Japan seems to be the only place that's still making games that are chasing films. I was recently exposed to a game, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (999, Chunsoft, 2009, Nintendo DS), that's part of a genre that epitomizes this: the 'visual novel'. Think of classic PC adventure games (e.g., King's Quest or Maniac Mansion) with even less interactivity. Basically, you watch long stretches of non-interactive text or video, broken up with choose-your-adventure style choices. Eventually the story presents you with puzzles whose completion begins the cycle anew.

The pay-off is that your choices influence the course of the linear narrative leading you to a series of different endings. The encouragement to play through all of the various paths is the acquisition of different pieces of information about the game's overall plot (mercifully you can quickly page through sections that you've completed in a previous play through).

Based solely on my personal gaming preferences - including my stated hatred of cutscenes - I should have hated 999. And yet, when I pulled it out during some long flights, I ended up playing through the entire thing.

It's difficult to explain 999's plot, especially without 'spoilers'. The titular nine people awake to find themselves trapped in an ocean liner that's been outfitted with all manner of weird puzzles. Each member of the group wears a bracelet with a different numeral and is told that they've swallowed a bomb. If they don't follow the rules of a 'Saw' style game based around the numerology of their bracelets, they will be killed. The rules dictate how they can move through the ship and provides their only means to escape.

999's success stems from its plot being surprisingly well-written. Everything about your circumstances is continuously thrown on its head: it's revealed quite early that one of the 9 persons is the master-mind behind the maze... but whom? By the end, (almost) everything you thought was a plot-hole is explained and even the need to play through 4 'bad' endings to get the 'true end' is explained as part of the plot. It's all stupid Japanese thriller nonsense, but I still enjoyed it.

I suppose that my appreciation for the game, despite its cutscene driven nature, is its use of the medium to do something that couldn't be done well in film or book. As I've said before, if I wanted non-interactive movies, I'd watch a movie, and if I wanted to read reams of text, I'd get a book. It's not perfect, but because of its branching paths, multiple endings, and how they're all integrated into the mind-bending plot, it ends up being something that neither book nor movie could accomplish.

However, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention some of the game's glaring imperfections - almost all of which seem to plague Japanese games despite endless volleys of criticism. Why, oh why must the text scroll so slowly? I can read much faster than this, so why not just let me tap along at my own pace? Thankfully you can 'fast-forward' through sections that you've already seen in subsequent play throughs, but why should I have to waste time replaying those sections at all? Why not just let me go back to a previous branch-point in the story and play from there?

In order to see the 'true' ending, you must encounter all of the 'bad' endings (this requires at least 5 play throughs). Thankfully, the endings you've seen and the choices you've made are highlighted, so it's pretty straightforward to try something else. Now, some of the choices are only cosmetic - they lead to different dialogue options with the other captives, but don't influence the ending. However, this is not true of the 'true' ending. In this final play through, choices that were previously cosmetic now matter, but nowhere does the game tell you this. Without the aid of a walkthrough (which I highly recommend), you may be playing the 'true' path several times in order to figure out what arbitrary choices you need to make in order to survive. This isn't good design - it would've been considered stupidly frustrating in classic adventure games, and given how much the medium has progressed, it's unacceptable now.

Somewhat shockingly given 999's ending, they've made a sequel: Virtue's Last Reward (yay ridiculous Japanese naming). I've heard that it fixes some of the issues I have (such as the ability to 'warp' back to previous branch points so I'm looking forward to playing through. I just hope that the writers are able to craft such an interesting tale again. 

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DEHR; 2011; Eidos Montreal) is a prequel, set in a near-future where cybernetic technology is becoming available to the general public. While the medical benefits of replacement limbs and organs are clear, many people fear a future in which wealthy people will gain even more of a competitive edge over plebes by implanting 'neural-stimulator chips' or synthetic muscles, etc. You take the role of the chief of security for one of the major manufacturers of cybernetic technologies when, on the eve of a major government hearing on cybernetic regulation, your company is attacked by terrorists. What follows is a quest to get to the bottom of who the terrorists were, and what they thought that they would accomplish (hint: it's a Deus Ex game, which means that it's going to be filled with conspiracy theories).

