Gaming

August 15, 2015

‘Her Story’ is one of the best games of the year


I just solved a mystery. Never done that before.

Well, that’s not true. I closed a bunch of homicide cases in 1940s L.A. I discovered the identity of the Origami Killer and made sure he couldn’t hurt anyone again. Just last month I stopped Professor Pyg from stringing up bodies all over Gotham City.

But this time felt different. In Her Story, a terrific new indie game written and directed by Sam Barlow, there is no hint system, no sound chime to indicate I’d found something important, no text popping up or voiceover narration telling me what the next move was. Not once did I feel like my hand was being held on the way to the next piece of the puzzle.

Her Story resembles those old CD-ROM games from the 90s that combined live action video footage with gameplay (The 7th Guest and Phantasmagoria come to mind), which makes perfect sense in the context of the game world. Check out this screenshot:

The mystery you’re trying to solve is a missing persons case from 1994, and as such the UI is made to resemble a desktop computer from that time period, presumably the only functional machine from which you can access a 21-year-old database of police interviews. To use the database, you have to search for video clips using words taken from the interview transcripts.

How did I know to do that? Simple. I read the readme files on the desktop, which told me how to play the game without telling me how to “play the game.” An initial search term (“MURDER”) is provided to get the ball rolling, and without spoiling anything, I’ll briefly take you through the process of how I started playing.

The clips are of a British woman, and the date and timestamps (in addition to the different clothes) indicate this interview took place over multiple days. She doesn’t identify herself, but she mentions the name Simon. My next search is easy. From the new set of clips returned I discover that “Simon” is Simon Smith, and that he’s missing. I find out the woman being interviewed is his wife, Hannah.

The game’s non-linear storytelling makes it difficult to discern at first what information is pertinent and what isn’t, and that’s part of what makes Her Story so compelling. At first, I was hopping around from clip to clip and search term to search term, looking for Hannah to reveal the kind of information that I thought would be most useful were this a real police investigation: what Simon looks like, how long he’s been missing, where he was last seen, who his friends and family are, etc. And I was curious to learn more about Hannah as well. Why was she being interviewed so much? Can she be trusted?

You can save clips for easy access, and while I did this haphazardly at first, I found that I was forgetting too many details, which led to a lot of repeated searches. So I decided to restart the game, and began arranging the clips in order. It’s hardly a necessary method, it’s just the way my brain works. I thought that being able to see Hannah’s interviews in chronological order would put what she was telling me in the context of not just what happened to Simon, but what role Hannah played in the events that led to his disappearance (if any).

There was a lot of footage to comb over, and I spent long stretches of time playing. I found out things. About Simon. About Hannah. Each new revelation would spur me on to keep searching and searching. It was very hard to stop. Playing Her Story brought about the kind of obsessive nature that can be seen overtaking characters in films like Zodiac and JFK.

But the who, what and how are only part of the story. The why ends up being the most important question, and the “answer” doesn’t come until you choose to end the game. A traditional win state doesn’t really lend itself to the non-linearity of the story, so there isn’t one. You can finish the game before you uncover every clip. You’ll know what happened to Simon, but understanding why it happened and what it means soon becomes more important, because of your character. 

In Her Story, you take on the role of… someone. Who this person is doesn’t become clear until the end, though you can spot glimpses of this person, when flickering lights in the background occasionally reflect their face onscreen.

(Actually, I can only speak for myself with regards to that. I’m not exactly sure how the ending of the game is triggered, so maybe it’s possible to finish the game without discovering some of the more vital details of the story.)

I mentioned that Sam Barlow wrote and directed the game, which isn’t usually how people refer to those who make games, but it feels appropriate here. While I don’t doubt a lot of effort went into making the UI look authentic and ensuring the music accentuated the emotional beats without being obtrusive, the key to the game is the writing, and how closely Barlow must have worked with Viva Seifert, who plays Hannah. The police interview conceit is a clever way to get around the fact that the entire game is basically just one long exposition dump, and it rests on Seifert’s shoulders to make sure that Hannah’s story feels real and honest. It’s a quiet, subtle, and very strong performance.

