Shallow Depths

I love discovering different approaches to game reviewing.

40 Ounces, 1 Game seems to be inactive, but I approve of the premise:

I’m going to purchase a 40oz bottle of beer, and drink it while playing a computer game that I haven’t played before – and then, the following day, I’ll write about it based on notes taken in a progressively inebriated state.

I feel like it's an idea with potential, at least.  Someone should start up a new site with a similar theme.  Go on, you know you want to.  Preferably someone who knows there should be a space between '40' and 'oz'.  I'm not an experienced enough writer to be a proper Grammar Nazi, but units of measurement bring it out in me. Better yet, why not review games while drinking appropriate drinks from The Drunken Moogle.  I'd read it.

I recently discovered Action Button Dot Net, which uses a stream-of-consciousness approach and takes no shit from anyone.  What I've read so far felt a bit like someone was punching me in the head, which is kind of awesome.

Naturally, I'm very excited about the Five Minutes With... column which recently started up on Gamasutra.  Focus in on five minutes of a game -- sounds great.

Given the huge number of game sites and blogs out there I'm sure there must be others taking a more unusual approach to reviews, but it's hard to find them under the huge pile of formulaic score-based stuff.  There's a place for that too, it just doesn't interest me much personally.

Always interested to hear recommendations.  Less interested to hear whining about how these things aren't really reviews, because I don't care.  Although, I would love another term I could easily use for my own 'review' approach: something that describes writing about a single game in a subjective, flexible way, incorporating amateur analysis and related tangent stories.

Earlier this month I was linked to this article on Flower. As an ecologist who works in urban spaces it was fascinating to me, and described something close to my own experience playing Flower. I really wish I'd written something like it, particularly the parts about breaking down the separation between humans and nature. On another level, the article suffers from what I have been known to call 'Matrix ecology' -- a poor choice of terminology, since matrix usually means something else in landscape ecology. I should possibly call it something more like 'popular culture ecology'.

(Tangent: computers and ecology seem to have a few awkward terminology overlaps. We've also started talking about 'landscape defragmentation'.)

Most people probably remember this rant from Agent Smith in The Matrix:

I'd like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realised that humans are not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus.

Kyle MacGregor's Flower article follows a similar idea:

The earth once was a healthy functioning ecosystem. In many ways ecosystems function like individual organisms. If the earth were a single organism, than all life on earth would be in symbiosis with that ecosystem. Most terrestrial life has either a commensalistic or mutualistic relationship with the planet. However, in recent history the human race has become a parasite.

These views come back to the idea of the Balance of Nature, which suggests that in the absence of disturbances (such as humans messing with things), natural mechanisms will maintain a stable equilibrium. There is also more than a hint here of the form of Gaia theory that considers the earth like a single organism, with all parts working together in harmony.

That's sweet and all, but to me this is a mix of outdated theory and pseudoscience. There is nothing fundamentally different about the animal and human approach to resources, it's more a difference of scale. Yes, humans are having massive impacts on ecosystems, and I'd like to see us take more responsibility for that. But it's not because we are particularly different to other animals.

Ecosystems do not function like individual organisms, and do not tend to exist in a stable balance. Disturbance is a normal part of the world. People seem very attached to the idea of nature as stable rather than chaotic, though. Something about this balance idea has wormed its way into popular mindsets. Humans are attracted to balance and stability, while nature itself has no such preference.

Druids in Dungeons & Dragons must have a neutral element to their alignment and are concerned with maintaining the natural balance. These D&D druids will get into trouble with their society (and deity) if they set fire to vegetation, or fail to protect nature from that 'destruction' to the best of their ability. In reality, fire can be very important to vegetation, and many plants require it for reproduction (there are numerous examples of this here in Australia). The best caretakers of the land know how to manage disturbances like fire, not just suppress them. Well-meaning conservationists did a lot of damage before they worked that out.

Science has at least partly moved on, but the idea hasn't died away yet. Druid land management based on balance and preventing disturbance is probably found somewhere in just about every fantasy roleplaying game ever produced. There are a heap of quests in World of Warcraft that act as fairly recent examples.

Fantasy often presents nature as a kind of mystic entity, which is fine, but it's a benign, fair kind of nature that a lot of fantasy focuses on.  I didn't think people really believed that, but that may well be because I'm too close to the topic.  These ideas do seem to keep coming up in places where I don't expect them.

I don't know much about Kyle MacGregor, but his profile says he's working on a B.A. in Environmental Studies, so that's good reason to be interested in these ideas.  The Arts approach to Environmentalism is likely to be rather different to my Science approach.  I don't know what those courses involve, but here's hoping it sets some things straight.  I don't really mean to pick on him specifically, since it's a very common view.  But I'd like to see people learning and changing these ideas.


Further reading: How nature really works - new ecology (Their comparison to Galileo is poor though, he lacked good evidence for his theories and pushed them anyway, which really is arrogance.)

