Final Fantasy Type-0 HD

I play quite a lot of Square Enix’s remakes. I still need to pour more hours into both Kingdom Hearts updated versions and I’ll almost certainly get the updates for Final Fantasy VII and XII. But this one was not only a disappointment, but by far the game I’ve enjoyed least in the Final Fantasy series. Yes, less than XIII or XIII-2.

I probably should have researched the game a little more before I bought it. I didn’t really know anything about it other than that it had an extremely pretty protagonist and was set in the Fabula Nova Crystallis universe. Because, you know, after FFXIII everyone just loves all that vague and poorly-explained lore about l’Cie and Black Tortoise Crystals. Not satisfied with how vague and unnecessarily complex this world is, the game infodumps a complex political situation about warring nations on you, introduces artificially-created life forms in an academy where if a person dies, all memories of them are erased from the minds of those who knew them and a backstory about the events your playing having been repeated millions of times already that you have to trawl through text entries in a library book to uncover.

All this I could forgive if it had framed a good game that was fun to play and full of engaging characters on an interesting journey. Sadly, the failure of these elements are where the game really became my least favourite in the entire series.

First, the game was horribly clunky and at no point became fun as a gaming experience. This may have been a fairly decent game for the PSP, but contained many of the drawbacks of Crisis Core without the advantages of a compelling atmosphere and engaging characters. The limitations of the system mean the main structure of the game is awful – the action parts are very repetitive and linear fights occasionally mixed up with some vaguely more strategic segments in the world map, but far worse is the way the game is divided into missions. This means that between combat sections, you are in a very basic school with a clunky portal teleporting you to different locations, where you can complete pointless and often very long-winded tasks for very little advantage and next to no character development. Things like the characters’ running animations and the straight edges of many locations betray the simplicity of the source, and the lazy update means not only have only textures been updated rather than entire models – resulting in very jagged or simplistic vehicles and buildings – but several minor characters have only very lazily been updated. It’s embarrassing when some old councilwoman comes to see the main characters – who have actually been updated to look current-gen – and she looks like she’s arrived from the wrong game altogether.  

The game design is also poor. Apparently by intention, you can pick members for your team that make it impossible for you to complete some missions. For example, you can choose characters who have no long-range attacks for missions that require them, or not equip any magic and go into a restricted section that automatically kills you for using any physical attacks. And then you have to go back to a save point ages before. Apparently the idea is to become familiar with your team, but it’s absurd not to even forewarn you that some choices make the game impossible. This isn’t what playing very difficult old games was like: back then, you knew you had to develop skills to win. Here, skill is not involved.

The balance is also terrible. I levelled characters evenly for a while, but then just decided to train only Cater, and she soon stomped everyone and the game was stupidly easy – unless you are surprised by a level 99 monster on the map, in which case you just have to watch your character die. Not once did I find a boss battle a satisfying challenge.

There is also an option to start the game with all enemies 30 levels above you, which I chose and regretted because it meant I kept dying in one hit and had to spend ages killing even basic enemies. There’s giving players a challenge, and then there’s just making them endure tedium until they finally match the enemy levels, at which point the difficulty ends up the same as it would have been normally in any case.

So the game wasn’t fun and the world-building was complex and confusing. How about the overall story? Unfortunately it’s clumsy too, unfolds in a very dull manner and keeps every character at arm’s length. There’s very little to find interesting in the battles between the armies of different nations or the self-sacrifice of some major players, none of whom are actually interesting. There’s really no reason to care who becomes ‘Agito’ in a quest for some vague extra powers, or stopping the incredibly uninteresting Cid. And the way that the story is delivered not through surprises and quests and discoveries, but dumped on you like clockwork after each mission is a pain. Especially since leading up to the mission has been the extremely boring school day where you desperately look around for ways to pass the time, and hope chocobo breeding will actually become interesting at some point (it doesn’t, even if the babies are incredibly cute).

