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Greatest Video Game Trailers, God of War III (3) Release date and cover

Tony Huynh — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:52:01 +0000

Posted by Tony Huynh.
If you haven’t already noticed, I would like to call your attention to the new WordPress Theme created by none other than the wonderful and talented Berenice Limon of BereDesign.com. I haven’t been posting because we’ve been in the final crazy stretch for God of War III (3) coming out this March 16, 2010. We’ve been all working a lot of late nights and weekends to make sure GoW3 is the conclusion that the God of War series deserves. The hectic schedule is finally beginning to wind down as we get closer and closer to the ship date.

In another announcement, the box art is finalized for God of War III.

I know some of you may prefer to have a certain “other” cover for the game. If you are one of these people, you may want to grab your copy of God of War 1 and 2 and open the case and take out the cover. Now flip the cover around and you’ll notice that on the back is an alternate cover for the game. When you get God of War III, you may want to do the same thing.

I also noticed that Amazon has a great deal on God of War III pre-orders. You can get the game for $57 and they’ll throw in a $10 gift card.

Lastly, there are some great games coming out this first quarter and beyond and some really great game trailers to go with them. Here are a few of the standout trailers.

Mass Effect 2 Launch Trailer
Damn that’s a good soundtrack and I’m a sucker for good soundtracks.

Red Dead Redemption Trailer
This is the perfect trailer for a Western themed game. It’s surprising that so many western genre games miss on evoking what a western is about. It is about selling the setting and not the main character and always has been.

These game trailers got me thinking about all the great video game trailers of the past. Here are a few of my favorites off the top of my head.

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare 2K7 Trailer
I like explosions.

Silent Hill 2 E3 Trailer
This is one messed up trailer, especially looking back on it now that I’ve played the game.

Gears of War (Mad World)
This trailer is made by the inspired choice in music.

GranTurismo 5 Ferrari Tribute
Damn this is a sexy trailer and a great accompanying song.

World of Warcraft Cinematic Trailer
Blizzard has been known for creating amazing cinematics and this is their crowning achievement.

Mirror’s Edge Trailer
Amazing soundtrack and innovative gameplay. The game wasn’t as good as I had hoped, but this trailer made the game an instant day one purchase for me.

Halo 3: ODST Live Action Trailer
Damned if Microsoft doesn’t know how to market a game. Truly successful trailers sell a feeling and a sense that the game is bigger than it is.

Street Fighter IV Announcement Trailer
Without any news on the actual game and this trailer the only thing to go by, I thought if they could make the game a 1/10th of how awesome this trailer was, I would be satisfied with Street Fight IV.

Battlefield Bad Company – Snake Eyes
I genuinely laughed when I saw this. Humor works.

Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony (There’s Always a Girl)
Rockstar knows pop culture. When you can cut a great trailer with The Look from Roxette you’ve earned my respect and god damn it, there’s always a girl.

Halo 2 Announce Trailer
I remember sitting there in disbelief when I saw this trailer. It left a lasting impact especially for somebody who loved the first Halo as much as I did. What separates a great trailer is that it evokes a feeling of something bigger than the game itself. Halo 2’s advertising campaign did that and that’s why it is my favorite trailer.

Hope you enjoyed the video game trailer blast.

Back in Southern California: New City, New Team

Tony Huynh — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:13:54 +0000

Posted by Tony Huynh.
It is official. I have left Day 1 Studios and joined the God of War team at Sony Santa Monica as a combat designer. While I enjoyed my time at Day 1 Studios and met and worked with a lot of talented people there, the move brings me closer to friends and family geographically. I will miss the city of Chicago and all the friends I have met there.

If you are a reader of this blog, you may have noticed that there has been a long lull in the posting recently. Now you know the reason why. I will be continuing to update the blog as time permits. Thanks for your continued support.

Bioshock: The Most Important Game of the Generation

Tony Huynh — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 06:03:52 +0000

Posted by Tony Huynh.
Bioshock is the most important game of this console generation. Bioshock not only succeeds as a well-crafted game, but transcends being “just a game” by enticing the player to think about philosophical ideas like Objectivism and Altruism as well as important topics such as government oversight and stem cell research. Bioshock is a game that shows the promise and the flexibility of our industry. For those of you interested, I explore the topic of social commentary in games further in my article: Roger Ebert was Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet.

Andrew Ryan Speaks out Against Altruism

Bioshock is set in 1960 and is a “what if” tale that serves as a sequel to the events following the conclusion of Ayn Rand’s influential book, Atlas Shrugged.

The game is about what might happen in a society created from the very best and brightest that humanity has to offer coupled with the removal of all government oversight and restrictions. The result is the impossible. The result is Rapture, a city filled with wonder under the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

Without the yoke of religion or morality tying down the scientists of Rapture, they soon discover a substance called ADAM (stem cells) that enable the user to rewrite their genetic code to make themselves stronger, faster, smarter, more beautiful and even gain superhero-like powers. The price they paid was their sanity.

This is the utopia dreamed by Ayn Rynd gone horribly wrong.

This article is a collection of my notes and thoughts on a playthrough of Bioshock on medium difficulty. There will be spoilers and the write-up assumes that you have played through the game already, so stop reading if you have not.

Bioshock has one of the greatest openings in gaming history. You are the protagonist Jack and begin the game aboard an airliner over the Atlantic. The passenger plane crashes and you are the lone survivor. Bobbing in the middle of the ocean, you see a very out-of-place lighthouse jutting out of the ocean beckoning to you. Once inside the lighthouse you are greeted with a bust of Andrew Ryan, Bioshock’s stand-in for Atlas Shrugged’s John Galt and a plaque that reads “In what country is there a place for people like me?” – Andrew Ryan.

Proceeding further you find a Bathysphere. With nowhere else to go, you enter and it is here that you are introduced in dramatic fashion to the city of Rapture. Just how the game introduces you to Rapture is absolutely amazing. I still get shivers even after multiple playthroughs.

Bioshock Introduction

At its core, Bioshock is a mystery that the player unravels through the course of the game. The world of Rapture is as scary as it is beautiful. The atmosphere is oppressive and there are genuinely frightening moments. I played the game alone late one night with the lights turned off and I caught myself looking over my shoulder more than once. The contrast in the music from the period really adds to the disturbing mood of the game.