Games have become so complicated over the years. Gone are the days of pressing Start and leaving it to the player to just “get” that Mario is supposed to run to the right forever. Her Story feels retro in many ways, but it’s approach to story is fresh, and it’s the rare game that makes you feel like you (or your character, however you want to read it) need to be the one to solve this puzzle. After all, this case has technically already been solved, yet the role you play, as both player and game character, has never felt more singular. Her story is your story too.

You can purchase Her Story here.

July 7, 2015

Batman: Arkham Knight

A LOT of thoughts here so we should just jump right in. I played Batman: Arkham Knight on PlayStation 4, and completed 100% of the Story mode.

Narrative has never been the high point of the Arkham games. I always looked at the cutscenes and dialogue exchanges as thin tissue that connected one objective to the next, and while Arkham Knight tells the best story of Rocksteady’s trilogy, like its predecessors, it makes some major missteps in its ambitious attempt to blow players’ minds. The series’ approach to the character’s mythology and its stickiness to the Arkham name has also become more problematic as it’s continued.

Spoilers on the identity of the Arkham Knight follow.

At first, the Jason Todd reveal felt like a cheat, redressing an established character (who had already been resurrected with a new alter ego years ago in the comics) and claiming he was completely original. But after thinking about it, what irked me most wasn’t the reveal itself, but how blatantly telegraphed it was, and the fact that it ended up having no effect on Batman’s arc or the larger story the game was trying to tell, which as it turns out, was another Batman-Joker story.

Or I should say, the conclusion to the Batman-Joker story that was first introduced in Arkham Asylum. And while I’m a little confused about the details that set this final, deeply internalized conflict into motion (I thought Batman cured his Joker blood infection at the end of Arkham City), the way Rocksteady brought Joker back into the game worked beautifully, as did the game’s climax, a real head trip that shows how good the developer is at playing with players’ perception and gaming mechanics themselves.

Gameplay has always been the series’ greatest strength. Before Arkham Asylum was released in 2009, no game had ever been able to capture the feeling of being Batman, and as the series progressed, Rocksteady has refined its formula to extraordinary results (with one caveat that we’ll get to in a bit). Controls feel as responsive as ever, which is critical considering that combat has gotten more challenging. The sheer number of gadgets and abilities Batman has at his disposal is overwhelming, so much so that I would recommend that newcomers play one of the earlier games first before diving in. All of them are worth playing, but Arkham City, to which Knight is a direct sequel, is the best of the earlier games from a gameplay perspective, and will put much of Knight‘s story in proper context for non-Batman fans.

One of the criticisms against the game has to do with side missions, with critics and players complaining that the series has turned into an Assassin’s Creed style of open world game, with a map riddled (no pun, I swear) with icons denoting so much content that playing the game starts to feel like checking boxes off of a to-do-list.

There are two sides to this. On the one hand, playing side missions (known as Most Wanted missions in the game) is the best way to gain the XP needed to buy upgrades, many of which are key to the whole “Be the Batman” thing this series has been pushing from the start.

Next, and most egregiously, a certain number of side missions have to be completed in order to activate the “Knightfall Protocol,” which is essentially a second ending. Then, if you want to see the FULL ending, you have to complete 100% of the side missions, meaning collecting every single Riddler trophy scattered throughout Gotham City.

This is a mistake. Instead of earning some additional reward for being a completionist, players are being punished for not completing the entire campaign. Suddenly, the so-called “side” missions, a term that’s always been used to describe an optional objective, don’t feel optional to players who only want to experience the story without having to track down all 243(!) riddles, or disable watchtower-like checkpoints throughout the city, or battle an endless number of unmanned tanks in the Batmobile.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to this problem, and those who don’t have the time or the patience to make it to 100% should feel no guilt about it: watch the full ending on YouTube. Not only will it save you time, but you’ll find solace in discovering that this final cutscene really isn’t worth the effort.

On the other hand, Arkham Knight does a good job of parceling out side missions in such a way that it never feels overwhelming. Not every mission is accessible at the same time, and they all play out in stages so you can’t simply play them from start to finish in one go. This may seem like a bad thing, but it helps in mixing up gameplay and keeping one type of mission (whether it’s combat, predator, Batmobile-related, etc.) from becoming stale. So any complaints that the world map has too much stuff on it is unfounded. If anything, the game’s missions are structured in such a way that it actually feels more like Arkham Asylum than Assassin’s Creed or Grand Theft Auto.