A digression. Unlike review sites, I tend to pay only the most lip service to video game stories. As I've said before, this is because most of them don't hold up to comparisons with any other type of media. Let me reiterate this: With only a few exceptions, the best that the vast majority of game stories can claim is that they're comparable to the pulpiest of pulp fantasy/sci fi novels or cheaply produced television shows. Some people get really offended when I say this, but I'd challenge them to go out there and read some books, watch some great classic movies, and then come back and tell me about how 'original' this or that game's story really was. Here's a paragraph from PC Gamer's review of DEHR:

The full story is vast and complex, crammed into every corner of Human Revolution’s world. Every apartment you break into, every secret room you find, every rooftop you clamber across has little scraps of personality and history to read and interpret. It’s a story-junky’s blissful overdose.

While I agree that there's a lot of fluff to read in the game (too much), we have very different definitions of 'vast and complex'. If you were legitimately surprised by the 'twists' in this game, I'm sorry for you. The foreshadowing is so clumsily heavy-handed that some characters may as well enter the stage for the first time wearing devil-horns1.

The game's dialog system is quite good, with one caveat: There's an absolute must-buy ability (it should be your first upgrade) that allows you to sense the NPC's mood, determine whether you're pursuing the right conversation choices, and ultimately influence their behavior. Given how important influencing others is to this game (it gives you massive xp rewards and perks), it's a bit ridiculous that you can actually accidentally ignore this upgrade.

With that out of the way, I was genuinely impressed by how much DEHR stuck to the formula and feel of the original. The layout of the worlds feels very similar in style, and the way that you can approach challenges from various angles (sneaking, shooting, hacking, etc.) cleaves very close to the best intentions of the first title. I say 'intentions' because I think that many reviewers forget that there's a huge difference between intention and execution, and it's in the latter that the game stumbles.

DEHR is perhaps the worst-balanced game that I've ever played - at least when it comes to titles published by professional studios. What a mess. Where to begin?

Take the upgrade system - it's terrible. For starters, at least in the early game, upgrades are very expensive (all upgrades have the same point 'cost'), and you're given a surfeit of uninterpretable choices: This upgrade protects me from poisonous gas... Is there a lot of gas in the game? (no). To make matters worse, there are entire upgrade trees that are completely useless. Seriously, go and read upgrade guides to see how they spell out why this or that 'feature' provides no benefit in the context of how the game actually works. When points are scarce, accidentally wasting them on useless upgrades is a massive drag.

Another problematic feature is the combat balancing: the main character is very, very weak, whereas some of the enemies are quite strong. Looking broadly at the skill trees, it's pretty clear that the game really wants you to lean towards stealth (annoyingly, you also get more experience for non-lethal takedowns so there goes that whole 'play any character you want to' thing). Inexplicably, however, the game forces ~4-5 'boss' encounters where you absolutely have to fight. Every review agrees that these fights are handled terribly, and even more so if you've invested all of your points in stealthy abilities. The developpers seem to have realized this as well, so they included a very cheap upgrade that gives you a limited-use instant-kill attack called the 'Typhoon'. Realistically, you may only find about 40 cartriges for this thing in the game, but it kills anything in 1-2 hits, including major bosses. I only used the ability about 8 times in the whole game, but 4 of those times were to instantly skip the awful boss fights.

I'm not a big graphics person, but given how terribly this game runs - with frequent frame-rate drops - I'd expect it to be a lot better looking than this. The character models are particularly stiff and bland, with flat textures. For comparison's sake, I can run Skyrim, a contemporary title, with all options maxed and no frame-rate issues at all. I've seen a lot of complaints about this on the forums, so I know it's not 'just me'. 

Finally, I want to point out that this is yet another example of a game where you have to upgrade your character a number of times before it's actually fun to play. The basic character can only run for 2.5 seconds (some super-soldier, hunh?), dies from a single shotgun blast, and sneaks like he's trailing a dozen empty tin-cans behind him on a string. You're constantly presented with alternative routes that you'll need this or that upgrade to take, so the game world feels like an endless series of limitations rather than 'opportunities'. I wish that more devs would make the basic game fun to play and use upgrades as 'perks' rather than necessities.  

I kept playing DEHR because many people were very positive about the game and I wanted to be able to criticize it from a knowledgeable perspective. Yes, the black-and-gold cyberpunk aesthetic is cool and the Blade Runner vibe is somewhat refreshing in the sea of overused military/space marine settings (I'd argue that the original Mass Effect did an excellent job with this same vibe). But none of this elminates my feeling that the game just isn't any fun to play. Compared to other sneaking games (e.g. Metal Gear or Splinter Cell) it leaves much to be desired, and as a third-person shooter it's too clumsy2.