Enemy introductions in Bioshock are some of the best that I have ever seen. One of the difficulties faced by game developers is how to introduce enemies to players fairly. That is to show what an enemy is capable of before letting them loose on the player. The most common practice in games is to introduce new enemy types through a cutscene. There are many advantages to the cutscene approach. The main one being that you can never be sure which direction the player’s camera will be facing during the game, thus they may miss events that happen during gameplay. The disadvantage is that the control is taken away from the player and immersion is broken. The developers at 2K Boston chose the more difficult, but more immersive route of never breaking the first-person camera perspective. As Ken Levine said, “cutscenes are for cowards.” The spider splicer is the first enemy that is revealed to the player when they arrive in Rapture. While still behind glass in the Bathysphere, Jack witnesses a Spider Splicer kill a man before viciously attacking the bathysphere that he is in. This not only shows the attacks of the enemy, but quickly tells the player that there is something very wrong in the city of Rapture.

While many games have great enemy introductions, fewer have memorable weapon introductions. This is surprising because as a design rule when weapons are first introduced they should always be placed in a scenario where the weapon is the most effective to make the player feel success with the weapon. The shotgun introduction in Bioshock sets a new bar for weapon introductions. As the player enters into a room they find that the shotgun is lying in the middle of the room. As the players picks up the new shiny weapon the lights go out, leaving the player in pitch darkness. Completely turning lights off on the player is very effective in raising tension. Audio of enemy Splicers can be heard before a single downward pointing directional spotlight turns on illuminating only the center of the room. The player gravitates towards this column of light because it is the only spot that they are able to see. From there they must fend off waves of Splicers armed with melee weapons with their new found shotgun. This forces the engagement range to be close, where the shotgun is the most effective. This is simply perfect execution of the weapon introduction design rule.

The telekinesis plasmid introduction was also very well-done. Before the plasmid is introduced, the player stumbles on a curious device, a tennis ball launching machine. Once activated the machine constantly spits out tennis balls, which hit the player and bounce off. Not finding any real use for the out-of-place machine, the player continues past the ball launcher through the level and finds the Telekinesis plasmid and is forced to back track and revisit the tennis ball machine. The true purpose of the tennis ball thrower is then revealed. The tennis balls simulate thrown dynamite that Splicers are armed with later in the game. The player is then allowed to practice catching the tennis balls with the Telekinesis plasmid and flinging them back at the machine. While this is not as memorable as Half-Life 2’s introduction of the gravity gun, it is nonetheless a very effective introduction to a new mechanic. The Telekinesis plasmid really frees the designers up to place goodies wherever they want as the players can now use this plasmid to retrieve cleverly placed pickups.

Speaking of plasmids that enable the player to gain additional items, I really liked the pickups locked in ice that can only be acquired through the use of the Incinerate plasmid. This gave many of the plasmids dual uses, like the Winter Blast plasmid that would slow down the flow in the hacking mini-games. The plasmids also served as lock and keys to prevent the player’s entry into new areas without first acquiring a specific plasmid. An example would be a door that was frozen shut that the player could not travel through until they found the Incinerate plasmid. This is similar to the gameplay used in Metroid, where the player would gain access to a new area only after finding the double jump ability. I would have liked the developers to have incorporated lock and keys that required more than one plasmid to bypass. Zelda games do this very often where you would need the combination of both the grapple hook and the iron boots to cross a ravine.

The inhabitants of Rapture are disturbingly insane. The Splicers whistle, have conversations with themselves, take their imaginary babies on strolls and even dance with each other. This is one of the best examples of a game with the illusion of a living world. The AIs in Bioshock are never simply waiting around for the player to show up. They have lives and are going about their own business. This is not easy to do and requires tremendous development resources, which is why it is not often seen in games. It is this unwillingness to settle for the mediocre that makes Bioshock special.

The brilliant Fort Frolic level was easily my favorite of the game. Fort Frolic is controlled by the insane artist Sander Cohen who makes artwork by plaster coating human bodies. If the player strikes these statues, they bleed.

Another moment that stood out was a scene later in the game where there are a number of bodies laying on the ground. Up until this point Bioshock had always rewarded players for searching bodies of dead Splicers and these player expectations were reinforced dozens of times. These bodies in particular were not dead Splicers, but were Splicers that were playing possum and laying in wait for the player. As the player gets near them they hop to the feet and attack the player. Bioshock sets the player’s expectations to search the bodies and then turn’s those same expectations against the player. This is similar to Resident Evil 4’s use of snakes in the crates and barrels which had previously only dispensed beneficial items to the player.

“Would you please.” What a great plot twist. I should have been expecting a plot twist and paid closer attention to the clues considering System Shock II’s twist.

During the take down Fontaine level I really liked the mechanic of randomly giving and switching plasmids on the player. This forced the player to try out all of the plasmids that they may not have collected. It would have been better if this had occurred earlier, so that players could acquire plasmids that they may have forgone, but really liked after having tried it.

Audio
The true highlight of Bioshock, besides the superb story is the audio in the game. The ambient audio and the contrast of the period audio recordings lend themselves to the horrific tone of the game. The recordings found littered throughout the spaces are incredibly voice acted and unravel the story to the player. Arman Shimmerman’s voice work for Andrew Ryan stands out from the crowd and is some of the best VO I have ever heard in a game.

Andrew Ryan Monologue Collection

The soundtrack is also fantastic. Here is a link to the free Bioshock Soundtrack Download provided by 2K Games.

Improvements I would have liked to see in the game:
1. Visual Fatigue
Despite the beauty of Rapture, the sameness of the colors and environment started to cause visual fatigue by the mid-way point in the game for me.

2. Overly Frontloaded
Bioshock, like most games, is very frontloaded. There is very good reason for this. There is a finite amount of resources that can be used to make games and developers know that most players never reach the middle of games, let alone the end. By frontloading all the best moments in the first few hours of gameplay, they ensure that the greatest numbers of players see their best work. There is a noticeable shift in the game during the midway point where the game changed from being horror themed to a more action oriented one. This was partly due to players getting increasingly stronger, but mostly this had to do with the allocation of scripted scare moments.