Now let’s talk Batmobile. The biggest new addition to the franchise, and a polarizing one at that. Batman’s iconic car comes in two flavors: pursuit mode and tank mode, and there’s definitely a learning curve. The control scheme takes some getting used to, and I think it took me a good dozen laps around the Riddler’s first racing course before driving started to feel good, and I wasn’t instinctively hitting the left trigger to brake/reverse. There’s an alternate control scheme that is eventually accessible in the pause menu, but I found it to be even more awkward than the default.

Tank mode seems to be the biggest point of contention among players, and while I agree that the whole concept feels out of place for the character, I still found tank battles to be a fun, arcade-y minigame that added some variety to the campaign. The problem is that these tank battles seem to get more and more frequent as the campaign goes on, and there are sections where you’re forced to “stealthily” come up behind certain enemy vehicles in order to attack them. It’s nonsensical and the complete opposite of fun.

So overall, I think the good parts of the Batmobile (including using it as a gadget to solve puzzles and being able to control it remotely) outweigh the bad, but the thing that straight up made me angry concerns a side mission that’s introduced late in the campaign (Spoilers, I guess):

After defeating the Arkham Knight, his militia forces are overtaken by Deathstroke, who’s returning from Arkham Origins to exact revenge. The Deathstroke boss fight in that game is my favorite boss battle of the entire series (yes, I like it more than the Mr. Freeze fight in City), and instead of taking that duel and refining it with a Rocksteady-level of polish, defeating Deathstroke comes down to yet another tank battle. It’s the single biggest missed opportunity in the game, and there really is no excuse for it. Deathstroke is one of the deadliest assassins in the DC Universe and you put him in a tank?

But while we’re on the subject of Arkham Origins, I was pleasantly surprised by how often the events of that game were referenced in Knight, since Rocksteady’s PR seemed to be going out of its way to ignore its existence and refer to the Arkham games as a trilogy. Knight even borrows mechanics that were introduced in that game (i.e. the crime scene reconstruction). It’s good to know that Origins is an officially recognized part of canon because, and I’m sure I’m in the minority here, if I were to rank the Arkham games based purely on narrative, I would put Origins in first place, the reasons for which I’ve talked about on this blog before. WB Games Montreal, who developed Origins, wrote a solid prequel story that does something that Rocksteady’s games have not been very good at doing: putting things in context.

Let’s use Arkham City as an example. As a longtime Batman fan, I got why Batman felt so strongly about saving Talia al Ghul (while disregarding all the other lives at stake), but for casual fans and newcomers, who may not know who the hell Talia is and why she’s important, understanding Batman’s motives requires a lot of additional reading. This is one of the Arkham series’ problems as a whole. It pulls from so many different parts of the mythology – mostly from the comics but from the animated series as well – that you could easily end up getting lost when it comes to following this Batman’s story. Hell, the fact that Jason Todd even existed in this canon* doesn’t come up until midway through Arkham Knight, and this late addition to the story just undermines the mystery of the Arkham Knight’s identity (because seriously, there’s no one else it could possibly be, and you don’t need to be a hardcore Batfan to figure that out during Knight‘s campaign).

*Yes, Jason Todd is referenced in a few easter eggs hidden throughout the games, and they’re cool, but only confuse matters further.

The criticism surrounding the treatment of the game’s female characters is… well, it’s justified. There are four major female characters in the game, three of whom share the same body type and highly sexualized/impractical fashion sense, and Barbara Gordon has been cast as the game’s go-to victim, who isn’t allowed at any point to save herself even though she was once a superhero. Hopefully the forthcoming Batgirl DLC will be able to make up for at least some of the game’s problems.

Well, I’ve been pretty negative up to this point so let me say that despite all of these problems, Arkham Knight really is the best in the series – the ultimate Batman game. Gotham City is absolutely gorgeous – a rain-soaked, neon wonderland. It feels like every street corner and every building contains some hidden easter egg that really brings the city to life, that gives it a sense of history – something I rarely think or care about in open world games, even ones based in real places. The dual play battles are so much fun that I wish there was more of them. The game contains more jump scares than most horror games, which is a hell of a feat (I freaked out during Man-Bat’s introduction). And again, the way Joker is used during the game is ingenious, giving the campaign a feeling of momentum that most open world games simply don’t have since you’re the one setting the pace.

