Would you kindly buy our game?

Monday, September 03, 2007

Finished Bioshock on Sunday. Overall I'm very, very impressed. Good graphics, good story, good audio, good gameplay feel... and good challenge, up until the last quarter of the game when everything goes bonkers. Yahtzee complains about Dead Rising's difficulty curve being steep but that ain't nothing compared to what you run into in Bioshock. Enemies triple their health in one sharp stroke, leaving you wondering if this game was secretly co-developed by Blizzard and you just got nerfed. No, it's the real deal, and you end up spending a lot of time staring at the inside of a Vita Chamber, wondering what use the plasmids are now.

About an hour or two later you've beaten the game, so it doesn't get too annoying, but yeesh was it hard to take down the last four Big Daddies. My research camera did a fat lot of good and my armor piercing bullets just plinked off their target. Empty clip into Big Daddy, Electo Bolt, empty another clip, Electro Bolt, out of ammo, reload, get drill through the stomach, wake up in the green glow of a Vita Chamber. You need Adam to get the upgrades to defeat the Big Daddies, but to get the Adam you have to defeat the Big Daddies. Irrational put the incongruous Vita Chambers in Rapture to keep that catch-22 from tripping you up.

No longer a prisoner of the sea, I've been exploring the galaxy with Samus Aran in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It's no exaggeration to say this game is what I bought the Wii for. My disappointment on learning it would miss launch by, oh, ten months was tempered by the fervent belief that the extra time would give Retro Studios the opportunity to make it perfect. And they did: Corruption feels like a revolution in shooting games, does wonders the Metroid series itself and was clearly designed for the Wii's technical specifications in the first place. Looking around with the Wiimote feels great, there's no apparent lag, and the puzzles make excellent use of the fact that you can now point anywhere on the screen quickly and accurately.

While the design and programming teams were working their butts off, it seems the storytelling team was killed off and replaced by, oh what's the derogatory expression I want to use here, a twelve year old ADD sufferer locked in a room with a pile of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books. This has always been a problem for Metroid and it has gotten worse: how do you make a credible world out of environments built for people who can double jump, spin indefinitely in the air and compress themselves into two foot diameter balls that drop bombs?

In past titles we could try and ignore the intelligent designer and pretend it's all the work of nature. Planet Zebes' rocky, icy and fiery realms were carved by erosion or explosion; it's just a coincidence that they're so compatible with Samus' systems. Or that research station in Metroid Fusion was partially destroyed by the X parasite; it's just a coincidence that Samus can squeeze through the resulting gaps. The steady evolution of your character's powers combine perfectly with the environment in a very Nintendo fashion and we can forgive this because it's just a game.

Forgive no longer. In Metroid Prime 3 you land on three different planets to work your outer space spelunking magic. None of these places feels naturally made or ravaged by war. They all seem to be the way their creators intended: built exclusively for Samus Aran at a particular point in her power suit evolution.

On one planet there are several "War Golems" - giant stone monsters that you activate by dropping a bomb in their stomach. When activated they are programmed to do simple tasks such as ring a gong or open a secret passage. Others are programmed to break open a door or jump with Samus down a shaft. It's these that broke my spell. You built a giant monster to destroy a door that you also yourself built? Surely dynamite was known to these people. And why not use an elevator when you need to go up and down? I ride the golem down and I've never seen him go back up, but there he is every time I need him.

All this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't wrapped in the worst plot imaginable. Gamespot says Metroid has never been known for its intricate plots and here we find out why. The Galactic Federation's main network is made up of several "Aurora Units" (AU): giant computer brains in jars with random three digit labels like 212 or 314. The evil space pirates implanted a virus into one of these Aurora Units and now the network is down. Your job is to travel to the planets with Aurora Units on them and deliver a vaccine that will destroy the virus.

I think.

It may also be to go all Mega Man on your three fellow Bounty Hunters who were corrupted by Phazon and now need their butts kicked and their powers stolen. You know. Whatever.

I can't muster any enthusiasm for this quest. One reason is that the game starts out onboard a Galactic Federation spaceship that is attacked by raiding space pirates. You might remember this original setting from the beginning of Halo. And Halo 2. Another is that the main Aurora Unit talks to you through your suit and tells you things no computer could say, like "I'm sure one of these planets will have a tool you can use to get through this area." Cortana wants her originality back, although Retro was kind enough to dodge critical plagiarism damage by making the AU's voice dull and emotionless. And finally, we have to listen to an eternity of bad dialogue: from Galactic Federation recruits to our fellow Hunters to the AUs themselves. When you're halfway through each line of drivel you'll see a signal to press the A button and advance to the next line. Use it and give your bleeding ears a rest.

One day I dream that Samus will gain her powers quickly and actually do some bounty hunting for once. Is she as sick of killing Ridley, space pirates and Mother Brain as we are? Metroid could become something very special if it capitalized on the premise of its central character and her awesome ship. Imagine a free form (or hell, even plot driven) bounty hunting game that let you acquire targets from electronic bulletin boards, infiltrate smoky bars to gather information and chase bounties across deep space and planetary surfaces. You'll have to imagine it, because I think the house of Mario is content redoing the same thing over and over and watching their customers lap it up.

Incidentally, I can't wait for Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Brothers Brawl. I hear you get to punch a guy in that one.

I also finished My HiME this weekend and have added it to my Official For Now Anime Ranking. It felt like Haibane Renmei all over again; one look at Mai's sad face is enough to get me all teary. The final disc of My HiME is the nonstop emotional torture of Mai, Natsuki, Yuichi and, of course, the viewer. But I felt good about it because they did a wonderful job of defining Mai's character and those of her friends. The love triangle evolves naturally and has a few tiny payoffs before everything goes to hell. There's a cop out at the end - a huge one, poorly explained and about the only one you could imagine if I were to say the series has a happy ending. Yeah they went there, but at least they leave you smiling.

I'm secretly overjoyed to learn that Lair is a failure, although it would have been nice to have a new retail title to play on the dusty PS3. Super Stardust HD will have to do until, say, Uncharted rears it's moss-covered head. Nothing interesting this month until Halo 3 on the 25th. Want a prediction? I'd love to give one, but I'm wary of going pro or con. On the one hand, Halo 1 and 2 had mirrored (Halo 1), disappointing (Halo 2) and frustrating (any time you fight the Flood) campaigns. Fool me twice, shame on me, right? We're on our third one now and it looks like Bungie's trying to fool us again. On the other hand, Microsoft's given them what must be an unlimited marketing budget and I've read a seven page feature in Wired about how great this new one will be. As if that will...

Will...

Will they take American Express, do you think?