By the middle of game the pacing is just excruciatingly slow. All the newness has worn off at this point and the game is sorely lacking in new enemy types and mechanics.

3. Lack of NPC Variety
While the fights with the Big Daddies were epic, the varieties of enemy types were very lacking. Where are the Splicers that are capable of using plasmids? Splicers that could wield the Electrobolt plasmid or Incinerate plasmid would have added variety.

More variation on the Little Sisters would have been nice. The masks and uniform changes for the adult Splicers added variety, but all of the Little Sisters were nearly identical.

4. Player Combat Tactics
The player’s tactics never need to change throughout the entire game. The Electrobolt stun to wrench combo is just as effective at taking out enemies at the beginning as it is in the end of the game. Giving specific varieties of Splicers resistances to specific plasmids would have added depth to the tactics employed by players. Imagine an Electrobolt plasmid using Splicer that was also resistant to Electrobolt attacks, but weak against the Insect Swarm plasmid. This would at the very least force the player to change their tactics on occasion.

5. More Ghosts
While portions of the story were revealed through the sighting of ghosts, this story-telling device was not used enough over the audio recordings. The latter half of Bioshock could have used additional ghost moments for better pacing.

6. Camera Research
I am sure that the developers were aware of the pacing and lack of variety problems setting in during the middle portion of the game and beyond. I am sure that the camera used to take pictures of enemies for research was an attempt at creating gameplay variety. It failed miserably. The camera was the most annoying mechanic for me in the entire game. What is this, Fatal Frame? The idea is to casually take pictures of Splicers as they unload their machine guns on you.

7. More Gameplay Modes
The inclusion of another gameplay mode would have helped to break up the tedium of one after another fetch quests. An example of a game that did this was Dead Space with their inclusion of the Zero Gravity gameplay sections.

8. Hacking is too prevalent
Hacking takes you out of the world and pauses the game. So if an enemy is attacking you and you run up to a machine to hack, he will wait patiently for you to finish before resuming his attack.

But the benefits of hacking were so great that I felt like I was forced to hack all the time. At least later on the game introduced auto-hacking items. I heavily stocked up on these, because I hated hacking after the 100th time.

9. The player is too powerful
There is a direct correlation from how powerful the player is to how scared they are. At the start of the game, the player had to ration bullets and money and every Splicer was a threat, but by the mid-point these resources are overly-abundant and the enemies were easily dealt with. With the inclusion of the Vita-Chambers bringing the player back immediately at half-health dying is nearly meaningless. This is just another reason to make the player weaker.

10. Keep the player unarmed for longer
The game starts the player without a weapon, but within moments the wrench is introduced. A player without a weapon is a very scary place to be. I wish that the developers would have taken greater advantage of this before introducing plasmids and weapons into the game. An example is the game Clock Tower 2. In that game, the player was defenseless against the lone stalker Scissorman and must hide or find ways to temporarily fend off the attacker. Now imagine how scary and tension filled the opening would have been being weaponless and pursued by the Spider Splicer and having to find hiding places or knock over bookshelves or other obstacles to buy time, before ultimately finding a weapon and turning the tables on the Spider Splicer.

11. Combat
The designers used very little cover to direct their battles and create fronts, most of the time it was just stand out in the open and strafe left and right while firing at enemies. There is very little half-cover in the game, so crouching behind cover is not an option most of the time. The game would have benefited having more vertical cover like columns used to add in an element of tactical cover use into the gameplay.

12. Replayability
The game suffers from lack of replayability. This could be remedied by giving smaller, but more frequent upgrades to weapons and plasmids and allowing these upgrades to be carried into subsequent playthroughs of the game. Resident Evil 5 does this to great effect.

13. Choice
I wish the decisions made were less black and white and landed more in the gray. The little sister choice was essentially meaningless and merely changed the ending cutscene and made me pine for choices with real weight of a game like Baldur’s Gate 2.

14. Clumsy Plasmid and Weapon selection User Interface
While the amount of choice available to players was being heavily hyped, the difficulty and clumsiness of selecting plasmids and weapons because of the radial interface made players less willing to switch weapons and have less choice.

15. Vita-chambers
I have heard a lot of people complain about the Vita-Chambers, but there is a trade off here. The experience felt cheapened for the hardcore player, but this makes it so every player can see the end of Bioshock which is very valuable. A compromise could be to have injured enemies regain a modest amount of health if a vita-chamber is used.

16. Andrew Ryan, why have you lost your way?
I would have liked to have seen Andrew Ryan follow the Objectivist ethical ideals more closely, such as not killing the stripper he impregnated and staking people to pillars [see “The Objectivist Ethics” Ayn Rand (1964)]. He is basically a cold-blooded murderer and in many ways deserved to be killed off. I felt because of this, the power of killing him was greatly diminished. If he was just a man clinging staunchly to his ideals while his world crumbled around him, it would have made the player’s act of killing him that much more impactful and emotional. This was a missed opportunity.

17. Golden Arrow
For as immersive and well-thought out the rest of the game was, the arrow used to guide the player is just shameful and really breaks the immersion of the player. Some other more fictionally relevant method should have been devised.

18. End Boss
Frank Fontaine as the end boss was a weak fight and felt rushed. A suggestion I have is borrowed from the Ganon fight in Legend of Zelda Wind Waker. In that fight Link is completely outclassed by Ganon until Zelda joins the fight by picking up her Bow and firing arrows to distract Ganon, allowing Link the opportunity he needs to slip under Ganon’s guard. Similarly, in Bioshock what if when the player confronts Fontaine, they are completely outclassed, until Little Sisters join the battle distracting Fontaine and giving the player the opening he needs to defeat Fontaine?

Conclusion
After reading through that improvement list, you might get the impression that I did not like the game. That could not be further from the truth. Bioshock is a response to those who call games “a way to pass empty time and nothing more.” Bioshock is that mythical mass-market masterpiece of a game that makes you think. Bioshock is a title that I can point to that shows that games can deal effectively with such topics as Objectivism, Altruism and human nature. Bioshock has proven that socially relevant games can be successful. I hope that more game developers are willing to take the path shown to us by Bioshock.

