An evenings worth of gaming

This double review was also posted on ArtFist.org

An evening of gaming for me is usually just enough to complete a couple of missions in Mass Effect. However I recently managed to finish two gaming experiences in the same amount of time. I'd hesitate to call them games, simply because they were both downloadable parts of a larger story.

First up was Harley Quinn's Revenge, a DLC expansion for Batman: Arkham City. I have been a big fan of both Arkham City and Arkham Asylum, but I was a little dubious about whether this would be worth 800 Microsoft Points. However, I ended up winning some bonus points from Xbox Rewards recently so it made taking a chance on it a little less painful.

For those who didn't buy the challenge maps that featured Robin (myself included), playing as him to begin with was quite a nice opening. That said it wasn't long before muscle memory kicked in and I started playing him in the same manner as Batman. He may have different animations and gadgets, but they don't really feel like they create a different playing experience. Compare this to playing as Catwoman, where a lot of her moves were overly flashy and took more time to complete, so you had to be more aware of whether you would leave yourself vulnerable.

I was also a little put-off after the opening section, as it used my least favourite scenario in TV shows at the moment: "48 hours earlier", gnnnngggh. This used to be a concept that was used rarely and was intended to make you think one thing from the brief glimpse of future events, before cleverly twisting your expectations when you finally catch up to what you've seen. Recently, it just seems to have become a standard way to open an episode, akin to a "here's what's going to happen in this episode" montage. I guess you could possibly be left thinking "Is Batman dead?" but c'mon - it's Batman!

Another complaint was how some of the new stealth rooms in this seemed very awkwardly laid out. Often they would be missing good vantage points to scope out your enemies, while good hiding spots were also thin on the ground if you were spotted. Some sections even seemed to be trolling you with grates that lead to nowhere, dropping you directly down to the next level rather than into an air vent, for example. Perhaps you were supposed to use these to escape from people on the same level as you, but it was a complete change in style from the rest of the game and not particularly clear.

All I can be thankful of is that none of the enemies featured the alarm collars that alert their compatriots no matter how you take them out. I always preferred having the option to mix up your approach, taking out lots of guards silently before finally making the last few aware of your presence. I was slightly surprised by one section featuring infinitely re-spawning guards though (or at least enough reinforcements to make it seem that way). Since this area featured Harley Quinn herself, I felt that it was very anti-climactic being forced to periodically drop down and wear down her energy bar before fleeing from guards rather than have a one on one confrontation.

Overall, the experience felt very short and despite the expansion obviously requiring new environments and character models to be built/modified, it didn't really feel worth the 800 points. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, I suppose a new unique boss fight or something was probably always out of the question. It was nice to have a reason to go back to the game (other than to visit Calendar Man) and I'll always enjoy a few rounds with its combat system but the story was so slight it was hardly worth bothering. I suppose in a way it was a fitting episode for Harley Quinn, lacking the Joker's twisted creativity, she couldn't really plot revenge on Batman and ended up sabotaging herself as usual.

My second game of the night was The Walking Dead, an XBLA adventure from Telltale Games based on the comics and TV show of the same name. Like most of Telltale's recent output, it's episodic in nature and only the first of five is currently available. It plays somewhat like a traditional point and click game, mixing in conversation choices similar to Mass Effect and Alpha Protocol, with brief combat sections a little like quick time events.

The first thing that came to mind after its brief introduction is how well it handles a point and click system on a console. Control is split between your analogue sticks, with the left moving your character and the right moving a fairly subtle cursor that highlights areas of interest. I found myself wondering whether this system could have benefited the first 3D LucasArts adventure with direct character control: Grim Fandango. While there was little to criticise about that game, interpreting exactly what Manny's head was tilted towards could prove difficult on occasions. The cursor may mean a slightly less immersive experience than having no HUD elements, but to my mind the ease of use this system allows is of greater importance.

After a short intro, you will soon be faced with one of the combat sections that I described earlier. The good thing about these is that to me they didn't really feel like quick time events, more like solving a simple point and click puzzle very quickly. The first event is probably the one that feels the most like this but I found that having to line-up the cursor to perform actions made you feel much more in control. While traditional point and click games featuring player death were usually frowned on, I felt that it fits the scenario really well - you should never feel completely safe in a zombie game. I think the important distinction is that you are unlikely to die by experimenting with the wrong item; it is more down to not reacting quickly enough. It keeps you on your toes knowing that killing a zombie is something you should never approach lightly.

I also really liked the conversation system, which is very similar to Alpha Protocol where you only have a certain amount of time to answer important questions. There were some differences though, and I liked the fact that you could take your time picking what to say in general conversation. Having the option to not respond at all was a nice touch too: I don't think you can spend the entire game as a mute, but there was at least one point where I felt that a response wasn't necessary. The text you choose is also the text you speak, compared to Mass Effect where the text is usually just a hint of what will be said, which sometimes doesn't match up with your intentions. Some of your conversation choices may not turn out to be important (especially if the character you're speaking to ends up dying soon after), but I'll be intrigued to see which of them do have an impact in future episodes.

Stylistically, the game doesn't really fit in with the TV series, but I can only see that as a good thing at this point. The relentless negative tone of the show has meant that I can't bring myself to watch more than the first episode of the second season. The game isn't exactly light-hearted, but it has a few funny points along the way and a lot more likeable characters than the show. Some of them are still bastards though: I'll be keeping an eye out for a way to get rid of one in particular in future episodes. I was also impressed by the kids in this game, I would guess largely because they were actually voiced by adults. Despite this, they come across as more believable than the annoying child actors in the TV show - I actually felt kind of bad when one of my dialogue choices led to me being short with Clementine in one particular scene.