My personal philosophy on game sequels is they’re rarely ever meant to be all that different from their predecessors. They’re the next step in the iteration process. Developers are trying to refine their ideas, not transform them. It’s one of the reasons you see so many HD remasters out there right now. A game sequel shouldn’t be held to the same standard as a movie sequel, where a phrase like “more of the same” is a pejorative. I want more of the same gameplay. It’s the tech being used to build said gameplay that should be different. As a story, Arkham Knight is deeply flawed, but as a gaming experience, it’s almost perfect, and most of the things that make it so fun to play couldn’t have been possible on last-gen hardware. We needed an asylum, a city, and their origins to get to this knight, and the team at Rocksteady can rest easy knowing that their ultimate goal has been achieved. I was the Batman.

FInal, random thoughts:

  • It made sense in Asylum, and even City, but there is absolutely NO reason this game needs to take place during ONE night. There’s at least 12 hours of gameplay here, it doesn’t make any damn sense!
  • As stated previously, the whole Arkham Knight mystery was a bust from the start, and that whole part of the story was really just an adaptation of the “Under the Hood” arc from the comics, but because the game had to have the word Arkham in its name for some reason, this “new” character was conceived.
  • As a character, the Arkham Knight is a whiny brat, not a menacing threat.
  • John Noble was fantastic as the Scarecrow, though it does kind of suck that Batman was able to defeat him in pretty much the same way he did in Arkham Asylum.
  • A lot of good voice performances all around, from Mark Hamill’s triumphant return to Jonathan Banks’ turn as Gordon, but if I’m being honest, Kevin Conroy just didn’t do it for me this time around. Maybe it was his dialogue, or the fact that Batman was just a straight up jerk throughout the whole game, but there was little nuance to his performance here.
July 23, 2014

A look back at the Batman: Arkham games

I meant to have my post about Batman on TV up before this one but since I’m still working on it, and because today is Batman Day, I’m putting this one up a little early.

Yes, there have been numerous Batman video games over the past couple of decades, but really, this series is the only one that matters. Nothing else comes close. And as gamers everywhere anticipate the Dark Knight’s next-gen debut in 2015 with Arkham Knight, let’s take a look back at this series, starting with the first game to actually make you feel like you were Batman.

Arkham Asylum (2009)

I was on vacation in the States when Arkham Asylum came out. I remember walking into an HMV with the intention of simply checking out the game box. I couldn’t do that, because they were sold out. When I came back home, it was sold out. Everywhere. It stayed that way for at least a few weeks, and when I finally got my hands on the game, it didn’t take long to understand why. This was the Batman game I’d been waiting for. A dark, atmospheric descent into Gotham City’s favorite nuthouse, Arkham Asylum allowed me to do so many of the things I’d seen the Caped Crusader do in film and animation. I had the grapple gun, I could glide for long distances with my cape, I beat down a room full of enemies in one sustained freeflow of movement (a brilliant in-game example of the character’s gracefulness and brutality). I struck fear into the hearts of the cowardly and superstitious (I’m not just using that turn of phrase – enemies actually got scared), I analyzed clues, followed evidence trails, solved riddles, and I confronted my nemesis and my demons.

And I actually wasn’t even all that impressed by the game’s story (despite the fact that it was written by the great Paul Dini), which speaks to how strong the game was on the gameplay side. The story functioned well enough as a means of allowing me to do Bat-things and encounter some familiar bad guys, and the game did so many things right that I was able to overlook weaker moments, such as walking (slowly) through a maze of sewer tunnels and fighting a mutant-sized Joker at the end. What an anticlimax that was.

It didn’t matter. The rest of Arkham Asylum was such a blast to play and sold so well that a sequel was inevitable. I wasn’t sure how Rocksteady Studios would be able to top it.