Which only leaves the main characters of Class 0. Twelve of them are artificially-created warriors with impressive fighting prowess and the ability to resist magic jammers and be brought back to life if they fall in battle. In a naming scheme that wasn’t even cool when Gundam Wing did it, they each have a name based on a number, or more specifically a playing card. Thus, you have names like Cinque and Trey, plus Ace, Jack, Queen and King – though inexplicably no number 10. Essentially, they are Organisation XIII, but instead of having clichéd bad-guy personalities they have clichéd anime high school character personalities (there’s the rough-speaking one, the know-it-all one, the Iinchou, the class clown, the air-head etc etc), and instead of looking flamboyant and distinct, they all look like very pretty pop stars with amazing hair. Added to this are the incredibly uninteresting Machina and Rem. Machina is basically Riku, embracing his dark side for the power to protect others, and Rem is basically a plot device who – cough! cough! – has an incurable disease slowly killing her but that she can keep secret.

The fact they’re almost aggressively a collection of stock characters, as well as not having any real past, makes them very hard to identify with or like. They’re put on a pedestal from the start, but it doesn’t make them insecure or vulnerable or anything else that might humanise them. They just plod through their missions and spout occasional lines that keep their personalities completely on the straight and narrow. And though most of the weapons are what you’d expect – guns and swords and spears – when you get to the flute and the mace and the main character with zappy playing cards, it feels a bit desperate. And I felt bad for poor Eight, the small cute one with only his fists to use.

I did start to like them – at the very, very end in the one scene where they actually show some development. But that was in the ending sequence and far too late. And yes, I’ll happily concede that they’re gorgeous and I love the aesthetic Square have developed of incredibly pretty characters who look like the prettiest biracial kids you ever could see with lovely floppy hair. But I wish what they had done with them had made them likeable and interesting. Instead, the only thing I can say was a success here was the designs of this specific group in this game – not overall character design. In all other aspects, I felt that Type-0 fell badly short, and most assuredly had no place being on a current-gen console. 

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy

Not counting the alternate-world Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright, this game is the last in the Professor Layton series that has so far been released. It’s also the last in the ambitious prequel series, which also includes the Eternal Diva film and follows the impact of the uncovering of various sites built by the Azran, an ancient and technologically advanced race reminiscent of how the people of Mu are often depicted in Japanese media.

Though it seems a little odd that none of the monumental, world-shaking events of this game are referenced by Luke and Layton in the games that chronologically follow it, and the people close to the characters’ hearts aren’t so much as mentioned again, such is the nature of prequels and I don’t have any real complaints about that. There are some fun things done here, too, like the frequent appearance of Inspector Chelmey as a background figure, usually facing away from the camera, off on a grand tour with his wife.

The Azran Legacy was certainly my favourite of the series on the 3DS. While the polygonal characters still lack the charm of the hand-drawn sprites, they’re rather better-done and closer to the original than in Miracle Mask. The interface was a little less clunky and the animations were a little more versatile. On the downside, the game had by far the least fun collection of minigames of the entire series – none of the three were remotely enjoyable, being an ugly nut-rolling game, a frustrating and dull flower-blooming game and a rather arbitrary and charmless dress-up game. There’s also a small Streetpass game that was largely about memorizing the locations of random things, but in effect was mostly about waiting for the nice people who’d set challenges that could be completed on one or two screens.

But the game itself is what matters, and it was an entertaining and fun one. Unlike the other games, it doesn’t restrict its location, but takes place in multiple countries around the world, all of which are very cliche in the most charming way. It starts in an oddly slow and dull way, unlike the grand goings-on that open Miracle Mask, but after the prologue in a frozen town and a rather dismal fishing village are out of the way (plus another visit to London), the entertainment level goes up drastically and is sustained better than any of the previous games through variety.

The games have always showed a fun, highly romanticised view of England, but this time Layton, Luke and Emmy travel the world – and the worlds they visit are all just as fanciful and over-the-top. There’s a wonderfully classic Western town full of cowboys, where the local problems are sadly solved thanks in large part to Luke’s talking-to-animals magic powers, one of the elements of this series I like the least. There’s a hidden village in a rainforest, where the funny-looking mushroom-haired denizens are pointedly light-skinned. There’s a funny creepy rural town in thrall to the local priest and archaic traditions, a slightly Wicker Man­­-esque community I honestly didn’t expect from Professor Layton. There’s a sunny vaguely Spanish resort town packed with touristy goods. And quite interestingly, there’s a pseudo-Arab town with headscarves and turbans aplenty.

