Heavy Rain (PS3)

It's been longer than I thought since I last wrote but since then I bought myself a PS3 and have been playing lots of games :-) One of which is Heavy Rain.

I really enjoyed this game. Actually, enjoyed might be the wrong word, as I'm not sure I've played anything that's made me feel the way Heavy Rain has, especially in terms of experiencing guilt. I should probably post the obligatory SPOILER ALERT here as I will be discussing what happened when I played the game, though I won't reveal the identity of the Origami Killer. I don't want to spend half this post telling you about the game itself though, as this is less of a review and more a way to document my own response to it. For those who know little about the game though and don't plan on playing it go here for a synopsis.

So first off, it's probably worth knowing that I didn't play the game on my own. My friend Paul came round and we took turns playing (on three seperate session). I'm not sure how I would of felt playing it on my own, but we both came away from it feeling like Heavy Rain could be the start of something very exciting, with Paul suggesting it might even be the start of a new genre. From the start, when we were given instructions on how to make an origami figure from the paper that came with box, we knew it was going to be an immersive experience. Yes it did feel a lot like a movie, in fact it felt like one of those books from when we were kids that asked you to make a decision and then turn to the appropriate page once you had - just a lot more effective! And ok, there is definitely room for improvement - the controls could get annoying, there were some plot holes, a pretty gratuitous sex scene (and a little unconvincing given how beat up Ethan was, and how little time him and Madison had spent together) while I think we were mostly deliberately lead astray about the identity of the origami killer - but overall, I would thoroughly recommend playing it.

The reason I do is because of how I felt when I played it. I felt helpless when Jason (Ethan's oldest) died as there was little I could do. I felt pleased with myself as Agent Jayden when I managed to calm a suspect down and get him to lower his weapon only to feel incredibly guilty when the suspect spun round during his arrest and I shot him, only realising too late he was holding a crucifix and not another weapon... I liked playing the hard-drinking private investigator who also seemed soft-hearted because though you fought people, you also had to change a baby's diaper and rock it to sleep after rescuing it's mother from a suicide attempt. I felt relief when I was Madison and I went to visit a creepy doctor to get some more clues and then left before he came back in the room (after having found the clue I needed and refusing to drink the drink he gave me - I'm not sure what would have happened if I did but I know it wouldn't have been good!).

But the guilt came back when I was playing the investigator again and I ended up in a car at the bottom of the river with Lauren, a prostitute whoose son had been murdered by the Origami Killer and was helping me with my investigation. A lot of the tension in the game involves having to react to quick time events, and this was a particularly tense situation as I had no idea how much time I had. Though I managed to cut my own ropes and free myself, in my panic to escape the car I ended up kicking my way out without rescuing Lauren... I felt terrible, and the only thing I could think to say to Paul afterwards was that we really need to save Shaun now! As if somehow it would makes Lauren's death worthwhile...

I think the fact that we played the game together made it even more interesting though. Depending on what we were doing and how connected we felt to the character we were playing at the time, we would refer to the character by name, as "I" or even "we". The Origami Killer sends Ethan a series of tasks to complete (each more dangerous than the last) and in one of them you are supposed to go to someone's house and kill them. After going to the house, there is a struggle and you end up pointing a gun at the guy in his daughter's room. Paul just turned round to me and said, I don't want to do it. So I said ok, even though we had failed the previous task (and so were now going to miss out on two clues), because that's not who we wanted Ethan to be. After almost every scene we would discuss what had just happened, reflecting and wanting to make sure we had done the right thing. Interestingly there were also a couple of moments where we didn't actually want the responsibility of having the controller - knowing that our decisions and ability to react could influence the outcome, meant there an awful lot of pressure on who was playing not to mess up. And that was the feeling I had during the final task Ethan had to carry out, which asked him to drink a poison that would give him enough time to rescue his son, but would then kill him. I actually paused the game at this point so we could discuss what we should do (and I think it was the only time that we stopped mid-gameplay to do so). After a lengthy discussion we decided that we weren't going to do it, because it would really suck if after everything that happened, Shuan survives to lose his Dad as well.

You can replay bits of the game but we wanted to play it all the way through first. After we finished, we did go back and try different things out to see what would happen - turns out the poison dilemma wasn't as serious as we thought, and that Madison being able to get to Ethan before the end is what you'd really want to not mess up. I'd like to see some of the different endings but I'm not sure I really want to replay the whole game from start to finish again. While it's an interesting "what if" exercise, I think it could become a little tedious, and won't ever compare to playing it first time around.

