The 2009 Select [Button]: Single-Player/Multi-Player

by C.T. Hutt

Most Engrossing Single-Player: Dragon Age: Origins

Despite a plethora of high quality single-player experiences that have come out this year, Dragon Age: Origins reigns supreme. Single-player RPGs are designed to create the optimum mano-a-computer gaming experience, often without an online play aspect or offline cooperative modes, so it’s really no surprise that a title which has been crowned by many sources as the best RPG of the year also makes for the most engrossing single-player experience.

Stunning graphics, complex, strategic game play, and the engaging storyline offered by Dragon Age: Origins combine to keep any gamer with a taste for tactical combat and fantasy glued to their office chair for days. An outstanding single-player experience is not without its dangers of course. Side effects of Dragon Age: Origins may include: vitamin D deficiency, reduced social interaction, loss of sleep, carpel tunnel, poor diet, and delusions of being a Grey Warden. Other than those minor problems, we recommend Dragon Age: Origins to any gamer out there who wants to fly solo.

Honorable Mention: Batman: Arkham Asylum afforded gamers with an experience they have been anticipating for a very long time: a great game based on a comic book character. In some places Batman: Arkham Asylum went a little overboard (i.e.: chemical mega-joker), but it was still a fantastic title.

Most Engrossing Multi-Player: Left 4 Dead 2

Zombies. They stink, they try to kill you, and they drag down property value in a major way. As a responsible citizen and home owner it is your duty and your pleasure to shoot them in the head. But many hands make for light work, so while you are busy clearing the zombie infested streets of New Orleans from the undead, make sure to bring a buddy along. Left 4 Dead 2 brings home the awesomeness of a great horror/ survival FPS and an excellent co-operative game play experience. Nothing says “we are having some fun now” more than pounding your buddy on the back yelling “Shoot the the jockey! Shoot the jockey!” before you get pulled into a puddle of acidic spitter mucus. Toss in some excellent environments and a dash of poignant social commentary and you’ve got a title we will be playing for months to come.

Honorable Mention: Borderlands. Wait, what? Didn’t you just say you hated that game? Not entirely. The setting, storyline, repetitive missions, character balance, and soundtrack of Borderlands all leave a lot to be desired, but the co-operative play is really quite good. Borderlands is proof positive that almost anything can be fun if you bring some friends along for the ride.

The Charming Sociopath

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

I recently played through Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and what the critics say is true: it is a very well constructed game, and the animations, characters and voice actors are superb. It did, however, leave me with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. After all, here was charming, likeable Nathan Drake and his lovely companion Elena, who moved and spoke like real, friendly people I might want to hang out with, looked more realistic than most other video game characters, and killed countless human beings without hesitation or remorse.

This problem runs rampant in video games: because of the genre of a game or the standards set by games that came before, all the hard work put into characterization is thrown out the window in favor of overused tropes. Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune attempts to bring an experience to the console that is as close as possible to a high quality action/adventure film, but even in Indiana Jones’s wildest adventures, he never killed as many thugs as Nathan Drake does within the first few hours of Uncharted. This works against all the hard work put into the character of Nathan. It’s hard to believe that a man who kills so easily is also charming and likeable.

But this is an action/adventure game, and action/adventure games generally pit the player against a lot of enemies. When the mass slaughtering is done by a character like Kratos or Marcus Fenix, it seems more natural because these men are ridiculous stereotypes of action heroes. They are grim, unpleasant, murderous clichés. With a realistic character in the forefront, however, this behavior strikes a more discordant note.

There are simple changes which could have made this disconnect less jarring. One solution would have been to cut down on the number of enemies Nathan Drake faced on his adventure. The game repeatedly recycles combat arenas by sending second and third waves of enemies into the room after each group is dispatched. This made many of the action sequences longer than necessary and increased the body count considerably. Even if every man he killed was actively trying to kill Nathan (and they were), you'd think that when a person loses count of the human beings they’ve killed it might affect their sunny disposition.

Another approach might have been to simply slow down the pace of the confrontations. Enemies do not hide behind barriers for very long, always pushing forward to flank Nathan and his companions. They do not hesitate, retreat, regroup or try to find aid. A group of enemies enters an area, takes cover, moves in to attack, and dies. If they behaved more like they valued their own lives, it could have extended the gameplay and added tension. Maybe they could have even, just every once in a while, presented a character who realized that twelve of his well-armed friends had just been killed and that he was all alone facing their killer. That would be an appropriate time to drop one’s weapon and run like hell, or even surrender, allowing the player an opportunity to show that he is playing a pretty good guy who doesn’t kill unless he has to do so.

I understand that this would make the game a less action-packed affair, and that this would be a concern for the developers. Many consumers look for constant, frenetic action in their games, and Uncharted delivers in that regard. But as games present more realistic, believable characters, questions are raised about whether the gameplay itself detracts from their believability. And when Elena goes from nervously joking about having never fired a gun before to calmly launching explosive rockets at strangers from the back of a jet ski, I must admit that I am a little less in love with the otherwise charming and intelligent leading lady.