Brad Borne’s The Fancy Pants Adventure and Bruce Branit’s World Builder

Tony Huynh — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:32:29 +0000

Posted by Tony Huynh.
I have not been posting as often because I have been really busy with work and life outside of work. Speaking of life outside of work, my girlfriend and I watched Cable Guy again a few weeks ago and that convinced us to buy tickets to Medieval Times for this weekend. This is our first trip to Medieval Times ever and I am really excited to dork it up. I’ll be sure to take pictures.

Cable Guy’s Medieval Times Scene

Brad Borne’s The Fancy Pants Adventures
Here is a great flash game that I’ve been having a lot of fun with called The Fancy Pants Adventures. It is a momentum based movement game with really great animations. It plays a lot like how Sonic the Hedgehog wishes it could.

Lastly I wanted to share World Builder, a beautiful short film by filmmaker Bruce Branit. He was the co-creator of 405. World Builder was shot in a single day and the postproduction took 2 years. The user interface for the 3D modeling is amazing. I wish the Unreal 3’s BSP editor worked liked that.

Bruce Branit’s World Builder

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Bruce Branit’s 405

Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet

Tony Huynh — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:48:42 +0000

Some of you may have heard about Roger Ebert’s disparaging comments about video games. If not, I will sum it up for you here.

“The nature of the medium [video games] prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship [however elegant or sophisticated] to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. For most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.” – Roger Ebert

Later, Ebert updated his opinions that games are art, just not high art.

“A year or so ago, I rashly wrote that video games could not be art. That inspired a firestorm among gamers, who wrote me countless messages explaining why I was wrong, and urging me to play their favorite games. Of course, I was asking for it. Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell’s soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art…” – Roger Ebert

This may sound blasphemous, but in a way, I agree with Roger Ebert’s assessment of our industry. Video games are currently not high art and they are an inferior medium to film and literature. I am not saying that video games can never be “high art,” it is that games have not yet reached that point. Video games have many challenges that other mediums do not have. Video games are a relatively young art form, are difficult to create, have to be “fun” and mass-market games have spiraling budgets, which cause a reluctance to experiment. If we are able to move past the video game industry’s self-imposed limitations, games have the potential to be the most powerful and important art form we have. In this article I will define what I believe “high art” is and discuss the challenges that the gaming industry faces to attain this important recognition.

Other gamers may challenge what I am saying by pointing to games such as Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, or Okami as “high art.” I would disagree. Stylized graphics do not make a game high art. High art is a work of importance. Works of importance are pieces of art that have cultural significance that include social commentary. Games as a whole are missing these key ingredients. Where are our games that deal head-on with themes like religious fanaticism, racism or the holocaust? While there are hundreds of films and books dealing with these topics, video games in the pursuit of fun and sales, avoid these touchy subjects at all costs.

Games = Fun
If you look at all the end of the year best of video games lists, what one word determines the placement of these games on those lists? Fun. If you peruse the talk schedule of the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), it seems every other talk is based on how to make games fun. Being a game designer, the main discussion point in every game mechanic meeting is how to get the section of gameplay to be fun. Maybe all of this focus on fun is a bad thing. That possibility is just what Warren Spector discusses in his article; “Fun” is a Four-Letter Word.

But, the word “fun” has other problems. It kind of locks us into a “games are for kids” mentality. It implies that games are good for just one thing: passing time in an enjoyable manner, for want of a better definition.

And perhaps most damning to me is that all this focus on passing time puts a ceiling, of sorts, above us that separates us from other media, media that are allowed to strive for something other than simple “fun-ness.”

Movies, books, musical compositions and so on are – or can be – fun to watch/read/listen to, but there’s nothing in the definition or judgment of those other media that requires fun. We’re the only medium that says to itself, “This is what you must be and all you will ever be.”
– Warren Spector

The mandatory “fun” is what pigeonholes the video game medium into a escapist distraction and puts a self-imposed limitation on video games that prevents it from reaching the high art plateau. I recently watched the movie The Terrorist and asked myself the question, was that movie fun? The film was thought provoking, sad and even disturbing, but can hardly be described as fun. What separates films from games as a medium is film’s willingness to tackle difficult subject matter. In the case of The Terrorist, it chronicles the life of a pregnant female suicide bomber leading up to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. It is hard to imagine a video game based on the same subject matter. This drives home how mature an art form film is and how much further video games have to go to be considered high art. If we do not limit ourselves to games = fun, we could one day see video games encompass so much more. Perhaps video games could be relabeled as interactive media and we could then see games be on equal footing as films. We could have games that genuinely explore and tackle real cultural and societal issues.

Budgets and Sales: Willingness to Experiment
The reality we live with right now is that fun blockbuster video games receive all the press, accolades and most importantly, sales. Publishers make games to sell and games that tackle societal ills or are not “fun” are unproven. Game budgets are now commonly soaring into and beyond the 20 million dollar range and as games get more expensive, publishers are becoming less and less willing to take chances. It is difficult for game developers to tackle difficult subjects that may alienate or divide their intended audience of Western males age 12 to 35.

Here is an example of a game developer’s willingness to make decisions based off of sales. Seth Schiesel of the New York Times wrote an article questioning the Ubisoft Montreal’s decision to Anglicize the main character of the Prince of Persia.

“What are we to make of a “Prince of Persia” who talks and behaves like a 17-year-old American mall rat? A “Prince of Persia” with blue eyes, fully Anglicized facial features and what looks like a tan he picked up on spring break? Is it taking a video game too seriously to shrink in distaste from such characterizations?”

It was no mistake that the Prince of Persia is Anglicized. This was done to not alienate the developer’s intended Western audience. Yet the game gets a pass for blatantly disregarding reality, simply because it is a game. If we want games to be viewed as high art, we have to look more closely at our games and not take the approach that all that matters is sales.

It is this sales driven mentality and unwillingness to take chances that have placed a ceiling above this industry’s head and stymied the growth and acceptance of games by the mainstream. If we do not occasionally move away from the big-action-summer style of games, we will never reach that pervasive mainstream audience. Games may be expensive to produce, but so are movies and even large budget movies do not shy away from socially important issues.

