Game review - Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit

Fahrenheit is the original title of this game, the title was changed to Indigo Prophecy for the North American release.

Fahrenheit was released in September 2005 for the PC, XBox, and PS2, developed in France by studio Quantic Dream and designed by David Cage.

This was a very good game, it is essentially an adventure game, set in New York city in January 2009, the game opens in a street cafe on a cold winter night; there, in the bathroom a man named Lucas Kane enters in an altered state of trance and with a knife stabs to death an unsuspecting patron that just happened to be there, after doing this Lucas regains control of himself and realizes what he has done, at this point the player assumes control of Lucas, giving him control to either run away quickly, slipping past noticing or avoiding suspicion.

What is original in all this is that the game opens up putting you on the shoes of someone who has just committed murder on a common place, and has to avoid getting caught. Later the game introduces 2 cops: Carla Valenti and Tyler Milles who are assigned in the investigation of the murder, and gives the player control over them to obtain the clues the player left earlier with Lucas Kane, so in another twist you are controlling both sides of the case: the murderer and his persecutors.

The story has the player switching between those characters, helping Lucas to solve the mystery of why he committed that crime and why he has recurring visions of a strange child, and both Carla and Tyler in collecting clues to capture him.

While the tutorial can be confusing for some, once you enter to the game you will find the controls to be very intuitive, many actions require to be performed by mimicking the motion on your control, dialog has you choosing several answers for the conversation before a time bar expires, depending of the situation this will be quick or slow, failing to answer a question will result sometimes in increasing the questioner's suspicion level.

Instead of a life bar, the game uses a mood indicator, that lowers everytime the character gets a setback or something doesn't go as planned, and goes up whenever he/she does something good for him/her, if the mood bar empties the character will commit suicide.

The game makes extensive use of split cameras, making use in them by alerting the player of an important event or for narrative purposes, the animation quality is very good also, it's obvious that it makes extensive use of motion capture technology.

Action scenes require to perform a certain sequences of pressing buttons to do the scene successfully, the player will get an advice to get ready before entering those sequences, what is good about those is that it uses peripheral vision to guide through them, that is you don't have to miss the action to watch the correct sequence to perform, this helps in maintaining the tension and sharing part of the adrenaline your character probably feels.

Gameplay has the atmosphere of a scifi flick, with a lot of suspense, tension and intrigue, although the plot is engaging and there is great deal of immersion, a little before the end the game starts to feel a little hasty, many characters that you would think would be important to the story disappear completely, and the ending feels a little rushed with a Deus Ex machina and The End legend, and that is something that kind of breaks all the mystery and intrigue that prevailed in the first half of the game.

At any case I would recommend this game since it has a very engaging story and will give you a very good experience, the game can be completed in less than 12 hours meaning you can finish it on a weekend.

Fahrenheit is available in America as Indigo Prophecy, this version has some scenes of sexually explicit content removed, a Director's Cut is said to be available but I have not yet seen it anywhere, and I got the european version. It is available for the PC, Xbox and PS2.

Screenshots:

Merchant Ivory - Gamasutra's Article

I read this Gamasutra article more than a year ago:

The title makes reference to Merchant Ivory films, it's status as high culture films, and how video games don't have yet the same status as "high culture" and thus are vulnerable to slander.

Video games are an easy target because, unlike the movies, games have no powerful friends and no beautiful film stars to argue for them. But there are many other reasons for our lack of cultural credibility as well. Some of them aren’t our fault, but a surprising number are, and recently I’ve thought of another one: We don’t have any highbrow games.

This provocative article sparkled a series of letters to the editor, some considering classic games as an example of merchant Ivory, games like Pac-man, Frogger, Galaxian, surely have transcended through generations, it is said that if an artist's work manages to break the generational barrier and stay in the taste of new generations, then it can be considered as art and culture, yet not a single game can be labeled as culture.

Now I know from long experience that a certain percentage of you are making derisive snorts of contempt because you personally care nothing for high culture and see no reason why anyone else would either. But even if you don’t like it, you still need it. And before yet another idiot pipes up with Standard Asinine Comment #1 (“but FUN is the only thing that matters!”), let me just say: No, it's not. Shut up and grow up. Our overemphasis on fun—kiddie-style, wheeee-type fun—is part of the reason we’re in this mess in the first place. To merely be fun is to be unimportant, irrelevant, and therefore vulnerable.