Arkham City (2011)

I’ve already described the many ways in which Arkham Asylum allowed you to be Batman, but that was all within the confines of an island separate from the rest of the city, and really, what’s Batman without Gotham City? Rocksteady’s next game was an attempt to drop the Dark Knight into an open world setting in the form of a walled off section of the city where criminals were imprisoned, but free to do as they wished. After a fantastic opening sequence that sees Bruce Wayne intentionally getting himself thrown into this prison (from which the game’s title takes its name), you too are free to do as you wish. Despite the map not being as outright massive as a Liberty City or Italy in the 16th century, there is plenty to do in Arkham City, and if I haven’t mentioned this enough times already, you do it as the Batman.

Arkham City felt like a natural next step for the series, one that didn’t see any significant changes to the way you played as Batman, but refined all the things I loved about the first one. The combat system was fleshed out and made deeper and better, the expanded setting allowed for a lot more traversal which was a joy, and the boss battles were improved (mostly — there were still some stinkers in there). However, the story once again proved to be a disappointment. In Hugo Strange we had an intriguing villain whose master plan was shrouded in mystery, and that turned out to be a good thing, because when said plan was set in motion and the “real” bad guy revealed, I was not impressed. And the disparate story threads failed to come together in any meaningful way. The most memorable thing about the story was the ending, but it didn’t feel particularly well earned, done more for the shock value than because it was the right ending to this story.

But this shouldn’t dissuade you from playing Arkham City, which functions beautifully as a game if not as a great Batman tale. I spent a lot of time playing this game. It offers as complete a package as you can find for a single player experience, and it’s one of the few games I still return to every now and then if I feel like beating up some thugs or just taking a nighttime glide.

Arkham Origins (2013)

There was a lot of disappointment on the interwebs following the announcement that the next game in the Arkham series wasn’t being developed by Rocksteady. Almost immediately gamers had decided that Arkham Origins, a prequel in the series’ timeline, wouldn’t be as good as its predecessors, which had set the bar pretty damn high. I actually wrote a post on another blog noting the ways in which the switch in developer did not mean instant doom, and the reasons why we should have been excited for its arrival.

Did the game live up to expectations? Yes and no.

In terms of gameplay, Origins was almost identical to Arkham City, which at times gave the game an overly familiar feeling, but the tweaks and additions the team at Warner Bros. Montreal made hindered my overall enjoyment. Combat felt ever so slightly off. The new crime scene investigations were half-baked; a neat way of playing a sequence that could’ve been a simple cutscene, but a disappointment because they did all the work for me. Navigating certain environments felt repetitive because many rooms looked the same. And there were several bugs and glitches, which was especially noticeable because the earlier games had been so polished. All the things I loved about the previous Arkham titles I loved a little less. The game was still fun to play, but could also be a little frustrating this time around.

On the other hand, Arkham Origins managed to correct pretty much everything I didn’t like about the previous games, starting with the story. This turned out to be a strong early-career Batman tale, depicting a younger and less refined Batman and his first encounters with a number of key figures in the mythology, including the Joker. I’m not the biggest fan of cutscenes in games. If I’m not interested in a story, I tend to check out during cutscenes. That didn’t happen my first time playing Arkham Origins. The meetings between Batman and Joker, Batman and Gordon, and scenes between Batman and Alfred were given the weight you should expect from such moments, and even though such encounters have been depicted in the past, they felt fresh here, because they were connected by an honest-to-goodness character arc. Batman’s stubbornness and reluctance to trust anyone is the throughline of the game’s campaign, and as events play out, he comes to the realization that in order to accomplish his mission, he’s going to need help. It’s simple but it’s clear, and the game never forgets that.

It’s the little details that allow Arkham Origins to rise above its flaws. The opening cutscene reflects a photo of young Bruce and his parents in a dinner tray cover. Alfred calls in while you’re on patrol to wish you a Merry Christmas (the game takes place on Christmas Eve). There’s a great sequence in the middle of the game that takes you into the Joker’s mind after he first meets Batman. Even the game’s trophies contain references to important parts of Batman lore. I consider the score composed by Christopher Drake (who’s done the music for a number of animated Batman films) to be the best of the series. Another improvement over earlier games is the boss battles, with the best being an early duel between Batman and Deathstroke that tests your timing and reflexes.

If only the controls and other gameplay additions were as well modulated as they were in Arkham City. As it stands, Arkham Origins is absolutely still worth playing for Batman fans, and I enjoyed my time with it despite its quirks.

Oh, and there’s also multiplayer. It’s crap.