This time, more than a mystery, there’s a straightforward adventure with a shadowy, heavily-armed organization competing with our heroes on a collection quest. Of course, the organization is largely represented by a manzai comedy duo who are completely incompetent, because after all if a small army with machine guns just cornered our heroes there wouldn’t be much of a story. Things never feel very high-stakes, but then, the usual charm of Layton games is that they’re quite restful.

At the end, things do come to a head and there are such dramatic episodes as a fellow scientist seemingly getting shot in the arm and Layton hang-gliding off the top of a huge building, but what really makes the story satisfy is an extended sequence of twists. I was feeling clever for figuring some of them out – but the sheer profusion of them meant I was surprised! For example, I saw the truth behind Sycamore coming from the start, but didn’t expect the truth behind Descolé. The flashback of the defining moment in his life was cliché but satisfying. I also didn’t see Emmy’s decisions coming, nor the origins of Bronev, even if I knew what to expect with Aurora. Oh, there’s something that’s always satisfying about representatives of an ancient, mysterious civilization speaking in a lilting Irish brogue.

In terms of the puzzles, nothing felt very innovative here, but there were some very fun ones to solve and nothing was ever too hard, except of course the usual absurd (optional) final hidden puzzles.

I don’t know how much more Layton we’re going to see. I don’t know if most of Level-5’s resources are now going to be diverted to the monstrously popular Youkai Watch series – pun intended. But I’ll certainly be having fun with Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright and hoping for plenty more to come. 

Kingdom Hearts II.5: Kingdom Hearts II

I haven’t written about the HD remake of Chain of Memories yet because...well, it got very dull trying to get the platinum, and when the sequel came out, that’s what I wanted to play. I haven’t stormed through Kingdom Hearts 2 quite like I thought I would, but in the last couple of weeks I got back to it, and yesterday I got the platinum trophy. Happily, unlike Chain of Memories, this can all be done in one play-through, as the difficulty trophies stack. And let’s face it, I wouldn’t feel satisfied only beating the tough hidden bosses on an easier mode.

I draw the line at doing it with zero experience points, though. That’s not a challenge I need to go through!

I have a degree of ambivalence towards KH2. Until the true sequel comes out, it’s the best-looking of the games, and despite the over-reliance on ‘reaction commands’, it’s got the most enjoyable gameplay. Yes, at easier difficulties you can just mash the attack button and have very few problems, but that’s not going to get you far in critical mode, especially with the likes of data Xemnas or the Lingering Will, both of whom were vastly harder than the relatively easy Sephiroth in this game.

This game is also where Sora goes from adorable, pudgy little fella to an attractive adolescent who can be taken much more seriously. Well, when he’s not singing. Sora’s still childlike in that classic shounen-protagonist mode, but I find him emotionally believable and engaging. In this game, he actually suffers in several ways, and it makes me believe in him.

But KH2 suffers from having a story that feels inconsequential, stays too shallow morally and gets downright messy. This was the objection I had when I finished the game on the PS2, which must have been about ten years ago now (reposted here). It’s unfortunate that Chain of Memories introduces Organization XIII but doesn’t finish them, because they come to dominate this game and the fact is that they’re neither very interesting nor very threatening.

I remember that I hadn’t played CoM the first time I played through this game, and not only is that a bad idea in terms of understanding the plot, it also means that the first fight with an Organization member is against Demyx. And when a plot tries to build up a malevolent and powerful organization Sora will have to truly struggle to defeat, when their battle prowess is first represented by goddamn Demyx, you know there are problems – even if he does make it clear he’s not a fighter. Organization XIII never feel like a tangible threat, absurdly decide to take on Sora one by one, and though there’s an attempt to give them some depth, it never really works. It’s quite clever that Xemnas has been using Sora as a heart harvesting machine, giving him a moment to question whether he’s doing the right thing, but his ultimate plot is vague and never even comes close to fruition. He wants to make an imitation Kingdom Hearts, suggesting that if he does, the nobodies will regain what they feel they have lost, but actually he wants to use it to become godlike, probably destroying the universe to remake it as he sees fit. But he never gets very close to this, with Ansem the Wise sabotaging things, and then tries to merge with his false Kingdom Hearts anyway, becoming only powerful enough to be a typical big blobby final boss who can be defeated by being hit a lot. As the antagonists’ plot is so vague and never becomes a tangible threat, the whole overarching story becomes weak.

