Games for the Heart: To The Moon

I've been waiting.

While the world of games whirls around me, busier than ever, constantly getting bigger and better and telling stories with graphics so lifelike, it seems like it won't be long until we can hardly discern them from real life. And they keep coming out and I keep waiting to feel something, anything, about the next big thing. I keep watching everyone else get excited.

For thousands, even millions of gamers, the "big budget" game is satisfying what they want. It's awesome, but it's also frustrating, because what they want is not what I want. What I want is something that I learned about almost twenty years ago -- that games could not only have a story, but a compelling story, one that made you not only care about the characters, but love them, and be sorry to see them go when the game was completed, feeling as if you were watching friends walk away and wondering if you might ever see them again.

To The Moon is that game, except it's not twenty years old, even though it looks like a Super Nintendo game. Actually, it just came out a few weeks ago. If you have a soft spot for games that dare to go deeper than just the surface, you'll hear it instantly in the soundtrack, which has a main theme that composer Kan R. Gao cleverly embroiders throughout the story. Telling a tale with a single piano melody is not an easy feat, but I'm betting you'll remember that beautiful music long after you've completed the game.

At the heart of To The Moon is a dying man, Johnny, and two doctors, Dr. Eva Rosalene and Dr. Neil Watts. The doctors have the power to alter a person's memories, and Johnny has a dream he wants to fulfill before he passes away: To go to the moon. In order to make that wish come true, they will have to journey backwards through his memory to learn all that they can in order to get to the point where they can make a change.

Many games tell a story, but the most courageous games tell real life stories, and the thing that makes us connect to them is that they resonate with some bit of what our own lives contain. The idea of winding back the clock of our lives and seeing where we've been and what could have been different is an intoxicating idea for anyone, as is the thought of going back and changing it at the end to make it more like what you wanted.

To The Moon knows this, and it executes it with elegance and enthusiasm. Like the Super Nintendo RPGs that are still beloved to so many gamers now, it balances out those human stories and moments with goofy humor that keeps us smiling and makes it all easier to process. It's not afraid to show us tragedy, either, or the parts of life that we wish we could forget.

Most importantly, it exhibits something that is absent in so many current games today: The ability for a developer to be vulnerable about his or her creation. By offering exactly the game envisioned with no concessions about what is "best" or what will sell, we invite our audience in. We take a chance. And if they choose to take that chance as well, they become vulnerable too, which means they are open to be affected on the deepest level by this thing we've created.

We engage in entertainment for many reasons, none better than the other: to laugh, to cry, to scream, to be thrilled, entertained, scared, affected, taught something new. And what To The Moon reminded me of is that for every dozen games that have polish and entertainment and play it safe, there are always the tiny treasures you find by sifting through the sand. You might have to work harder to get your hands on them, but once you do, they'll present experiences that you'll never forget -- experiences that make you a better gamer, a richer person.

In other words, my wait was over.

A Call To Action: Bring Point and Click Adventure Back To Life

Last week, a post on Kotaku referring to the days of drawing your own dungeon maps in games like Zork struck a chord with me, as well as my co-worker at Touch Arcade (find him at @blakespot). Suffice to say I've been in one of those retro gaming moods where lots of shiny high-def new releases have been hitting consoles, and for whatever reason, not a single one of them has appealed to me.

This morning, I stumbled upon this not-at-all-new video which I somehow had never seen: a fan's remake of Shadowgate for PC, which was never completed but fascinating all the less. In case you have no idea what I mean, Shadowgate was one of a short series of games (MacVenture series) created by ICOM Simulations back in 1987 that led the player through a series of point and click scenarios. Other entries in this series included Deja Vu I & II, two hard-boiled detective mysteries, and Uninvited, a haunted house adventure.

I loved these games.

However, even as I read the aforementioned article about Zork maps last week, I asked myself the question: Are these forms of gaming obsolete? I recently spent some time playing Atlus's remake of Persona 2: Innocent Sin for the PSP, and while the dialogue and characters hold up quite well, I found I had much less patience for the random monster encounters every three steps. Sure, I played those when I was a teenager, because I had nothing to compare them to. Now, gaming is more intuitive, and we don't need to draw our own maps or spend weeks grinding in randomized fights. Some of us prefer those methods, but those numbers are dwindling.

The point and click adventure genre is not entirely dead, but it surely seems antiquated in terms of modern gaming. Look at my beloved Shadowgate as an example: rather than use a menu to select my actions, such as moving to a new room, my environment could simply be navigated with a controller. It saves time, but it also takes something out of the experience that I miss. Perhaps the MacVenture series created an unusual tension in that we were only allowed a window into the surroundings of their titles with no alternate views. We couldn't adjust the camera, so our imaginations were forced to generate whatever was outside of our line of sight.

This limited peek into a world will not interest most developers, who prefer to show you the entire world, and I understand why. I do. Why peek through a keyhole, when you can use the key and stand in the world? It makes much more sense. Except that I keep passing up these fully explorable universes, or spending time in them and finding for all their glory, I'm just not enjoying myself. It has nothing to do with the quality of the game. It's just that as gamers, we all like to stand in different types of worlds.

Can these games come back, exactly as they were? They cannot. They were experienced at a specific time, and the reaction to them is partially affected by the time period and the gamer's personal state of mine. Can they be created in new ways? They can. Jake Elliot's Ruins is a perfect example (and it's free, so you really should play it.) I applaud the developers courageous enough to continue to give us worlds that we can explore that differ from the norm. My true hunger as a gamer is to find those worlds that are not so average, and experience that magic again of peering through the keyhole. Perhaps I will find the key, and open the door, and find that what is inside is exactly what I was hoping to find. Or even better -- Nothing like I could have possibly imagined.

How to Never Really Know Anyone: Facebook Timeline

I've never been big on privacy. And so as social networks have come and gone, I've been more than okay with splattering them with personal photos, status updates, musical preferences, cutesy photos of me with boyfriends, even memories from childhood. The fabric that makes up our lives seemed to be a thing worth sharing, and so I shared it, and I never spent a lot of time thinking about who would read it and what they might think, because I had that fierce pride that accompanies youth where you feel you must burn through the world and show them who you are with all the blazing fury of a person with everything in the world to prove.

I got a bit older, but I kept sharing. Smartphones got fashionable, then in a seemingly effortless motion, necessary. Photos taken on the fly became commonplace. Going to bars and other social outings and seeing people staring into their phones, trying to capture it all in a perfect Instagram shot or Tweet, encapsulated the irony of it all: In trying to use all the new social media at once, we were so busy capturing all the moments of our lives that we were effectively distracted from living them. It looked like we were living them, in the pictures. But what do we remember about those days and nights that wasn't pressed into a digital photograph?

Facebook ushered in a new level of ability to "research" a person on the internet, better known as comprehensive stalking and something that many people admit to enjoying (me included). In the Friendster days, you could go ogle shared groups or photos and peek through a keyhole into the life of a stranger, or perhaps a person you barely knew at all but wished you knew, or knew a little bit but wanted to know much more. It was fun, this glimpse into a life, even the part where you pretended you might be a part of it.

The combination of Facebook and Twitter is an intoxicating combination when it comes to researching that guy you met at the book launch party or the St. Vincent show who smiled for a second longer than he should have when he was about to leave. Essentially there's nothing wrong with it, we all agree to the information that we put on it. And we can restrict that in any way we want. We can go and see what a person's stream of consciousness is like on Twitter, and make key judgement calls: Do they complain frequently? Do they act like they're above the common guy? Do they use annoying internetspeak and sub in letters for entire words?

