Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Oh Valve, How You Steal My Heart -- Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2

Valve must know that they have some of the most patient customers in the industry. Valve's name is a parody of time manipulation but also a synonym for quality. I mean come on, Halo 3 was like .75 Valves and Earth Defense Force was somewhere near 1.21 GigaValves. Seriously, being compared to Valve is one of the highest honors I can give something. I've played through Half-Life 2 and Portal so many times I know the dialog.

All things considered, Valve is really stingy about the information they release to their salivating fans because the instant they do, every single syllable is searched for a cryptic meaning or metaphor somehow connected the Black Mesa events to the destruction of GlaDOS. This could be the reason that it's been ages since we've heard anything about the assumed dead Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or been given zero information about Half-Life 3.

This obscurity may be why many fans were greatly excited for the episodic releases of the Half-Life games. More Half-Life to rage over sooner right? BUT THEN something called Portal became extremely successful and so did another title called Left 4 Dead. Now the fans that would normally sit and wait patiently found themselves wondering if their beloved developer had abandoned them. Episode 2 was like taking a stroll down HINTington Avenue or down WinkWink Boulevard. Then at the end it became the biggest building in the video game metropolis known as CliffHangersburg.

Now the poor and beaten fans are watching Left 4 Dead, its sequel, Portal 2, and DOTA 2 come out before even hearing about a new Half-Life. Now these games are fantastic in typical Valve fashion, but come on, poor Alyx is still crying, it breaks my heart. Now onto my article!

Half-Life 2: Episode 1

Starting where Half-Life 2 left off, you are immediately reintroduced to two of the most lovable characters of the HL2. Alyx and DØg. You have to once again save City 17 from certain destruction and complete tasks well beyond the physical abilities of most theoretical physicists. This is the first episode to use HDR lighting and was by far one of the best looking games of the time. The story is this game was much more driven and focused. It used cooperative AI in a way that made Alyx a welcome teammate that never got annoying.

There were not really any new gameplay tweaks or differences from the original game which is actually a good thing. It is familiar and solid the whole time. It is short but ended up being my favorite game in the Half-Life series.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2

I will keep my story descriptions low in this section to prevent posting any spoilers. This episode most notably involves covering a lot ground. You find yourself in a vehicle for a great amount of time. Zombies are becoming a smaller and smaller part of the Half-Life games at this point and the bigger and badder Combine are attacking full force. You really feel like you're at a disadvantage here. The Ant Lions also make a pretty big return here. I don't generally condone baby killing, but for 2HP each, I'll relax my morals a bit.

This is by far the most important episode for story telling and there really isn't too much to tell you beyond that. It's great and if you like any of the previous game you'll love this one.

Images from store.steampowered.com and blackmesasource.com

Why Gaming is Still Important: A History, A Melody, A Cause



Nick Duncan
The Gamer Gestalt
“The Secret of Life is in Art.” This quote comes from legendary writer Oscar Wilde. Since the dawn of man there have been artists, drawing scribbles on cave walls to painting the lush canvases of the Renaissance. Oscar Wilde, however, was not a painter. His art came from a different place, though he was in fact an artist. Art can be defined on a multitude of levels; the brush and the paint fall into just one of the innumerable categories that portray the physical manifestations of the human imagination. Today’s world exists in the digital realm. Computers, cell phones, and the internet all link us, bind us, and shrink the world to the size of our pocket. This digital era also introduced video games. The popularity of video games has grown incredibly since their creation in the mid-seventies, and a growing debate has sparked both in and out of the gaming community on whether or not video games are art. To answer that question one must define art and demonstrate how games are a form of artistic expression. The technology that exists today allows the creators of video games tell grand stories that can bring the player into an experience that they also help sculpt. Players are affected emotionally by these experiences to which they become so committed. Games carry themes, and form a thesis about a point they wish to prove. Video games are an expression of the human being, pulling the player into a world that is not their own, yet reflecting the ideals and imaginations of the creators and along with those who play it. This experience is as much a piece of art as a painting in the Louvre .