When a game's fundamentals fail on so many levels, I don't understand why so many people feel compelled to stick around for the setting or story. There's so much better stuff out there to waste your time on. 

1Simply understanding 'The Law of the Economy of Characters' makes it very difficult for overly simplistic 'twists' to have any impact.

2The enemy AI is absolutely abysmal. For instance, foes can spot you through glass windows, andwhile this will trigger the alarm, they'll just stand there and shout at you. No enemy will actually bother firing at you until you shatter the window yourself, allowing you to line up a great free headshot, grenade toss, or rocket strike before you're even threatened.

I don't like 'TV'1. Like not at all. I try to watch these shows that people rave about (Lost, Breaking Bad, etc.) and I just don't get it. It seems to me that once you go without cable for years and years (grad school will do that to you) the concept of trying to come up with interesting stories week after week seems ridiculous. It's all just soap operas2.  

There does seem to be one 'benefit' that TV provides, at least when it comes to managing your life: It's probably the world's best time-killer. When you're in a relationship and you frequently want to 'spend time together', sitting in front of the TV can be an easy solution. More difficult is finding alternatives that are so cheap and relaxing.

Enter jigsaw puzzles. Yes they're simple and archaic (you don't have to plug them in), but they're a lot fun. I'll do almost any puzzle as long as it doesn't contain any of the following:

a) Dolphins (I have an inexplicable hatred of seascapes).
b) Thomas Kinkaid's work
c) Jesus in any unironic setting

For some reason clearly linked to my childhood, I love puzzles involving elements of fantasy. Dragons are best, followed wizards, knights, and princesses. I recently found a puzzle that had all four, which was awesome:

This is actually a classic Larry Elmore DragonLance cover puzzle found on the internets.

Thankfully the gf enjoys puzzles and is actually in agreement with my preferences. Never again shall I have to assemble an awful toll-painting of some stupid cottage in a region that obviously doesn't get cellular data coverage (or at best can access 'edge'... ungh). 

Furthermore, we've taken it to the next level by gluing the puzzles together and mounting them on our wall. In the past, I've had a personal disdain for this practice as it just felt somewhat rural and umm... poor. But we're both postdocs, so who are we kidding on that count?

No dragons :-(

The only downside to jigsaw puzzles is that they can sometimes be more addictive than drugs, and occasionally we'll find ourselves unintentionally staying up past our bedtime because we were convinced that we could quickly finish this or that part of a design. Oh well, better this than staying up to watch one more episode of Two and a Half Men I guess (no really, why does anyone find that show funny?).

Unfortunately, I'll end on a downer by pointing out that occasionally you get a puzzle that doesn't live up to your initial expectations. I should have looked at the picture on the box more closely before getting this one:

 Clearly everyone in this painting is carrying around some extraneous chromosomes...

1I'm talking about cable here. I use my TV to watch movies and play games, of course.

2I've really come to the conclusion that this applies to pretty much everything. Almost all of the best 'media' comes from stories written with a defined arc based on a good idea. Beginning anything without a clear path through the middle and to the end just seems ripe for disappointment. 

I'd heard through the grapevine that the new Mortal Kombat (MK9; PS3; NetherRealm) went above and beyond in the single-player department. My understanding is that this isn't new for the series (this is the 9th title) as all of the MK games have included mini games and modes that encourage single-player gaming. Nevertheless, MK9 really has taken this to another level.

The game includes a rather extensive single-player 'story' mode that wraps all of your battles into a long and involved narrative that 'reboots' the overall MK 'universe'. I haven't played the MK games since the 90s, but I do remember that the overall plot was umm... dumb. And yet, somehow this 'story' actually works out quite well. The content is preposterous, of course, but the interstitial cutscenes between fights are entertaining in an 80s action movie sort-of way.

The trend in fighters it seems is to bring back the 2D, side-scrolling style (using 3D rendered characters of course). The over-sexualized female fighters, on the other hand, have laways been there. Image cred here.

