What BioShock could have been

I have a lot of respect for Ken Levine, the lead designer and creative mind behind the 2K Boston game development studio. He’s a smart guy with a whole lot of great ideas and influences under his belt, and an obvious passion for creating original and unforgettable game experiences. In an interview about the concept of his latest brainchild, BioShock, Levine said “I love exploring what happens when good ideas fall apart.” I am sad to say that this brilliant notion may have bled into BioShock a few layers too deep.

The setting of BioShock is a wonderful idea: a secret self-sufficient subaqueous ‘50s city seemingly created for the individualistic residence of the richest and smartest people in the world, discovered accidently in a mysterious state of disrepair and near-abandonment. The introduction to this setting is also a wonderful idea. In fact, having recently completed the game, I can say with confidence that the greatest and most potent act of BioShock is the first ten minutes in which this introduction takes place. The player is given control almost immediately, following a plane crash over the Mid-Atlantic, allowing them to swim from the fiery wreckage to the only visible point of safety—a small structure mysteriously emerging from what should be open sea. Upon entering, lobby jazz music and lights flicker on automatically, revealing the welcoming banner, “No Gods or Kings. Only Man.” The visual and auditory execution of this introductory act is worth the purchase price of the game, alone. It is probably the best example of game immersion since Rand and Robyn Miller’s Riven in 1997.

After the pod ride into Rapture, the city of BioShock, the game takes what I see as a series of wrong turns. The player is presented with a radio transmission from another character that will lead them to their next destinations through a series of goals. There goes exploration. Next, you’re told to pick up a weapon to defend yourself. There goes isolation. Finally, you inject yourself with a DNA-mutating agent that allows you to shoot electric bolts from your hand. There goes maturity. From this point on, the game just feels like another shooter with an above-average backdrop to the constant action sequences.

This is not to say that BioShock is a bad game, by any means. I also love exploring what happens when good ideas fall apart. I wasn’t about to give up on Levine’s masterwork because of a few misfires. I fully enjoyed the game. The Little Sisters and Big Daddies are great characters, and a whole lot of fun to deal with in each level. Hacking the mechanical devices of Rapture via a Pipe Dream remix was a fun, albeit insufficiently designed game mechanic to break up the shooting action. Also, as much as the magical plasmids pricked at the plausibility and maturity of the game’s concept, they were fun to use and well implemented. BioShock was a good first-person shooter, there’s no contesting that. I just wonder what BioShock could have been had it not been a shooter at all.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

For the last five years, the Metroid Prime series has served as a keystone in Nintendo's catalogue of top-name titles. Primarily developed by Texas-based Retro Studios, it successfully transplanted the cherished exploratory gameplay of the Metroid series into the style of a First-Person Shooter, a genre of whose popularity Nintendo hadn't taken advantage since Rare, another second-party company, developed GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark for them back on the Nintendo 64.

But while the first game was still in development, unless you worked at Nintendo or Retro yourself, you never would have guessed it would turn as flawlessly as it did. Between Retro's nonexistent pedigree and the fact that the average shooter is so far removed from Metroid's defining characteristics, the gaming public considered the combination ill-conceived at best. Especially loud in their protests were fans of Super Metroid, the last title in the franchise, which had gone without a sequel for eight years and gone well beyond sacrosanct in the meantime.

Expectations were a collectively nervous mix of hope and dread, but they were all blown away in November of 2002, when the final product emerged a near-perfect 3D representation of Metroid's signature organic adventuring. And with the revival of the franchise's grim science-fiction setting, along with plenty of shooting action, Nintendo also gained a “mature” title they could use in marketing to refute their reputation as dealers in “kiddie” games. With all doubts disproven, the venture was considered a success, the unique result officially dubbed a “First-Person Adventure”—a genre unto itself.

That prestige continued to thrive with 2004's Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, but although the sequel was a critical success, its sales numbers failed to meet Nintendo's high standards. Because of this, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, originally advertised as a launch-date title for the Wii, was held under multiple delays for fine-tuning. It's now almost a year later, but Corruption is finally ready for consumption.



As Nintendo's flagship shooter, Corruption was expected to compete with Microsoft's Halo 3 even as far back as early 2006, and those comparisons only gained steam as the delays drew their release dates ever closer towards one another. Interviews with Retro revealed that they were shifting the focus of the series more towards straight action than exploration, and footage of the game's opening areas only seemed to corroborate this disturbing turn. Environments were drab and metallic, from gray battleships to gray naval bases; the presentation took a military slant as Galactic Federation troopers featured prominently alongside the series heroine, Samus Aran; and gameplay progression was achingly straightforward, constantly yielding to a linear narrative.

