Max Payne 3 Impressions

Max Payne booth at Pax East

I had the pleasure of seeing a preview of Max Payne 3 over at the Rockstar booth at Pax East 2012. The line seems long at first but it went pretty quickly. Rockstar employees were giving guided tours where you got to play  a demo portion of the game while they explained features to you and answered any questions you had.

The demo itself took place in America (before Payne travels to Brazil) where for some reason Max is getting shot at. You run and gun your way through a bar, the kitchen, and eventually through some back alleys which is where the demo ends. The first thing my adviser told me is that while cover exists in the game it shouldn't be used all that often. This is a still a run-and-gun game with bullet time. Cover works by pressing a button to snap your character to a wall, similar to other games. I noticed that whenever I was in cover, Max moved much more slowly. You could still pop out and shoot but you weren't nearly as agile as when you were just running around shooting people. While I would normally chastise such mechanics, placed within the context of the game it is a subtle way to encourage the player to only use cover when you need a break (such as for reloading). Otherwise, you should be running around shooting guys in the head.

If you have played previous Max Payne games, you will remember that one of the best moves to use is the diving bullet time which is very much present in this latest game. I always used the dive move whenever I could - around walls, through doors. You can stay on the ground shooting after a dive before getting up as well. Another interesting mechanic is that death is handled through bullet time. When you get shot enough, you start falling down and the crosshair starts moving towards the last enemy that shot you. If you manage to kill the enemy before you hit the ground, then you get to stay alive. The move is handled very well and definitely shakes things up in regards to giving players second chances at life.

The comic panels make an appearance except this time they are more integrated into the gameplay. So instead of seeing a sequence in between levels the sequences are interspersed throughout the same level, such as introducing a boss or getting ambushed. I thought that the comic panels could sometimes be abrupt in starting and ending but it keeps your hands on the controller as you never know when the action might begin.

I am pretty excited for the game. It looks to capture the essence of the original Max Payne games while adding a distinct multiplayer experience with bullet time. The game is coming out May 15.

Contracts and Consoles

The Verge published an article recently claiming that an Xbox would soon be released for only $99.  One minor caveat: it comes with a 2-year contract a la cell phone.  Termination fees and all.

Now, the subscription service has some benefits, most notably that for the duration of the contract you have access to Xbox Live Gold.  A standard Xbox with 2 years of Live comes out to only $39 less ($459 vs $420) than the subsidized version.

Personally, I don't like recurring payments.  However, they absolutely lower the barrier for entry.  Add in the value of an Xbox Live Gold subscription and this isn't that bad of a deal while making the initial cost affordable to many kids with birthday money or parents on a tight budget.  Sure, the long term cost is slightly more, but that's in the future - what counts is that it costs less now.  America invented razor and blades, and this is a red-ringedblooded American console.  Eat it up, 99%.

The console contract marks the start of a new era.  With tighter integration between connected services and the console, I suspect within a generation or two, buying a console will basically require a contract.  There will be no Xbox Live Gold or PSN Premium - just Xbox and Playstation.  If you've got the console, you've got the sub.  Perhaps there will be a cheap family friendly Nintendo that will try to create a niche, but what Microsoft understands is that the most family friendly thing there is a low starting cost.

This is the flip-side of the longstanding subscription incentive to add value to the people who are already paying - something that has sometimes had backlash from the gaming community.  Now the approach isn't to just add value but also decrease initial cost and lower the barrier of entry.

I don't like it, but it's smart and I think will ultimately be the standard model within 1-2 console generations.

Don't Sweat the Little Things

There is a great comic over at Virtual Shackles today called "Machine Made". It points out one hilarious example of an event in a video game that upon further thought doesn't quite add up. In this case it is the design of a Geth ship that Shepard and his crew are fighting through when a companion casually mentions that the ship seems alien and not designed by organics. When I first heard this while playing the game I didn't really think anything of it - I was too busy blasting through Geth Primes and figuring out where the cover points were. But I have to say that the comic points out a funny and all too common example of how gameplay elements can sometimes require reality to take a back seat.

When you really think about it, a ship designed for machines shouldn't really be anything like a ship designed for organics. The same hallways, ladders, bathrooms, or other contrivances that organics would face wouldn't be a problem for a race that can wirelessly download themselves into bodies. The extra space taken up by a mess hall or crew quarters could either be re-purposed for more armaments or a smaller ship. In fact, having a design which doesn't support organics would be a very good self defense mechanism itself. If there were no ladders, then Shepard couldn't maneuver around the ship at all. You would still need loading bays and transports for possible ground assaults but those could be separate compartments away from any vital infrastructure.

Thinking on the design of this ship has also made me think about other moments where gameplay elements clash with reality. How is it that in every RPG there are random chests strewn about that are unopened? It's not like you are always the first one to happen to find these chests a little ways off the road. But if you think about it, reality should dictate that 1) either these chests don't exist at all or 2) most of the chests would already be open by the time you found them. I'd rather have the unopened chest than the reality that someone came along before me to grab my upgraded sword of plenty (or whatever). Of course, until someone figures out a way to dish out upgraded items to me on my quest to kill some magical monstrosity without using treasure chests, I suspect we'll be seeing them for some time. But until then, I'll give the Geth keyboards and treasure chests filled with clothes and gold a pass.

Birth of an Era

And by era, I mean a blog site.

Welcome to the brand new Games For Thought blog! I created this blog in order to capture the thoughts and conversations I had among friends regarding the video game industry. We always discussed gaming news and our thoughts about games but then I thought - why not write them down? These posts are dedicated to the analysis of gaming topics and trends - not to the rehashing of marketing emails and public statements. That isn't to say that those are bad posts - it's just that other sites do them much better than I could. The reader will find topics such as the analysis of game design, commentary on the latest news and gossip, and the occasional review. I always found these discussions quite interesting - hopefully you will too.

Artistic License

The current story on the internet has to do with the varying opinions on the Mass Effect 3 ending.

Many players are frustrated with the lack of closure in addition to perhaps not liking the ending to the epic Shepard story arc.  They have been very vocal about this, and Bioware has even responded to the gaming community promising a free DLC this summer that will provide better closure.

Some people have defended Bioware's decisions, and a blog post by one of Bioware's Doctors specifically talks about artistic license.  However, I do feel that in video games, artistic license only goes so far.

The mass effect games made a killing off of being cinematic with fully voice acted dialogue and a very well written script.  The ability to suspend disbelief was higher in the Mass Effect games than perhaps any other game in history.  The politics, the combat, the emotional interactions all blended together in a couple of the best storytelling games ever made.  But at its core, Mass Effect 1 and 2 are still ROLE playing games.  Players loved being Shepard.  Players loved acting out Shepard in their own way.  In the end, players loved feeling like the Shepard story was one they created.  This is the illusion of choice.

Make no mistake, the choices were mostly always an illusion.  While there is some variation on the events that take place depending on choice, the overall arc remains the same.  I knew this, yet loved Mass Effect 1 and 2 all the same - because I never felt that I was being tricked.  Yes, the arc remained the same, but when a choice I make kills or saves a companion, it feels like a substantial shift in the direction of my Shepard's story.

That illusion of choice, or perhaps control, is gone by the Mass Effect 3 ending.  So while Bioware may have a right to create and sell a game to their liking, they are ignoring what made this franchise great.  One game won't destroy Bioware's reputation, but this isn't a movie that I can spend 2 hours watching, or a book I can read in a couple of afternoons.  This is a character that I have worked tirelessly to become the hero I wanted him to be - and to take that away from me is the very definition of biting the hand that feeds.