Yesterday Facebook introduced Timeline, and we all ahhhed collectively. It was still clean, still functional, but really pretty, and best of all, it didn't just swallow up the moments of our lives in big gulps only to digest and excrete them, never to be seen again. It cataloged them, like a photo album. Suddenly we found ourselves surfing back months or even years to see what we did, who we talked to, who we took photos with. With the click of a button, there was a public view available that showed off every bit of our online activity, all in one place.

It was more information than had ever been available before -- in fact, you could literally see every bit of any given person's thoughts, choices, feelings, travels, and whatever else they chose to expose to the barren maw of the internet.

It's brilliant, and it's also terrifying. We can find out so much more than ever before about the people we come in contact with, to the point where we can look at a scrapbook of their lives that is so comprehensive that it makes us feel as if we are in fact included. And there's something there that we will blissfully ignore: We may not be included at all, but we will absolutely feel as if we are.

Will this lead us to chances to know each other more? I don't know. I think it's more likely to increase the power of that illusion that we do, but really plug us further into our computers, our internet presence, and maintaining a persona that matches it. Before we know it, we realize it requires actual upkeep and perimeters -- we want some people to see it, others we don't. We realize certain things cannot be said. It's like a date where we have no idea how to be, so we try to be fluid and flexible and open and interesting and in the end barely show a scrap of who we actually are.

Are you a digital being? Or a flesh and blood human, sitting behind a computer, trying to express life and your experience and not miss it all at the same time? How can you do it?

The Beguilement of Catherine

Atlus is my favorite game company, and I've been rabid for the release of puzzle/relationship sim Catherine from the moment the very first Japanese screenshots hit. Even the first trailer was a thrill for me, and I waxed philosophical over at Gamasutra about the possibilities it seemed to offer to break new ground in gaming. A game that addressed the male psyche and issues of fidelity? Add in that Persona Team is behind the title and have handled delicate matters such as true vs false identity (Honne and Tatamae in Japanese) in past times, and well, you can easily see why I was so worked up about the possibilities.

And then, it came out in America. And finally, I had my most anticipated game of the year in hand.

There were a lot of things about Catherine that I expected, and I got. I expected a man's struggle with apathy and fidelity. I expected commentary on modern romance and its pitfalls. And I of course expected that surreal touch that Persona Team games bring to all their titles. Demons, moral conflict, surreal imagery ... that's the taste of Atlus home team going to bat, alright.

What was more of interest, however, was what I did not expect -- and there was more of that than I bargained for. I expected a story that was courageous enough to poke a stick into real life issues, but I didn't expect that those issues would hold a weight that I connected to and felt directly. By the time I was halfway through Catherine, I realized that personal feelings about both women were coming up, and that those feelings would be absolutely different for each person who picked up the controller. For instance, I detested Catherine from her first appearance on, considering her to be the type of person hellbent on destroying the lives of strangers for her own fun and profit. If you've seen the game's ending, you'll know that that characterization isn't far from the truth.

Katherine, on the other hand, showed a sense of frustration I felt I could relate to. Any woman can tell you Vincent's apathy is painful in an obscure way that is difficult to understand from the female perspective. Therefore, Katherine asks for what she wants and comes across as a nag because Vincent is resistant. Vincent wants things to stay the same and seems to feel frightened of change. These are all traditional human thoughts and feelings and roles men and women find themselves in all the time-- nothing particularly out of place there.

So much of Japanese society pressures its residents to follow a "set" path, creating an unrealistic, rigid expectation of what a life should be like. Catherine takes an interesting approach in that it explores the two different paths in its eight endings, but doesn't cast any opinions on which is favorable. In fact, the meter that changes based on Vincent's decisions has a red and a blue side, which we traditionally read as "good" or "bad." But we find out later that the two ends of the scale actually mean "freedom" and "responsibility." Neither are inherently positive or negative in nature, and the "herbivore" trend of the last few years in Japan reflects that the seesaw between the two may be starting to even out in the other direction.

The broader statement of Catherine is distinctly non-Japanese in nature, despite all its recognition of the country's societal tropes. Much like the way Persona 4 dealt openly with the parts of people that they hide, Catherine suggests that rather than follow the way of the "sheep", we make our own decisions on how to live, whether they be towards acceptable societal norms ... or the opposite.

Of course Catherine carried weight that affected me as a player, because it made me question myself. Not about what I thought about the value of fidelity (as I thought it would), but a much larger question about the type of life I choose to lead. Freedom and responsibility can be both good and bad, depending on one's perception as you experience both states. And yeah, cheating is still shitty if you don't have an agreement with your partner that allows other partners. But rather than break "the rules", perhaps we should consider first whether or not they fit us in the first place.

What did you take away from playing Catherine?

No, don't sell my favorite game company's soul! What PopCap's acquisition means (so far)

Game company acquisitions are not a unique thing in this industry -- they happen all the time. If you're just a person who enjoys games, or maybe even more than that, you may pay attention in a general sort of way. But you probably haven't really worried too much about the meaning of an acquisition unless you're concerned it may affect you in some way.

For instance, in April 2003 it was officially announced that SquareSoft would be merged with Enix, who were famous in Japan for their Dragon Quest series. SquareSoft had created many of the RPGs that had had the biggest impact on my heart and my memories as a gamer, and I recall that this was the first merger that really scared and worried me. As it turned out, I was right to worry -- just because two fine companies make great products individually doesn't mean that those visions will merge well together. And sure enough, the tone of the Final Fantasy series changed drastically, leaving many fans feeling as if the series they once loved had lost its footing (more on that topic another time, when I feel in the mood for a real rant).

Let's fast forward to the recent announcement that behemoth gaming company EA has acquired indie developer PopCap for a cool 1.3 billion dollars. While I never expected one of my favorite developers to be a casual game company, PopCap has really struck a home run with me this past few years, especially after the release of Plants Vs. Zombies. I loved everything about this quirky developer and their addictive, simple to play games. Needless to say, brows furrowed when this acquisition was announced, despite a lovely letter on PopCap's website assuring fans nothing would change about their approach. We want to believe. But we've heard it before.

On the bright side of things, we've got word that PopCap may have some sort of out (which sounds ridiculous, but bear with me). Digital Trends says that PopCap can continue to operate as they always have, and that if EA tries to change anything against PopCap's wishes, that PopCap can "bail." Since when are contracts written like this? I somehow doubt the validity of this concept.

Blizzard's merge with Activision has left the company's output, tone and quality more or less untouched, and fans don't seem to feel they've lost anything. PopCap may go down the same route if EA is smart, merely helping EA to move towards the casual gaming goals they clearly hope to achieve. It seems they feel PopCap is a vehicle that can help them to get where they want to go ... but we can only hope that they will respect the integrity of the vehicle itself.

I'm hoping for the best here, as I've grown to deeply respect PopCap and look forward to their new releases. I feel companies these days have a better appreciation for keeping the elements what makes a developer unique when it comes to acquisitions, but still, there's always a chance of things changing radically if the right suit has his say.

In other words, as long as invasive DRM stays out of my PopCap experience, I'm happy.

So Bad It's Good: Insect Armageddon's Triumph

As many of you may know, I am hopelessly in love with a series of games called Earth Defense Force. Or, more specifically, one title in the series, Earth Defense Force 2017, which was an early launch title for the 360. Made by a Japanese developer called Sandlot, this series of games was part of a collective called "Simple 2000 Series" -- cheap games that pack a lot of fun for the price. The third game in this series, called Chikyuu Boueigun 3 in Japan, was eventually released in the US as Earth Defense Force 2017.

