I was when I saw Aerith buy it in FFVII. And the two characters weren’t even my favorites of mine.

The difference was that I knew that they died because I’d screwed up. (And if that isn’t a decent, if not somewhat facile, simulation of leadership in combat I don’t know what is.) This wasn’t scripted. I could have saved everyone, had I not made two wrong decisions. I knew what points those decisions were made, but what were the right decisions to make?

So I immediately reloaded and tried the suicide mission again. And two died once more. So I tried a third time. Got it down to just one. Then a fourth. One again. By now I was falling over asleep, but I sure as shit wasn’t giving up until I had every single one of my crew safe as houses. I cared that much.

(I had to resort to using the Internet to sort it out: normally, that isn’t too big a deal for me. I try to do it only when I'm at a loss, but this time it felt like a betrayal. I was that into it. But I digress.)

I got there eventually. What I was missing, in a word, was leadership. Getting your whole crew out alive isn’t just a function of some stats and upgrades, like many games might treat such a scenario. At various points in the mission you’re asked to split up one or more members of your squad, in order for them to do some specific task. Unless you pick the party member that best meets the criteria for that job, chances are that they aren’t living through the mission. Put differently, you as a leader need to know your squad – and their strengths and weaknesses aren’t always made immediately obvious.

But what sticks with me the most almost two weeks after I finished Mass Effect 2 is how I felt on that first playthrough of the suicide mission. Just the sheer tension of it all: “Did I get it right? Oh God, is ___ gonna catch a round?” Yes, at some points that feeling is achieved through clever cuts and the like, but it’s such an immersive experience that I absolutely and completely forgive BioWare the use of a couple cheap tricks of the camera to heighten tension at the climax of this game.

I could go on and say more about this game. A lot more, in fact. But I needn’t bother.

*If you don’t, I will stop satisfying your mom sexually. And who’s she gonna take that out on? You, that’s who. Cogitate on that.

Review: Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360)

Developer: BioWare
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: January 26, 2010

The reality of the game industry today is that software revenues (and thus releases) are dominated by big-budget, franchiseable titles that usually emphasize lots of action and the slickest graphics possible. So when game developers plan sequels there's usually very little desire on their part or their underwriters' to take risks: make the graphics slicker, add some new bells and whistles, but for God's sake don't make much of an effort to respond to criticisms of the first game and make sure it's out by the holidays!

It was into this market that BioWare, which is owned by Electronic Arts, published Mass Effect 2. The original Mass Effect was published back in 2007, and represented BioWare's first serious foray into the action-RPG genre (yes, I don't count Jade Empire). The studio's previous efforts were magnificently crafted RPGs with a real-time turn-based combat system that used the Dungeons and Dragons rule set. (Yes, that was even true of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.) So Mass Effect was a big departure for them: it was a BioWare RPG, set in a totally new universe, with a third-person squad-based shooter grafted onto the RPG foundations.

Mass Effect's RPG underpinnings were quite good, displaying many of the hallmarks one would expect from a BioWare RPG. You played ___ Shepard, a customizable human space marine: you could select gender, appearence, first name (s/he ways always addressed as "Shepard" in-game), and class. More interestingly, there was a moral mechanic insofar as you could select how you wanted to interact with characters: be nice and gain Paragon points, be a jackass and gain Renegade points. How you approached key moments of the game, and your choices overall, affected your ending and a bunch of other stuff. It was a little too simplistic in that the moral choices weren't that much deeper than what you saw in Lionhead Studios' Fable back in 2004 (or BioWare's earlier Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic), but it still added a nice touch of immersion, as did the romantic subplots and multitude of sidequests.

Likewise, the universe that BioWare created was utterly original: yes, it drew from other sources, but it didn't feel like the Star Wars rip-off many "original" science-fiction universes are. In fact, it was arguably the game's biggest selling point in the face of some major problems.

First off, Mass Effect's combat system was designed with the idea that users would take cover and fight strategically. Except that you never really had to: if you were a soldier, you could just use the plentiful supply of new weapons (combined with the game's unlimited ammunition) to make yourself a tank and shoot your way through. Or if you were a biotic user (think spellcaster) you could overpower your enemies with biotics. Basically, it was an easily exploitable combat system that suffered from a really dumb AI -- the hazard of an RPG team trying to make an action game. And the rest of the game's general lack of polish in some significant areas was fairly obviously the result of the studio's staff focusing too much on how to make a shooter, at the expense of improving upon the mechanics that BioWare built its name on.

