As many gamers likely are, I’m a great game designer… in my own mind. While listening to a podcast recently, I heard someone mention how the protagonist in Red Dead Redemption helps Bonnie the rancher round up cows, and then immediately goes and murders twenty people at the behest of a snake oil salesman. Not exactly consistent, and it makes the character that you’re playing feel like less of a character. So many games take this tact – they allow for a great diversity of choice, but provide no penalty for inconsistency of action. Is the character magnanimous? Is the character self-serving?

Thinking about this, I immediately imagined the tried-and-true linear one-dimensional scale of good and evil, and imagined points up and down this grid, each of which represented an action. +2 might be a mildly nice action, and -60 would be a downright evil action. Perhaps the best approach would be to rate in-game actions on this scale, and move the PC’s alignment slider up and down accordingly, based on the appropriate algorithm. The trick is to only allow actions that are 20 points below or above the character’s current alignment. Thus, if you’ve just murdered twenty people, your alignment might slide from 0 (neutral) to -30 (dastardly), and disallow you to undertake a quest rated at +2. Obviously, this system requires some work before it would be usable, but I think the jist is apparent.

Roger Ebert’s recent article claiming that games can never be art has spawned conversation and argument all over the interwebs of late. While listening to a recent episode of Gameshark‘s Jumping the Shark podcast recently, something Brandon said caught my attention.

If you want to hear it, download episode 14 and skip ahead to 58:00. I’ll paraphrase here.

There’s a painting down here in Atlanta. It is stunning. I stood there at looked at it for ten minutes straight. I just could not believe that anyone could make something that looked this amazing. To me, if a game can do that – that kind of emotional moment – I feel that that would be considered art.

What he said here struck a chord for me. There have been very few games that have had this exact effect on me. I could tell you that a number of difficult moral decisions in Dragon Age and the tense scenarios in Heavy Rain have brought about  emotional moments for me, but to hit the truly good ones, I’ve got to go back a bit further.

My continual references to Resident Evil 2 must have gotten trite to those theoretical few who read this blog regularly, but the terror I felt in this moment, being chased by the T-103 zombie was potentially the most exciting game moment of my life. Similarly, the rooftop chase in Beyond Good and Evil made me sit back after completing it, take a deep breath, and just say “wow.”

 But if I’m looking for a truly emotional moment in a game, the one I’d have to use is the very ending of Half-Life 2, episode 2. It’s made entirely possible by the “acting” of one Alyx Vance, which is of course a combination of excellent voice acting and excellent character face modeling. I swear – that scene just about made me cry. And a video game has never before done that.

Although you may be aware that I found the original Bioshock to be an overrated game, I played through and enjoyed it enough. Now, Irrational games has released the original design documents for the game. Very very cool. Check it out.

Imagine a version of Tetris in which it’s just about impossible to complete a single line because the game always gives you the absolute worst piece possible. Yes. It exists. It’s called Hateris, and it sucks.

Play Hateris

VVVVVV is an old school game. It even looks like you’re playing on a Commodore 64. It’s not a free game, but you can play two of the game’s levels for free on Kongregate. Check it out.

Play VVVVVV

Last night was my first real night of video game playing after our big cross-country move. I fired up Uncharted 2 and was forced to spend 45 minutes downloading an update, during which time I played some Dragon Age: Awakening on my PC.

It’s hard to look at Uncharted 2 and call it anything other than a great game. But I found myself repeatedly annoyed and frustrated with the game’s puzzles, camera angles, and especially the game’s controls. I hate running around for 5 minutes in a small room looking for where I’m supposed to climb only to receive a hint that I need to climb up to a ledge. Thanks. Might as well have had that hint read “win the game”. It’d be equally useful. I hate running up to a ladder and pressing a button to climb it only to have that button make me jump off a nearby cliff, falling to my death. I hate waiting 45 seconds for a guard to turn his back so that I can sneak up and mug him, only to have Drake dash to the other side of the doorway at which he’s hiding rather than through the door. A second attempt to go through the door made me dash back to my original position. It’s pretty rare that I get this far into a game without having gotten some basic mastery over the controls. And I hated some of the platforming for the same reasons that I hated the original Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I’d try a jump two or three times and fall to my death before deciding that the game wanted me to choose a different path. After a half hour of searching for another path, I’d find that the one I tried originally was correct. It’s just that the first few times, Drake didn’t jump hard enough or something.

I really want to love this game. I’m partway through the train sequence, which I rage quit last night at half past midnight after my fiftieth death on the same checkpoint. When I go back to the game, I’m going to try harder to enjoy it. Everyone else loved the game, why oh why can’t I?

I’m a huge fan of Okami. The Nintendo DS spinoff Okamiden is due for release in 2011, and the trailer looks fantastic.

What? A one-button Real-Time Strategy game? How is that possible? Here it is. Meet Pax Brittanica. I’ve been playing this game on and off for a month now. Hold down the button to charge the circular meter. If you release it in the first quadrant, you build a fighter. In the second quadrant, a bomber, and in the third quadrant, a frigate. If you can defend yourself well enough to charge that meter to the fourth quadrant, you can upgrade your ship to charge the meter more quickly. Ships steer themselves. Enjoy.

Download Pax Brittanica

OmgLasersPewPew is a very simple game. Shoot dudes with your laser. Strangely addictive though.

Play OMGLasersPewPew