John Zeitler

You can say what you will about Michael Bay’s ability to direct a movie. I’ll probably join you if your comments run along the lines of “he can’t do it very well”. But the trick to enjoying a Michael Bay movie, and by extension not harboring an incredible loathing for the man equal to or greater than that owed Uwe Boll, is to remember that Michael Bay sticks primarily to what he knows. And what he knows is “if you blow a lot of %#$% up in your movie, eventually, that can overcome serious deficiencies in writing, acting, and cinematography”. (Although on that last one I have to concede that the man does have a certain amount of skill in framing big booms just right on-screen and making an explosion, or just the right explosion, look awesome.)

Split/Second is, as I’ve said many, many times before, like driving through a Michael Bay movie. Stuff blows up, constantly, incessantly, and awesomely. I know I use that adjective with abandon but in this case I mean it in its most authentic sense: the pyrotechnics in this game truly inspire awe in their scope, execution, and results. With only a few exceptions, each and every detonation has an effect on the course as a whole, either by denying your rival drivers the use of that particular bomb, scattering debris across the course, or (in the case of the Route Changes and certain full-meter explosions) drastically rerouting the race through environments that were previously closed off. What makes the game very interesting, from a programming standpoint, is that the AI-controlled rivals adapt to the new course geometry as it evolves, avoiding burning wrecks or terminal boulders after they’ve expended their immediate discharge. At higher levels, the AI even has enough sense to stay out of the range of some of the worst of the blasts before they even go off. The AI hardly ever feels prescient or precognitive, but this comes at the cost of being predictable to the point of being routine. The ship is always going to come off the moorings, it just depends on if you trigger it or if an AI driver behind you does.

The game has some severe problems with balance, though. In general the AI is keyed to the level of the car you select, and in some cases certain cars are vastly overrated. In one Elite Race (the final event in each episode), I found myself consistently up to ten seconds behind the last-place driver simply because the car I picked– the highest-level available to me at the time– was rated a few notches higher than it realistically should have been, and as a result the AI cars were bumped up a level so that they were beyond my capabilities. This is a problem most evident in online multiplayer, where the players who have purchased the “unlock everything” packs have distinct and insurmountable advantages over players who haven’t yet unlocked the so-called God-tier cars. Still, by the end of the game even without a full unlock players have some decent car options available to them.

More to the point, the events are uneven in terms of fun. The basic Race events are exciting, and I enjoyed them, but Survival events– where players must overtake double-length big rigs which spew explosive barrels behind them– can be maddeningly frustrating on certain courses, and Demolition events are just gussied-up time trials, which is to say boring. The game uses a loathsome unlocking mechanism based on credits, and there’s no real pattern to how many credits are needed to unlock the Elite Race for an episode. This gets to the point where, if you’re doing averagely-well, you may be able to have the Elite Race unlocked for the first 8 episodes before you have that episode unlocked, then need an inordinately large sum of credits for the final four. I had to go back and grind through tedious events to bump up 4th- and 3rd-place finishes before I could handle the finale. I think an unlock system that required all 3rds-or-better, which is what it basically amounted to, would have worked a lot better than the credit-based system.

By no means is Split/Second a bad game. I personally think it’s miles ahead of Blur or ModNation Racers; Blur made the mistake of trying to play the Mario Kart tropes seriously with a straight face (which would work if Blur was trying to be a parody, and not a Serious Game That Adults Play ™), while ModNation’s build-it mechanic lends itself far too easily to abuse for my tastes. Without a doubt, though, there’s plenty of room for improvement, and I certainly hope Black Rock Studios gets the chance to do up a proper sequel (as opposed to the PSP version recently announced). By improving the unlocks, balancing multiplayer, and adding more courses, I really think Split/Second could be the breakout hit of 2010.

A sequel, it seems, is probably the riskiest endeavor a creative individual can undertake. On the one hand, it continues a story that many people found to be very enjoyable, and it can usually mean there’s going to be a pretty sizeable number of sales to be had from just those people alone. The problem is, though, it means that you have to top your previous work, without cheapening it. Creating a new bad guy behind the original one, having some other threat come along that was just waiting for the time to strike, or introducing new characters that far overpower (or at the very least put to shame) the original cast– all those are guaranteed ways to alienate fans of the original.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World does every single one of those. And the kicker is, somehow, it all comes together nicely.