We also have to deal with the bland and overlong prologue, where the player has to control Roxas and do very boring things in Twilight Town. Roxas unfortunately is not very engaging or likeable, especially compared with Sora, being rather less concerned with other people and having to be made sympathetic with artificial angst – when looked at from a bit of a distance, the things DiZ does to Roxas in the simulation are totally unnecessary and meaningless, other than to be cruel.

I have to say that I felt more charitable to Axel on this playthrough. He puts up an irritating, cocky front, but he is suffering, unlike the others probably actually does regain something of his heart through contact with Roxas, and does act nobly towards the end. I don’t think he was redeemed, but I didn’t find him wholly objectionable this time.

But of course he brings a level of moral complication to the concept of Nobodies. Sora is taught that they are not real people, cannot feel and should not exist. Thus, his killing of the various members who attack him does not affect him like killing a person – though the way he talks (mistakenly) about taking care of Maleficent is just a little psychopathic. But Axel shows that these nobodies have the potential to be drawn back towards becoming whole people, even if in very limited circumstances. That potential surely changes the morality of snuffing out their existences, even when attacked. But Sora – as with his parents back home who we hear nothing about in this game – doesn’t even consider that.

The mess that is the story of the Nobodies isn’t done yet, though it’s really their ‘Somebodies’ that are looking to be foregrounded a little more. It looks like we’re to have an Organization made up of different forms of Xehanort, but Lea has joined the fold (please stay away from Ventus, Lea) and I don’t think we’ve seen quite the end of Braig, who was made much more interesting with his expanded role in Birth By Sleep. But the truth is, the Organization made the plot far sloppier and far less interesting than it should have been, and I suspect all the series’ notorious problems with complexity of plot derive from half-baked ideas being put into awesome-looking secret endings and portable spin-offs.

Sora’s story, however, certainly kept me engaged. There are some well-chosen new Disney worlds, like Mulan’s Land of Dragons and the rather brilliant one based on 1920s black-and-white short cartoons. The Tron world works as a bit of variety, but I have to say that the Pirates of the Caribbean world is a bit jarring. This playthrough reminded me how clunky the Lion King world is, too – I love The Lion King and am very happy it got included, especially with adorable cub Sora, but it’s just not very well-done. The attempts to recreate scenes from the film are awkwardly mechanical in a way the rest of the game isn’t, and the way the animals’ jaws just flap looks much worse than when humanoid characters are talking – or even the Disney mascot characters. Plus even if they managed to get Ernie Sabella and even James Earl Jones reprising their roles, the lack of Jeremy Irons and Matthew Broderick really hurts the English version.

I also will not accept that the writing is not intentionally homoerotic. Only Dream Drop Distance is more obvious. In the first game, Sora genuinely seems to have puppy-love affection for Kairi. But here, as famously pointed out by VG Cats, his reaction to Kairi is almost dismissive while being reunited with Riku is presented with far more significance. Yes, he knows Kairi is safe whereas it’s not clear with Riku, but he also has faith in Riku’s ability to take care of himself – yet still ends up on his knees pouring out his heart – appropriately enough. At every point, he seems to have far more emotional investment in what is happening with Riku, and treats Kairi almost cursorily.