The first step to having games be accepted as high art is to be willing to take on criticism and be held accountable for our decisions. We can no longer fall back on the excuse, “It is just a game.”

Complexity in Games
One of the major disadvantages of the video games medium is that games are very complex and difficult to produce. In order to create a mass-market game, it can take team sizes in excess of 100+ developers, each specializing in one of these four disciplines: programming, design, animators and artists well over two years. To a certain degree, independent filmmakers are on an even playing field with bigger budget film projects. The differences between a low budget independent film and a big budget film are much less discernable from the audience’s perspective than an independent video game and a big budget blockbuster video game. With film, anybody can pick up a camera and with post-production and editing software readily available, can make a highly polished mass-marketable film. This is not the case with the complexity required to bring a polished video game to market. It is much more difficult for smaller budget and more experimental games to gain acceptance by wide audiences because the production values between these types of games and games with much larger budgets are so wide and easily noticeable to even a casual observer.

Just as technology has made the independent filmmaker more on par with a studio production, I am hopeful that the day comes when technology closes the gap between independent games and big budget games. There are signs that this movement is already in progress with game development suites like Adobe Flash and Microsoft’s XNA studio. When independent gamemakers are able to remove the disparity between their products they will be more able to compete for the consumers’ dollars and it will empower our industry to push and experiment with new social themes and genres.

Video Games are a Young Industry
When film first took form, few would have called it a “high art” form. It took over a hundred years before it gained that distinction. Many parallels can be drawn from when film was in its infancy to video games of today. When film first appeared on the scene it was a spectacle, but frowned on as not comparable to live theater. The same can be said of games in comparison to films today. It heartens me that the video game industry has come so far and so fast on the technology front, but we cannot neglect our responsibility to our audience to move them to think. We cannot simply dismiss Roger Ebert’s criticism, but instead we need to take it as a challenge and use our medium to make our audience more “cultured, civilized and empathetic”. By doing so we elevate video games as a whole into the realm of high art. Games are a young form of media and in the years to come we will be given the opportunity to answer our critics and gain the respect of the mainstream, let us not waste it.

Conclusion
We are at a crossroads and must confront the self-imposed limitations we have placed on ourselves and start viewing video games as something more than mere escapist fare. It as a challenge to our industry as a whole to produce games that tackle difficult themes and strive for more than simple “fun.” Video games have boundless possibilities and are uniquely suited to surpass any other mediums that currently exist because there is a level of connectivity through open-ended and collaborative interactivity that no other media can hope to match. If we are willing to take head-on serious societal themes and not shirk our responsibilities, I believe we will see the day that the video game is looked upon as more than a way to mindlessly pass time, but as deeply important and socially relevant.

I would like to thank Amadeo Plaza for our discussions on this topic.

Gears of War 2 Through the Eyes of a Game Designer

Tony Huynh — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 05:19:12 +0000

I finally made time to play through the campaign of developer Epic’s Gears of War 2 and wanted to share my thoughts on the game. I will begin by saying that this post is not so much a review of the game as a slightly more organized version of my notes taken while I was playing the game. With that being said, there will be spoilers. Continue reading at your own risk.

Gears of War 2 continues the nearly non-existent story of Gears of War. The Locust horde has been sinking entire cities and steadily pushing humanity back. The game begins with humanity clinging to their last stronghold of Jacinto and the Gears setting out on a counter-offensive to prevent their last bastion from being undermined.

In the following sections I will outline the aspects, levels and events in the game that left a more lasting impression on me.

A nice lengthy starting video helps to catch the player up on the setting and events. This video is something I felt was missing from the original Gears of War and does a great job in establishing the setting.

After the video, the player gains control of the protagonist Marcus Fenix and can choose to go through training or skip it entirely. Training is handled in a very novel way. Fenix takes on the training of a rookie recruit. The player, as Fenix, orders the rookie to perform each of the game’s mechanics, before the player performs the actions himself. The advantage of this is twofold. The first is that it maintains that Marcus Fenix, being a badass veteran, does not need training.

The second is that as Fenix orders the rookie around, the rookie AI shows the player the action before the player has to perform it himself. For example, Fenix will bark out, “show me how to take cover rook!” The AI takes cover and the player is shown how it is done, before he performs the maneuver himself. If you want to see another great tutorial that uses the AI to show the player the mechanics and controls of the game, look at Lost Planet.

The first real level of the game takes place in a hospital and starts out fairly slowly on the action quotient. The interior corridor setting does do the job of familiarizing the player to the basic cover mechanics without a lot of distractions. The developers placed dynamic flat panel monitors on top of the desks used for cover. The well-placed monitors were often shot off during the firefights and gave the action sequences more movement. The other thing that I noticed was when certain events occurred that would bring you closer to an accumulation achievement, such as performing 30 Active Reloads, the game would display a progress indicator to show you how far you are along to gaining the achievement. While I generally do not go out of my way for achievements, I found that these indicators would dictate the way I played the game. I would purposely keep specific weapons in order to get the achievements. I have a feeling this will not be the last time we see this mechanic used in other games. Epic also replaced their collectible dog tag system from the original Gears of War with a journal collection that serves the same function as dog tags, but they also give the player additional back-story in text format.

The one great bane of developers in first and third person shooters is that when we place down scripted events, we can never guarantee the player will witness the moment because we have no control over where the player’s camera is facing. Gears of War got around this problem by inventing the third-person-look-at (Y button) mechanic. This ensured that players knew where to go and are able to witness the scripted events that the developers spent so much time implementing.

One of the moments that are keyed off of Epic’s camera look-at-system is later in the mission when the action moves to the exterior. Locusts have taken over the high ground and are bunkered in on a turret. The turret is just out of the range of the weapons you have been introduced to at that point in the game. Just when the hail of fire from the enemy turret becomes frustrating a friendly helicopter flies in and takes out the enemy turret. The Y Button pops up on the screen during the event and when pressed by the player moves your camera to frame the event ensuring that none of the action is missed.