The game was a race against evil masses of invading aliens to save the planet, and if anything was like being an active part of Starship Troopers. As for craftsmanship, the game seemed to be pretty shabby around the edges, with terrible voiceovers, poorly animated character actions and a framerate that simply couldn't keep up when the screen got really packed with enemies. In other words, an instant camp classic.

Let's fast forward to the announcement of Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, which was news I had been waiting for for some time. However, it wasn't Sandlot behind the title but Vicious Cycle Software, who had previous come up the original Puzzle Quest. Hopeful, perhaps, but to recapture the spirit of such perfectly executed black comedy could be a challenge. Could they pull it off? Would the game be too good to be bad in the way that made 2017 such a classic?

Insect Armageddon came out yesterday, and I can confirm that not only is it not a bad game at all, but it's also much better made than 2017 could have ever hoped to have been. Up to this point I'd scowled at the idea of that, thinking that good game development could only hurt this unintentional masterpiece and that it needed to be bad in order to be good -- kind of like "The Room", which is like watching the various stages of an eight car pileup on the freeway. But in fact, it managed to retain the spirit of the original games while cleaning up what was wrong with them, which was something that I doubted was possible.

One of my favorite parts of 2017 was the voiceovers, which were stilted and awkward with hilarious dialogue such "When this is over, let's go get a bite to eat!" Vicious Cycle opted to hire real voice actors to deliver better written lines that still manage to be funny, such as fellow teammate Cyrus occasionally screaming "Welcome to Earth!" or a helpful pilot who smoothly delivers the usual on-an-airplane speech and casually informs you that we will likely all die before thanking you for flying. The laughs are still there, and I love how they chose to go about bringing the to the table.

Earth Defense Force 2017 is still a great game, even if it also simultaneously manages to be terrible. I've had countless hours of fun with it, and I can't say some part of me doesn't miss seeing the awkward body animation of my soldier as he runs sideways or laughing at useless armed vehicles with names that sound like Starbucks drinks. But I have to hand it to Vicious Cycle: they made a game that has all the spirit of a camp classic, but subtly sneaks in and improves on the broken parts without distracting you from the action at hand. It's what makes a game great, and you can tell that they studied the previous entries in the EDF series with respect and serious attention to detail.

We've recently heard that Sandlot wants to make their own EDF as the next part of the series. Whether or not they can bring us another terrible but wonderful game remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: Vicious Cycle has raised the bar. Could we still fall in love with another poorly made EDF, even if it has the right charms, or will Armageddon spoil us to expect more from now on?

Symphonies of Sound:The Journey beta

If you care about games at all, you absolutely must play the Journey.

Why?

Well, it's the latest offering from That Game Company, who made Fl0w and Flower. If you've played either, you know both games were very different from the majority of what's out there. That Game Company favors minimal instruction, so their games tend to begin without a lot of backstory or tutoring. The amount of respect I have for this approach is difficult to express adequately -- we live in an age where we are handheld through our games more than ever before, yet these delicate, thoughtful offerings simply hand us the controller and say: Figure it out for yourself. I feel almost honored to play it, that an experience would be so respectful of my human intelligence. It's ... refreshing.

Journey opens organically, as you see the face of the creature you will play set against the backdrop of a sprawling desert. The game's sparing soundscapes and your character's fluid movement communicate the grace to be found in the company's previous offerings, but you'll see right out of the gate that this game is offering something a bit more. Fans of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will be instantly mesmerized by this universe, which is filled with mysterious structures and bits of music that can help you along the way.

Forward movement will lead you past shimmering sand dunes and to structures that you must climb. The use the of music quickly emerges as a key theme, as one button seems to allow you to release a note that can allow you to interact with items in your universe. Puzzles also use sound interaction, but you must learn for yourself what to do with them and how to use the sounds to achieve a result.

You aren't entirely alone in your vast world, though. You'll meet great silent beings that will communicate wordless messages, open new paths for you, and leave you wondering what could be next. As you explore, you'll experience genuine awe and joy. We get to explore many divine worlds because of this hobby that we love so much, but the remarkable thing about Journey is that the world it presents us with is so fiercely fantastic and unlike the majority of what is out there that it has the capacity to capture you immediately. If there is any argument that games are art, this elegant game fuels that fire.

For some, this beta will be an absolute bore and something they want to chuck out the window within the first few minutes. Some players enjoy instruction and may find the absence of it, or a structured story, rattling. It's really no insult to the game or you if it's not a fit for you, but for the right gamer, this is exactly the experience they've been looking for. I feel it will be more than just an experience to while away some of your free time, but an exercise on hope for the future of the hobby.

Every bit of Journey is like a dance. You must experience this love letter to games, if you've ever cared about what games can be, what boundaries games can break and cross into, how they can grow and become new. I genuinely cannot wait to watch people react to it.

If you're in the beta too, I hope you'll share your impressions below.

The Digital Sonnet: Why I Don't Connect To Modern Games

I've been thinking a lot as of late about how far videogames have come, and how as a child this was the future I had always dreamed of. Rather than having to hide your habit and have people look at you derisively and privately label you a child in their minds, a world where games could be shared as media just like film and books, as yet another wonderful place in which we can get lost.

And then games evolved, and somehow it happened, and now there is a new world for this long standing hobby, one where I can mention gaming to anyone from my best friend's niece to my grandmother and they all know what it is. Nintendo had the biggest hand in that, successfully accomplishing the homogenization of gamers and non-gamers by introducing a system that was aimed at all of them.

Graphics also ramped up as technology grew and changed. As a child I would peer hopefully at the pages of PC Gamer and PlayStation Magazine and tell my friends, "I can't wait until the whole game looks like the cutscenes", a tone of awe tingling behind the words as I spoke. I wanted a brave new world of gaming, where everything was new and modern and different and I could see my most far-fetched dreams become reality.

Here we are. But it doesn't quite look how I imagined.

Actually, to say I don't like it is a bit strong -- some of the advances have been so spectacular that any person who has been playing games for years would be considered a bit of a crackpot to say such a thing. I do love downloadable gaming, and even though I'm that type of nerd that will always love the physical presence of games and their lovely cover art on my shelf, I also love that I can settle down in the evening, browse a store and buy a new game without ever leaving my house. And the demos which allow us to play games for free, and wireless technology that allows us to play with our friends and loved ones no matter where we are ... it's great. What's not to like?

It's not any of the surrounding circumstances here, what's available to us, what technology has changed games into. It's that there is something about newer titles, high def graphic titles especially, that simply doesn't touch me. It isn't that they aren't well made -- quite the contrary, many of them are. It reminds me of Hollywood big budget films. Maybe it's the underlying emotion with which those films are created: gotta appeal to a large group of people, got to turn a profit, got to make something for everyone.

Sometimes, a thing with mass appeal is good.

And sometimes, there is something glimmering and fine to be found in the smaller efforts, the things less people look at. The games that don't have the mass appeal, which will never make "the big bucks", but are often something that developers simply feel the need to create. Of course, indie games fit this role perfectly, and they have filled this niche for years.

Are big budget titles "bad"?

Well, they can be. But as a whole, not at all. It depends on what you are seeking. Some people like to go to the movies, see something entertaining for a few hours, and promptly forget all about it afterwards. And some people long to see something that will etch itself on them for a long time to come. Being of the latter variety, I think the key that makes me less engaged with the current gen lies somewhere in this: it's become less popular to emotionally engage and more to entertain.

