Shallow Depths

I'm slightly ashamed to admit to how much I enjoy games featuring mental asylums (and similar locations). I suppose it goes with the territory when you appreciate dark themes, uncertain layers of reality, and an ominous atmosphere.

Pervasive ideas about mentally ill meaning creepy, dangerous, subhuman and so on... those aren't so cool.  I know I'm treading through problematic territory on this one.  I suppose I find creepiness here which has more to do with how patients are treated than the patients themselves.

Barbaric treatments for mental conditions are some of my top nightmarish-fears, with the additional frightening element that 'barbaric' doesn't always mean 'in the past'. Not having asylums anymore doesn't mean everything's rosy.  So, I disturb myself by playing around in virtual asylums, then worry about the treatment of (and respect for) people with mental illnesses in the real word.

One of my favourite asylum-like locations is from Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (spoilers ahead). For the unfamiliar, VtM includes a whole clan of insane vampires: The Malkavians. It's that well-worn idea of insanity as a two-edged gift, balancing madness with unique insight. Bloodlines eventually sends you to the mansion of Dr. Grout, the head Malkavian who has mysteriously disappeared.

Even in Grout's absence the influence of a powerful, disturbing vampire on the mansion is tangible. He was also kind enough to leave audio logs lying around, just to add to the atmosphere. It actually makes some sense for a change, as a scientist recording his thoughts and observations. Grout's insanity doesn't make him incomprehensible, he's articulate and focused (if twisted).

Another unfortunate casualty to tide of time: insane asylums. I lament their loss not only as brokerage houses for the breadth and depth of human psychosis, but also I shall mourn the disappearance of that peculiar environment present only in an insane asylum. That palpable atmosphere of blistered brains and churning bowels, the odiferous melange of freely flowing bodily humours, that gently rolling cacophony of distant sobs and screams, the muttered cursing of perceived enemies and the blissful gurgling of the lobotomized like a new-born babe discovering the sky. I shall still find test subjects as surely as I find bloody sustenance in the night, but this climate, I fear, will never be replicated.

Dr. Grout is a psychologist from an earlier time, twisted by vampirism and the Malkavian condition. He hasn't taken too kindly to the developments made in his field. Dismissive of the new-fangled ideas of Freud, he is bitter about phrenology's fall from grace and continues his more physical approach to psychology in private.

The mansion is populated by Grout's experiments, presumably former patients who have undergone crude brain surgery. The women sob quietly in corners, but quickly pull a knife if you fall for their deception. The men are more openly violent. I wonder if Grout performed different experiments on men and women, due to some old-fashioned sensibility. But maybe I'm being too generous to the game designers.

Grout sits in that awkward place between doctor and patient as he tries to make sense of his own condition. More recently, hidden segments of The Chronicle of Arkham in Batman: Arkham Asylum were used in a similar way to Grout's audio tapes. Both look back into history to describe barbaric treatment of mental patients. Both feature a doctor who has themselves turned to madness and violence.

Amadeus Arkham is more openly malicious, dealing exclusively with the criminally insane and treating them like animals. He's fueled by revenge. Grout, for all his love of screaming and crying patients, seems oddly detached. Chillingly unemotional. And yet, he's still motivated by love for his wife.

These are tragic stories for everyone involved, without any real concept of 'good'. Just beings in various states of inflicting and receiving suffering. My Bloodlines vampire is still a vampire, motivated most by self-preservation. Batman's a hero, but treads close to the line between hero and villain.

I'll avoid a longer discussion of the inmates of Arkham Asylum or I'll be here all night.  What actually prompted this post was recently playing through the 1998 adventure game Sanitarium.  It seemed like something I had to play sooner or later, combining my virtual asylum hopping with my point-and-click adventure habit.  Good Old Games calls Sanitarium "one of the most immersive and chilling psychological horror games ever created" and describes the story as "incredibly good and enthralling". Many people seem to have good memories of it.
Playing older games means putting up with a few things, in this case particularly the awkward path-finding and shoddy voice acting.  The main character's over-acted lines tend to make me laugh rather than give me the creeps: "Oh God, it's horrible".

I take these elements in stride.  What I wasn't quite expecting was just how batshit erratic Sanitarium is.  It opens with its best trick, sending you from the run-down asylum to a delusion-induced world full of creepy, deformed children. There are hidden bodies in the boarded up school-house, and everyone's afraid of the pumpkin patch. Thus far we have the kind of atmosphere I was expecting. But it's all downhill from there.

That supposedly "good and enthralling" story jumps between insects trying to take over the planet, battles between Aztec gods, an abandoned fairground and various other locations. Admittedly fairgrounds have spooky potential (nothing is scarier than clowns), but it's garish next to everything else, highlighting the inconsistency even more.

Leaving aside any problematic ideas here about what it means to be insane, the major issue is playing with different concepts of reality while making it very clear which parts are real and which are delusion. Throwing in the likes of aliens, comic book characters, and a goddamn giant squid boy will do that. When elements of reality creep in it tends to be obvious. I was hoping to be proven wrong: a twist at the end at least to make reality murky, perhaps, but it never happened.