Actually I would be the one to differ with the above statement, nobody wants to play a game that is boring, likewise watching a film that is.

The real question would be: What is fun? I think fun can come from just more than slapstick comedy or blowing stuff up, like the article later says:

Whoever thought that city planning could be fun? Or knowing the progression of social, technological and political developments that lead to different forms of civilization?

There are many examples of the above, but I think that the core issue is that we are confusing the term fun with entertainment. Entertainment can come from many ways: When we enter to a spook-house, we go there to fell frightened not to amuse ourselves, likewise how many times we have seen people crying over a soap opera or a film? Does that make them masochists? No, they are there to experience entertainment.

One can define entertainment as experiencing a wide range of emotions to distract ourselves from the problems of the real world, the saying says: "Art is entertainment." I couldn't agree more with that.

In describing what would a Merchant Ivory Game would look like the article specifies:

a) Top notch art and design.
b) Very, very user-friendly interface.
c) Lot's of politics, human nature and social issues.

All this combined to create a living world in which we can interact and entertain ourselves. The article also speculates a little about why there are no Merchant Ivory Games, citing economical interests and that sometimes it "sacrifices it's principles to appeal a wider audience", I would add another one: As video games are fully technology dependent, the landscape is constantly changing, faster than other media like books, films or music.

Everyone remembers the revolution of film's visual FX with the advent of GC, and before that there was the revolution of technicolor and sound, but those where changes that came far between them. Video games on the other hand are undergoing massive changes: From the standard 8 color palette to physics in FPS, everything new became another tool to develop the work. And older games without them where simply "demoted" or in the case with blockbuster hits become susceptible to "enhanced remakes".

Who knows what's next for video games? Maybe speech recognition so that you can directly speak through you avatar with the NPC in a game, and respond accordingly even allowing you to have conversations. All those would help to make a real Merchant Ivory Game at least until a new technology comes.

Game Review - Psychonauts

Psychonauts was released on April 2005 for the PC, Xbox and PS2. Designed by Tim Schaffer previously known for his work in LucasArts's classics: Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango.

This is one of the best game I have played, it's essentially a platform game with some few elements of adventure, the protagonist is Raz, a likable quick-witted kid with psychic powers that arrives to a Summer-camp like Boot-camp for training psychic kids (or Psychonauts, hence the name). He must solve a conspiracy on which several members of the camp are having their brains removed by a deranged mad scientist.

The character designs looks like a more colorful and psychedelic version of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride or his short film Vincent. Characters with candy-cotton shaped hair, big dumbo-like ears, or with looks like distant cousins of the Jim Henson's Muppet's Show all interact with Raz with their own distinct and well crafted personalities.

The game allows exploration of the camp at will, although some areas become only accessible when the player completes certain levels, progression of the game is linear in most parts. As Raz advances though the plot he unlocks several psychic powers that all become useful for defeating opponents or advancing through obstacles, some times you can try new powers on old opponents and watch their hilarious reactions, for example the "Men in Black" alike "Censors's" reaction to the pyrokinesis is priceless.

Level progression goes by completing the levels inside the minds of people (or animals), this is where Psychonauts shines the most in my opinion: level design is crafted in way that each level is completely unique stylistically and requires different approaches in gameplay, one level is on the mind of a care-free party-going instructor of the camp, as one could expect her mind is shaped like an ongoing dance party with disco inspirations, another level is the mind of an analytical, cold logic professor and the game presents his mind shaped as a cube that reconfigures each time you make progress, one level looks like a black velvet paint portray of Hispanic culture! (trust me: it looks good), bonuses on those levels can be completed by collecting figments of imagination, sorting emotional baggage (watching this happenning never gets old), and cracking vaults of memory.

The game has also lot of details and subplots rewarding exploring players, the mechanics of the game also allow to find hidden items that will allow to unlock psychic powers earlier in the game.

Gameplay looks like typical 3D platforming, some levels are linear in the obstacle course others are like a world you get to explore and solve adventure-like puzzles, or a combination of both. In most cases you will unlock a different psychic power that will become most useful in that particular level. The obstacles although some are intimidating they are not that difficult and are very funny to watch, some bosses require figuring out their weakness, there are cases in which it's easy and others not so, at any case sometimes the game hints you of that via the "mentor on mind" plot device.

Audio is fine, music fills the mood on each level thus enhancing play experience.