As a game, though, I think this one is the best-designed yet, and the most fun to play. Birth By Sleep would be a very strong contender if not for Shoot Lock being almost comically overpowered for most of the game, and Dream Drop Distance is ruined by the ‘free flow’ mechanics, which made it far too easy. Though some were very frustrating (goddamn data Xaldin), I found the extra boss challenges of this game a lot of fun to get through and puzzle out – as well as the silly Mushroom XIII who added a bit of extra flavour to the final mix. I’m quite proud that I didn’t beat Lingering Will or Data Xemnas in the way that seems to be common on Youtube: for Lingering Will I absolutely relied on Stitch, and abused Limit Form as much as Session for Data Xemnas. The fights were challenging without seeming impossible, as opposed to the Vanitas Remnant who gets beaten by relying on gimmicks.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is a great story with great characters and worlds slightly let down by the main story being pretty lacklustre. And that same story will affect Kingdom Hearts 3. Will that game be able to build on the convoluted and overwrought backstory to tell a satisfying tale? It’s been a very long time coming, so I certainly hope so. And one thing’s for sure, I’m in this series for the long haul, and very much enjoying it. Next: watching the silly Re:Coded cutscenes in HD as I play through Birth By Sleep again – which is by far my favourite in the series in story terms. 

Five Nights at Freddy’s

Well, in the wee small hours of this morning – Hallowe’en, of course – I watched the trailers for the fun-looking Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and decided to do the famous 4/20 mode, where the AI of all the animatronics is set to maximum. I figured out a working pattern – catching Freddy right outside your door and keeping him there, then checking on Foxy every time Chica comes so you can shut the door on her and Freddy at the same time, going quickly enough not to let Bonnie in – so got my third star.

As just about everyone knows by now, FNAF is a jump-scare game. You play a security employee who is stuck in an office with limited power while four (well, strictly five) creepy animatronic puppets stalk through the corridors. If they catch you, they will forcibly cram you into a puppet suit...only the puppet suits already have animatronic parts in them, so that wouldn’t end very well for you. You can catch them by shutting doors on them, but this takes power, and you only have a limited supply so must balance being vulnerable with being able to last the night.

Now, I don’t care much for scary games, which aren’t exactly my sort of entertainment. Creepiness hasn’t got to me since I was very small and playing The 7^th Guest, which should totally get a remake – that has nothing to do with that terrible 7^th Guest 3 failed kickstarter a year ago today. As an adult, I mostly find creepy games either very daft or enjoyable completely separate from their supposedly creepy parts.

And it was in the latter camp that FNAF fell. I bought the game primarily to watch others play – and it succeeded nicely in that respect, with the friends who had big silly reactions to the scares still making me laugh when I think back to them. But for my part, it got no more out of me than a little jump. But that’s fine. After all, the most well-remembered part of Resident Evil hinged on just such a moment, with dogs smashing through windows.

Besides, the jump-scares aren’t what makes FNAF a scary game. That’s the pay-off, but really it’s about the tension on the higher levels, where you know several enemies are coming to get you and dealing with any one of them stands in the way of dealing with the others. The sound effects build a good atmosphere, and the game is very good at building then releasing tension – once you get past the first couple of nights where the game relies on fear of the unknown. The jump scares ultimately end up irrelevant, nothing but punishment. But for the easily-scared, there’s much more to be enjoyed than just big creepy things jumping out. In other words, the journey ends up better than the destination.

But for all I bought FNAF for the jump-scare gimmick to watch others play, I ended up really enjoying it as a challenging strategy game. It is incredibly simple, and part of the aforementioned tension comes from the fact that you can’t move, you can’t fight back, your defences are highly limited, and the best situation you can be in is doing nothing.

The real fun of it, of course, comes right at the end – the fifth, sixth and custom max-difficulty levels. That’s where you’re not sitting tensely hoping things don’t pop out. You are constantly having to balance controlling four AI programs to win a game. It’s not scary, and you will know when you lose and why, with only Foxy having any capacity for surprising you with a jump scare (and he looks a whole lot less alarming when he appears than the others). The genius of the game is that two enemies must constantly be checked on with the lights, one must be checked on with the camera as much as possible, and one must be looked at occasionally and may just sprint towards your office if you don’t get the chance to check up on him – and you only just have enough power to stop this on the 4/20 mode. I don’t care if arrogant gamers want to call the game gimmicky or boring: the last levels are, plain and simple, a fun and challenging game that I am willing to bet next to none of those who censure the game have beaten. Effectively, most of the people who dismiss it have played the tutorial and decided they beat the game on expert mode.