Can we have both?

I often talk about the NES and what a weird library it had. The cost of producing games was so low that a game about a ouija board or a gambling RPG was completely acceptable. However, games are big budget productions now. Your fever dream carnival simulator starring cats from space may not look like such a great prospect when it's going to cost you a ton of money to make and may not sell, so back to the indie pool with ya. Don't worry, there's plenty of company here.

I still deeply appreciate what's going on in the gaming world, even if I rarely connect to it. I see evolution, and I am excited to see what the next stages will be. However, beneath those adult hopes is a child that wants to be enthralled by a game again. Perhaps there was something to those older games less graphically sound but somehow more engaging, the ones we speak of in hushed tones in conversations with other gamers. Imperfect perhaps, blocky, difficult to control, and yet we played them with such dedication, such drive to get to the end and see all that they had to offer.

I'm always on the search for the next game like this. And I don't judge on looks. Sure, it'd be lovely if it was something I could play on my PS3, but I'd be just as happy to play it on Steam, in the form of Flash on your personal website, on an older console, even on a handheld. In the end, the platform and the way it looks hardly matters. How it feels is what matters, and if we are engaged the way we were as kids: when every bit of our attention was absolutely held in thrall by the characters and the worlds we had found.

These digital sonnets still emerge. And always, there will be gamers like me, waiting to find them and to connect in the way I most want to. Maybe older games had the advantage in that because they didn't possess the level of technology to make them photorealistic, we had to use our imaginations more. We embroidered parts of ourselves on those blocky sprites. We made them ours. Perhaps now, there is no room to imagine such a thing, because every line and detail is filled in for us.

And yet, there's still the excitement of the hunt for the next game that will matter. And no matter how long I go without finding one, eventually, something always comes along that does awe and inspire. Maybe it took years to find it, but there is the feeling that I had as a nine year old girl again, and it always comes back, and I'm so happy to have found it. Maybe the treasure itself, in the end, is not even the game, but the feeling: a beautiful sense of mystery and delight, the discovery of a world which must be explored at all costs, and characters to learn to know and find that we love.

Wonder.

Portal 2: The cure for the common sequel

I am the kind of punk rocker (in my mind, anyway) that hates sequels with a passion. In my mind, there's rarely any genuine reason to make one beyond the realization that people liked the first installment of whatever it was you made, and if you make more, you can make more money. Since the motivation behind this concept is financially rather than creatively motivated, it always feels a bit forced -- hence the endless wasteland of sequels to films that would be better off having never existed (The Matrix Reloaded, anyone?).

Lucky for our set, it seems games are different .There have been some truly engaging sequels in past year, such as Uncharted 2 (with 3 on the way) and Mass Effect 2. The teams at work on these titles know that gamers expect more, and they seem to have some genuine regard for creating a better experience for us on the second go round. Sure, perhaps the motivation to make a sequel is still to build a brand and therefore make more money, but there seems to be something more going on behind the scenes. And we applaud that.

Enter Portal 2, one of the most anticipated sequels slated for this year. The original Portal set fans into a frenzy in which you couldn't go more than five minutes without hearing "Still Alive" played on Rock Band and hearing endless jokes and references to cake and lies. Don't even get me started on the t-shirts. It was a big deal. And even though I played it, and I agreed it was quite good, I found myself irritable about the endless buzz. Overhype. I mean, the game was good, but was it worth people's level of obsession? Was that Companion Cube tattoo really necessary?

I found myself revisiting the same idea yesterday when I picked up my copy of Portal 2. As a precursor to this, I should say that I haven't been feeling terribly inspired about games lately as a whole, and even some of the best produced titles on the market out there today haven't gotten to me like I hoped they would. I often cite lack of character development as the reason, but after playing Portal 2, I wonder if the issue isn't characters, but scripting.

You see, the moment I fired up Portal 2, I watched the opening cutscene and found that I wasn't once looking at the controller to see if I could press select to skip it. That's because from the word go, the writing is so deeply entertaining that you become completely engaged knowing little to nothing about your characters, which is a feat in itself.

Wheatley, the personality core you meet early on in the game that is voiced by Stephen Merchant, is so expertly executed that you cannot help but laugh aloud at your television just watching him. Ellen McLain returns to do exactly what she did with GlaDOS the first time, and somehow, it never feels forced. You never experience that moment of hand-to-forehead that you so often do in movie sequels as they milk some terrible one liner that's bound to be used in the trailer. Somehow, even references to the first game are elegant.

In the pleasure of playing such a beautifully crafted game, I found myself reflecting back to the last time I was so entertained by a voice actor's performance in a game. That accolade belongs to Jansen Friedh, the comic relief from Mistwalker RPG Lost Odyssey, one of the last RPG's I deeply enjoyed. Another expert voice performance, combined with pitch perfect writing, makes for instant engagement for the player. And almost magically, we begin to care about the characters. The bond required to make us play to the end is made. It's like some form of secret sorcery.

Watching the evolution of gaming for the past 25 years, I can't help but feel as if games like Portal 2 signify the next stage of where our beloved hobby might go. I've already mentioned that the polish and presentation of game sequels frequently outdoes the film industry, and we know from current studies that gaming is giving both film and music a run for their money in terms of profit. In fact, we are truly entertained. Unlike when we leave the theatre and promptly forget the summer blockbuster we just saw, we're meeting more and more characters who engrave themselves on our consciousness absolutely.

Is this a new trend in gaming? No. For me, it's happened since the first time I played Maniac Mansion. Great writing has been around for a long time. But games like that weren't evolved enough on a graphical level to compete with film. Our current titles are. And so we enter a new era of this version of entertainment we love so much. And it feels lovely to stand here in it, and see what it's becoming.

Dead Island: Love, family and 10,000 zombies

I have to admit, the last few years have been so glutted with videogames about zombies that when one is announced now I hardly give it a second look. And in fact, I have to admit that games have become so good looking in general, that I find myself glossing over a lot of them too. Even RPGs, once my favorite genre, look more flawless than ever, but so many games these days seem to lack the thing that made me so deeply attached to them in childhood.

Whatever that elusive thing is, Dead Island seems to have it. Techland describes their game as a "survival horror first person shooter with RPG elements", but truthfully, they could have called it a carnival simulator featuring a ouija board minigame and I would have nodded and said "Uh huh, uh huh" in numbed amazement, mostly because I've watched the trailer ten times and even though I have seen everything that can possibly happen in it, I can't seem to stop watching it.

It also hit me while watching this that the people that make trailers for videogames are going to be ashamed of themselves when they see this. And honestly, they should be. Not because the trailers we see these days are subpar, but because they are all painfully alike. Like sitting at a runway show and watching one impossibly tall and beautiful girl after another saunter down the catwalk. And you should be thrilled, really, to be surrounded by so much hotness. But for some reason, you're bored instead.

Dead Island's first trailer does not fire you up by using crazy music, show you how many guns you can use to reel you in, or even try once to look badass. Actually, it takes a more courageous approach by using a musical track that is slowly paced and introspective. it shows us how savage zombies are, and we've seen plenty of that before, but it also shows us the death of a child, a father and daughter's bond, and a family's happiness. We don't even know their names. But we want to, right away. And that is something that hasn't happened to me watching a trailer for an action game in a long time.

I have to concede that the piece of music accompanying this trailer is stunning, and that may be doing a lot of the talking here when it comes to the emotional wallop it seems to pack. We'll see as more of the gameplay is unveiled, but it looks like for now, we may have something special to look forward to. After releasing a trailer this unique, they have one hell of an act to follow.