I really enjoyed this game and I didn't want it to finish since each level was a feast to the eyes and mind, too bad that this game performed worse than expected in the market, probably with a little more promotion it would have been different, because reception was quite good. Also, the ending hints of a sequel but I see difficult that that come to be.

Psychonauts is available for the PS2, XBox (it recently has been added to the list of compatible games for the Xbox 360), and PC (retail or available via Steam or GameTap service).

If you get a chance to get your hands in it do it, you won't regret it.

Screenshots:

Free play?

Reason magazine website published an interesting article a few years ago. It basically talks about the interaction and dynamics of games and politics:

Political ideas are infiltrating not just the back-stories of games but their "play mechanics" -- the inner workings that shape game behavior. It may be the scripted parts of the games that explicitly state political notions, but what's ultimately more significant is the way games can communicate doctrine by demonstration, the same way sports communicate physics. As Salon's Wagner James Au once put it, "Socially minded films and television programs can only dramatize their politics, but we now have a medium where you can interact with them, as an engaged participant." If cinematic spectacle grabs eyeballs, then gameplay grabs minds.

That's a pretty acurate portrayal of what video games have become today, unlike watching a film or TV, a video game really puts you in the action, it's not a soldier ass you are watching on the TV the one that is under fire, it's your ass that's on the line! Quoting from the book Character Developing and Storytelling for Games from Thompson Publishing (very good book, I recommend it):

Games allow us to become characters we could not be anyway else. (Or something like that)

Free the Gamers!

In theory, the easiest way to graft an ideology onto a game is through the story, as with the post-apocalyptic backdrop to Gore. In practice, it's not so simple. Facile analogies to the movies have concealed a deep tension between game play and narrative.

Storytelling has so possessed game design that, with the exception of sports, racing, and a few other genres, it is rare for major titles to fore go extensive script and character development. But while stories can supply context and direction, they are told, not played. Full-motion video became reviled by many gamers in the mid-'90s for periodically butting in to tell unevenly produced story-snippets. Though visually striking, such vignettes tend to clash stylistically with game graphics. But the real downside is that they seize control from the player. One moment he is guiding the main character's actions; a moment later that power is frozen while a video clip plays. If the protagonist does something during the scene that the player would rather not have done, that is considered an acceptable cost of telling the story.

While it is true that we gamers demand a great deal of interactivity many of us still like a certain degree of guidance to play through a game, in GTA series while the gameplay offered you a lot of freedom to roam the city it still offered you a linear set of missions to advance through the story, unlock new areas, or acquire more abilities, sure you where free to do it or ignore it but in order to advance linearity or guidance is needed.

Games with extreme freedom got lampooned by the Penny-Arcade webcomic a few days ago.

Why? because sometimes it's not funny when when you don't know what to do next, it is said with certain reason that the player must have the objective clear in order to know what to do next, there is a great difference between guiding the player and designing stiff constrained environments. Ironically to achieve freedom the game must have a set of defined rules.

Another pitfall for "too open" environments is that sometimes it will be impossible for the player to know if he/she has made a mistake from which its impossible to recover, the player will continue playing for a while until he/she realizes the mistake, and what if he/she saved the game at some point before? The most viable solution would be to implement a system that makes "game over" as soon the player makes the mistake, but it will be harder to implement that on open environments.

Games are not simply another channel through which artists communicate but a means by which individuals take control. That control is brought to bear in a new and dynamic community where no topic, assumption, icon, or milieu is entirely safe from scrutiny.

I would disagree in a way with the above statement, while an artist wants to express his thoughts or feelings through his works, it is still up to the people who experience his works the feelings they get when watching a paint or listening to a music composition, if the artist managed to capture the thoughs and feelings in the way he expected it then it can be said that his work is a success, the same goes for video games, only that the way to experience the work of art goes beyond watching listening or touching, it is interactivity.

Because they want fun, not lectures, players have been known to skip scripted scenes -- or to wreck them just to see what will happen. Well-designed games get back on track despite such mischief, but they can't force an indifferent player to pay attention to the story. My father has played the war game Red Alert (Virgin) and its sequels for years but has never tackled the scripted missions. Instead, he plays in "skirmish" mode, which delivers strategic challenges without the movie clips or story. He never finds out who ends up ruling the world, nor does he seem too concerned about it.

It's true that you can't force an indifferent player to pay attention to the story, anymore than you can force a guy with no musical taste whatsoever to enjoy the classics, but then again it is up to the player those experiences, and it is in the developer's power to craft a story that will grab most people's attention.