The real accomplishment, however, is in how the story actually teaches you how to play the game. In typical fighters, the single-player mode involves fighting through a random series of matches with a single character. In MK9, you switch among a large diversity of characters over the course of the story, forcing you to learn how to effective use each one. Thankfully, MK is a much more simple (playable?) game than the highly technical Japanese fighters, and so while there are some sharp difficulty spikes -Shao Khan's stupid ability to shrug off hits comes to mind - it's never unreasonable (you can also change the AI difficulty at any time).

Beyond the pleasant surprise at how much fun I was having with the game, the most salient thought running through my mind during my playtime was: How in the world do other fighting games get away with charging full price for titles with so little content???

 While fighting games have always had a die-hard, niche following, one could say that the genre experienced a renaissance with the release of Capcom's Street Fighter IV on consoles in 2009. Since then, Capcom has released what feels like a hundred different variants of their game and all of the classic fighting devs (Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soul Calibur, etc.) have dipped back into the fray a few times themselves. Yet most of these titles (the Capcom ones in particular) are just straight fighting games. You get a translation of the arcade mode, a few different variant fighting modes, and janky online play for $60. MK9 offers all of that, plus the long, interesting story mode, other challenge single-player modes, and tons of unlockables.

Drama. Image cred here.

I realize that in 'hardcore fighting game circles' it's accepted that the bulk of the effort in making Capcom games goes into balancing the fighters such that they're cash-money tournament ready. I doubt that the majority of folks who play these games care about that at all, so I'd rather have the content (and the lack of price-gouging on $40 annual 'updates'). I feel as though the hardcore fighters hearken back to the times when gaming was subconsciously divided into people who wanted 'the arcade experience at home', vs. those like me who felt that there were fundamental differences between what made a good home game as compared to a good arcade game.

Oh well, I wonder how long it'll be before I give a dang about a fighting game again? 

One book I got was Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 (2008), which I'd heard about because the author/artist David Petersen won an Eisner Award for it. It's been described as a blend of 'Lord of the Rings and Stuart Little' - though I'd remove the former and substitute the latter for the Secret of NIMH instead.

In the world of Mouse Guard, intelligent mice live in a medieval civilization. All of their towns are hidden underground or in logs because most of their enemies (or predators) are so much larger than they. In order to facilitate trade and unity among the towns of the mouse territories, they've created the Mouse Guard - a society of elite Ranger types that chart trails and keep peace in the wilderness. The plot focuses around some of these guards who discover a plan to undermine mouse society.

The high point of the book is certainly its artwork: Petersen decided to go with a 'realistic' style for his characters with minimal anthropomorphizing, which makes for a unique effect. The downside is that there's very little detail to distinguish the various mice, other than slightly different tones of fur, making it difficult to identify characters (also see below).

Unfortunately, Mouse Guard's low point is its short and utterly pedestrian narrative. A large part of the stories of graphic novels are told via the imagery; but even so, telling any tale beyond the most perfunctory requires a certain economy of action-per-panel. The best books have panels that feel as though they 'flow' into one another, and yet find a way to keep the action moving forward at a reasonable pace. It's not enough to take a movie still every 30 seconds and snap some text bubbles onto it. Some scenes move quickly from panel to panel, while other, important moments require panels that move with deliberate slowness.

This economy of narrative is lost in this book. Panels are large by most comic's standards, which is great for the art, but not so much for the story. Very little happens in each chapter - in fact very little happens in the book in general. Ultimately, what does take place is pretty 'blah'. I'm kind-of blown away that they created an entire role-playing game around the series given how uninspired the narrative is.

I would like to finish by touching on one particular artistic point that kills the very little attempt at narrative gravitas: Petersen's choice to not anthropomorphize his characters means that none of the mice have facial expressions. I realize that it's difficult if not impossible to criticize art in in any absolute or 'objective' sense, but not allowing one's characters to emote obviates a massive benefit to using a visual medium. This has the negative impact of making all of the characters seem generic, unidimensional, and hollow.

My exposure to graphic novels has been limited (but growing), and so I've often found myself somewhat puzzled by why some people love or hate one series versus another. I find the occasional books excellent based on writing/art quality or plot (Watchmen, Y: The Last Man, Preacher), whereas many others are entertaining but don't elicit much of an emotional response. Probably because I read reviews and buy books only based on recommendations, Mouseguard has been the first graphic novel that I really didn't like very much. Unfortunately, I won't be picking up further books in the series.