One Chance: gaming and consequences

As we see games evolve, we find that our experiences within them become more realistic. And yet, there are basic tenets of gaming that still are determined to defy reality: monsters that drop money, treasure chests in the middle of nowhere, and last but not least, that ongoing fantasy world of being able to back up to your last save point and try again, no matter how poorly you planned your course of action.

What if you only had one chance to do it right?

New indie sidescroller One Chance from awkwardsilencegames presents you with just that opportunity. In it, you take the role of scientist John Pilgrim, who has come up with a cure for cancer that eradicates the cancerous cells within the human body. John is a hero, and the world champions his name as the papers publish the news. By day two, it's become clear that the cure not only destroys cancerous cells, but all other cells in the body too. And what once seemed like salvation has suddenly, overnight, because unintentional genocide.

Most interesting about the six days you have to take action within the game's time frame is that the creator of the game firmly states there is no replay feature. The comments on Newgrounds are full of people angry about it, and yet, he says the heart of the game is about facing the consequences of your own actions. For a gamer, that's a foreign concept. In fact, it's more a human life concept than something that belongs in a video game. Why, then, is it a part of One Chance?

It's easy enough to say that the creator of the game wanted to buck the system, or just piss off gamers by denying them what they are used to getting, but I think his statement is much simpler than that. One Chance is a depressing tale, and that seems to push many people away from it. However, it's also sure to shake you, make you think, and slow you down. In an age where we are constantly bombarded by social media, ways to delete and hide what we've said and done, and no real reason to think before we act, a game like this is a statement about the decisions we make, and how different our lives can be with as minor of a choice like going to work or staying home.

Several of John's choices present food for thought as well. Every day, he can go to work or stay home. His coworkers encourage him to be with his family as the situation worsens, but he can also ignore them and go to work anyway. He can sleep with one of his coworkers, since the world's about to end anyway. He can forget it all and take his daughter to the park. Each of these actions completely affects your last actions in this desolate few days before your world comes to a close.

Perhaps One Chance is overly dramatic. The chances of something like this happening seem more like a bad action/horror film than they do anything we could suffer in real life. However, that's likely beyond the point. There was a time when consequence in gaming was firmer, but since it "lessens the gaming experience" by frustrating the gamer, we see less and less of it these days.

We aren't accustomed to making hard decisions. We dislike consequence. Yet, I can't help but see a game like this as courageous by offering just that to us and asking us to cope with it. Perhaps we are too adjusted to the idea that any route is open to us. And while that's a lovely fantasy, it presents a softer gaming experience that may lull us into a sense of false safety. However, our strongest emotions are connected to consequences, choices, and loss, so by realistically asking us to look at those things and go through them even thought they may be depressing, they also engage us on a deeper level emotionally (something more and more games fail at these days).

One Chance asks us to experience it all as it really could be. And I think that's for the best.

Sex And The Male Psychosis: Catherine

This week, I saw the first game trailer that has truly intrigued me this year. The game is Atlus' Catherine, a 360/PS3 offering due out this winter (so far, in Japan only) from the team behind dating sim/dungeon crawler hybrid Persona 3. In the game's first trailer, we meet a man named Vincent who seems to be haunted by dreams both sexual and horrific in nature; he is alternately chased by rams wearing ties and taunted by a blond woman named Catherine who flirts with him, kisses him, and straddles him naked as they appear to have sex. He is clearly worried and afraid, but from the little we've seen, we aren't sure what's real yet and what's a part of the nightmare -- only that we are seeing the first suggestions of a major fracture in our main character's psyche, which only tantalize us to want to see more.

Described as a "horror/adult action adventure", the trailer made a strong impression on Atlus fans, who discussed it wildly in forums. The development team working on the title said it would be "highly erotic" and character designer Shigenori Soejima has stated that there are some shockingly adult scenes in the game. While most gamers reacted favorably to such a topic being central in an adventure title, most seemed more interested the possibility of a U.S. release than the meaning of the sexual themes shown. However, voices here and there were picking up on the very things I found most interesting -- not the fact that the game is not afraid to deal with sexuality, but the themes it is mixed with and what they say about the male sexual psychosis.

Sexuality has made its presence known in much less subtle ways within the games we play. When Fox News caught wind of a sex scene in BioWare's sci-fi RPG Mass Effect, a frenzy followed about the "unsavory nature" of the content. It seems like as far as gaming has come, there is still a gap between "normal" gaming and blatant sex simulators. So to speak, there is no bridge where the two meet -- at least, not one where sex is represented as the multi-layered experience that it can be (under certain circumstances).

Then, we have Catherine. Vincent, our 32 year old protagonist, identifies as a "herbivore" -- a recently-popularized Japanese slang word that refers to men who are passive and lack interest in sex. He argues with a woman who he calls "Catherine" in the beginning of the game's trailer who seems to be aggressive in nature, as she mentions dreams of killing others. As the story goes on, we see a man who exhibits signs of terror when confronted with a sexually forward woman. In fact, we have no proof whatsoever whether Catherine is a real person, or simply a symbol he sees in his dreams that represents a part of his psyche.

It's been a while since I've seen sex in a game and been taken aback, but I was genuinely awed when I realized it was happening again as I watched this trailer. The topic of true sexuality was certainly being addressed here, focusing not only on Vincent's sexual orientation but also the world within his dreams. Whether Catherine is just a symbol or a flesh and blood woman, the scenario being portrayed so far suggests that we are about to participate in a journey through his psychosis to seek the answers -- and that is something new indeed.

Atlus have been poking at the sexuality issue in their games for a while now. Persona 2 protagonist Tatsuya Suou had the option to engage in a homosexual relationship with another character, while Persona 4 famously led the players into dungeons that represented their innermost feelings and explored a blatantly homoerotic dungeon that suggested male character Kanji Tatsumi was suffering confusion over his sexual identification.

However, Catherine appears as if it may forge a new pathway of the presence of sexuality in games: delving into the role of sexual identity, specifically within the male psychosis. Not just a quick what-bam-thank-you-ma'am either, but a much more developed, multi-layered sexuality. After all, the herbivore man in Japanese culture has essentially chosen to forfeit his sexuality and therefore some measure of his power. Yet in his dreams, Vincent is surrounded by rams, which traditionally symbolize virility, power and force. In fact, at one point, he wears the ram's horns himself (echoing Shakespeare's horn-wearing "cuckold" men, who accept their wives infidelities without complaint), but appears uncomfortable and terrified to find them on his own head. In another scene, one ram is wearing a tie, which implies he is a Japanese salaryman (and also perhaps, a sheep in an unending flock which merely do what they are told to do).

Vincent's identification as a herbivore ("soshokukei") may well point to the concept of terror of the feminine. This issue has been gaining presence in Japan as of late, as men in their twenties and thirties are identifying with the term. The idea centers around men do not seek out girlfriends and tend to be a bit clumsy in love, care less about financial matters than the average Japanese, and are more comfortable showing vulnerability.

If the game is localized, these details may be lost on western audiences unfamiliar with the recent rash of men in Japan that fit this description (20 percent according to pop culture columnist Maki Fukasawa, who coined the term). On the other hand, Persona 4's themes also distinctly addressed issues in Japanese culture such as the contrast between honne (true feelings) and tattemae (public opinions and behaviors), but the game still resonated with western audiences and was lauded for its presentation of mature themes.