There is probably loads more I could say about how this game affected me but this has already turned into an essay. I think I just want to say that though Heavy Rain didn't do everything perfectly I was fascinated by the ethical discussions we had about it, and thoroughly engrossed while both playing and watching it. Maybe the game gave us the illusion that we had more control than we did (despite a large number of possible endings there is still a limited number) but maybe that illusion is more important than actually having a completely open ended experience. Maybe it is more like a movie than a game, but so what? It still felt more engrossing than watching a film about the Origami Killer would. And maybe I would have felt less positive about the game if we hadn't saved Shaun and got one of the "better" endings but I still think I would have enjoyed the process.

I think this is the first time I've been able to experience the way games can provide us with such powerful emotional experiences and it's something I'd like to see a lot more of, both in commercial games as well as educational. This is something that games can do in a way other media can't and I for one would really like to see how these sorts of games develop.

Trine, Borderlands and Assasin's Creed II (PS3)

First off, I need to say thanks to my mate Paul for sharing his PS3 with me over the last couple of weeks - I promise I will get one myself but it's going to have to wait till after Christmas...

So first, we played Trine (from Finnish developers Frozenbyte and you can also get it on PC) And it was good. A physics based action/platformer/puzzle game? That you can play with up to two other players?! Awesome!!! It looked pretty too (see video above). I have to admit not really caring about the storyline so much, but I did love the gameplay. Especially when we had to stop and think about what we needed to do next. I seemed to gravitate towards the thief most - I liked the fact she used arrows (so I didn't have to get too close to enemies) and I guess I just like jumping! I kind of left the wizardy stuff to the more experienced player as he seemed to have a good handle on when to do what but we would sometimes switch depending on what was going on. All in all, Trine did a brilliant jump of encouraging enjoyable coop play and I think it gave plenty of examples of problem solving and collaboration in action. My only issues with it were the occasional glitches that occurred when one of the characters goes off screen (similar to LBP) and the end. The last level really wasn't very difficult (in comparison to earlier ones!) and the n the game just ended - not really satisfying at all, but please don't let that put you off trying a pretty innovative game.

Then, there was Borderlands (see pic above). It's a first-person shooter (FPS) with role-playing game elements (RPG) set in a post-apocalyptic world full of bandits, guns, leftover cash in boxes and scary looking dog like creatures called skags. Paul likes it a lot but I'm not sure it's really my thing... This game made me realise I have a tendency to panic when something unexpected happens that threatens my character. It happened in Trine too - I ran away from a big scary skeleton when it first appeared, even though I was the warrior with the big sword! But when I panic in an FPS this means I lose all sense of spatial awareness (which isn't great to begin with) and start shooting all over the place. And then I die. So that's not much fun. Plus, I don't really care about guns and I don't like the feeling that I'm not very good at something. I also think my lack of progress levelling up and getting enough money to buy better (i.e. more powerful) weapons also added to my disatisfaction with the game. And god that robot guide at the start is annoying! My feelings are a little mixed on the game as a whole though because I did enjoy some of it. Like when I could see I was getting a little better - my aim did improve while I have to admit there was something really satisfying about nailing those head shots and also when I did eventually level up. I could even see myself picking up simple strategies like remembering to crouch down behind something when reloading and running backwards while shooting. Plus, playing with a more experienced FPS player made it a lot easier because it meant I also had someone to tell me what to do. Then there was the really hilarious moment when we heard growling, got scared and both ended up hiding in the same shed waiting for the skag to come to us! Though you may have had to have been there for that one... So yeah, mixed feelings about Borderlands.


Finally there is Assassin's Creed II from Ubisoft. I really liked this - a lot more than Borderlands. Probably because the third person action-adventure genre is one I'm more comfortable with and maybe because I get to a lot more jumping in the form of free running around beautiful recreations of 15th Italy. While the avatar facial expressions are a little disconcerting (e.g. a lot of them seem kinda cross-eyed), the rest of the game is seriously stunning (see pic above). I found the storyline intriguing too, especially at the start where I ended up getting quite into the whole revenge plot. Though I have to say this doesn't seem to have sustained itself, as now I feel more impatient to just get on with the missions. And sometimes it wasn't clear how to get from a to b (or maybe we just haven't figured out the maps properly yet?). I did like the fighting here more too, though I have a feeling I prefer punching (i.e. hitting buttons repeatedly) and assassinating (killing someone without getting in a fight) than sword fighting (which seems to involve a mixture of timing and skill that I'm still getting the hang of). I have also learnt how to spell assassin properly ;) All in all though, it is a game I would actually like to spend some time playing on my own to how much I get into it, even though it was still fun to take turns at it.