The game opens with the titular character, a famous horror novelist, arriving in a small town with his wife Alice. Alan's been having writer's block since his last best-selling novel and has taken a vacation on Alice's advice. Unfortunately, soon after arriving Alan witnesses his wife's drowning at the hands of an unknown assailant, after which he passes out. Inexplicably, he comes to one week later with no memory of the intervening time. As Alan struggles to find out what happened to his wife, he comes across pages of a mysterious manuscript that describe events before they actually happen to him in the real world. Many of these events are supernatural in nature, and the Alan soon realizes that the manuscript was written by him, though he has no memory of its creation. Shortly thereafter, a supernatural darkness takes over the town, and it becomes clear that this isn't all simply happening in his head.

In terms of everything but the terrible lip sync-ing, the game is quite gorgeous. It probably helps that the designers had so little diversity in their locales (see below).

It's an interesting and quite untested premise for a game. In addition, unlike many a review that I read, I also felt that it was satisfactorily 'wrapped up' as far as horror themes go - in the end, you do find out what is happening. But while the story and voice acting - particularly Alan's narration throughout the entire adventure - are by far the game's strongest features, this style of tale is also it's Achilles heel: How do you actually wrap a game around it?

I'm 100% certain that in the past, Alan Wake would've been an adventure game. I can think of classic titles like Gabriel Knight and Phantasmagoria from that genre that were in the horror mold. Point-and-click adventures catered well to aggressively linear cutscene-driven narratives of the style presented by Wake.

But this the present, and the dev team chose another route: Alan Wake is an action game. In between all of the story elements, Alan wades through endless forests fighting off people who have been 'consumed' by the supernatural darkness. Combat involves a somewhat clever concept whereby Alan must first burn-off the shadows shielding his foes by using a flashlight before he can exterminate them with firearms. I've read many praises about this system but I have to admit, I absolutely hated every second of combat in the game.

The battles just feel wrong and poorly balanced to me. From the very beginning of the game, fights are quite difficult. There are only a few different enemy types and even the basic ones require a lot of light, opening you up to attacks from their allies, followed by several bullets. Each and every battle begins in the exact same way: Enemies teleport in and surround you after which you have to scramble to some place where you can begin picking them off one by one. Your foes appear at specific 'spawn' locations that can sometimes, mercifully, be avoided, discouraging any type of exploration. It also doesn't help that your foes move faster than you do, making crowd control a huge chore. They're also able to hit you with ranged attacks from off screen, which is always fun1. It reminds me a lot of the combat in Grand Theft Auto in that it's functional, but at least in GTA's case, it was never meant to be the focus of the game. 

Yay, more trees! Honestly, the designers probably spent so much time designing trees that they should sell extras to other devs. Oh wait, nevermind. 

Sadly, the majority of Alan Wake's gameplay is this awful combat. Each of the six 'episodes' somehow contrives some way to get you back into the woods, where you fight the same three or four shadowy psychos over and over and over. There's no level design to speak of either: you just walk along mostly linear paths, struggling though waves of enemies and occasionally finding one of the game's excessive number of collectible doo-dads (yay replay value!). But aside from the occasional open-world style driving segment, every level pretty much feels exactly the same2. I just feel that if you're going to have hours and hours of combat in your game, it would do you well to add more variety to the mechanics or even enemy types.

The older that I've become, the more I've begun to fall into the camp that argues that linear stories don't belong in video games. The excessive number3 of action sequences in this game are completely disconnected from Alan's broader predicament. In fact, the story itself claims that the supernatural force is trying to 'capture' the writer, so why are all of its minions trying to kill him? This is a perfect example of the 'interrupted movie' style of game: You get the same effect from Alan Wake as you would by watching 15 minutes of The Exorcist, then playing 1 hour of Streets of Rage, followed by 15 more mins of the movie, and so on. Not integrating the story and game play together in any real meaningful fashion completely wastes the medium.

But hey, in my experience, many folks just love those boring, disconnected cutscenes, so I don't see them going away anytime soon.

1Wow a guy teleported in behind me and hit me in the back of the head with an axe! I didn't even know he was there!

2The game is so boringly monotonous in design that my girlfriend got tired of watching me play it. For nights on end she'd ask if I was still in the same place, or if the game was just one big forest that you fought through. The latter is more accurate.

3The game is a boring ~14 hours while it should have been a much tighter and more varied eight hours or so.