We've long seen games that place a central male figure in a position of hierarchical and sexual power, allowing the player to take on those characteristics and feel dominant. Even the simplest games imitate this structure, as Mario and Link save their respective princesses over and over. The theme is the same -- the man is active, the woman passive. Catherine turns this deeply ingrained societal role upside down, introducing a willowy, frightened man as the character we will play as. Not empowering at all, is it? In fact, rather than play a role in which the player is lead to triumph, we are led through Vincent's fear as he becomes a victim of the female object he also longs to possess, as his genetics drive him to. While males of every species long to conquer, they often also expect the woman they conquer to remain in her passive role, as that was an unspoken part of the deal. Catherine is clearly not that woman ... and neither is the angry woman at the end of the game's trailer who screams at Vincent that she will never forgive him.

Now, we have a theme, with many layers to explore. But how does it make for compelling gameplay? We've seen little so far, although some summaries suggest that the nightmares act as the game's action component. Set in a world with an unending stairway, Vincent has to make it to the top of the stairs, or he will not be able to leave his dreams and come back to reality. If this is in fact true, we can deduce that we will spend more time in Vincent's dreams than we will in reality to further the story, which may leave us with some very dark paths to walk down indeed.

In any action/adventure, you must control your character, so I expect we will maneuver Vincent through some of his nightmares. With a theme as complex as this, the options to use unique gameplay mechanics are vast. For instance, the same design team entertwined dungeon leveling mechanics with real world relationships in Persona 3 and 4, suggesting the connection between physical and emotional strengths. With such a creative team at the helm again, I suspect we may see something equally interesting in Catherine. For instance, if we play Vincent's nightmares, how will the actions we take affect his day to day life? If we make the right choices within his nightmares, could we "unlock" further parts of his memories, to learn why he feels he way he feels about women? And alternately, if we make the right choices in his real life, will we find some relief from the horrible visions of the nightmares?

The choices a game designer has at hand while designing a game like this are surely more challenging than making another platformer where the knight saves the princess -- although that type of game has earned its place as a beloved part of the culture. However, the more intuitive the gameplay mechanics used, the more we as players can be drawn into a world so human and realistic that we may even feel our character's fear and shame, and therefore push that much harder to transcend it.

While we can only wait to see how the game itself will flesh out the things it suggests, even the things we've already been shown point that Atlus intends to once again use games as a vehicle for commentary on Japanese culture and how its rigid structures are forcing its citizens to create new identities. For the first time in video game history, we may have the opportunity to peer within the male sexual psyche to a new depth and perhaps breathe in a bit of mingled fear and desire, to feel a moment of the responsibility of being the "pursuer" ... and perhaps understand the weight that might carry.

If the game does in fact explore these issues the way the material we've seen so far suggests, it may mean the first time a door is truly swung open into the world of intelligent, human sexuality in gaming. And since the games of today aim for a realism so true to form that graphics grow closer and closer to lifelike perfection, it only makes sense that this last barrier should be crossed. Not to explore "fucking" -- that's been done, thank you, Kratos. But to communicate sexuality as another dimension of characters who we've already come to know emotionally, mentally, share in the memories of and more -- why not begin to understand them sexually, too?

Being a solo gamer in a multiplayer world

Being a gamer over 30 means that you likely fell in love with gaming a long time ago. For me, that affair started around age 6, as my uncle showed me the Atari and I prowled through his Commodore 64 collection, wondering what the stone that came with Wishbringer was really for and fantasizing about kicking the sh*t out of Zork for not understanding my commands.

While a lot of kids turn to games as a way to share fun with their peers, in the time period I discovered games, they were very much the opposite for me -- since I was a bookworm and a bit of a loner, games were more like an escape -- a place where I could be alone and yet not quite alone, and have an adventure with friends that, while not real flesh-and-blood people, provided some of the most important friendships I ever had.

Twenty years later, the future is pointing at an age of gaming in which all of our activities are shared -- from friend lists to Microsoft's recent addition of parties, you are always accessible for multiplayer games, chat and more. In fact, games, like LittleBigPlanet focus mostly on user content and online play, taking all focus away from the single-player adventure.

These are all great advancements and certainly follow the flow of current technology to interconnect our world as completely as possible, but where in this new world is there a place for the solo gamer, one who not only enjoys the experience of playing a game alone, but actually (gasp) holds those gaming experiences above those he or she has with other players?
People who are fans of multiplayer games are already talking back, I know it -- you're saying, "If you don't want to play with other people, just don't sign into Xbox Live!" And you know, you're right. I don't have to do that. In fact, despite the fact I love to game alone, I do also sometimes enjoy playing with other people, and I do enjoy the ability to interconnect with them so easily at any time.

The thing is, people who have never been heavy into the solo experience in a game are just not going to get it. Why play a game alone when you could play it with other people? That's like going to a movie alone. Which, of course, I also enjoy doing. Often.

A common complaint about the recent RPG Fallout 3 touches a little bit on the "why" of what solo gamers passionately pursue. Some gamers said they disliked the beginning of the game in which your character grows up in the Vault, where you are surrounded by other people. Personally I found that when I escaped the Vault and got out into the open landscape, I found what I was looking for: the experience of feeling completely alone on an adventure that you are wholly responsible for.

I suppose it's a lot like reading a book. There's an almost reverential quality to the experience, because even though thousands of other people will read the same book, the unique way you will process it and how it will affect you is all yours. While total immersion into a game enviroment is being praised in games like Dead Space, solo gamers have to laugh -- we've had total immersion in the games we've played for a few decades now, not because of advanced graphics or sound, but because of our isolation and imaginations.

Because of my experiences as a solo gamer, I traveled with Crono and his friends and enjoyed their company as if they were my friends, I mourned the death of Nei in a way that actually prepared me to face real loss later in life (laughable, I know, but true), and I learned some pretty valuable lessons about life in general.

I think if I had had friends to share these games with at the time, I wouldn't have had the amount of free time to devote my attention to them in the same way. I would have been more distracted by those real-life interactions, and while that wouldn't have been a bad thing, I don't regret being an isolated gamer back then. I think the inability to share these gaming experiences with other people made them even more special to me -- and I believe the people who listen faithfully to RetroforceGO! on a weekly basis may understand exactly what I am trying to say here.

So yeah, I'm glad that today I can turn on my 360 and be instantly connected to a hundred friends who can invite me to parties, chat with me and enjoy games with me in real time. I think that rocks, and I'm so grateful that I'm getting to experience something like that in my lifetime. At the same time, some days I'm going to go buy a game, come home, turn out all the lights and make sure that I'm not signed on to anything that shows other people I'm there. While it may not measure up to being verbally abused by strangers on Xbox Live, I still kind of enjoy it.

The Difficulty Arc: How frustration ruins the gameplay experience

The scenario: You, controller in hands, sitting on the sofa, staring at your television with a mixed expression of frustration and anger. You've hit a point in a game where you can't get any further, you don't want the strategy guide, you don't want to go pull up Gamefaqs. You just want to figure the wretched thing out so you can get on with the game you were enjoying up to this point.

The moment is as simultaneously recognizable and detestable as catching a fleeting glance of an ex at a party. The more you try to figure out how to advance, the less enthusiasm you have. It gets to a point where before you even pick up the controller to try again, you can feel it in your stomach -- a kind of grudge you don't even notice developing until it's in full effect. Before you know it, you don't pick up the game anymore at all.

This frustrating little phenomenon is the Difficulty Arc, a slippery slope where wonderful games can easily lose their footing and fall to their death, never to be played again. That perfect marriage of conflict and reasonable challenge rarely find their balance on the Arc. Only the best games manage to delicately hover there, poised as a hummingbird before a flower fat with pollen.