But anyone who would judge the game based on those segments alone is sorely mistaken. While it's true that they're strikingly bereft of Metroid's traditional style, they only serve to set the story and establish the characters that will steer the remainder of the game. After playing out the prologue, you're aimed toward the planets of Bryyo and Elysia, which instantly shed the silvery hues of cold technology for the beautifully intricate and eclectic art design that made the series famous. Moreover, their labyrinthine passages are completely yours to explore, alone and free from the shackles of a rote storyline.

Unfortunately, gameplay is still artificially framed into a series of objectives passed down to Samus from a commanding entity from the Federation, but this is ultimately a minor nuisance—certainly nowhere near as annoying as the similar system exhibited in Metroid Fusion, which brought gameplay to a halt with constant story scenes and prevented the player from exploring any areas not pertinent to her current mission. In Corruption, objectives are communicated over transmissions that play in real-time over your gameplay, making no interruption, and you're free to ignore them for as long as you wish while you go where and do as you please.

As far as controls go, fans of shooters widely hold the PC set-up (where the keyboard is used for movement and the mouse is used for aiming) as ideal. On consoles such as the Xbox, the mouse and keyboard are emulated by dual analog sticks, but since the GameCube controller only had a single viable stick, Metroid Prime 1 and 2 utilized a lock-on feature that made aiming a non-issue. This was one of the series's few criticisms, but it's been finally been rectified by the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities. With the Nunchuk attachment's analog stick guiding Samus's footsteps and the Wii Remote's pointer directing her onscreen arm cannon, Corruption has been fitted with controls that may very well exceed the PC approach in terms of basic functionality. Hardcore players can even select the “Advanced” setting in the Options menu, which increases the sensitivity of the pointer for an even more accurate response.

Some may regard the revised interface as a potential mixed blessing, reviving fears that the majority of the game will be lent to pure shooting in order to showcase the strength of the set-up. Fortunately, the controls are put to use for exploration purposes at least as much as they're dedicated to fire-fights. Aiming is no more important to killing Space Pirates than it is to clearing debris, making platforms out of obstacles, and even using the Plasma Beam as a welding torch to repair broken circuitry. Moving on to more complex techniques, a flick of the Wii Remote will deploy the Grappling Beam to tear barriers from doors as easily as it can tear the shield from an armored Pirate trooper.

Speaking of Samus's new repertoire, you'll be able to enjoy her more interesting power-ups much sooner than in the first two Prime games. Not only does she no longer suffer some contrived injury in the opening sequence that forces her to spend time reacquiring her most basic equipment (she starts the game with—and keeps—the Morphing Ball, Bomb, Charge Beam, and Space Jump Boots), but she also gets to the fun stuff—the Grappling Beam, Screw Attack, and so on—well ahead of when you'd expect. Because of this, the first third or so of the game no longer feels like a chore, which is a marked advantage for the overall pace of the experience.

Another improvement in terms of pacing is the removal of scripted battles that trap Samus in a room until she cleans out the enemy threat. These cropped up all too frequently in Corruption's predecessors, breaking the momentum of the game for what seemed like nothing more than an attempt to ratchet up the shooting ratio. Thankfully, Samus now only gets locked in for the rare surprise boss fight, and the game generally flows very smoothly, striking an ingenious balance between action and adventure.

Retro's design is such that the game will never require a particular item or ability too often, tactfully shuffling the use of Samus's arsenal and making sure that no two consecutive rooms will have the same solution. However, one entry in Samus's new arsenal does stand out, and it's as focal to the game as it is controversial among players. Early in the story, Samus's body gets infected with the toxic substance known as Phazon, putting her life at risk but bolstering her combat effectiveness. In gameplay terms, this is expressed as the ability to enter “Hypermode,” which temporarily turns Samus into an invincible killing machine at the cost of an entire Energy Tank. Each shot fired during this time accounts for a portion of the sacrificed energy, so exiting Hypermode before spending it all will return Samus to normal without taking too much of a hit.