X-blades (2009; Southpeak Games) is just such a mediocre title. Most of its reviews were middling to poor, but a few critics spoke favorably about the game, comparing it to Devil May Cry and other character action titles. While nowhere in the league of the good DMC games, it does have some cool design ideas. Unfortunately, it's also brought down by oh so many rather obvious flaws.

As stated above, XB is a 'character action game', meaning that the action revolves around a versatile character (in this case the ninja/artifact hunter Ayumi) whose moves and abilities can be upgraded as the game progresses (think Ninja Gaiden, God of War, Devil May Cry, etc.). The comparison to DMC comes from Ayumi having swords, guns, and spells at her disposal, each of which can be chained together to dispatch the hordes upon hordes of foes that come her way.

A brief digression about the main character: Ayumi is the most over-sexualized character I've seen in a game in a long time. She literally isn't wearing any pants:

Most games endow their female characters with unrealistically large breasts. In the case of X-blades, the detail with which the developers drew Ayumi's posterior is umm... impressive? To be honest, her head, hips, and bust are somewhat creepily disproportionate. Image cred here.

You (get to) stare at her thong over the course of the entire game (which doesn't feel like pandering to 14 year olds or anything). I actually think that there should be more sex in games for people who want it - both because sex is a normal part of human existence and the inability to discuss the topic in deep character relationship games tends to make intimacy feel very juvenile (see many, many JRPGs). I'm also unopposed to having attractive characters in games - there are certainly enough examples of those in both sexes. What's somewhat off-putting is when a bunch of guys decide to make a heroine who's fighting thousands of monsters in her underwear.

Anyway, the combat system is the game's best feature. It's fast and fluid and features a lot of different abilities and skills that must be used in combinations to defeat a vast number of opponents. Switching in and out abilities among the 4 quick-buttons is a bit of a chore, but worth it given the diversity. Sadly though, the first major problem with the title is that the developers throw so many foes at you at once that what starts off as a very tactical, skill-based combat system eventually turns into either a frantic button masher, or a rote checklist of using the same moves over and over (stun the crowd, take out fliers with your guns, switch to magic to kill the now unfrozen foes, repeat).

It's clear for many reasons that the devs ran out of development time and vastly increased the number and strength of foes in order to draw out what is ultimately a fairly short experience. Level design is extremely simple, featuring around a dozen arenas made up of one type of area (a ruined castle), which you will visit a couple of times each (there's little to do between arenas except find and collect upgrades). The worst aspect of lack of development time is certainly the story, which is completely nonsensical. I couldn't describe what happened other than the main character releasing a curse from which she has to free herself. One of the two other characters that you meet and interact with (in this case only once) suddenly becomes a love(?) interest towards the end of the game with no explanation. Obviously something got cut out in between. (Also incidentally, the English voice acting is so nerve-grating and terrible that I played through the entire title in French).

The development team, Gaijin Games of Russia, is obviously quite talented as the character designs are great (sexual innuendo aside) as are the graphics. The lighting effects in particular are quite impressive, and get shown off a lot in the dark, shadowed environments. Image cred here. 

It's often more disappointing to play a title that's got highs and lows as compared to something that's just plain bad. The combat and upgrade mechanics of X-blades are pretty good and were enough to keep me playing. On the other hand, the lack of environment variety and anythin to do other other than fight in the game are a major drag. 

I need to end by pointing out one other heinous flaw that I've seen a few times in games and have never understood. In order to get the 'proper' ending to XB (the 'bad' ending is only a few seconds long and is awful), you must refrain from putting ANY points into a particular set of abilities from the very beginning of the game. Nothing warns you of this - you just have to somehow 'know' not to touch one part of the skill tree. If you do, getting the good ending will require a complete restart. Who thought that this was a good idea? Why do developers do things like this? I don't feel the urge to play their game again - in fact, the only thing I feel is being cheated out of a complete experience.

These 'clones' have always been the series' curse. A lot of companies have had vague notions about what aspects of Diablo lead to its success: The constant gaining of 'loot', the randomized dungeons, the customizable characters, etc. As far as I'm concerned, the real 'secret' to Blizzard's success came from the very delicate balance of all of these factors - plus high production values, a great atmosphere, and awesomely unique music. Too much or too little loot makes the game tedious or boring, too many skills and customizable abilities leads to choice paralysis, low production values create a less-than-compelling play experience, etc. These complaints could be levelled at any number of genres, but the somewhat simplified (click, click, click) gameplay of Diablo and its clones seem to expose such faults in a glaring fashion - and there have been oh so many clones2.