The history of video games is a short but sweet story. In the seventies, a device known as “The Brown Box” was invented; this allowed the user to control a dot on a television screen, trying to catch another user who controls another dot. This dot was far from the Mona Lisa, but contained the makings of a thriving global medium. More “game boxes” surfaced and turned into arcade cabinets; the industry continued this way until it saw a decline in the mid-eighties. Video games started to be written off as a passing fad. Then Nintendo, an arcade cabinet company that wanted to get a share of the household market, created their first console. The Nintendo Entertainment System revolutionized gaming at home. The system perfected the practice of swappable cartridges, reaching out to more third party companies and creating some of the best video games in the industry thus far. The games were fun and engaging, drew the player in with their look and feel, and everything just worked. From there Nintendo, and more console companies such as Sony and Sega, created consoles and games for the next decade. This comes from Mark Wolf’s book on the history of video games, Video Game Explosion: a History from PONG to Playstation and beyond. The consoles reached out to consumers across the globe, letting friends and family gather to share in the experience of gaming. The turn of the century introduced the internet, and the capabilities of computers skyrocketed. Gaming machines were now capable of producing graphics and environments closer to real life than ever before. The story continues today as the gaming community grows larger, encompassing a larger variety of people than ever before.
In order to understand how a game can be art, one has to first understand what a video game is. This can be a difficult concept to grasp because video games encompass so many devices. Games can be a solitary experience, where a player takes control of a character through an adventure similar to a movie. Players interact with protagonists and antagonists, though defeating enemies is the usually norm for a game plotline. Multiplayer games are very popular, as they allow many gamers to play together at once, competing and working together to achieve a goal.
Control is an important concept in the gaming world. The player’s actions off screen are translated into the game. Many critics of games point out how gamers are enveloped into the game and lose a sense of what is real. Outcries against violence in video games put this ideal as their masthead. The truth is that games do affect the gamer, but only as much as the gamer desires. This is not a conscious desire, but a subconscious one. Evidence has shown that media effects on violent behavior are minimal. The annual review of the effects of media violence from the sociology department of New York State University stated that media effects are minimal and “affect only a small percentage of viewers” though players do put themselves into the game. Video games put players in a “role”, but they play the role through their own being. A person’s character is most revealed when they fail to realize they are reflecting themselves by the game they are playing. True, most people are not likely to shoot a town full of people. The situation made by the game places players in a spurious realm and they are given instructions to complete a task. The way players go about completing this task is what is so revealing. Subtle nuances on play style, how gamers use their environment, whether they work alone or with a team, or even which tools they use can be linked to a person’s personality and emotional grasp on the situation.
Now this all equates to evidence that games can in fact be art. Art is a feeling or experience that garners an emotional reaction. Films and novels have always attempted to draw in the user to a world that will affect them emotionally. These two mediums are recognized as art. Video games attempt to establish themselves separate from simple comparisons between films and novels by differentiating the means by which they achieve artistic goals. These means involve bringing the player into the artistic experience, something that no other medium can do. Many who have established themselves in the field of film or writing try to write off video games. Roger Ebert wrote an article for the Chicago Sun Times assaulting the claims that games are art, saying “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets”. One cannot make that claim unless they experience the argued games for themselves. Grand Theft Auto IV, a free-roam action game that is set in a huge city, has gotten a healthy amount of attention for being controversial and violent. Yet no one has taken a look at the context in which the game is presented. A man from war torn Russia comes to America to live the “dream”. The game poses the question, “What is the dream anymore?” (GTA IV) This man gets swept up in the mob while trying to get by, reducing himself to the acts that he swore never to commit again since he moved to America. “Here, things will be different.” (GTA IV) The character development, the story arcs and the creative, intense action parallels the experience for which creators of novels and film have contended for decades. As for films, Goodfellas, The Godfather, and The Departed all explore the means by which people try to make something of themselves. All were created by one of “the great filmmakers”, but cannot bring about the point in the same way the game does. The game has a point to make, and is made using devices that are found within all video games.
