So, after all of the controversy they stirred up, Konami has backed out of publishing 6 Days in Fallujah. Obviously, they incurred a heaping dose of wrath for what many considered insensitive and ill timed considering the conflict in Iraq continues at this very moment (my brother just returned from his second stint in Iraq, which was his third to the middle east). It is unfortunate that the very vocal minority will get their way in the short run and will have seemingly stopped the release of this game unless developer Atomic Games can find a brave new publisher.
It sad that the dichotomy of our industry is that we want the creative freedom to make "art" but can't stomach the potential financial loss if that backfires. But the scary thought of industry execs self censoring is not the only issue here.
Without knowing much more than the game existed, it's hard to say if we'll be missing anything at all. Would it have been just another shooter or would it have brought to new light what happened in those six bloody days? Would it have transcended above a "game" and deliver an experience that a documentary could not? That what the developer's proposed as they said that "games are not just toys."
I'm afraid I'm skeptical. It seems to me that they set out to create a linear, but vivid and accurate, recreation of the battle. It that sense they would most likely be very successful at telling the story they want but miss the point of what games can bring to the table. Games allow us to solve problems and make our own choices. Players are not led by a director through a scene but create their own story through play. Instead of going down the alley to the left, maybe the player leads his squad down the right and they are all ambushed and captured. Maybe the player successfully neutralizes the threat in Fallujah with minimal casualties and the skirmish is no longer as historically significant. Maybe the player decides the threat is too great (or not great enough) and never enters the city at all. These divergent paths change the course of history and take away from the developer's attempts to create "game-amentary."
There have been many, many war games. It is a popular setting as it lends itself easily to good versus evil, right versus wrong. But the Iraq war is not that black and white. Could Atomic Games create a game where there are no winners and the "good guys" die a lot? Sure, I like to think we could progress our medium to that level.
But it probably wouldn't be much fun. And it most likely wouldn't sell as well as the new Call of Duty.
Debt is clearly a problem for many people, myself included, just look at the state of our economy. Unfortunately, there aren't too many ways for people to educate themselves on the subject, especially not in games. A while back, I gave some thought to how to design a game with the player managing his debt as a major component of the game play. Obviously this would be a game about educating the public, not necessarily entertaining them.
I envisioned an RPG-style game where the player had limited income resources and needed to rely mostly on loans and credit as a means of paying for in game necessities and items. The ultimate goal was to show the player how quickly one can drown under the weight of debt in the face of shrinking income and increasing interest rates.
Well, it seems someone has beaten me to the punch as Brian Haveri, a grad student, has released Debt Ski. This flash game is simple but quite effective at showing how hard staying out of debt can be. It's a fairly simple platforming game; the player moves a pig on a jet ski from left to right collecting "income," paying for necessities like rent and trying to avoid luxuries like iPods. At the of each level the player has to be in the black to keep playing or take on debt. If the player can't afford his necessities of accrue too much debt, it's game over.
While the single player campaign turned out to be pretty darn good, I could not see how it would translate into a multiplayer experience very well. Needless to say, I skipped the $5 DLC and will continue to imagine that this is how it plays.
I didn't spend the month of March watching college basketball. Nope, I spent it catching up on some of the games I missed in the crowded holiday season.
The first game I tackled was Dead Space. This game hit on almost every cylinder. The atmosphere was brilliant and tense, especially the audio as I played through most of the game while wearing headphones. The controls were tight, allowing the player to move and shoot (unlike some other horror game) all while managing your inventory in real time. But it was all of the little things that made this game great. For example, the character's head moved with the cursor as the player navigated his HUD and that all of the pertinent player information was built right into the character model really drove home the immersion. With the minor exceptions that many of the missions were fetch quests and the 3D map was finicky (I remember it being much more fluid and readable in Metroid Prime), this game stood out for me as one of the great experiences of this last year.
The next game I devoted my time to was Mirror's Edge. This game, mush like EA's other gamble Dead Space, was served by beautiful art direction and audio. The parkour mechanics translated rather well to the first person genre and offered some brilliant moments of free running that were both nerve-racking and exhilarating. If that was the whole game, I would place it up with Dead Space as a must play. However, the hand to hand combat was absolutely dreadful and, unfortunately, is unavoidable at set pieces throughout the game. Which leads me to my next negative point about the game - if parkour is about going anywhere, why was there really only one correct path through the game? If the level design was opened up more to allow craftier players to find paths to avoid enemy encounters while other could charge through, run and gun style, this game would have far exceeded any one's expectations. That being said, it warrants a sequel if only to see where the developers can take this and hopefully improve upon said short comings.
I then moved on to Tomb Raider: Underworld. This game was a mess, with some sketchy controls and camera; the game even crashed a few times throughout my play through. In addition, many times I felt like I had no idea what to do next and I was forced to rely far too heavily on the hint function in the menu for direction. Unfortunately, this seems par for the course for a Lara Croft adventure, but I forged ahead anyway because, graphically, it was a pleasure to look at and the story line was intriguing because of how set up Norse myth as a basis for all other mythologies and the (fictional) reality that forged those myths. In the end, I would say that I had fun playing through the game but technical issues marred the experience.
I ended the month with Resident Evil 5. I know I've been tough on the game for its unwillingness to evolve but, you know what, I ended up really enjoying it. I still stand behind the idea that the game has one of, if not the worst, first impressions of any game ever. With the controls they way they are and then to throw the player right off the bat into a confined area with a boss and numerous fast moving enemies was a recipe for disaster and I image that many people who didn't give this game a chance was because he or she didn't get past this part. It's a shame because once this section is over, the pace settles down and the player can settle into a groove that lasts through the end of the game. I ended up playing through the game several times to get some of the additional achievements but the game gave me no incentive to try the Mercenaries mode, Co-op or the dowloadable VS. mode but I imagine someone that is a huge fan of the series would dive right in to them. At the end of the day, RE5 will have to go down as a contender for game of year (so far), which is not something I expected to say after my time with the demo.
When, I heard about the Big Sister a couple of weeks ago, I thought that it may have been an April Fools Joke. I was wrong and it became known that she was in fact going to be in Bioshock 2. Now that I've seen her in action, this game can't come soon enough.
