I’ve been playing Heavy Rain now for two evenings, and I’m probably 5 or 6 hours in. Before they made Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream released a game called Indigo Prophecy, which I absolutely loved despite the game’s severely flawed denoument. I can say now that although Heavy Rain contains no science fiction beyond some advanced technology that likely doesn’t exist yet, the same basic feel is in place: what Quantic Dream terms “interactive fiction”. I’ll try to lay out how I feel about the game in an entirely spoiler-free way.

But what’s struck me most about the game up to this point is the notion of consequences. In most games, the sole consequence is death. Your character dies and you reload. But imagine for a moment that you couldn’t reload. Imagine that the game could continue after your death. The only game that I’ve ever played with any kind of similar system was Ultima III, back on my Commodore 64. In that game, when one of your characters died, the game would immediately save the character’s death to the floppy disk. In Heavy Rain, the game constantly saves your progress, your decisions, your advancements, and your failures. And it makes the consequences of failure far more severe than in any game I’ve ever played. Your decisions are irrevocable, your failures final.

Last night, I was dealt my first major failure in the game. The character didn’t die, but having experienced what that character has gone through, I know for a fact that he’d rather have died than failed. But no – that isn’t quite right, because if he’d died, he’d have failed, and the consequences of that failure would remain despite his death, so he had to survive in order to succeed. But he did not succeed. And I felt – through him – what it’s like for a man to throw himself heart and soul at something and fail. In Heavy Rain, like in real life, there are no retries. And I find that I love that. It’s just a game, and I love when a game makes me feel something, even if that something is a total sense of defeat. Just as long as I’m not expected to retry until I succeed.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that Dragon Age: Origins is the best game I’ve played in years, due primarily to the writing. The storyline and the characters are absolutely stellar. But as good a job as Bioware did with the game, I can’t claim to have loved everything they’ve done. Let’s take a quick look at the IPs Bioware has created over the past decade or so.

1998: Baldur’s Gate
The IP that put Bioware on the map is arguably still the best series they’ve ever produced. While in my opinion Dragon Age’s setting, storyline and characters surpassed those of Baldur’s Gate, there are still many things about Baldur’s Gate that remain superior: exploration, class and spell selection, and available PCs to name a few factors. There’s a reason that Baldur’s Gate remains a legendary name and a gold standard in RPGs.

2002: Neverwinter Nights
Without a doubt, the strongest feature of Neverwinter Nights was the Aurora engine’s make-your-own-adventure toolset. Many things about the Neverwinter Nights game engine bothered me, and despite completing the included single-player adventure, I never loved it.
I hated the fact that you couldn’t control an entire party of adventurers. Although I spent countless hours with the Aurora toolset, it never changed the fact that Neverwinter  couldn’t hold a candle to Candlekeep. I never played Neverwinter Nights 2.

2003: Knights of the Old Republic
Hailed by many as a better Star Wars story than George Lucas’s prequel trilogy, KotOR was met with much acclaim. But the lackluster combat was so very similar to the combat that had annoyed me so much in Neverwinter Nights. Although I appreciated the story, and very much enjoyed The Big Twist, the black and white good versus evil choices that determined your alignment on a very one-dimensional scale never struck much of a chord with me. I never played KotOR 2.

2005: Jade Empire
I enjoyed the gameplay of Jade Empire more than I had Neverwinter Nights or Knights of the Old Republic. It had a single-companion mechanic very much similar to Neverwinter Nights’s and a good guy/bad guy gauge similar to that in KotOR, but the combat was twitch-based. Sure, there were RPG aspects, but I got to manually jump, punch, kick, and dodge. I’ll grant you that by this point, the conversation system in Bioware games was getting very much same-old-same-old, but with much of the remainder of the game working so well, it was easy to overlook the staleness of the conversation mechanics. And Jade Empire had a storyline better than any of the previous Bioware games. Jade Empire 2 would be very nice.