Games have garnered an emotional reaction from gamers since their inception. The production that gaming companies put together is not just a way to make money. It is known that games cash in on popular themes and play styles, but the creators of games want people to take something away from the experience of playing the game. If games were just one dimensional, buyer consumed creations, there would not be world class writers assigned to the script, brilliant programmers tasked with making the gamer feel like they are a part of the experience, and even artists given the job of creating the visually stunning landscapes and characters that populate the games. Games are their own medium; they do not fall in with the likes of checkers or baseball. Those that argue that football cannot be art confuse the definition of game and video game. IGN editor Mike Thomsen refuted Ebert’s argument in an editorial, and when the aforementioned concept came up, saying,
The reason football is not art is because its rules were designed with the primary goal of competition. Competition is only one of a great many different experiences that a videogame can create. Games can also be about losing, and not competing at all. They can be about love, the impossibility of relationships, the beautiful indifference to our individual life choices, urgent intimacy in the shadow of death, sexual anxiety, and confrontation with life choices to which there are no right answers.
The games that build these relationships demonstrate a gripping, storytelling method that allows gamers to experience something similar to the emotion from art, film, and books, yet it contains something that sets it apart from everything else.
The dictionary defines art as “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary substance”. Games have the ability to have players experience something beautiful, and come away moved in a way that has them thinking and telling others for a long time. This concept can be found within the game Bioshock, which was released in 2007. It is set within the confines of an abandoned underwater city, created as an escape from the government authority around the world in 1950. The player’s character survived a plane crash in the sea above this city, and as he is lead to safety he lands in the desolate wasteland that is the city of Rapture. Upon entering, you receive a radio transmission from a man named Atlas, who acts as your guide to getting out of the city, ending each request with the phrase “Would you kindly?”(Bioshock) Players explore the city and deal with the crazed populates that are desperate for the drug known as Adam which gives them superhuman abilities. The setting is dark, dreary, and sets an incredible tone which all players feel. The lush details of the collapsing city underneath the waves create a feeling of confinement that haunts the characters to the game’s chilling conclusion, which is the most artistic part. Atlas is revealed to be the mobster who had a hand it bringing the city to the state it was now, along with his arch enemy and the city’s creator, Andrew Ryan. Atlas has been using the player all along to carry out his means, as the player’s character, Jack has been trained from birth to follow the orders given. The phrase “would you kindly” makes the player follow every request, which they have done unknowingly throughout the game. Ryan reveals this to the player and uses the phrase to have the character murder him, ending his life with the now famous phrase, “A man chooses, a slave obeys.”(Bioshock) . These story elements call into question many heavy themes that sit with the player long after the thrilling conclusion. Obedience to authority is something young people question and reject, but to be following an authority without even knowing it makes people reevaluate every task they do. Gaming itself is taken under the microscope and examined. Do players really choose? Any movie, painting, or song that is considered “art” would have to work much harder to create this feeling in the viewer. Since the connection the gamer feels between the game and themselves is so visceral and corporeal it allows incredible ease in the flow of intended emotions from the creator of the game to the recipient.
These themes and theses may seem like a new addition to games, but gaming having such a short history as it does, time is needed for it to grow. Film, accepted by most of the population as a form of art, got its start at the end of the 19th century, and has moved from a simple medium to one that can call for thinking, intelligent audiences able to appreciate the artistic emotive means the piece hopes to fulfill. Using the medium to appropriately garner the response needed is the key. Film uses cinematography, writing, acting, and staging, not to mention a feeling to make it all happen. Games use similar tools. Design, scripting, acting, modeling, are all parts of what goes into making the pieces into a complete a picture.
Earlier games used the limited technology creators had at their disposal to pull a feeling from the players. Super Metroid, a two dimensional action-platformer released in 1992, had simplistic graphics and a general run-and-gun gameplay. Yet gamers still talk about the story and the feeling they get from running around the dark corridors of the alien infested planet. The text-only story of the game was intriguing but simple, and the design carried a mood with it to match the overall purpose of the game.
People want to express themselves. It is a part of a collective mission to define who we are as humans. For millennia people have created and destroyed to find this purpose and meaning, and the mediums they use have shifted throughout the years, and most of it has been referred to as art. Games now carry the expressive weight of artistic expression, sharing it with the scores of other conveyances of human emotion and purpose. Video games carry a negative weight that makes the medium work that much harder. Visually Interactive Experiences would be far more appropriate for such an increasingly important aspect of human culture.

Monday, April 18, 2011

PS3 Steam Account Option Now on Steam Install

I was relocating my Steam install when I noticed something new. An option for new PS3 user accounts. Here is a picture. This comes as I sit impatiently awaiting the delivery of my copy of Portal 2 for PS3. I can't wait.