The real danger in Hypermode is the capacity for Samus to become “corrupted,” which occurs when she goes too long without expending the Energy Tank or making a manual exit. At this stage, her Phazon infusion gradually increases to deadly levels, forcing you to keep shooting in order to expel it from her body. The initial instinct is to avoid corruption like the plague, but savvy players may find it even better to shoot just enough to stay alive and kill their enemies without flushing out the last of the Phazon, thus reaping the benefits of Hypermode for as long as possible before the built-in time limit runs out. Many enemies and obstacles can only be surmounted with Hypermode, so learning to use it strategically is crucial to survival, especially on the higher difficulty settings.

Corruption's presentation is suitably immense for bringing the Prime trilogy to a close, all while keeping to its roots as a Metroid game and knowing when to leave the player alone. Its gameplay is enhanced to great satisfaction, and its alien worlds and haunting soundtrack uphold the engrossing sense of atmosphere that is essential to the series. And while it could never be as fresh and revolutionary as the original Metroid Prime was five years ago, it stands a worthy successor to its gaming legacy and will surely be remembered as one of the best offerings of the Wii generation.

Beyond Cruise Elroy

I was born in the midst of what is referred to as the golden age of arcade games. I’m not complaining. In retrospect it was a good time to be alive. It didn’t take me very long to realize that I loved video games, but even considering my earliest years of gaming, the classic arcade games that would later become my undisputed favorites were a bit before my time. For the years I’ve had, I’ve eaten a hell of a lot of dots.

We’re in the age of HD now; a truly sad time to hear the word “reinvention” in game development. It’s a tired term that’s come to essentially mean 3D models with high-res textures, hold the worth. If someone would have asked me what I thought about the idea of an HD Pac-Man reinvention for the Xbox 360 a year ago I would have probably cringed and ranted passionately about how Pac-Man doesn’t need a reinvention. I’m glad that no one asked me.

Toru Iwatani decided to retire from game development after putting out Pac-Man C.E. (Championship Edition) back in June, an action that unquestionably solidifies him as a hero of video games. Pac-Man C.E. is the kind of game that we should expect when we hear the word “reinvention.” Its genius serves as a classy message of adieu from Iwatani, and a message to game designers across the board: “This is how you do it.”

Rune Factory

Prior to this week I had never played a Harvest Moon game. To Mr. Yasuhiro Wada, I apologize.

To be completely honest, my entire knowledge of Harvest Moon up until Monday morning was obtained from a brief article I had read about the games years ago, which described them as "farming simulators." For years I wondered how Harvest Moon games were continuing to be funded and made. Finally, I have figured it out. Was it a huge underground subculture of agronomic gamers buying these things up year after year? Unfortunately, no. Here is the secret: Harvest Moon games are not farming simulators. Calling a Harvest Moon game a farming simulator is a hilarious understatement and misinterpretation. It reminds me of when Cave Story was released, an independent homebrew game which surpasses most major production games in its genre on almost all accounts, created solely by Daisuke Amaya who, after five painstaking years of development, posted it for download with the description,

“Cave Story is a jumping-and-shooting action game.
Explore the caves until you reach the ending.
You can also save your game and continue from where you left off.”

I decided to give Harvest Moon a shot when I heard about Rune Factory on Monday. It came to me, calling itself a fantasy Harvest Moon, and seduced me with promises of swords, magic, and cave exploration with bosses. I haven’t put it down since, and here’s why: this game understands you. It gets to know you, and moreover, it knows.

It knows that mindless repetition is boring. Most games don’t know this. Think about that MMORPG you’re playing. See? I told you. Every time I started to get bored of doing something in Rune Factory, it was ready to provide me with a way to get the job done without having to grind play the same tedious details over and over again. This is true throughout the course of the entire game. It’s as if Neverland Co. developed Rune Factory under the philosophy of that party game, “Telephone.” By the time you’re exploring the final caves it’s like you’re not even playing the same game as you were when you started, and thanks to the smart pacing, all of the transitions feel very natural.

It knows the things you’d like to do, and it lets you do them. Having fun doing something? Do it as much as you like. There is no rush or time limit. Seasons and years pass, but there is never any obligation to do anything that you don’t want to do. You don’t even have to farm if you really don’t want to. Are you fond of an NPC? Give them some time and they will be fond of you, too. You want to marry her and have a kid together? The game isn’t going to stop you. It will make the arrangements.

It’s not a dating sim, though. It’s not an RPG. It’s not a fucking farming simulator. It’s just a game--a lovable game that is not without quirks, imbalances, or imperfections, but still knows how to have fun.