So, that's a few more games than usual, and a lot more killing than I have done in a while! I don't think I've ever had much of a problem with violence in games - I know it's not real and of course I know it's not an appropriate to behave outside of the game - but I guess it is strange to realise I actually enjoy a lot of it. At least, when I do it well... So maybe, as Przylbylski et al. suggest (see here for a good summary), it's more about competence than violence? I think lack of competence may be why I don't like FPS games that much - I feel I have too much to get a handle on in terms of learning the controls, orienting myself spatially, comparing weapons I really don't know much about etc. Maybe I'd enjoy them more if I spend a little time practising but when there are so many other games I enjoy playing (and get to grips with quicker),I think something else will probably get priority. Until the next time a friend wants me to play an FPS anyway. I also liked the way that these recent experiences have all been quite social. When it wasn't a coop game, we took turns, and when we played Trine there were other mates around who were happy to watch us. Sharing does seem to make things more fun, or at least make things fun in a different way. And I think working together can also be quite satisfying though I imagine this might also depend on who you're playing with!

It's been good but I really am going to have to get my own "serious" console soon...

Reference:
Przylbylski, A. K., Ryan, R. M. & Rigby, C. S. (2009). The motivating role of violence in video games. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 243-259.

Social gaming

I had a couple of friends come round last weekend so we could have a go on a some games I'd been wanting to try out. The first one was World of Goo, which I already knew I was going to love as I'd already played the PC demo. At first we were looking for some sort of multi-player mode, but then realised that all you had to do was point another wiimote at the screen to join in the puzzle solving. World of Goo is seriously easy to pick up, and we enjoyed it pretty much from the start. It follows the usual approach of starting you off with relatively easy tasks which get grow more and more difficult the further you progress - achieving a nice balance between your developing skills and the challenges you have to face. I also really like how you gradually start to become more and more curious about the goo and what exactly is going on in the game world. Who is the mysterious Sign Painter who leaves cryptic clues around the place? What are goo balls used for? What's with the random giant frogs? And so on. While I quite like this sort of randomness, one of my friends did point out the self-referential humour employed by the game might get annoying after a while. It was quite interesting to try and solve each puzzle with someone else though, especially since the experience seemed to have much to do with who you are playing with! While it made sense to cooperate and establish some sort of strategy together i.e. "you do the bridge and I'll do the balloons" (see image below), there was also the occasional competitive moment of "stop stealing my goo balls!". We didn't try it with three wiimotes but I have a suspicion it would have been quite hard to break down the puzzles into different tasks and it would have just turned into who can solve the puzzle fastest!

In contrast, de Blob supports multi-player play with a party gaming mode. The game is essentially a single-player adventure where you have to bring colour back to Chroma City by acquiring paint and bumping into things. It's amusing enough but not very engaging in the long term to be honest - I think I'm more intrigued by World of Goo's Sign Painter than the de Blob story. I had hoped the party mode would be a bit more interesting, but it essentially consists of three mini-games (which you have to unlock by playing the story mode) where you can compete against another player (actually up to 4, but while I do have 4 wiimotes, I've only got two nunchucks). The image below shows the split screen for two-player mode. We played it for a bit and it was entertaining but to be honest there wasn't much there to keep us going for long. The party mode just ended up feeling like a bit of a simplistic add on thrown in to try and tap into the Wii's success as a party console. Which is fine, if you don't want to invest much effort into it, or if you're playing with people who don't have much gaming experience.

If you want something a bit meatier though, there is Little Big Planet on the PS3, which I would seriously encourage anyone to have a go on. I'm going to ignore the user-generated content side of things for the moment as I think I want to do a separate post on this later on, and focus on the going through the levels, which you have to do anyway to unlock materials to design your own levels. I have played it on my own, and while it's incredibly cute and you could spend ages customising your little sack person, I found it a lot more fun to play it with someone. I first tried it back home at Christmas with my sister, and it brought back memories of how it used to feel playing together on my Mega-drive as kids - a sort of nostalgic bonding experience! The game encourages you to play with someone else by providing challenges you can only solve with the help of another player. I didn't realise until I was helping out at the Digilab stall in the Learn About Fair on campus a couple of weeks ago that you can play with up to four players. This was quite cool in terms of getting as many people to try it as possible but did get a little complicated trying to keep multiple sack boys and girls on screen at once (if your character disappears off to one side for too long you end up losing a life).