Rather than taking the approach that Final Fantasy IV: The After Years did, by continuing the story with more or less the same engine as the original, Dawn of the New World adds a slightly different spin on the current Tales combat engine. Battles are still in the free-running Linear Motion Battle System that Symphonia used, but on occasion after putting down a monster, it will hang around after the battle to see if you want it to join you. It works like a randomized, Tales-ified version of Pokemon. Unfortunately, it suffers from the fact that there hasn’t really been any game that properly copies Pokemon’s catch-em-all mechanic. Worse, as the game went on, fewer and fewer monsters made such an offer after battle. And possibly even more damning, because monsters grew in levels much faster than the humans, they don’t offer a whole lot of incentive to evolve them (returning them to Level 1, a la Disgaea’s reincarnation mechanic) or, for that matter, to catch other monsters once you have a group you feel comfortable with. In point of fact, after about the sixth or eighth hour of gameplay, you’re almost always accompanied by enough humans that you don’t need to have a monster in your active party. Great concept, crappy execution.

It could easily be argued, though, that nobody plays JRPGs for their battle systems. At least that’s not the case with me, anyway, as I’m usually more attracted to stories than stick-waggling. (Oh, on a related note: there’s no waggle controls here. The Sorcerer’s Ring is aimed with the IR pointer… more on that later.) Dawn manages to be a very well-thought-out extension to the seemingly-concluded story set forth in Symphonia. After the completion of the previous quest, the worlds of Sylvarant and Tethe’alla were merged back into the one they were before. To put it succinctly, this did not go well; the political systems of the two worlds were totally incompatible, and all hell broke loose (almost literally). This culminated in an attack on (Dawn’s protagonist) Emil’s hometown of Luin, seemingly led by Lloyd Irving (Symphonia’s protagonist). Things happen, and Emil links up with a seemingly-repentant member of a militant group, Marta, who bears with her a mysterious stone.

In true Tales fashion, though, the story starts off cliche and quickly spirals out of the realm of mediocrity. That’s not to say it doesn’t stick with certain cliches, but, well– you know how spies are told that if they’re in danger of blowing their cover, to play it harder? Dawn manages the same thing. It takes cliches, spins them a little, and pushes them to their breaking point and beyond. It’s not a profound story, it’s not in-your-face, and it’s not anything that’s unique or overly spectacular. It’s strictly formula, it knows it, and it plays it to the hilt. Suffice to say, if you like the Tales formula, you’re going to love Dawn.

The Tales formula, it should be noted, is composed of two things. The first, and the one major problem I have with the formula, is that its dungeons are laid out in the most frustrating fashion possible with the Wii’s hardware. Graphical details obscure paths, and I’m sure that if Namco could have dragged more polygons out of the processor they’d be hidden further. What compounds this is that the dungeons, especially later in the game, contain unhealthy amounts of backtracking thanks to the Sorcerer’s Ring. One dungeon, the Temple of Lightning, is a monstrous pain in the ass due to the fact that it requires you to go back to the main room no less than ten times in order to proceed, its only saving grace being that there is also a full-heal save point in that room. It took me three hours to get through that dungeon, not least of which because the encounter rate was jacked up to “obnoxious” as well. I wouldn’t mind either shorter dungeons, or longer dungeons that are split up more so that it feels like you’re making some kind of progress.

On the other hand, the Tales formula also relies on extremely strong characterization, and Dawn manages to crank this up pretty far, too. The game is punctuated with optional skits, which are simple talking-head conversations between characters. While some of these are the usual dramatic “what are they thinking?” kinds of things that you’d expect from a serious story, the vast majority of these are flat-out hilarious. Since they’re fully voiced in this game (something the original Symphonia lacked), they just become even more funny. From complaining about each other’s cooking, to playing with stereotypes of the characters and their “expected” behavior in situations, they wind up being one of the better parts of the game. After each main-line story bit, I found myself hesitating as I approached the exits, finger readied on the C button to start the skit whenever I saw the prompt. The skits easily are one of the biggest selling points for the game… or rather, the series as a whole.

Overall, it’s not really fair to say that Dawn of the New World is an “average Tales game”. Granted, it’s not better or worse than any other installment of the series, but you have to consider the series for a second. The Tales games are among the best that the JRPG genre have to offer, ranking in my estimation right up there with Final Fantasy and Wild ARMs. Calling Dawn an “average Tales game” is kind of like saying it’s an “average hundred-dollar bill”. Or an “average Lamborghini”. I’m probably going on to Tales of the Abyss for my next big RPG project, but that’s a little ways off, I think.

Another new feature on the ol’ blog, folks. Rather than just report when a game’s done, I’m going to do a little writeup on what I thought about the game a day or so after the Clear notice. That way, I have something to write about, and you all are spared the horror of more inane cats-doing-something-cute Youtube bailout. So, let’s get this rolling.