Again, the experience is pretty short, but it feels like there is a fair amount to do and a good variety of locations, with the story moving forward at a good pace. At half the price of the Batman expansion, I definitely felt that I got my money’s worth and would be happy to continue buying the episodes as they are released, even if there is eventually a cheaper collected edition. In fact, the only real downer to it is how long it is taking for the next episode to appear, originally expected to be in June, its exact release date is still unsure. I doubt we could ever see episodes released in less than a month, but that feels like a reasonable amount of time to keep people ready to play the next one. Even I'm starting to forget some of the decisions I've made, and waiting much longer to see their consequences could mean that they lose their impact.

While Batman was a little disappointing, The Walking Dead still managed to convince me that I like the idea of episodic gaming. Having a complete gaming experience somewhere between the length of a TV Show and a film is something that definitely appeals to me, and I would imagine to a lot of people with limited gaming time. Only being able to get half way through a mission before being forced to quit can be a frustrating experience, especially if it is difficult to pick up again next time. I'm becoming increasingly aware of this while replaying Mass Effect and really looking forward to moving on to its sequel. Many have commented on how well paced Mass Effect 2 is, with nearly every mission feeling like a self-contained story of sensible length. In contrast, Arkham City's rather open-ended approach is perhaps the opposite of an episodic game, which makes you wonder whether adding content in this manner could ever have been a success - no matter the quality of it: you are just expecting to play it for a much longer time.

Demonstrably Locked Content

Cody and one of his alternate costumes found on the SFxT disc.
Picture from Shoryuken.com

I felt a certain amount of irony last night, after I finally got around to playing DLC Quest, to then read about Street Fighter X Tekken having 12 downloadable characters on the game disc and that Capcom state it is to ensure compatibility between buyers and non buyers. The first comment on that article authoritively states: "Duh. Anybody that knows a single fucking thing about how games are made knows why DLC is on-disk. Whining babies don't know what the fuck they're talking about."

Okay, so there is a grain of truth in that first comment, DLC for consoles isn't just like modding on a PC or something, where dropping some new files into the correct folder will automatically be picked up by the game engine. With the console expecting all data to come from a disc (or a hard drive seamlessly pretending to be a disc), you have to know in advance how you're going to store extra content on disc and roughly what sort of content you'll be able to add.

This commenter clearly forgets the fact that just last year there was an update to Super Streetfighter 4 though, which added 4 new characters that were not originally on the game disc. To allow compatibility here a free update was made available to all players, which allowed them to play against the new characters but not use them. This all proves that it is possible to add bonus characters that aren't on the disc but that it takes more work to do so. The Arcade Edition update was the best example of a DLC update for a fighting game so far and I hoped that would be the approach taken by most in future. But of course not even Capcom themselves would take a consistent approach internally, with Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 being a brand new game, only available at retail (another game with 2 DLC characters on disc). Why people are willing to jump to Capcom's defense for taking the easy route I can't understand - other than wanting to brag about knowing how to make games.

With this case in particular, these unlockable characters feel like something that you would have previously gained access to by playing the game, in a similar fashion to the additional characters in Street Fighter 4. What I think might be a better approach is to follow the example of free to play mobile games, where everything can be unlocked eventually just by playing the game but you can also pay to unlock features if you are impatient. I'm sure that this would have been a welcome feature in Street Fighter 4, as unlocking all of the additional characters took a considerable amount of time. This was a frustrating task if you took the game around to a friends house or were trying to run a tournament. In those cases you wouldn't feel aggrieved about paying a little extra to unlock characters and those who don't pay would still have the same experience in the end. I'm sure this wouldn't please everyone but I think it would lead to a lot less backlash overall.

I wasn't always so critical towards DLC in general, I guess my initial idea of how it would work relied on 3 assumptions though:

1. It wouldn't be that expensive.
2. New content would be mostly created after the game was released.
3. Err, that you would have to download the content.

Each of these assumptions has proven to be false in a lot of cases and more often than not it feels like content is being held back from you, rather than it being a bonus. I understand that there may be cases where projects overrun and content has to be pulled, so it is a good thing that it can eventually see the light of day via DLC. The same goes for content released the same day as the game, where the development of the DLC starts after the development of the main game is complete, even if this still seems cheap to a lot of people who aren't aware of the different production stages behind the scenes. But when most of the content makes it onto the game disc then that means that it was finished by the time the discs needed to be pressed, probably at least a month in advance and it becomes hard to justify the fact that additional work was done to create an 'unlock code'.

Sadly I feel that I have very little interest in buying this game now, the entire thing has been a clusterfuck of confusing pre-order bonus gems and these locked characters are just the icing on the cake. I may feel especially strongly about this since one of the characters is Cody, a character I play quite a lot. I feel like Capcom have burned a lot of bridges that they have built in bringing people back to fighting games by the approach they have been taking. This constant monetization and new versions of games has shown that they haven't really changed from their approach in the 90's where they ran the Street Fighter series into the ground through a multitude of different versions. I thought better of it as I don't know for sure but I really wanted to reply to that first comment with: "Yeah, I know about making games and I know exactly why this happens - money."