Another annoying thing about having friendly units with the player in other shooters is that when they run in front of your gunfire, they always scream at you like it is your fault for hitting them. This is different in Gears of War 2 in that when Marcus Fenix shoots his friends he is the one that screams, “Would you get the fuck out of the way please.” This really makes the player feel more like the hero.

Later in the game there is a sniper mini-game that was so well executed you just had to smile as you played it. There is a squad of Locusts who are moving and at range. A conveniently placed sniper rifle allows you to pick them off. Once you start firing, the surviving Locusts run off the screen out of your line of sight, which adds a timed element to the mini-game. Marcus counts out each kill with the sniper rifle. This mini-game did not have any bearing on the story, but it was just a simple moment that tests your sniping skills and was fun. More games need to add moments like these.

The next fun scene was when you are approaching a shut door and without cutting to a cinema the door opens on its own with a loud audio stinger and a bunch of creepers burst out of it rushing the player. This is one of those surprise moments that make you immediately slam down on the gun trigger and flail your weapon around spraying everything. Experiences like these remind me why I am a gamer.

The tank level had the player driving through a dark tunnel with the only illumination coming from the tank’s headlights. After landing the tank from a steep drop, the tank’s engines and lights malfunction and shut off. For several moments the only things you can hear are Locusts and then you begin to see the iridescent glow coming off their carapaces creeping closer. Meanwhile the tank’s crew is frantically trying to repair the tank. This was a suspenseful moment and was just awesome when the tank crew manages to fix the tank just in time.

During the locust queen’s castle mission you enter into a room where the enemies are not yet aware of your presence. There is a flamethrower-wielding locust on the bridge with his back turned to you. Since the player has already run into these locusts prior to this moment they have already been taught that these locusts carry flammable fuel in their backpacks for the flamethrowers that blow up if shot. In this case, if you shoot his pack he blows up and the bridge he is standing on collapses in glorious fashion with him. Having cool stuff happen when the player shoots is great because it almost guarantees that the player will see it.

There are a lot of different enemies in Gears of War 2. They vary greatly from one another in both their silhouettes and sizes, making them easy to differentiate from the varying types of enemies. The lesson here is that when each enemy type is dramatically different in size and silhouette it helps players quickly assess the threat of the situation and decide how to tackle the different scenarios designers create.

Chapter four of the last act is one of the most enjoyable levels because of how ridiculous everything is. As the game progresses the action continues to ramp up and by the end it is just out of control. This level has you falling through the floors of a building. You survive another falling building, which lands on its side and then you ride an elevator sideways through the building. It is so crazy, but you are having so much fun it that it does not even matter. The level ends with you and Dom commandeering a giant Brumak and using him as a mobile weapons platform to wreak havoc on the Locust hordes. It is just the absurd fun you can only have in a videogame.

The overall design theme of Gears of War 2 was unique and fun ways to introduce and use cover. This is a list of the different ways that I can remember that Epic introduced or had the player interact with cover.

A living rock worm that is attracted to red colored fruits that hung from the ceiling that the player can shoot down to entice the worm to move.

Player operated switches that turn cover on and off.

Enemies that attempt to remove your cover through the use of these switches.

Pillars that fall and create additional cover.

Rolling destroyed cars into place for cover.

The Boom Shield portable cover.

Picking up injured enemies to use as cover.

The sheer number of different locales and art pieces for the game are also amazing. Just off the top of my head.

Above ground forest

Hospital

Underground city

Underground cave

River

Inside the worm

Research facility

Snowy Forest and frozen lake

Locust home city

Jacinto city

All of the settings were very different and distinguishable from the others. The amount of art required to pull this off makes my head hurt. The artists at Epic are simply on another level.

The gameplay pacing was excellent. There was an incredible amount of gameplay variety and the designers constantly mixed things up so you never did anything for too long. There were on-foot segments, various vehicles that felt really different from each other, and rail shooting.

As I mentioned already, Gears of War 2 keeps outdoing itself over and over and reaches a great crescendo. The gameplay is lengthy and there was more than one time where I thought I was nearing the end of the game only to find the story twisted and offered so much more. The greatest accomplishment for this sequel was that I actually found myself caring about and getting involved with the story, which is really amazing considering how little I cared about the original Gears of War story.

Finally, it is very fitting that Gears of War 2 was EPIC. There are explosions, buildings collapsing and helicopters flying overhead everywhere you looked. You felt like you were part of a bigger war.

Issues I saw and improvements I would have liked to see in the game:

1. Bugs:

The number of obvious bugs that the game shipped with surprised me. While none of these were game breaking progression stoppers, I just expected better from Epic and because of these bugs the game does not feel polished. During my single play through of the campaign I saw all the geometry disappear and all the dynamic objects including people fall through, my squad warping everywhere in my line of sight dozens of times and lots of floating objects and players.

There are noticeable hitches when the game saves.

I saw Dom standing in front of a sentry gun blasting away at him and he just stood there not dying or even reacting.

The AI on a few occasions got hung up on static mesh and just kept running into walls over and over.

The flamethrower wielding AI would fire their short-ranged flamethrowers at me even when I was 200 meters away.

There are no interaction animations when carrying turret weapons. These include the kicking of doors and using switches. It is just bizarre when you are wielding a turret and the doors open by themselves. A minor issue, but noticeable nonetheless.

2. When you are alone, which happens very often in the game, the reviving mechanic does not work. In these segments, when you are injured, very often the enemy AI will ignore you after you have fallen and you are forced to wait until you bleed out and die before you are able to play again. This is very annoying. A very simple solution would have been to kill the player outright if there is no partner in the vicinity to rescue them.

3. Having the pick up a downed enemy to use as a human shield and the dive for cover move on the same button is just frustrating; especially when you accidentally do the opposite of what you intend to. The controller mapping on this is just bad. When an enemy is downed X, Y, and B buttons essentially have the same effect (different ways of killing the enemy). The only different option is on the A button (same button as dive), which picks up the downed enemy to use as a human shield. Having 3 options doing the same thing is redundant. Drop one of these killing moves and replace the button press with the human shield option. This would prevent the player from mistakenly diving when they mean to pick up a human shield or vice versa by only having the A button for dives.