These faults were made even more obvious by the fact that Gears of War had come out the previous year and set the standard for this sort of shooting system, making Mass Effect seem like a bad rip-off in comparison. Even worse, both games used the Unreal Engine, but where Gears was gorgeous and smooth, Mass Effect (which admittedly had to render a much bigger game universe) had pretty good graphics and was incredibly buggy. So while Mass Effect was a commercial success, its critical reception was probably the worst BioWare has ever seen. But it was an enjoyable game in an interesting universe, and BioWare went ahead and made a sequel.

At that point, BioWare could simply have done a typical sequel, but they didn't.

Not at all.

Mass Effect 2 retains the few (but significant) strengths of the original game, tosses out everything else, and rebuilds from what is essentially the ground up. The game's universe is kept, it's still powered by the Unreal Engine, and the base mechanics for interacting with characters are still pretty much unchanged.

The shooter-RPG hybrid nature of the game is also kept, though it's hardly recognizeable when compared to the original. Every single one of the original's flaws has been utterly and completely erased. Guns now have finite ammunition, which adds depth to your combat inventory that was previously absent, especially since ammunition is shared between all weapons. Both the enemy AI and your squad's has been improved to the point that, even playing as a soldier, it's hard to make any progress in the game without using the cover system, which has also been overhauled -- so much so that it actually works now. Enemies are more aggressive and really put pressure on you, while it now occasionally behooves you to actually use your squadmates.

The health system has been overhauled for the better, with Shepard's health managed by a Gears of War/Halo 2/ Halo 3/Uncharted/etc.-style recharge system. Whether or not other characters regenerate health depends on their race (humans don't, for example), and shields are still around and still rechargeable, though the new health mechanic definitely makes them more important.

Similarly, the over-reliance on maxed-out skills and amassing as many weapons as possible have also been junked. You now improve skills less often and acquire new versions of weapons very rarely, which balances your character out better. It's offset by the addition of a research and upgrade system that makes sure people who explore every nook and cranny are thoroughly rewarded, and I imagine that this system doesn't punish people who play through quickly as severed as the original did (I'm not a professional journalist and thus didn't get an advance copy to play through a bunch of times).

In other words, Mass Effect 2 copies Gears of War fairly successfully by streamlining the combat, while simultaneously rounding out the sharp edges that the underlying RPG elements created in the first game. And think about that: an RPG, made by an RPG company, has a shooter mechanic that's a great facsimile for that of Grand Theft Auto IV and Gears of War. A pretty robust RPG mechanic underlying a fast-paced, high-octane shooter. That's unreal.

Speaking of Unreal (see what I did there?), the game looks absolutely stunning. Fundamentally, it's the same engine (the system requirements for the PC version are apparently basically the same as those for the original), just tweaked. But those tweaks make a huge difference: it's actually hard to believe that these two games run on the same engine. Plus the whole game runs so much more smoothly than the first, and I have yet to see any bugs save for one small clipping error. The UI is also aesthetically slicker, though that's more of a coat-of-paint improvement.

As for the universe around you, where the first Mass Effect was populated by all manner of different creatures, Mass Effect 2's universe feels inhabited. It's much more immersive, in part because of the visual improvements, but also in other ways. The voice acting is great and incredibly deep -- the voice of the Male Shepard said he had twice as much dialog to record this time around -- and I find myself getting drawn in far more easily. The fact that the God-awful MAKO driving stages have been removed helps, as do the all-new hacking and safe-cracking mechanics. Plus sidequests are more carefully tied to the overall game, and there are cool little offhand news reports that broach how you handled (or didn't handle) sidequests in the original. The Paragon/Renegade morality system gets a little more depth as well, with certain moments allowing you to press a button to perform a Paragon or Renegade action (as opposed to just dialog choices), and moral grey areas are approached with a little more subtlety. At least, I find it easier to be doing the "right" thing consistently but still (however inadvertently) collect some Renegade points. And the decisions you make have a much greater effect on how things turn out than in it original.