A few other things make the game impressive. Obviously, there’s the fact it’s a small-scale indie game that one guy made on his own. Then the way the fandom has become so large and so prolific – the super-cutesy fanart being my favourite. There’s the numerous over-the-top theories based on the sparse backstory about five murdered kids, and then there’s the excitement around the sequel.

Definitely worth the meagre price and an enjoyable challenge. And I really wanna go see the creepy animatronics at a Chuck-e-Cheese now! 

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

With the switch to the far more powerful 3DS, sadly I think that the Professor Layton series lost much of its charm. Though the story was relatively strong, I enjoyed playing through Miracle Mask far less than any of the previous titles. Firstly, the attempt to replicate the eccentric sprites in polygons doesn’t work too well, and they simply look a bit clunky and unpleasant compared with their hand-drawn counterparts. Secondly, the desire to use the big top screen for the main action means a rather disjointed control system where the bottom screen is used to control a magnifying glass on the top screen. With an additional press required to bring up that magnifying glass, and then the slight difference in screen sizes meaning precision is often not quite there. Being able to simply tap on the screen where you want to inspect feels so much better – and the simplicity meant the game was much more snappy and fun to play.

Which is a shame, because the actual gameplay part – that is to day, the puzzles themselves – improved in presentation terms. It’s just that the main draw of Layton games are always the story that drives the player from puzzle to puzzle. The story itself is also a good one – after the last game covered Luke’s past, now we have a follow-up that through flashbacks shows us Layton’s. And it’s a lot of fun. It kicks off with Layton fencing his friend Randall (épée of course – he’s a gentleman!), and we soon find out that at this stage, the Professor is a decidedly un-academic young rebel with a big ole head of hair. He and Randall go on an adventure, exploring old ruins, and inevitably disaster strikes and sets up the modern-day story. So we have the fun of a mystery with a masked man (not very mysterious), the fun of Layton reuniting with childhood acquaintances – some of whom are a little awkward with him – and a kind of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien scenario only in the end prizing loyalty that goes almost ad absurdum.

All this takes place in the desert of the UK, which as I know from Million Arthur is in the midlands.  

Fun while the set-up was, though, the game itself was a bit of a grind, especially in what should have been the exciting section of exploring the ruins. The game threw away most of its best gimmicks – like a horse-racing minigame – right at the start and while the bunny mini-game was adorable, getting things wrong on it meant having to watch a whole sequence again and the other mini-games were very tedious. The robot one was both ugly and absolutely no fun. I ended up resorting to a guide to finish the absurd hidden puzzles for that one, too – but I could really have just left them.

 Things end fairly neatly for the story, but ultimately there’s a cliffhanger, and it feels slightly cheap how the good guys just don’t mention Descole again after he slips off.

I’ll certainly be playing the other Layton games, but this one was the first one that was really a disappointment. I hope they’ve refined things for the next one. 

Spec Ops: The Line

I’ve played some terrible games in my time. Honestly and truly, this wasn’t one of them. But it was perhaps the game I’ve enjoyed playing the least. I’ve resented playing a game before, but never before have I had a game resent me playing.

When setting out at the beginning, I didn’t know why a friend had lent me this game (or, in fact, lent me someone else’s copy...!) – this isn’t the kind of game I play. I don’t like macho war games. I’ve never played Call of Duty or Medal of Honor or any of their ilk. I just don’t engage with the characters or find them fun. So what was I doing here?

About halfway through, I got it. This is a military video game that plays with the concept of military video games. I’d expressed admiration for Bioshock and how it played with free will and being impelled to do something because that’s the only way to continue a game, and something similar happens here. But the way this game does it is incredibly irritating, frustrating and smug. First, it pretends you actually have a choice, leading me to waste far too much time attempting an impossible different choice for Walker. But secondly, after it becomes completely foregrounded that you’re playing a game whose main character made the wrong choice and backed the psycho who decided the best course of action was to kill everyone, the game begins beating you over the head with it to a ridiculous degree. ‘Do you feel like a hero yet?’ it asks you in the loading screen, smugness dripping from the words. ‘If you were a better person you wouldn’t be here.’ The only way to win at this game is not to play it. Which is absurd, because having made a purchase (or borrowing from someone who has!) the last thing I want is for game writers to start taunting me for engaging with their product.