This post was inspired by Mark "Mr Ak" Johnson's recent discussion Danananana Batman! An in-depth case study of archetypes in different media formats. Batman! Batma-an!.  Because it's an interesting topic, and sometimes I just can't leave well enough alone.

I agree with Mr Ak that Batman: Arkham Asylum (game) is more enjoyable than The Dark Knight (movie) – less so about his opinions being objectively correct.  I (deliberately) don't have as much confidence in my own opinion, and trying to understand why I agree in this case is almost bringing me undone.  I'm not sure I should be right – 'should' is the wrong word, since opinions are all valid, but my reasoning and my gut reaction are at odds this time.  Can I back up my own opinion, then?  I'm going to try.

To explain this I need to step back and come from a different starting point.  Arkham Asylum vs The Dark Knight isn't the right comparison for me to start from.

Arkham Asylum was not based solely on any specific imagining of Batman, but I still played it while keeping a particular graphic novel firmly in my head.  Probably unsurprisingly, this was Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (hereafter referred to as Serious House, for clarity).

I like Serious House since I have a weakness for darkness and symbolism, call me pretentious if you like.  But I have to admit, it's not the most accessible graphic novel I've ever read.  Dave McKean's artwork leans towards the surreal, and panels are often placed very close to the action.  The details of what's going on are not always clear, but it does very well at creating feelings like panic and madness.

The Batman of Serious House is vulnerable, and forced to play entirely on the Joker's terms.  To be trapped in the Asylum is to start to wonder if he belongs there.  To me, that's the core of Batman as a character – the need to maintain a fuzzy line between sanity and madness; hero and villain.

In Serious House, the Joker is even scarier than the Heath Ledger version.  He thrives in the chaos, and easily understands Batman well enough to push his buttons.  He flirts and pinches Batman's bottom, because he can see how uncomfortable Batman is with intimacy.  In later stories, I believe Bruce Wayne becomes stronger as a man as well as a hero, but at this point he's horribly dysfunctional.

This is nothing like Arkham Asylum the game, where Batman is predominantly presented as strong.  He executes those wonderfully fluid combos, and swoops down from gargoyles to take enemies by surprise before disappearing back into the darkness.  Overall, he's clearly the goddamn Batman, and worthy of fear.  The Joker still has control of the playing field, but he can never actually go so far as to reach the man under the bat-suit.  There is always the sense that Batman will eventually catch up to him and win.  Which is okay, because the Joker is just there to enjoy the game for as long as it lasts.

The Dark Knight falls somewhere between these two extremes, with Batman and the Joker possessing a similar amount of power.  It's that perpetual situation where neither can ever really best the other.  I think I enjoy imbalance more, but it does do a good job of highlighting how dependent on each other the Batman and Joker can be.

The Joker is in all cases pretty hard to pin down, as he should be.  Heath Ledger and Mark Hamill present different facets, but neither could create the whole.

Considering the game some more, the Joker in many ways isn't really the ultimate villain of Arkham Asylum.  The character who can actually get through to Bruce himself is the Scarecrow -- reminding me once again of why he's my favourite Batman villain.  The Scarecrow sections are really the only moments of true vulnerability in the game.

Since weaknesses are important to how I see Batman's character, the predominant emphasis on strength could have made me appreciate the game less.  So why didn't it?

It's probably because it didn't quite work that way in my mind.  I enjoyed Arkham Asylum partly because I was projecting elements into it that weren't really there.  Serious House never left my mind (partly reinforced by collecting elements of Amadeus Arkham's story), and I utilised my pre-existing interpretations of the characters to add extra layers.  I added more vulnerability to balance out the power fantasy.

So, I focused extra attention on Batman's suit becoming progressively more banged up and ripped, and assumed he was also becoming mentally exhausted.  I was afraid when I encountered Clayface, even though he remained safely sealed behind thick glass -- knowing what he could do was enough.  I worried about where Doctor Destiny might be, because I knew I couldn't really fight him.

The game allowed me to become the character, and left me enough space to build my own understanding into him.  I don't find that space in the comics or movies -- they are too strongly someone else's complete vision.

(Plus, I'm nerdy enough to enjoy collecting references to more obscure villains like the Ratcatcher.  Movies don't let me do that.)

Where Arkham Asylum almost fell down for me was the sense of place.  I got to know the layout extremely well, and that was one form of power I couldn't over-write in my mind.  I couldn't get lost and create anything like the level of panic experienced in Serious House.  Mind you, if I could I probably would have been too terrified to continue playing, so that's for the best.  The game provided me with an Arkham Asylum I could conceivably overcome.

Part of me really wants to see unwinnable story-driven games, but this probably wasn't the place to try it.  The existing balance was pretty much right.  Overcoming Arkham Asylum is fun, which of all things is an element of play I often overlook.

Brawsome's Jolly Rover, winner of the best Australian Game at this year's Freeplay independent game festival, is currently on sale for $4.99, in honour of upcoming Talk Like a Pirate Day.