The way the story is handled is a little more interesting, as well. The original Mass Effect followed a path a little too much like Knights of the Old Republic: at minimum, you need to go to these different worlds, do something, and then that world will open up some new piece of the puzzle. Then at the end you go to one or two different places, one right after the other. It felt a little like a linear game that had occasional delusions of being non-linear.

Mass Effect 2 is pretty different: you know from the first half-hour or so where you're supposed to end up. You know it's a suicide mission. The question is just when you want to go. There's a minimal number of things you need to do to get ready, but it's not that long before you can go on the final mission -- probably no more than 10 hours if you do very little else. Your job for much of the game is to recruit a team: you can see where each potential team member is, and past that pretty much everything else is up to you. Plus people who didn't play the first shouldn't feel too lost in the game's story and universe: you have plenty of chances to get background info from other characters, and the game's Codex function is still around to explain the inhabitants, objects and politics of the Mass Effect universe as much or as little as you like.

The original Mass Effect simply had characters on your team that you used, or didn't, and occasionally you had to make decisions about their fate based on your stats and how much you liked them. Mass Effect 2 presents a deeper mechanic, however. Basically, there is a trust mechanic that establishes a relationship between Shepard and each member of his team, and that mechanic is meant to become very significant once you're on the suicide mission. Loyalty, which is acheived by doing a special missions for each character, gains you a new color outfit for the character, a new ability, and can come in handy overall.

And there's reason to use different characters: each one's differing abilities and available arsenal are far more pronounced than in the first, creating far more pronounced differences in how you approach fights and interactions. More than that, your actions regarding them have real effects at the game's end. Best of all, the characters are all actually somewhat interesting: many of the characters in the original felt pretty bland, and those that are recruitable in this game are given more depth via their loyalty missions. And the new crew additions are also pretty neat.

But Mass Effect 2's greatest strength is a really obvious one: it's never boring. Mass Effect had exciting "wow" moments, but there've been more of those moments in 13 hours (so far) of Mass Effect 2 than there were in 30+ that I spent on the original Mass Effect. I'm talking about keeping the gameplay fresh and interesting, showing me sights that make me want to see what's on the next floor, the next station. Making me never want to put the controller down.

I realize that this has basically read as one long love letter to Mass Effect 2, and while it's an exceptional game I do have to admit that it's not without its flaws. First, the Paragon/Renegade system still needs some work. I like that there's a greater attempt to integrate it more fully into the game, but it's still a little too black and white. I'm not expecting perfection, and the improvements are quite noticeable, but it feels at times a little too much like a touch-up rather than a deep re-thinkin. Granted, that system needed far less improvement than the combat system and engine (which is where I imagine most of BioWare's time was spent), but I'd like to see a little more tweaking for Mass Effect 3. Also, some character animations are perhaps a little too jerky: for example, even though Shepard has reportedly ten times as many cover animations as in the first, many still look really robotic. And although Mass Effect 2 definitely removes some of the linear constrictions of the first, it doesn't necessarily remove as many as I'd like. But then, RPGs rarely provide the full sandbox experience, so I'm at best nit-picking and at worst complaining about something nobody reasonably should.

Where Mass Effect felt like a great idea that was afraid to take too many risks at one time -- and thus came up short in almost every way -- its sequel dares to make some major revisions, all of which pay off massively, while supplementing that with a multitude of smaller tweaks. Ultimately, where the original felt like an traditional BioWare RPG that had a shooter grafted awkwardly on to it, the sequel feels like a harmonious balance between shooter and RPG in which the approach feels as if it were to make a shooter first and integrate RPG elements wherever possible.

Mass Effect 2 isn't a step forward from its precursor. Nor is it a jump, a leap, or even an extended road trip. It surpasses its predecessor by roughly the distance between the Earth and the Moon. It's the difference between Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Deus Ex: both have many of the same ideas at their core, but one is so much better than the other in every conceivable way that it's not even a matter of opinion. It's fact.

Don't let all the comparisons I drew* fool you: Mass Effect 2 isn't just a fantastic sequel and the philosophical model for how a sequel should be approached. It's an epic achievement in its own right.

*I thought those comparisons were necessary to get across just how much better this game is. It's all about context.