This isn’t dark subversion of expectations. I don’t think I’d feel it to be even had I been a big fan of these games anyway. I don’t feel I need a morality lesson from a game, on how I need to stop to think whether killing men made of polygons is right, even if they’re meant to be MURRICANS. I don’t feel I need to feel terrible about having played through a pre-set scenario just because it turns out destructive. When Bioshock did it, I was amused because while I felt manipulated, it was a clever twist and once revealed, it was left to one side. Here, I felt manipulated but it was signposted far too heavily (‘There’s always a choice!’) and once it was revealed I was beaten over the head with it for the rest of the game.

And that’s not even mentioning how completely ridiculous it is that Walker has been hallucinating all the way through.

The story is a pretty snappy one. Three elite soldiers are sent to look for survivors in Dubai after it is devastated by massive sandstorms, a previous entire battalion sent there having vanished. When they arrive, they find that this battalion has taken over the remains of the city, apparently following a coup – and the CIA are now in conflict with them. After having to fight for their lives, Captain Walker and his two men Lt. Walker and Staff Sgt Lugo decide they need to take down this dug-in militia. Which, as I’ve already spoiled, turns out to be incredibly destructive.

The story overall isn’t terrible, other than the smugness towards the end – but I was also made to cringe a lot by how the whole thing is supposed to be a tribute to Heart of Darkness, culminating slightly embarrassingly in the Kurtz substitute being called ‘Konrad’. While darker than many such games, of course, you get to do all sorts of fun things like fire a minigun from a helicopter, shoot everything from RPGs to shotguns and zipline between huge Dubai skyscrapers.

Graphically, it is also good, with locations lovingly rendered. Unfortunately, the characters themselves are a little lacking in this department, especially in the way they move, which is clunky.

All the game’s flaws could have been forgiven if it were really good. If it had been solid fun to play, that would have come first. Unfortunately, it’s pretty terrible. The very basics are fine – the general aiming and shooting is good, the variety of weapons is admirable and the convenient way the terrain always gives you somewhere to hide is good. Unfortunately, there are certain things that ruin it. First, the awful mechanic for taking cover, which is absolutely crucial. I played on the hardest setting available at the start, and if you don’t take cover you die in seconds – and have to suffer looong loading times to respawn, which is something that definitely shouldn’t happen anyway. Unfortunately, once you take cover things get incredibly clunky – getting up again to escape from a grenade takes too long and often you end up facing the wrong way. The prompt to swap from one piece of cover to another often just doesn’t show up. If you’re running for cover from a heavy (a rather absurd idea in and of themselves), woe betide you if you take cover on the side of something, because you won’t be able to slip around the corner. Other things inexplicably won’t let you take cover, and still more you can’t shoot over despite how obviously feasible it is. This, more than anything else, made the game incredibly frustrating.

Several mandatory scenarios are also ridiculously tricky. There was one part where I had to shoot out big windows, and it seemed to take several minutes to do it. At another point, you’re chased by a helicopter and survival is pure luck.

I desperately wanted the game to end 2-3 hours before it did. But I was damned if I was gonna quit before finishing. 

Bioshock 2

I was resistant to playing through Bioshock 2 for a very long time. I bought it when it was going very cheap, but even then it took months, possibly years before I actually played. I had been told it was an inferior sequel, it was deeply disappointing, that it was like a direct-to-video follow-up of a good film. In the end, I quite regret this, because I very much enjoyed Bioshock 2. In every way, I prefer it to Bioshock Infinite.