Without that meaningful confusion what's left is a mess with no coherent vision. It's like a bunch of short adventure games strung together with a crude plot attempting to tack everything together. This isn't even B-grade material, which might not have surprised me except for some people's raving praise. I've played worse adventure games, mind, but there's really nothing special here. Sanitarium made me question my love of asylum games.
After my disappointment with Sanitarium I could at least find a more consistent asylum in Lylian Episode One: Paranoid Friendship. It's a side-scrolling platformer, featuring a girl beating things up with the untied arms of her straight jacket. It's not my best genre, and if it were I'd be complaining about uninspired combat, but it gets the atmosphere right. I gather episode two will be more puzzle-based, which would suit it much better.

Lylian fights her way through Hacklaster Hospital armed with her heavily starched sleeves and an over-active imagination. Exploring different versions of the world never feels wrong (or only in the way it should feel wrong). The creepy asylum and reality-shifting is quirky without degenerating into stupid. Lylian herself is disturbed enough to justify her odd reality.

In Lylian reality is suitably unknown. Lylian and the protagonist of Sanitarium both provide an imperfect viewpoint, but in Sanitarium's case our own sanity lets us see past his limitations. With Lylian we're stuck with her warped view of the world, and although we can assume a lot of what we're seeing isn't real it's impossible to determine what might have some basis in reality.

There might be conspiracies going on here, or just a whole lot of delusions. Episode one was too short to say too much more, but I will be looking out for future Lylian installments.

The hardest games to discuss are probably those that are good but not great. I recently finished Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and yeah, it was okay.

It's tempting to stop there, but 'meh' is a very inadequate reaction to a game with so much good in it. My lukewarm core reaction is honest but misleading.

There are definite high points to Enslaved, starting with the power dynamics between Trip and Monkey. Control swaps back and forth at various points, complicating the master-slave relationship. How happy they are in those roles also varies. Although Trip's vulnerability is over-emphasised at times, I still found it a relatively well-handled, deliciously ill-defined relationship.

I have a bit of a crush on Monkey actually, which has been weirding me out. As much as I love masculinity, this is not my usual reaction to another shirtless, ridiculously-muscular game hero. Am I really that easily manipulated, just by adding in a few moments of ambiguous tenderness?

Ambiguity is probably the key here, with enough character to latch onto, but still with quite a bit of wiggle room. Possibly, as my partner suggested, it's also that Monkey's strength isn't predominantly physical, despite what his physique might suggest.

Monkey is incredibly matter-of-fact about things. I get the feeling being enslaved is just the latest in a series of shitty situations and he's learnt to take them as they come. Sometimes it seems too unemotional, at other times I get it. I guess I'm also a bit of a sucker for held-back emotion - so much anticipation of the flood when the dam finally breaks.

All of this is quite valuable, I think. I want to see games with more nuanced character interaction like this. But it still wasn't enough to make me love the overall package.

Enslaved's other obvious selling point is the scenery, mostly traversing the overgrown ruins of New York. It's very green -- too consistently verdant and oversaturated for my believability-meter, but certainly very pretty.

The ruins are full of little details from the people who used to live and work there, and the landscape tells a story about what happened here.

One detail I wonder about, though: there are a few too many tattered American flags lying around, which probably should have disintegrated by now based on the level of decay of other things. I always find the level of patriotism in games and movies slightly bizarre. I'm not sure if that's just because I'm Australian - are there really that many flags lying around in the US?

Confusing flags aside, it's an interesting landscape, mixing nature, ruins and modern technology. But this is also where the game starts to fight against the player.

The environment invites exploration, and there are even shiny orbs to collect from poking around all the hidden corners. Not always a popular decision, but I happen to enjoy collecting things while I sniff about. Yeah, I know it's silly but I don't care.

The camera is the first barrier to following through on this exploration. It has very definite ideas about where it wants you to go. To be fair, there really is always a very specific way you're supposed to go, but I wanted to look around anyway. There are also fairly frequent points of no return, which cut off exploration options if you happen to select the correct path first try, or perhaps if you try to take out the enemies first and look around more thoroughly later. Sometimes it works out, but fighting first can be a risk.

The scenes tend to be far more restrictive than they look, and it doesn't take much to start banging up against the edges of the path. I longed for either more open exploration within a section, or clearer edges designating where I couldn't go. I understand not wanting to ruin the natural look, but it can be frustrating.

Games like Enslaved create a 3D space with its own rules. They don't function like the real world (e.g., if I could just push those leaves aside I could go another way), and different games set the boundaries in different ways. That means there's a learning process to go through before it starts feeling at all natural, and I guess this just wasn't my usual style. I felt cramped, within what superficially looked like huge and rambling surroundings.

(Tangent: Climbing around in Enslaved made me miss climbing around in the more open world of Assassin's Creed... plus, Altair could actually make mistakes and fall occasionally. Maybe it's time to reconsider my DRM-induced boycott of Assassin's Creed 2?)