Let's begin with a little video (because somehow pictoral examples make everything seem a bit more realistic.)

Ah yes, that moment. While it rarely gets that bad, sometimes it happens. Perhaps partially the fault of the gamer in question (that lad seems to have some anger management issues.) Regardless, the issue here to focus on is not the gamer but the game: Envision a well-adjusted young man or woman of about 30, sitting with controller in hand seriously fantasizing taking the disc out of the console and hurling it out the window like a shuriken with murderous intent.

What I'm proposing here is that one of the biggest faults of games today is finding the right spot on the Difficulty Arc -- a space that is neither too hard or too easy. Now, all gamers differ, so they can hardly all be satisfied by the same exact point on the Arc, yes? BioShock is an excellent example of the use of difficulty settings: I would have become extremely frustrated (enough so to deter me from the story) had the hard diffuculty been the average, but thanks to the normal, I was able to enjoy the story first and go back to the hard setting later.

One of the worst failings of bad placement on the Arc is when frustration makes a gamer quit altogether. This often happens with excellent games, which seems to me to be a sorry shame. My personal memory of this moment is with Chrono Cross for the PS1. You can beat the last boss in a straightforward fashion, or you can beat it in a complex way, which nets you the best ending. The latter challenge was so elaborately ridiculous that I gave up after a few tries. The frustration here was more mental than physical -- The equivalent of attempting to find a single paper in stacks of thousands.

The physical form of Difficulty Arc failure is more a matter of personal skill and adaption to a game. For instance, some gamers hated the Myst series, citing the puzzles as ridiculously difficult. Others whipped out their graph paper and mapped out elaborate puzzles with relish. Some games have a reputation for being insanely difficult, such as Ikaruga for the Gamecube. This is hardly a failing on the part of the developers, as the title is intentionally intended to be a tremendous challenge.

Dementium: The Ward presents a more recent form of structural slippage on the Arc. The game allows you to save your progress, but you must begin at the start of the chapter each time you die. Sometimes, this isn't such a big deal. After trekking through the entire level to kill the boss six times only to die when you get there and be whisked back to the start, forced to repeat all the same crap, is just a recipe for frustration. This echoes the NES era, but even most of those titles employed checkpoints, rewarding you for your progress and effort. Dementium is a fantastic title, but it did test my patience and I have to admit to putting it down a lot due to that.

Of course, some gamers will tell you they've never been frustrated enough to quit playing a game because of difficulty level (they're likely lying or androids posing as human beings.) You're not a gamer until you've thrown a controller at the TV and screamed SHITFUCKJESUSHOLYASSCOCK loud enough for your neighbor to hear you and look at you oddly the next time you pass them in the hallway. It's simply a classic rite of passage for the digitally addicted. I actually hit a friend in the face with a flying NES controller while playing Super Mario 3 once ... still feel a bit guilty about that.

This is not a rally to encourage harder games to take a hike. Rather, it's a picture of a consistent issue in gaming today: The balance of challenge and difficulty is a delicate one, and to ensure a title is truly enjoyable, there must be a flow to the gameplay. By interrupting this flow with unnecessary amounts of frustration, you are taking the gamer out of the gameplay experience -- exactly what you don't want to do.

I hope the next gen of gaming stands up to the challenge of making more game conflicts that are less ridiculous and more reason, offer level difficulty selection more often, and keep in mind how difficulty works with or against the immersive quality of the title. As long as I'm wishing for stuff I'd also like a miniature pony, a mint condition Delorean and the ability to teleport at will, but for now I'll settle for a few controller-hurling titles that are still within the boundaries of reason. I will try not to hit anyone in the face with controllers again, although it's likely best if the cursing and screaming begin to just get out of the way.

A Thousand Years of Dreams: Mortality in Lost Odyssey

While playing RPGs, I have encountered situations that sometimes predated me having the same experiences in real life. As a little girl, the first of these I found was comradery, which took me a while to find since I was the bookworm type. This infused the games I played with a sort of private and thrilling magic, which hasn't entirely worn off to this day.

While Mistwalker's new RPG Lost Odyssey does follow the conventions of many other RPGs, it sets itself apart with a feature called A Thousand Years of Dreams, in which you recollect the experiences of your character's past. We've all played games that introduce to our characters' memories, but since Lost Odyssey's Kaim is immortal, the memories are suffused with something more: the absence of mortality.

Much like BioShock and its underlying moral themes, Lost Odyssey presents the player with a richer experience which I believe is the future of RPGs: graphical superiority, yes, but more importantly, having the ability to engage our mortality, including our sense of what it is to be human. Welcome to the next generation -- playing games with the ability to excite your senses, engage your emotions and grasp your own transience.

Hit the jump for more.

Depending on how long you've played RPGs, you may have a very specific expectation of what you want in one. Since I've played them on and off for the last twenty years, I'll chuck a formulaic RPG out the window faster than a hooker administers a BJ. Usually, playing the same old structure isn't enough to hold my interest through eighty hours of game time. At this point, there has to be something different, something that can shake me up enough to make an impact.

Enter A Thousand Years of Dreams, in which the immortal lead character Kaim recalls his memories one by one throughtout the course of the game. Like many other RPGs in which the lead character has lost his memories (ahemcloudahem,) we are intended to develop an emotional attachment about the character we are playing because of his or her past. Since you are playing on a modern console, you would think that Lost Odyssey uses superior graphic capability to its advantage to tell the stories of Kaim's memories, no?

It doesn't.

Instead, the developers made a braver choice: they tell the stories using only words.

I can see you reading this now and saying "Words? Like on the page of a book? LAME!" I have two words for you -- you're wrong. It isn't lame at all; in fact, it's the most elegant tactic I've seen used in an RPG since Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife floated in a dream world and remembered he wasn't who he thought he was. Instead of taking the obvious route, it does something games did before there were graphics to support them -- tells you an amazing story and leaves your imagination to fill in the rest.

The irony of this approach is palpable. Gamers have been complaining more and more as of late that they don't want to have to read a bucket of text, and now here I am telling you that it's the best thing since goat rape. Luckily, those gamers can skip the dream sequences altogether and still enjoy the action, which is solid enough on its own. The dreams are the best part of the game and flesh out the main story with depth and emotion, but if you want to leave that behind, that's your loss.

This nearly literary approach could possibly be effective on its own, but it is accentuated by something that completes the package: writing brave enough to delve deep into Kaim's lifespan, reflecting back startlingly painful bits of immortality and leaving you starkly aware of the vulnerability of human life. It has been a long time since a game has actually reached my emotions in any way, but Lost Odyssey has finally done it, reminding me that it's worth it to sift through all these RPGs after all.

A Thousand Years of Dreams taps into the very spirit of what makes RPGs great, which is why I can say that I see the future of next gen adventure gaming in its courageous approach. As we come closer and closer to playing games that are indistinguishable from our real lives, they will also have to step up to the plate when it comes to matching the human spirit. Literature and film have long probed topics like mortality and humanity, but games are still new to the territory.

Does this mean that every RPG has to send us into a spiral of existential crisis, leaving us wondering who and what we are and why we live human life? No. Obviously this is heavy stuff, and not always what we want to spend our free time on. Used sparingly however, it can create a gaming experience that is the most realistic gamers have ever encountered. Combine that with graphical prowess, and you have a truly modern interactive experience. Let's hope the anti-game crusaders have prepared well -- they aren't ready for what is to come.

Intelligence and games: a poor pairing?