2007: Mass Effect
TO hear some speak of it, Mass Effect was the second coming. The premise of a race of super-machines threatening humanity sounded absolutely fantastic. What we got in reality was a shooter that didn’t feel much like a shooter. It had a somewhat innovative conversation system, but the same black and white good vs evil mechanic that had bored me in KotOR was replaced by a black and white paragon vs renegade system. And the closest to unstoppable robots we ever got was the geth, a robotic race of utterly unremarkable peons for the PC to shoot at. Oh, and for some reason they could put people on giant spikes in order to change them into zombies. For some reason. I’m not in a hurry to play Mass Effect 2.

2009: Dragon Age Origins
Where to begin? Bioware took the one game they’d made which had been absolutely fantastic (Baldur’s Gate) and they did what they could to make it even better. And I’m not just talking about better graphics.

Firstly, the system of game mechanics. In the past, they’d used Dungeons and Dragons rules. Baldur’s Gate used 2nd Edition rules. Neverwinter Nights used 3.0. The current D&D ruleset is 4th Edition, and it’s dog crap. Bioware made the decision to create their own rule system, and I couldn’t be happier with it. It’s very different, but it’s probably my favorite RPG rule system other than Fallout’s SPECIAL system.

Secondly, they took that tired old black vs white good vs evil character alignment system and trashed it. In its place, they set up a system whereby each of your NPCs will have a different opinion of you based on their own values and their opinions of the various decisions you make throughout the game. It may sound like a small change, but in practice, it’s hugely different, and aside from making the game deeper, it leads you to care about the characters with whom you travel.

2011: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Oh, good. Another MMO. Based on a game that everyone other than myself loved. I’m not particularly interested.

I just got my first platinum trophy today for finishing every achievement in Trine.Working my way through every experience vial in the game was the part that took the longest, and I’ll admit: I had to consult a few online guides to find a few of the more cleverly hidden ones. But this is the first game I’ve ever gotten 100% completion on other than the Steam achievements in Plants vs Zombies. I’ve got some thoughts on a few of the trophies in Trine.

All Boxes and No Play
Achievements like this one are just a bitch. Creating 500 planks takes a good 20 minutes of annoying rote repetition. If I weren’t interested in having a platinum trophy, I’d never have done it. What a serious pain in the ass.

Master Ninja
I never thought this would be as hard as it was. Perhaps the game is buggy, but I swear I had the thief swinging seven times in a row and never got the trophy. This was the second to last trophy I picked up. In the end, I just swang back and forth under a bridge for ten minutes or so every so often. Usually, after 10 minutes of swinging, I found I’d gotten no trophy, so I’d just continue playing. And swear a lot. But eventually the game decided to recognize that I’d gotten five consecutive swings.

Better Than The Developers
I have a love hate relationship with the Tower of Sarek. At first, I totally hated it. But when I decided to try to get through the whole level without a single death, I steeled myself to the experience and forced myself not to get frustrated after my tenth death. Then, I started getting better at it. Soon, I could get through the majority of the level 90% of the time. I found that there were only two parts that were really hard. Firstly, a spinny platform onto which the phantom summons a box, making it spin. You can see that at 1:17 in this video. I eventually got to the point where I could shoot that box with a fire arrow before it made the platform spin, but it’s harder than it looks. The second hard part is at around 1:41 in the same video. Making a triangle platform with the wizard and getting it to be stable may be easier on the PC version of Trine than it is on the Playstation.

The fact that I actually enjoyed going through the Tower of Sarek as many times as I did is very interesting to me. Repeating a 90 second portion of a game over and over until you get good at it is such an old school concept in gaming, and it’s been many years since I’ve done it. It may not be the last time.

Everyone know Missile Command. Looks like Atari updated their 80’s classic with online multiplayer, upgradable weapons, and boss battles. Too bad I don’t have a track ball.

Play Missile Command

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss the games that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I’m a self proclaimed pack-rat and collector, but if I ever had to sell my gaming collection to feed my family these are the games I’d hang onto. If my wife let me, anyway.