So, I think two-player mode works best, but while the game starts out easy enough some of the later levels can be quite difficult! Or at least they require a level of coordination and timing from both players that isn't always easy to achieve. The fact that there are frequent save points throughout each level means reduces the consequences of falling off a cliff or into crocodile jaws, being burnt to death etc but you essentially get four chances at making it to the next checkpoint, and that's between the number of people playing. So if there are two of you, and one of you has died twice, and the other once, the pressure is on for the second player to make it to the next check point in one piece, otherwise you have to go back to the start of the level It's an interesting mechanic, but it can get a little frustrating when things don't go very well. Plus, I tend to want to rush into everything when presented with a new level (I'm going to blame this on growing up playing Sonic...) when perhaps a bit of patience would work better. I also think that while de Blob and possibly World of Goo could quickly be picked up by any player, and played quite happily by a single player, Little Big Planet requires a bit more investment from two people to really reach it's potential as an engaging platformer. At the end of the day, I guess what you choose what you want to play based on the energy you want to put in and the experience you want to have.

Portal (PS3)

I finally finished Portal. It's a first person action/puzzle game, where an AI called GLaDOS challenges you to get through each of the test chambers through the use of a portal gun (which allows you to create a connection between two different locations in 3D space). Oh, and you are promised cake when you complete all the trials. I borrowed it ages ago from the library, and meant to complete a lot sooner but kept getting annoyed with certain puzzles and taking weeks off before trying them again. Now I’m well aware that a lot of people out there thought Portal was a piece of cake (pardon the pun…) and it only took them a day or something to get through the game. If anything, that’s an important part of why I just didn't give up on it entirely after the first time I got stuck – I wasn’t going to let this “easy” game beat me. But you see the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t solve the puzzles, it was that I had trouble putting my solutions in practice. I’ve never really played first-person shooters, I tend to panic when being shot at and I find them disorientating – like I never quite know where my feet are. So even though the game wasn’t about shooting, it was still about aiming and it turns out my aim sucks. And that’s a bit of a problem when you have to shoot holes in the ground while hurtling through the air and make sure you land in them. The result was that I had to keep trying what felt like the same thing again and again, till I eventually got it right. I went from getting so frustrated I gave up on the game for weeks to consulting walkthroughs to make sure I wasn’t wasting my time trying the wrong thing.

The whole experience reminded me of a quote I came across ages ago which defined madness as “doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results” (possibly by Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin). Games seem to stop being fun when they make you question your own sanity. And who wants to play something that makes you feel inept? This seems to fit in with Michael Abbott’s reasons for not being overly enthusiastic about Braid – frustration can really ruin whatever experience the designer intended you to have.

But why did I keep playing Portal? I think a major part of it is because I’d heard so much about the game and from friends who’d found it relatively easy and fun. Don’t get me wrong, I do think it’s a pretty clever game – I liked how it took a novel approach to the first person genre and the dark sense of humour that came with it. So maybe these things helped me to come back but I really think the main reason I persisted is that I wanted to be able to talk to people about the game without feeling like a failure for not having completed it. Tell you what though, when I finally got to the end, it felt pretty damn good. In that embarrassing punch the air with your fist and shout “Yes!!!” sort of way…

It’s been ages since my last entry because I’ve been pretty busy with my master’s dissertation (which isn’t quite finished yet). In my thesis, I’ve been using Gordon Calleja’s Digital Game Experience Model to talk about instances of play and learning, and I can’t help consider my whole experience with Portal in relation to it. The framework describes involvement along six different frames (affective, narrative, spatial, tactical, performative and shared) that the player engages in on both short and long term levels. Basically, during certain instances of game-play, I was having a lot of trouble actualising my strategies (tactical) which seriously reduced my sense of agency within the performative frame and subsequently decreased my affective involvement (in terms of enjoyment). When this happened I would give up but in the longer term I was motivated to come back by my desire to prove my competence to other players (shared) and, to a lesser extent, to get to the end of the game story (narrative). By looking at walkthroughs I was also engaging in the tactical and shared frames outside of the moment of game-play since I was checking my strategies and using an online resource created by the game playing community – as opposed to cheating ;)

Now these frames can be experienced at the same time, and to a greater or lesser extent at different points within the same game but when they have been internalised to the point where the player no longer has to pay conscious attention to them, it can result in an experience Calleja calls “incorporation”. This is defined as: “the subjective experience of inhabiting a virtual environment facilitated by the potential to act meaningfully within it while being present to others” (p. 219; Calleja, 2007). And that is what I experienced during the final level. After my initial rushed attempts, I was finally familiar enough with the spatial (the setting), tactical (I knew what I had to do) and performative (I could actually carry out what I wanted to do) frames while I was getting the affective (in terms of graphics and sound), narrative (in terms of the story progressing) and shared (in terms of GLaDOS’ reactions) feedback I needed to experience that deep sense of involvement that seems unique to video games. As Calleja rightfully points out, this is more than just feeling like physically “immersed” within the environment, it is also about feeling like your actions have meaningful consequences within an environment that responds to you. It’s a pretty powerful feeling, and that’s my excuse for punching the air and shouting “yes!!!” when it all worked out in the end.