As to its relationship with the first game, well...the story of the protagonist is certainly nowhere near as interesting. It doesn’t have that wonderful twist that plays with what it means to follow the instructions given to you by a game’s set goals. It also doesn’t benefit from revealing Rapture in all its Art Deco glory – or, indeed, Columbia up in the sky. Its iconic enemy is certainly a long way beneath the Big Daddy or the Motorised Patriot – or the Songbird: the Big Sister is one of the most annoying parts of the gameplay. It feels much more limited, since backtracking is forbidden and the game must be taken chapter-by-chapter. It lacks a genuinely strong ending, though it was wonderful and hilarious to see Rapture as a Little Sister does, and of course we don’t have the fun of the first game’s post-mortem investigation: Rapture has clearly failed and fallen to pieces, but why? That’s all been answered already, replaced by the limited mystery of ‘who is Eleanor?’

However, three critical things made this a real pleasure for me, heightened by the fact that I expected something awful and got something good. The first was that while it wasn’t quite Bioshock in terms of plot and sophistication, it was almost there. The second was that the gameplay was more polished and varied, and there were some quite wonderful ways to fight off the waves of enemies that you have to face – my favourite mostly involving bouncing them about with the wind traps. But the third and most important part was that this game did much more than the first game in exploring the philosophical ideas raised in the original.

The original, you see, is sometimes called a ‘critique of Objectivism’. Now, obviously, there was a big and obvious influence from Ayn Rand: Andrew Ryan is clearly a play on her name, Rapture’s twee early-history ideals are those of Objectivism and all that talk about parasites comes from the Objectivist (and libertarian) views on the State. But I found it a long way from a ‘critique’. Sure, an Objectivist society gets set up, goes wrong and falls apart. But it goes wrong because (a) Ryan isn’t a very good Objectivist, ends up experimenting on human beings to remove their free will, effectively constructs a big utopian prison and spoils his version of the free market by removing the possibility of import and export, and (b) because magically powered sea-slugs are discovered that make society collapse and a civil war erupt, while also creating insane drug addicts and violent superhumans, which frankly isn’t very likely in Galt’s Gulch. It was a story set in a fallen Objectivist utopia, sure, but it wasn’t what you’d call a critique of Objectivism. Rapture didn’t fail because of Objectivist ideas, but because of the ways it deviated from Objectivism – though that can also be said of Animal Farm.  

Which is where Bioshock 2 comes in. By having someone politically opposite from Ryan – Altruist Sofia Lamb – assuming power, there is a chance to explore these political ideas a little better. Despite Sofia Lamb’s bizarre attempts to create a true gestalt collective – in a rather Star Trek sort of sense – this game is also not a critique on Altruism as a political mindset, and also distorts the general concept with outlandish sci-fi, but after all, you need a driving plot for a shooting game. The real result, though, is that the conflicting political views lead to much more discussion. I absolutely loved angry Ryan’s little theme park ride ‘Journey to the Surface’, in which giant hands representing ‘the parasite’ in various acts of large-state theft, starting with the farmer’s possessions and culminating in a child conscripted for war. The obvious clash between Ryan and Lamb over art and its purpose shows a wider argument than the central one about money, and simmering beneath it all is the hint that the solution is between the two extremes...but not where American society landed.

To allow these ideas to be conveyed, a story about a prototype Big Daddy bonded to a little sister who just so happens to be Sofia Lamb’s daughter is developed. The child, Eleanor, was brought up considering the dog-eat-dog world of Objectivism was bizarre and selfish (she calls them ‘dog-eaters’), only to end up in the Little Sister programme after her mother is arrested. After her mother claims her back and undoes her programming, she resurrects her original Daddy, Subject Delta – which is you. Yes, you are a (rather feeble) Big Daddy for the entire game. Suits me!

Putting the game on hard was a good idea – it seemed just the right difficulty, though there was an overabundance of resources towards the end, making the last couple of levels a breeze, including duelling two Big Sisters and the final defend the flag battle reminiscent of that in Bioshock Infinite. A last boss would have been nice, but the general level of difficulty and the variety of ways it is possible to attack – or defend – made the rather short game immensely playable. That said, I got the good ending – and I doubt I’ll go back and replay the game for the others. I’ll just watch ‘em on Youtube.

Thinking back, as it came out in the period I wasn’t playing many games, Bioshock 2’s large posters were the first time I really knew about the series – though I likely had glimpses of the original game too. I remember it well – someone mentioned that Subject Delta was Bomberman, and I could never unsee it. Goddamn Bomberman.