I know, you’re asking yourself, “why the hell it this game a Keeper?” C’mon people, it’s a Star Wars fighting game! Need I say more? Outside of Vader and Yoda in Soul Calibur IV, this is the only chance you’ll ever have to pit Luke Skywalker against Chewbacca, or Princess Leia vs Boba Fett. Heck, you can even play as Mara Jade, how cool is that? Ok sure, the graphics were rough even by PS1 standards, and the characters are horribly imbalanced (Boba Fett is way overpowered) but I still chuckle like a fanboy at ComiCon when I revisit this game. Plus, now that I have a PS3 I can enjoy all of Slave Leia’s 200 polygons in 42″ HD glory. I think this game is more of a Keeper by novelty than quality, but that’s what having a collection is all about. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to practice Luke’s Jedi Precision Slice on this Gamorrean Guard.

With the huge number of games that were released over the 2009 holiday season and the 2009 games that were pushed into early 2010, I’ve got a to-play list that’s just way too long. I’m currently spending a good bit of time replaying Trine on very hard difficulty, working towards those last few trophies. If I can finish the Tower of Sarek on very hard without dying once, I’ll have full completion on the game. I’m also roughly halfway through a second playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins, and just getting into the meat of Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. I’ve got a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the DS which is supposedly coming in the mail, although you never can tell with EBay sellers. I was a huge fan of Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks looks to be more of the same.

There are also a number of games out there that I’m just dying to play. Chief amongst them is Heavy Rain, a game that I’ve been looking forward to from the day it was released. I loved Indigo Prophecy despite the plot derailment in the later portions of the game, and with all the thought I’ve put into the fact that Dragon Age was the first game in a long time to make me feel anything, I’m hopeful that Heavy Rain will achieve something similar.

Uncharted 2 is coming down in price – I can get a used copy for around $35 now, and it’s at the top of my EBay shopping list. Also high on that list is Retro Game Challenge, a DS game that I’ve heard a lot of good things about. It contains a number of different games made in a retro style. Old skool racers, RPGs, shooters and platformers which ostensibly maintain the old style of gameplay while removing the most annoying things about those games. All this is wrapped with the storyline of a 12-year-old sitting in front of a TV with his friend in the NES era, entering cheat codes and achieving high scores.

Another game I can’t wait to get my hands on is No More Heroes 2. I may wait for the price to come down a bit before I get a copy, but I was a big fan of the first one, and I’ve heard that the sequel removes all the flaws of the original and makes the gameplay a bit easier. Maybe I’ll be able to finish this one.

I’ve decided that the PC is the platform on which I want to play Batman: Arkham Asylum. It’s a GFW Live game, and while that interface annoys the crap out of me, its one benefit is that I can get XBox achievements. And since GFW/360 achievements, PSN Trophies, and Steam achievements are the only achievements that mean much of anything to me, I’ll be happy to add to my collection.

From early on, I’d decided that I did not want to play Demon’s Souls. A game that everyone lauds as the most difficult and frustrating game they’ve played since Ninja Gaiden doesn’t sound appealing to me. But when I heard the Brainy Gamer gamers’ confab folks discussing the game on Michael Abbott’s four part best of 2009 podcast series, I grew intrigued. Many of them cited Demon’s Souls as their favorite game of 2009, despite the game’s oppressive difficulty. I pondered this as I played through Trine’s Tower of Sarek level twenty or thirty times, trying to pass the level without dying once. Maybe I am up for it after all. In the end, I determined that if I do try the game, I’d be best off renting it rather than buying. Less commitment that way.

But I don’t generally rent games. Gamefly’s monthly plan runs $16 or $23 depending on whether you want one or two games. That’s a bit more than I’m willing to pay given that I don’t always want to have a game rented at any given time. I may be better off trying to get a copy from a Blockbuster for a weekend. I haven’t rented anything from Blockbuster in over fifteen years, so that should be interesting.

Other games I might consider renting include the new Wii Punch-Out!, which seems like a quick playthrough, the newest Prince of Persia, which I’m very hesitant to play given how much I hated Sands of Time and The Two Thrones, House of the Dead: Overkill, Dead Space: Extraction, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. I’m excited to play Darkside Chronicles, but I’m not convinced that it’s going to be a keeper.

So far, this is a long list. But while I’ve listed all the games about which I’m most excited to play, there are plenty more on my radar.