There are two philosophies of game design at war here: Uncharted attempts to deliver a lengthy, action-packed experience as well as a fulfilling narrative with a likeable main character. Unfortunately, these two ideas work against one another. This conflict also arises in video game villains, especially those of the malevolently-scheming-behind-the-scenes variety. (Some spoilers for BioShock and Batman: Arkham Asylum follow.)

In the finale of BioShock, the manipulative villain of the game transforms himself into a superhuman monster, despite the fact that it hardly fits the character or the story at all. Why would an enterprising businessman and criminal attempt a direct confrontation? An otherwise excellent, complex and genre-defying shooter, BioShock fell prey to the idea that every video game needs an epic final boss to fight. The result was one of the few flat and uninspired moments in an otherwise stellar game.

Similarly, in Batman: Arkham Asylum, the Joker, who has made a career out of using people like pawns to accomplish his mad schemes, goes out of character and transforms himself into a huge, preposterous mutant to fight Batman directly. Other than in that moment, Arkham Asylum does an excellent job of conveying the Joker as a character, and the translation from comic book to video game was impressive. But the developers wanted a big set piece and an imposing enemy for the finale, so all that careful character development was thrown out the window.

Developers need to realize that it is okay to be different for the sake of a character. A huge, tough boss is all well and good in the right game, but when Batman thwarts the Joker’s plans and defeats his thugs in the comic books, the only thing left to do is to sock him in the jaw and throw him in a cell. For the narrative of a game to improve, the mechanics and gameplay can’t work against the development of the plot and characters. I’d much rather have a great story from beginning to end than have a boss fight just like those in every other game. And if there were a little less killing in Uncharted, I might feel like having a beer with Nathan Drake if I ever met him in a bar. As it stands, though, I think my best bet would be to run for my life.

Batman: The Best Around

by Daniel Bullard-Bates

If my fifteen-year-old self had been asked to describe the ideal video game, I might have come up with something a lot like Batman: Arkham Asylum. It has all the elements a Batman game ought to have: crowd combat, stealth takedowns, even a little detective work. And it all works because the developers, Rocksteady, didn’t simply look to other games for their mechanics. Unlike in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which shamelessly apes God of War, Batman: Arkham Asylum uses unique mechanics and a by-the-comic-books approach to more accurately convey what it feels like to be Batman.

Combat has Batman whizzing from one opponent to the next, using timely button presses to counter incoming attacks, flip over the heads of opponents, and stun others. Even with a large number of thugs attacking, Batman is more than capable of holding his own. As it should be. When the enemies have guns, he takes a different approach. Sneaking around the room, swinging from a gargoyle to gargoyle, this is where the gameplay really shines. There’s no rote memorization of patrol patterns to learn here. Batman just watches until someone wanders off by themselves, and takes them down one by one. By the time there’s only one thug left, he’s panicked and his heart is racing, shooting at any noise he hears.

The plot of Batman: Arkham Asylum revolves around typical villainy by the Joker, made interesting mostly by the setting and clever use of Batman villains. How better to introduce a variety of Batman references and characters than by setting the game in the madhouse where all the Batman villains are kept? The island where Arkham Asylum sits is one of the big stars of the game, presenting a Metroid-esque level of exploration and discovery through the dark halls of the madhouse. And Joker isn’t the only member of the rogue’s gallery to make an appearance; Killer Croc, Harley Quinn and others show up, and my personal favorite Batman villain has some of the most surprising, incredible sequences in the game. I’d love to discuss them, but I wouldn’t want to spoil it.

My one complaint about the villainous cast is its relatively small size. While many villains have small cameos or references worked into the game, the asylum offers so many possibilities for villainous encounters that the absence of some major figures seems glaring. Then again, Batman villains spend about as much time broken out of Arkham as they do in it, so maybe they’re just saving a crew for the sequel.

There are some very clever touches done to make some video game clichés work in the Batman universe. The collectible items in the game, for example, are all riddles or objects left by the Riddler. Not only does it make sense for the Riddler to want to leave strange puzzles and clues all over the island, they even serve a purpose, both in experience gained to go towards a variety of skills and upgrades, and the ultimate goal of apprehending the Riddler. What is normally a tired means of extending gameplay is thus turned into something that actually makes the player feel like Batman.

The fifteen-year-old version of me would have called this game the greatest of all time. Over the years, I’ve come to look for more from my games than just a good time and some great mechanics, and I realize that my affection for the Batman character likely clouds my judgment. But Rocksteady have done something truly impressive here: they’ve created a game that accurately portrays the character, aesthetic and world of a superhero, and while the game has some issues (I agree that the final boss sequence is pretty silly), there are no faults glaring enough to spoil the experience. While the bar was not set incredibly high (superhero games are typically quite awful), they’ve easily made the best superhero game of all time. And for several days this past weekend, I felt like I was fifteen again, having a great time being Batman, just like I’ve always wanted. Hopefully this game will sell well, showing video game developers everywhere that when the superheroes we love are finally given the treatment they deserve, critics and gamers alike are thrilled.