At full price I'd been tossing up whether to part with my money.  On sale it's an easy choice for fans of point-and-click adventure.  It's a very polished independent game, with a great sense of humour.  It includes a heap of truly awful puns, but I also found myself laughing a few times, and I'm not an easy target for humour.

Jolly Rover really is essentially Monkey Island featuring anthropomorphic dogs.  That's no bad thing, though I would have loved to see them tackle a different setting.  It's also quite easy, which disappointed me but may appeal to some.

[Note: The rest of this post contains character discussion on Jolly Rover and Monkey Island.  Potential minor spoilers.]

James Rover and Guybrush Threepwood are both unlikely heroes.  They have a slightly childlike manner and sense of humour, making comparisons very natural.  They are joke pirates, in a sense.  Threepwood has his silly name and wields wit like a weapon, while Rover is quite literally a clown.

Monkey Island has naturally had a bit more time for character development, but Rover is pretty well fleshed out for the time available.  What I actually find more interesting (and a little disturbing) is comparing the love interests in Jolly Rover and Monkey Island.

Monkey Island's Elaine Marley is often held up as a good example of a positive female character in games.  She's a strong governor, showing kindness as well as intelligence and resourcefulness.  She commonly subverts the "damsel in distress" stereotype, by finding her own way out of situations before Threepwood can come to her rescue.  She is also quite definitely the dominant partner in their relationship.

Clara from Jolly Rover is also presented as strong, in that she will threaten to break Rover in half if he says or does the wrong thing.  She is once again calling the shots in terms of their developing relationship.  Where it falls down, though, is that she does little to earn either fear or respect.

We first meet Clara arguing with a group of man-hunting female pirates, and being determined to "have no more part in this bloody business".  She's demonstrating moral strength, but she lacks any influence within the group so is left powerless.

After teaming up with Rover, I kept expecting Clara to do something to demonstrate her ability as a skilled captain.  She never did.  In fact, she spent most of her time standing around doing nothing.  Sometimes she would even beg Rover to get them out of whatever predicament they were in.  It made me quite uncomfortable, and the game could have been improved substantially for me simply by giving her something to do.

Elaine isn't strong because she can snap at Guybrush and make him jump as high as she likes.  She's strong because she wields genuine power in her own right.  She possesses political influence, strategic thinking, and skill in direct physical action.  It isn't necessary to go quite that far – if anything Elaine may suffer from being a bit too good to be true – but I at least expected something from Clara.

Sure, you can create a passive character (of any gender) if you like, but overuse of the helpless female stereotype is not doing computer games any favours.  In a game that invites such a strong level of comparison to Monkey Island it's particularly disappointing.  I was silly enough to expect something more because of that.

I don't buy that the famous pirate's daughter is going to be so useless.  If she's going to talk tough I want her to be able to back it up.  Flitting between bossiness and helplessness, Clara is a wishy-washy mess of a character.

It was unfortunate to have such a bad taste left in my mouth after what was otherwise a worthwhile adventure game.

I'm not a particularly skilled player, so I do like having difficulty options of some form. I have also improved considerably and am working on continuing to get better. The only way I can do that is if game difficulty stays just a little above my current level. Enough to challenge, but not to give up in frustration.

One of my pet annoyances in games is when I die a few times and start getting messages reminding me I can turn down the difficulty level. The game seems to be mocking me. You aren't good enough to be here, why not just switch to easy mode, you loser? The occasional tip I could probably handle, but once I know the option's there I see no need to hammer the point. Unless someone out there in game-developer-land really enjoys teasing people like me, which is valid I suppose.

Adaptive difficulty is more subtle, and increases game accessibility without seeming to poke faces at me in the process. I have a slightly dubious relationship with this method though.  What if the game's just laughing at me behind my back now, instead of telling me to my face?

Theoretically, adaptive difficulty should be a great way to make games accessible to a wide range of people, and give me that level of challenge I'm looking for. In reality, this idea has quite a long way to go.

The major issue for me is actually choice. In a non-tweakable system, adaptive difficulty must naturaly make assumptions about how much of a challenge I'm looking for, and how many failures I will tolerate. I'm a relatively patient and determined person, so those systems will probably pitch their challenge just a little lower than I would like. It can make the wins less satisfying. Discrete difficulty levels are a bit limited, but at least they give me a choice.

My sister recently linked me to Infinite Adaptive Mario. It uses player performance to determine procedural level generation, as opposed to the more superficial tweaking of current mainstream games.  It doesn't solve my particular issues, but I think investigating different approaches to difficulty managment is useful.

I've never really got the hang of controlling platformers using a keyboard, so a PC Mario game is going to cause me some problems. After a few too many deaths the levels do become easy... and also kind of pointless. Thankfully it doesn't resort to that too quickly, and it's useful that how far you progress before dying is important to how far the difficulty is dropped.

All in all it's an interesting idea, and one I'd be interested to see used elsewhere. My major concern about choice still stands, though. I look forward to the day when I can more commonly control how I want difficulty management to behave.