4. Seeing the scene through Dom’s eyes as he is reunited with his wife is very jarring as the rest of the game is told through Marcus’ perspective. When telling a story, you have to be careful of not breaking the perspective from which the game is told.

5. The voice acting fluctuates in the game from bad to good. The voice actors for Dom and Carmine are noticeably worse than the rest of the cast.

6. Lastly, how does your robotic companion Jack just appear and disappear into and out of thin air like that?

I have to say that I am more than impressed by the game. Epic really outdid themselves on this title. The scope of the game and the variety of gameplay in Gears of War 2 is mind-boggling. I do not say this of many games, but the sheer amount of content in the campaign alone makes this game worth the $60.

My thoughts and impressions of the game were based off of a play through of the single-player campaign at the Casual difficulty.

TapDefense Reviewed Through the Eyes of a Game Designer

Tony Huynh — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:16:02 +0000

As I was stepping on the plane for a holiday visit to San Diego, I went on the Apple App Store on my iPhone and downloaded the free game TapDefense. As a rule I generally do not expect much from free games, especially for the iPhone and just got the game because it was high on the popularity list and to waste some time on my four-hour flight. I was very surprised by how good this unassumingly named game was. The game itself is a tower defense strategy game that is surprisingly deep.

The Premise
Your job is to defend the gates of heaven from 41 waves of invading demon hordes through the strategic placement of a variety of different defensive towers. There are three different difficulty levels in the game and the only difference (and it is an important one) between easy, medium and hard is the path the demons take to the gate. Easy mode’s path is very circuitous and the map provides a number of great choke points to place towers, while medium mode has fewer turns and a more direct path to the gate and hard mode is nearly a direct path. At the start of every level the player may place towers without the threat of the demons. The player may also pause the action in the game at any point and upgrade existing towers or place additional towers.

The Gameplay Mechanics
As I play games I am always analyzing the gameplay mechanics and boiling it down to a few tenants of game design that I believe the developers had in mind when creating the game. The game mechanics are designed to work in a certain way to encourage the player to play in a certain manner. Here are the two game design tenants that I see the game mechanics supporting.

1) The first tenant is that the player must strategically place towers and properly allocate resources.

How TapDefense accomplishes this is through the way the game gives money to the player by using compounding interest after each level is complete. At the end of each level the player receives interest on their remaining gold. The rate is 10% at the start of the game and can be raised to higher rates by spending Halos.

The interest rate game mechanic is an interesting one and certainly has its tradeoffs. The mechanic weights its punishment of mistakes made at the start of the game heavily, making it nearly impossible to recover during the later waves. Perfecting the opening is much more important than the ending. I call this feature out because it is exactly the opposite of what most game difficulty curves are like. In general mistakes at the later levels are punished more gravely than at the beginning.

In the end, I believe that it was a good choice because it furthers the design tenant by rewarding players who scrutinize their tower placement and to win each level with the minimum resources necessary. It also encourages replay value as players attempt to maximize their money totals.

2) The second game design tenant is that the player must utilize a variety of towers.

TapDefense achieves this through the use of the different varieties of demons that the game throws at you each have their vulnerabilities and resistances to different kinds of towers. In order to be successful the player must use a variety of towers.

These game design tenants in TapDefense keep the gameplay interesting and varied. So based off of the design tenants the key to winning is the proper allocation of resources to maximize effectiveness and the use of a variety of towers.

Tower Variety
I will list out the various towers the game has available. TapDefense begins with the player only having access to the Arrow Tower, Bomb Tower and Water Tower. Additional towers are unlocked through the use of Halos, which are earned at predetermined level intervals.

Arrow Tower

These are cheapest towers to place and upgrade. They have good range and have a fast firing rate.

Bomb Tower

These towers are more expensive than the Arrow towers and have a slower firing rate and range, but more than make up for it by doing very good area effect damage.

Water Tower

This tower slows enemy movement and when fully upgrade does decent direct damage.

Storm Tower

These towers have short range, but they take off a percentage of a demon’s life. Storm towers scale incredibly well. While these towers are not useful early on, since most of the enemies do not have a high health total, in later waves when enemies have outrageous hit points these towers become essential to victory.

Ice Tower

This tower slows down entire enemy groups.

Magic Tower

This in my opinion is the most important tower to have during the higher waves. The Magic tower has a high rate of fire, the best range in the game and when fully upgraded do very good area of effect damage.

Earthquake Tower

This tower has decent range and causes very good damage, but it takes up the equivalent space of four towers. The Earthquake Tower is also special in that it is the only tower that requires the player to manually operate it by shaking the iPhone.

Problems I would like to see addressed in the game

1. Occasionally the game will stall and not load

This issue was not just isolated to only my iPhone as my girlfriend’s phone had similar issues with the game.

2. Frame Rate Issues

When there are a lot of demons on the screen and lots of towers shooting at them, the frame rate can drop very significantly. This can hurt the game to the point where the game will not respond to your command to pause.

3. The sell tower button is in the same spot as the pause button

Since the pause button is such an important button (used frequently to assess the situation), the UI choice to place the sell tower button in the same spot with no confirmation leads to some very unhappy accidents. Selling a tower only recoups a small fraction of the cost to build the tower so this is simply unforgivable.

4. No Undo

If you do manage to sell a tower or place a tower down by accident, there is no undo button. Not a killer, but occasionally annoying.

5. Add a level rewind feature

As far as I could tell there was no level save feature, even if they had this feature it would not resolve the issues, because mistakes early in the game ripple throughout the rest of the game. I would suggest the inclusion of a per level rewind feature to go back in time to the spot where the mistake occurred. Currently, in order to atone for mistakes the game must be restarted from the beginning.

TapDefense is an ad-supported game and there are ads after every level played. They are small and out of the way though and really never bothered me. If we can have more high quality games like TapDefense made free through ads, I am all for it.

If you have an iPhone, you should download TapDefense. The gameplay is addictive and provided me with hours of entertainment. It is free so what have you got to lose?

Tony Huynh Recommends

Tony Huynh — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:42:56 +0000

If you are still looking for some gifts or something for yourself, here are my recommendations for games and books that I have enjoyed. I’ll be updating this list from time to time as I think of more stuff to include.