A Boy and his Blob is a game that looks like a lot of fun. And while it’s not top on my list, I’d really like to try it for some point, and it’s likely more than a rental. Maybe I’ll get to it before next Christmas. Ditto InFamous. Looks good, but not high priority.

Cold Fear is a game I’ll likely download from a service like Direct2Drive or Steam, depending on where I can get it cheapest. It’s not a triple-A title, but it looks interesting, and I don’t expect it to cost much. In the end, if it disappoints, I can stop playing and I won’t feel as though I’ve lost much.

I’ll probably end up getting Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box and Henry Hatsworth in another year or so once they’re bargain basement titles on EBay. I expect to enjoy them, but I’ve got DS games coming out my ears right now, so I’m in no rush.

There are also a metric butt-ton of sequels about which I’m less than excited. Bioshock 2? Meh. Mass Effect 2? Sure, I’ll try it eventually. Assassins Creed 2? Yeah – I’ll get to it. My feelings about Killzone 2 and Wolfenstein are similar. All games I’d like to try at some point. We’ll see if I ever get around to them.

Lastly, there are a few games I expect to be released later this year. I’ll definitely be picking up Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening when it’s out. Ditto Super Mario Galaxy 2. I loved the first one. Starcraft 2 is a game I’ll try to buy on day one if I can. If The Last Guardian comes out this year, I’ll be as excited about it as I am about Heavy Rain, and I’ll get that one ASAP. God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13 look potentially good, but I’ll likely wait until 2011 to pick them up.

Recently, I finished my first playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins, which is easily the best game of 2009. And while I’m already well into my second playthrough, I’ve got a lot to say about the game. I’ll try to keep mention of any game-specific events very vague to avoid spoilers, but if you’re extremely sensitive to anything that might be vaguely construed as a spoiler, be forewarned.

I played on the PC, which from what I’ve heard is the best platform on which to experience Dragon Age. As the game is a spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate series, I was almost surprised to see it appear on consoles, although I’m sure that the appearance of XBox 360 and PS3 versions boosted sales substantially.

More than anything else, what struck me about Dragon Age is the emotional impact the game’s story and characters had on me. From the moment my character’s family was slain in the origin story to the brutal reality of the Grey Warden joining ceremony to the tragedy at Ostagar, the game’s events struck a chord with me. When characters died, I felt empathy for the loss that the game characters were feeling. When Alistair and I triumphed, I felt a camaraderie with my brother-in-arms. And when I said the wrong thing and upset Leliana, I felt the feeling of foot-in-mouth that only males can feel when talking to a significant other. The game’s writing and characters are simply excellent.

In so many games, when something bad happens, I’ll reload from a save. But I was so engrossed in the story of Dragon Age that when my character was captured and his equipment taken, I continued playing and forced myself to accept the loss of my best weapons and armor. And I felt a real sense of loss, as if I’d lost some real physical property – those were some really nice weapons, and I lost the grand master runestones too.

My main character was a rogue, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Dragon Age gives you three character classes, and unlike in other RPGs, no class ever feels useless. Many times I’ve played RPGs and found that the bard class, the monk class, or even the thief class was severely underpowered and unbalanced. But with Dragon Age and its three classes, that never ends up being the case. The mage is exactly what you’d expect: weak in toe-to-toe combat unless given time to prepare defensive magic, but powerful in terms of ranged attack and control spells. The fighter and rogue classes are both huge damage-dealers in close melee, but the fighter is generally the armored tank, whereas the bulk of the rogue’s damage comes from skill use and backstabs, which makes tactical positioning very important.

For the majority of the game, I had Alistair and Wynne with my main character. Alistair is simply an amazingly powerful tank, and since I’d alienated Morrigan early on in the game, Wynne was the only mage available to me. For my final character slot, I rotated between Leliana, Shale, and my dog who I named “Burton”, after Jack Burton. In my second playthrough, I’m making heavy use of Sten, Morrigan, and Zevran, none of whom I really used in my first playthrough.