After a dozen years of absence, Blizzard finally decided to release the third installment, and playing it has coalesced my feelings about the franchise such that I understand why I can enjoy this company's efforts while being mind-numbingly bored when playing so many others.

Yes the gameplay remains a click-fest and yes the primary drive behind playing is watching better and more powerful equipment drop from slain foes. But Blizzard appears to have tested and refined the formula such that the frequency of the upgrades makes continued play incredibly addictive. Furthermore, at least as compared to D2, individual areas are smaller and more varied, so you constantly feel as though you're making progress. The game is also gorgeous and cinematic, so each weapon, piece of armor, or ability that you use looks cool and incentivizes you to further develop your character(s).

The different classes, Monk, Barbarian, Wizard, etc. all look really cool and unique (although the Barbarian female may be a bit... huge). Compared to the previous titles, much more of your equipment is uniquely represented on your character, so there's a constant aesthetic drive to seek out new sweet looking loot.

While the base gameplay may be quite conserved from previous entries, character development has been simplified considerably: you no longer distribute stat points and have access to all abilities given to your class. You simply swap them in and out as needed. While this reduces the degree of differentiation among players, it fixes one  of the major issues underlying D2: there were too many useless abilities while others were 'obvious' bests. It also prevents you from creating a 'gimped' character - you can't mess up. I'd personally prefer having a few meaningful choices rather than many useless ones.

While the changes to character creation were a minor controversy, a very controversial aspect to D3 is its requirement that you have a constant internet connection to play - even in the single-player mode. Admitedly, the title is so multiplayer-focused that I can understand this choice: There's no distinction between offline and online characters, and there's an ever-present online auction house where players can buy and sell sweet loot. However, the arrangement does pose some odd peculiarities. For one, you can experience server lag in single-player. It doesn't happen often, but it's odd. In addition, whenever the servers go down for maintenance, you can't play the game at all. This has already happened to me once in the couple of weeks that I've had with the title, which isn't fun. 

Everything about D3 oozes with that typical Blizzard gorgeousness. The company's also got a reputation for making games that are highly scalable - I can play it on my MacBook (with settings turned low) or my 2 year old Windows PC (at 1080p with settings on max).

As I've alluded to above (as somewhat in previous posts), the loot-based Diablo-style of game hasn't always been my thing. I felt that even Diablo 2 relied too much on exploiting player's OCD tendencies to make a compelling game rather than actually putting any substance into the experience (I feel quite strongly that this is one of the major failings of Torchlight, a game that many people evangelize. Take away the OCD hunt for loot, and you're left with a very boring game). But in D3, Blizzard's really crafted a much richer experience - there's a lot of narative for people who want that, visual flair for those who like graphics, loot for the OCD in all of us, and co-op multiplayer for teaming up with friends. It has some failings, such as having to beat the game once to unlock a reasonable challenge in single player, but they didn't detract from my enjoyment.

If nothing else, Diablo 3 reveals how sub-par many of the genre's titles have been, which, if we're really lucky, will push other companies to improve their own mediocre efforts.   

1Yes, yes, previous games had done this - Neverwinter Nights (1991), among others - but they tended to be very niche and buried behind pay-to-play systems.

2I highly reccomend Dungeons & Desktops to anyone who's interested in PC RPGs. The author has a great chronicle of the many, many Diablo clones to grace the PC. This doesn't begin to cover the number of such games that graced consoles.

On the game soundtrack tip, I just wanted to point interested folks to a blog, http://gamemusic.wordpress.com/. The maintainer of said blog both discusses good commercially available game soundtracks, and also curates a list of freely available sountracks - mostly to classic PC games.

There are some real gems from a bygone era here: Homeworld, Daggerfall, System Shock 2, etc. Interestingly, it seems that many of these tracks were either made freely available by now defunct companies, or the composers retained the rights to the music and released it later themselves (some of the albums are actually enhanced or scored beyond the original say MIDI format). Check it out!

RoLW is quite fascinating if for no other reason than historical interest. It's very similar to a later, much more popular game called Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on PS2 (2001; Snowblind Studios) though it incorporates some gameplay elements that are superior in many ways than its spiritual successors. (Note that while both games came out in the same year in North America, I believe that Lodoss War came out two years earlier in Japan).   