Video Games
Xbox 360 Pro Console
Xbox 360 Live 13 month Gold subscription
Bioshock X360 l PS3 l PC
Gears of War 2 l Read my review
Dead Space X360 l PS3 l PC l Read my review
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare X360 l PS3 l PC
Call of Duty: World at War X360 l PS3 l PC l Read my review
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core PS2 l Wii
Bioshock X360 l PS3
The Orange Box X360 l PS3 l PC
SoulCalibur 4 X360 l PS3
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn
Oblivion X360 l PS3 l PC
Psychonauts Xbox l PS2
God of War
God of War 2
Resident Evil 4 PS2 l Wii
Civilization 4
Chrono Trigger DS
Diablo 2
Starcraft

Fiction Books
Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover
Dune by Frank Herbert
Legend by David Gemmell
Stardust by Neil Gaiman l Read my review

Graphic Novels
Blankets by Craig Thompson l Read my review
Sin City by Frank Miller
Thieves and Kings by Mark Oakley
Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore

Books on Life
Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee l Read my review
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Investing & Business Books
The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham
One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch
Unlimited Wealth: The Theory and Practice of Economic Alchemy by Paul Zane Pilzer
Art of War by Sun Tzu
The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Built to Last by Jim Collins

Tony Huynh Amazon Search

Call of Duty: World at War Through the Eyes of a Game Designer

Tony Huynh — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:54:43 +0000

I played through the single-player campaign of Treyarch’s Call of Duty: World at War over the long Thanksgiving weekend and again decided to compile my notes. As this is not a review of Call of Duty: World at War and more of a collection of my notes organized in a more readable format, it will contain some spoilers. You have been warned.

I have got to tell you that going in I was very skeptical considering I was less than impressed with Treyarch’s last outing in the series, Call of Duty 3.

Call of Duty: World at War brings the series back to its traditional setting of World War II. I am torn by this decision as I enjoyed the more freeform story that a modern setting afforded Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The modern setting allowed Infinity Ward more flexibility in their locations, missions and story. The developers even introduced a villain and made him perform evil acts so that the villain evoked an emotional response from the player. There was suspense in the outcome of the game as the way the game could end was in question. These sorts of conventions are more difficult or even impossible in a historic setting like World War II, where the player enters the game knowing that the allies win and how they win. Still World War II allows for very epic scenarios.

In the following sections I will outline the levels and events in the game that left a more lasting impression on me.

The first mission was easily the worst mission in the game. The level traps the player into really tight corridors. Invisible walls hem the player in preventing the player from entering areas of the level that are seemingly blocked by small bushes and knee high rocks that the player should be able to easily traverse. Worst still is the fact that very little cover is available in these tight corridors and because it is so tight in sections, it prevents almost all lateral movement. The end result is a player that is left out in the open with no cover and no place to move. I also really dislike the convention of placing enemies in places where the player is unable to travel. It is in many ways lazy and I feel cheated that a 3-foot wall or small plant is preventing me from a performing a flank or even approach the enemy position. By the conclusion of the first chapter I was almost ready to turn the game off and never revisit it. I am glad I continued.

The game really starts to pick up at the start of the Russian campaign. The Russian campaign begins with a sniper mission called Vendetta. The start of the mission is nearly a direct copy of one of the scenes from Enemy at the Gates. As you gain consciousness surrounded by a stack of bodies inside of a destroyed fountain. You crawl to make your way to the edge of the fountain and are given a sniper rifle by a fellow survivor. Here you spot a group of Germans and must wait for planes to fly overhead to mask the noise of the sniper rifle before opening fire. Later in the level, while inside of a building you are spotted by Germans just outside. They pour fire through the windows of the building with flamethrowers and you must go into the prone position and learn to crawl to avoid the streams of fire. While crawling a bookcase that falls overhead was a simple, but very nice touch. There is also a sniper versus sniper segment further in the mission that was very well executed as well.

The tank level, while breaking up the pacing, was not fun. It consisted entirely of sitting at range and firing over and over at targets. If you came too close you would be punished by being pelted by Panzerfäuste carrying infantry or other tanks and quickly destroyed.

The Black Cat mission was one of the more memorable. It involves the player manning the turrets of a “Black Cat” PBY Catalina plane. Although the gameplay is 100% scripted, the running back and forth through the plane to switch to another turret was very exciting. In one scripted event, just as you sit down at your seat to man the turret, a Japanese Zero crashes into the water right in front of you. The mission is littered with exciting moments and there is always something to shoot.

Later in the Russian campaign you are asked to storm a German occupied city. As you prepare to storm the city, your troops line up in front of you forcing you to stop and watch a bombing of the building ahead. The group then charges through the fields screaming battle cries. I just thought this was a great gating mechanism that greatly increased the chance that the player will see the scripted event of the bombing happening and get the rush of charging across a field under fire.

In one of the American Pacific campaign missions, you fight your way up a hill and you arrive at a nice vista shot to close the level. Amazing vistas are a great way to reward the player for reaching a goal.

One of the departures from previous games in the series that I liked was the way the game made you feel heroic especially in the Russian campaign. Previous Call of Duties put you in the roll of a grunt soldier that was treated no different from any of the other soldiers. In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare the player meant so little that the developers went so far as to kill the player’s character.

Some of the situations where the game made you feel like a hero were:

The Russian commander giving you a rest on the back of a tank for your performance, while ordering another grunt to walk.
The Russian commander also kept reminding you of all the harrowing circumstances you had lived through and that as long as you lived the Russian army could not be broken.
The Russian commander also gives you the honor of planting the Russian flag to signify victory over your German adversaries calling you out specifically for your heroics.

I am also glad to see Treyarch got rid of the quick time event hand-to-hand battles that you had no control over when they occurred from Call of Duty 3 and replaced them with a single knife button press and only if the enemy comes within range of you. This gives the player the ability to prevent these events from occurring by not allowing enemies to get within range. Although the frustration of these events have lessened by being able to prevent them from happening, when they do occur they can be frustrating because the game clock continues and this often leads to grenades landing on you that you can have no chance to escape from.