There’s something to be said, I think, for being a couple years behind on one’s gaming.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was, in 2007, the first-person shooter. Other titles like Left 4 Dead and Resistance, were out, but the entire gaming world seemed fixated on COD4, mostly for the multiplayer. And I’ll be honest, I was interested. I had been planning to pick the game up in early 2008, before rumblings of misdeeds at Activision turned me off the company entirely for a couple of years. When I finished up Modern Warfare 2 last month, I figured it was time to let bygones be bygones and give the game a fair shot, particularly because– shock of shocks– MW2 was actually good.

As it turns out, the hype for Modern Warfare was entirely justified. The game certainly lost a little bit of its luster owing to the fact that I played its sequel first, but in all honesty it made me appreciate MW2 a little bit more as well. The improvements between the games proved that Infinity Ward really puts a lot of effort into the games each year or so, and isn’t just dumping the same code out over and over again. The thing is, though, those improvements are remarkably subtle. Someone not terribly versed in the tropes of FPS gaming might not quite appreciate the differences in the waypoint tracker, the aim-assister, or the enemy AI.

One of the biggest knocks against COD4 was the overarching importance of grenades. It even earned the game the memetic nickname “Grenade of Grenade 4: Grenade Grenade”. I have nothing to dispute this claim. Enemies seemed to chuck the little bombs at me with alarming accuracy, and it seemed like I needed to be practically on top of one in order to throw it back have it blow my arm off. More to the point, grenades weren’t terribly useful when I used them: tossing one into an enemy’s nest did nothing to thin their forces, and it sure as hell didn’t force them to break cover and become exposed. The only saving grace is that, unlike Halo, these grenades don’t stick to you.

Here’s the other thing, though: MW2 had one important advantage over its predecessor, and that’s the elimination of the infinite-enemy spawns. In certain choke points, enemy troops would relentlessly charge back into positions where I or the AI squadmates had just exterminated them, sometimes not even moments afterwards. It made advancing through these areas ridiculously difficult, as compared to MW2′s difficult-but-doable points. I can see where Inifnity Ward would have wanted to emphasize the death-or-glory valor of an SAS trooper or US Marine, but it introduces an element of inconsistency that’s really jarring. For 90% of the game, you’re taught not to go charging off on your own– your squad is there to back you up for a very good reason. For the other 10%, you’re expected to do exactly that, racing through stupidly-accurate enemy fire to get to the next unintuitively-laid out save-state checkpoint.

Now, it’s not all bad. The game has a reputation for being laden with awesome moments, and in all honesty that reputation is well-deserved. Storming a freighter in the opening mission is only the start; acting as the gunner in an AC-130 makes for an extremely cathartic experience as well. But the moment that is probably one of the most striking in the game is one that’s a bit of a mixed blessing: the mission “The Aftermath”, which takes place immediately after the detonation of a nuclear device in a Middle-Eastern city. In this mission, the player takes on the role of a US soldier whose evac helicopter was caught in the blast; you, as the soldier, watched the mushroom cloud blossom over the city not three minutes of real-time before (an acceptable break from reality, as anyone that close to a nuke going off would probably be blinded in the explosion). The player sees the burning wreckage of the city around him and crawls around, trying to move or escape. The problem is, though, that there is no escape. The character is basically the walking dead. After a few minutes of horrifyingly slow and lurching movement, the character collapses and the mission ends.

It’s hard to say whether Infinity Ward meant to make such a chilling statement with the mission. Certainly they intended to say something; the fact that they added the controversial “No Russian” mission into the sequel pretty much proves that they had something to say with that one. But there’s a difference, I think, between a game being recognized as a piece of art– hell, even a brief portion of a game– and developing a game specifically to be art. It puts the aphorism “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in stark relief. Art, when it exists, is acclaimed by someone other than the creator. Declaring your own product to be “art” before anyone else has looked at it, I think, highly prejudices people against the product at the outset. It’s good to have goals, but keeping your expectations of how it’s going to be received to yourself is, in most if not all cases, a pretty good idea. Do I think “Aftermath” and “No Russian” are art? They’re artistic, they’re art-oid, but it’s hard for me to tell what’s art and what’s not. I don’t know art. I just know what I like.

I’ve been at this for far longer than I anticipated, so I’ll just sum up by saying that I liked Modern Warfare and MW2. MW2′s active multiplayer community and persistent-character level progression are fairly big draws as well, but I’ve never been terribly big on multiplayer, particularly in FPSes (the only genre I’m worse at in a “live-fire” situation is real-time strategy). I may go back to MW2 and play that on Regular (I had to drop down to Recruit owing to severe rustiness in FPSing; MW1 was played through entirely in Regular), but that’s a ways off. I have a ton more games to get through before that point, so we’ll see what’s next on the list.