One way in which RoLW is substantially inferior to later, similar action RPGs is in its graphics, which really are quite abysmal. I've heard from retro podcasts that many Japanese developers were taken by surprise in the move to 3D graphics - some studios stubbornly refused to switch, producing 2D games for many years while others attempted rather poor forays into 3D and ended up closing their doors.

Lodoss War looks only slightly better than a PS1 game because of the noticeably crisper polygons. The devs would have been so much better off by stylizing the characters rather than going for 'realistic' proportions. Notice the complete lack of shadows on anything; something I'm finding quite common on Dreamcast games. I can't take my own screens, so this one's from Gamespot (here).

Neverland was clearly unprepared for the transition to 3D: character models are flat, simple barely shaded polygons. While all equipment is technically represented on the character, it doesn't really matter as this essentially translates into some smudge becoming a different colored smudge. Animations are also laughably bad: characters run as though they're skating around, with nary a bob or swagger. It's easy to chalk this up to RoLW being an old game, but there are many N64 titles that looked a lot better than this.

If one can overcome the horrible eyesore there's quite a bit to like about Lodoss. For starters, the game features a neat weapon/armor upgrade system that takes the place of the 'loot' so common in other Diablo-esque clones. On top of allowing quite a bit of variety in terms of play style and customization, the key breakthrough in the system is that you can easily transfer any upgrades placed onto an item to any other item of the same type. Furthermore, all upgrades 'stack' without a limit on the number of upgrades other than their rising cost. A common problem in Diablo-type games is the fear of 'wasting' upgrades on equipment that may quickly become obsolete.

In RoLW's case, you're actually just carrying stats and skills forward onto each new piece of equipment such that by a few hours in, your stuff is pretty crazy 'epic'. This also has the benefit of allowing players to experiment with different upgrade paths (eg., boosting critical hit chances, damage, weapon speed, etc.) with very little consequence. (I should also note that a recent rather under-appreciated title, Two Worlds II, also implemented a somewhat similar consequence-free upgrade system that made experimenting pretty awesome - why don't more games do this?).

Note the 'quick' item bar on the right side of the screen. It's pretty useful and easy to cycle through, even if it's typically only filled with green healing potions. Screenshot from here.

Also, it's somewhat mind-blowing to me that Lodoss War lets you save almost anywhere (the only exceptions are boss battles). At any time you can town portal home, save, and when you load, the portal is still there waiting to take you back into the fray. This comes at the price that savegames chew up just under 1/3 of a memory card, but it's rather shocking that a very early game in what became a rather popular genre2 offered an awesome feature that none of its successors, even on hardware with HDDs, did.

Among its other neat features are an excellent automap, and a host of optional dungeons and content that seem interesting even if they're only there to pad out the experience somewhat. I guess I should mention that in typical Diablo fashion, the story is near non-existent - basically you've been revived from the dead to halt the ressurection of a dark Goddess. It's a bit of a departure from the theme of the original cartoon (which a friend loaned me when I was 16), but you do meet and team up with some of its main characters. These NPC sections are actually quite fun, as your helpers are powerful, and generally allow you to be more reckless than you can be solo.

While it's clear that RoLW is a product of its era, the number forward-thinking elements it incoporated into its design made it quite easy for me to overlook its general ugliness. The appeal of such a title, being tied to a classic cartoon, would have made it niche no matter what, yet it's unfortunate that more games of the genre weren't influenced by its efforts. It certainly deserves a look from anyoen who's into loot games or classic RPGs in general.

1For all I know, the game could be based on the novel/comic book series, but I'm not up on that sort of stuff.

2'Rather popular' was sarcastic. After Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance was a smash success, we got such titles as: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II (2003), Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes (2003), Champions of Norrath (2004), Xmen Legends (2004), Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004), The Bard's Tale (2004), Champions: Return to Arms (2005), Xmen Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (2005), Marvel Ultimate Alliance (2006), Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (2009), Deathspank (2010) and sequels, and Bastion (2011). On top of that, we have many games that are only slight variants of the above model including Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003), Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (2004), and Too Human (2008) among what I'm sure are many others. The point I'm trying to make here is that I don't hear enough people talk about what an INCREDIBLY PLAYED OUT GENRE these boring hack-and-slash, loot-based RPGs have been. Please come out with something with the semblence of originality!!!