It’s hard not to compare Dragon Age to the old Infinity Engine games, i.e. Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale. But while they compare favorably on most counts, having better graphics, a better UI that shows you spell effect areas before casting, and very well-crafted custom game mechanics, the one thing I found lacking was exploration. One of the joys of Baldur’s Gate was tromping through areas of wilderness, caves and dungeons that weren’t related to the main plot, and dozens of other areas that were purely optional. Dragon Age has none of that. While there are many areas that are off the beaten path, they generally appear as a linear portion of one of the game’s main quests. Few are optional.

Not to knock Minsc and Boo, but the characters in Dragon Age are better than the characters in Baldur’s Gate in every respect. I remember Yoshimo’s betrayal, I remember Minsc losing Dynaheir, and I remember Imoen coming out as your character’s sister, but none of them stand out like the character moments that Alistair and Morrigan have in Dragon Age. And only Minsc’s dialogue could ever approach the hilarious writing Bioware put into characters like Alistair and Oghren. “Well, fart me a lullaby!”

My second character is a mage, and she’ll be a bit looser on the ethical points than my first character was, so as to see some different plot. I’ve already recruited werewolves and templars rather than elves and mages. The game told me that I’ve seen less than half of Dragon Age’s content, so I look forward to seeing what else is out there.

I’ve had some seriously bad luck recently with games. This weekend, after getting thoroughly trounced by a revenant in Dragon Age for the sixth time, I decided to fire up the Playstation, and I played some Trine. That platinum trophy has been seeming more and more attainable. I managed to get every experience vial in the game, and I eventually got past the Tower of Sarek without dying once before I realized that I needed to do it on “very hard” in order to net the trophy.

That’s okay. I can deal with that. But on Sunday when I went to start playing Trine, my Playstation threw a 8001050F error, and Trine wouldn’t start. Looking it up online, I found that the error code meant that I won’t be able to connect to PSN (which I couldn’t) and that I very likely would have to send in the console for repair. It wasn’t until today that I’m not the only one having this problem. Sony says that they’ll have a fix soon. Looks like I’m not playing Trine tonight. Hope I don’t lose the four trophies that I never synced.

So after that on Sunday, I decided to try a disc-based game and was pleased to find that Brutal Legend still worked. But I’ve decided that the only good part of the game is the part that appeared in the demo. After you meet up with Metalheade and start playing the RTS portion of the game, the gameplay is just crap. I’m really disappointed, because I love the game’s style and humor. If I could get past the poor gameplay, I’m sure I’d enjoy it. Too bad. I’ve listed my copy of Brutal Legend on EBay.

After the disappointments with the Playstation, I jumped on the PC to play Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. It’s a lot more polished than Butcher Bay, although I can’t yet speak for the story as I’m only about an hour into the game. But while transitioning between areas, the game froze and crashed. I didn’t try to start it back up after that, but I should’ve at least tried, because now I’m nervous that my cheap Direct2Drive copy of the game is a lemon.

I guess it’s back to Dragon Age for me. It’s my second playthrough and I’m seeing how badly I can screw up the world. I’ve already aided in destroying three of the game’s main areas, which I can only imagine will vastly change the game’s storyline. I can’t wait to see where things go from here.

Yes, I’ve gotten so preoccupied with real life that I’m getting lazy: I’ve stolen this week’s Free Game Friday from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Through what they term “a minor act of skullduggery”, you can now get yourself a free copy of Peggle Nights. I’ve never been a huge fan of Peggle – I prefer Plants vs Zombies, or maybe Zuma. But lots of people love the game, and now you can get it for free by signing up for a Popcap Passport.

From the day I bought my PS3, I’ve had it hooked up to our flatscreen with an HDMI cable. But recently we had to sell our televisions, and I found need to hook it up to an old standard definition set. The problem I found is that the AV output cables just wouldn’t work. I tried it on more than one TV just to check, and I couldn’t get any signal from the Playstation 3’s AV cables.

Googling around, I managed to find the solution. You’ve got to reset the PS3’s video settings. When you turn on the PS3, rather than using the controller, hold down the power button for 5 seconds or so. The thing will beep, and then the AV cables should work. Viola. Hopefully this helps somebody out. It drove me nuts for the hour or so before I thought to search online.