Today I read an article about the top games of 2007 in the UK. The chart itself was very different from the popular titles of the United States, but that's to be expected. The biggest difference, as noted by the author of the article, was that 2K's award winning shooter was nowhere to be seen on the UK list. This caused a great deal of discussion among readers of the article. In one disturbing reply, one reader commented in regards to BioShock: "It was a FANTASTIC title, but I'm sure all of this talk about noir, Art Deco, and objectivist undertones must have turned a few of the people off who regard games as day-end relief and not an exercise in artistry. "

While the statement is a factual one, I found myself revisiting it over and over in my thoughts, having discovered a sticking point about it that truly bothered me. I felt true indignation at the idea of being "turned off" by BioShock. The title was the very definition of an intellectual gaming experience - a rich storyline meshed with highly addictable gameplay mechanics. It made an unforgettable impact on me last year, and this article and comment provided a shocking contrast to that, shaking me outside of my own thoughts and into those of others for a few moments.

While it's perfectly understandable that a gamer may not always want a rich, thoughtful gaming experience and sometimes craves something simpler, it's unthinkable for me that a game like BioShock is not a welcome addition to our industry as a whole. More disturbing is the underlying concept, which suggests that "intelligent" games are looked down upon as a nuisance by some people.

I have days where I want to settle down and play a game where all I do is kill shit as much as the next guy. In the case of titles like Diablo, these can be addicting experiences than I go back to again and again. However, twenty of years of playing games puts me in a place where I do crave newness from the hobby I love, and bigger and better versions of what have come before don't always hit the nail on the head. Dynamic storytelling, however, can make all the difference.

If gamers look down on this, and all they want is more of the same, they crush some part of the very craft that creates the things that we cherish. I beg you - if you play games, and they have made a difference in your life, want more for their future than this. In order to continue, games have to be allowed to evolve, and supported by the people who love what they are. You don't have to personally play games like BioShock, but for the love of fucking Christ, use your eyes and see how they have helped break boundaries and push games to be more. They deserve your respect.

The Endgame Syndrome; Why do we abandon games?

As most of my Destructoid compatriots know, I await RPGs with intriguing storylines more than any other type of game. I enjoy nothing more than to sink myself into a rich plot, get to know the characters, and most of all, experience some form of emotional fulfillment at the end of the story for the work I've put into playing it. To my surprise, the last few I have looked forward to I've gotten fifty to sixty hours into and then simply never picked up again. Why this sudden transformation from game committment to total disinterest?

I clearly remember finishing a lot of the games I played for the NES, and I can't blame it on scarcity of product. Between friends that generously shared large cartridge collections and the game rental store down the street (Performance Hobby! I salute you), I played hundreds of games released for the system during its lifespan. Since I started playing often when I was about ten or so, I know I had the free time to complete them, but it seems to me something more was at work as to why I finished those games.

In the case of the games I was most driven to complete, I was so absorbed in them that I thought about them even when I wasn't playing them. Other new releases didn't get in the way because I wasn't interested in them until I completed the one I was playing. Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy X were great examples. I held them akin to reading a great book - by reading other books at the same time, you distilled the purity of the experience of the story.

In the current state of gaming, releases come out so frequently that we constantly have new "stories" to choose from. The biggest catalyst of "Endgame Syndrome" is definitely this factor. Since production values and budgets have risen to new heights, most games are gorgeous to look at. Some argue that one must wade in a sea of pretty games to try to find the ones that are worthwhile, so consumers are constantly sifting through large amounts of content and don't have the patience to spend on completing a game.

Another major factor seems to be length. BioShock was completely engaging, yet presented the story in a shorter timeframe. The more time you have in which to tell a story, the more challenges one faces to keep a gamer engaged. Considering the average attention span is twenty minutes, it's no small feat to create a game that can remain interesting to a player after 40 hours of play. Structural variance is also a key -- If you're doing more or less the same actions for the majority of the game, are they fun to do?

Most difficult of all is the experience of playing an enjoyable game and then abandoning it after committing many hours to the storyline. Eternal Sonata, I'm sad to say, fell into this category. I was pleased with the story, but I didn't think about it when it wasn't in front of me. It leaves you feeling disappointed when Endgame Syndrome kicks in in these instances. I did want to see the ending, but the drive to do so just evaporated, leaving me as confused as waking up naked with an otter. ( I need to stop drinking at those Zoo-To-Do events.)

Is it that games aren't what they used to be, or is it that gamer attention spans have shortened over time? I fear that some of both are present, although I am always hoping to be pleasantly surprised. The shape of the industry that creates these games has dramatically changed. In 1985, few people would have dreamed that games would one day rival the film industry. As a result, more experimental projects may have turned into playable results, which at the very least promoted creativity.

Whatever the secret formula is, recent feedback proves even RPG giant Square-Enix can't always hit the nail on the head anymore. Avoiding Endgame Syndrome is simply a matter of being choosy about what titles you take home -- and even then, there's no ensuring you'll feel the spark. For me, those unforgettable stories that are worth finishing are worth the search, no matter how many duds I have to sort through to get there.

Video Game crushes: Wanting to undress your imaginary friends

After five hours of Eternal Sonata, I can finally admit it to myself: I have a crush on Frederic Chopin. Before you start laughing, think back over all the games you've played. Maybe you were so absorbed in the storyline you didn't even realize it. Put down your controller in hushed reverance for all of Sephiroth's cut scenes? Waited patiently for all the moments you could get extra glimpses of Lara's endowments? Maybe your heart even fluttered any time Balthier was dashing and debonair, dangerously straddling the line between androgny and rampant homosexuality. Either way, more of you are guilty of this crime than you'd like to admit: The Video Game Crush.

Your average non-gamer (or even some gamers who have never experienced the phenomenon) will be quick to say,"Why would you get a crush on someone who isn't even real? That''s stupid." Stupid, perhaps, but I can't help but think about all the imaginary people I'll fallen a little in love with, and not just in video games. Ender Wiggin in the Orson Scott Card novels is one of my long standing not-real crushes. How can any logical person find themselves in this position? The answer is simple: The heart is not logical, and a video game is an ideal setting to entertain illogical things. You're already flying along the coast of the Etrian Sea Universe in an armored flying narwhale wearing a crown of igloos, so why not fall in love with the Princess of Obscuria?

It also seems that when we play games, we get to meet many characters who we will never meet the real life equivalent of. I am pretty much assured that I will never meet anyone as metrosexual as the Final Fantasy boys until I head straight to the streets of Harajuku, so it makes sense that those characters might be a little fascinating. As far as female crushworthy characters are concerned, the formula is even simpler: Few real world women kick ass and look as sexy doing it as the Lara Crofts and Chun Lis of the world. Then there's the sweet and helpless formula, which Aerith of Final Fantasy fame is the reigning queen of. She looks so sweet while she's being stabbed through the chest with a sword, doesn't she?

Some people think it's ridiculous, but in my mind having a crush on a character in a game is as normal as getting choked up when a great game ends. If the character designers meshed well with the writers and did their job right, they created characters that were ultimately real enough to emotionally engage you -- something that seems to be getting harder and harder in RPGs every day. It's a compliment to their skills that I can't stop thinking about that dreamy Chopin. The voice actors, of course, are the glue that holds it all together. In a modern era of gaming that makes fully voice acted games the norm, they bring these characters to life or leave them behind to blend into the scenery.

So, got a crush? You can admit it. It's okay. Unless your crush happens to be Pyramid Head, in which case you're an ill little gerbil and really should be confined to a damp room with no doors. Really, it takes all kinds.