Finally, if you explore too far in the wrong direction, the slave headband activates and Monkey dies. It feels quite arbitrary, with travelling a similar distance in a different direction being just fine.

So, I'm left with a game simultaneously encouraging me to explore, while restricting and sometimes even punishing me for it. That's rather cruel. I could pretend it's deliberate and clever -- that this variable balancing out of freedom and control is exactly what it feels like to be in Monkey's shoes. But honestly, it's just a bit awkward. Not game-breakingly awkward, but many little things add up to produce that good but not great vibe for me. The combat's also pretty shallow.

Enslaved isn't a complete waste of time or money, just a bit disappointing. Clearly some people love it, which is always nice. Possibly they didn't fight the game for control as much as I did, or at least they were less bothered by that.

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.

The thing about a new console is the sudden exposure to a bunch of new games (often just new to me, but never mind). So, I've been working on speed-reviews, for the fun of it.

In alphabetical order...

Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice (PS3 exclusive)

This is more my partner's interest than mine. I understand Disgaea games are valued for their stories, humour and playing with stereotypes (and the fact that the level cap is 9999). It's not my sort of humour, the stories don't interest me much, and the gameplay is unashamedly repetitive. That said, I am enjoying this more than previous Disgaea games, and turn-based can be good when my brain is tired. Also, there are War Slugs, so that wins points.

Eternal Sonata (also available on XBox 360)


I was attracted to this game purely on concept. The story takes place in a dream sequence that Chopin has on his death bed. It also includes interludes about Chopin's life, the first of which was about his relationship with George Sand, who seems a very interesting woman. Eternal Sonata is a very pretty game, in an anime, non-realistic way. And the music is of course very beautiful. The people and places are all named after musical terms. Beyond that it's probably a fairly standard JRPG, but I'm enjoying it despite the fact that they usually drive me a bit mad (mostly due to linearity and annoying repetitive special attacks).

flOw (Also available on PSP, or as a Flash game here, at least for a couple of creatures)


flOw is a simple game, but it works. I think it's probably much easier to control in the flash version than using SIXAXIS, but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun. You are an aquatic micro-organism, and your goal is simply to eat, grow and evolve. It can be quite relaxing to float around "om nom nom"ing away. Though some of the creatures you encounter also include some challenge - things that run away quickly, or fight back etc. It's the sort of game you can either play aggressively and try to reach your goal, or just sit back and enjoy a sort of interactive screen saver. There is no actual death of your organism possible and trickier things can usually be skipped.

Flower (PS3 download exclusive)


I'm a little bit in love with this game, though there is a bit of debate about whether it is actually a game, or perhaps more of a technical demonstration. It probably has to be experienced - screen shots and descriptions don't do it proper justice. Flower is something of a successor to flOw, though you are now a breath of wind in a 3D landscape. Your aim is to pick up flower petals, and you will gradually build up a long trail of them. I think of it a bit like being a nature spirit tasked with making flowers open, though I doubt that was the intention. There is a potential for using this as a relaxation game, and happily whooshing about the landscape. It also takes some interesting turns, but I don't want to spoil it.

Folklore (PS3 exclusive)


This is probably the PS3 game I was most enthusiastic to track down, and was glad I did. In order to solve the mysteries in a small, Irish town it is necessary to travel to the netherworld and recover the memories of the dead. Different realms are based on concepts of the afterlife: the pleasurable faerie realm; a war zone created by modern people who experienced a violent death; the Endless Corridor representing the concept that nothing exists after death; and so on. Combat occurs by capturing, training, and controlling "Folks" (the creatures of these realms). It takes a bit of getting used to, but it works (arguably training folks gets a bit tedious, though I personally enjoy this sort of thing). Using SIXAXIS to suck the souls out of creatures is fun and appropriate, if sometimes hard work.

LittleBigPlanet (PS3 exclusive)


Cute, fun and has a great soundtrack. Things are made even cooler by Stephen Fry's narration. I also appreciate games with good co-op mode. LittleBigPlanet is also surprisingly challenging in places - cute does not equal easy. I found the level creator a bit cumbersome, but the scope of potential creations is huge. You could have a lot of fun with this as an engineering-geek.

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift (PS3 exclusive)


I don't play racing games often, and probably never would have gone near this if I didn't get it for free. But, occasionally I do enjoy racing around and I guess this is my current-generation replacement for Powerslide. I like my racing games to be fairly unrealistic, and this fits by allowing me to tear through jungles, fall into lava and so on. It has a fun range of vehicles, from big trucks through to motorbikes. And each track has multiple pathways, with the best option varying for the different vehicles. I can't comment on how it compares to any other current racing game, but it's a bit of fun.

Noby Noby Boy (PS3 download exclusive)


It's a $AU7 download, so I would have had to really hate this to feel ripped off. It is extremely strange though. Even stranger than I expected. There is no real goal - just stretch and eat things. It's kind of cute, but again in a very strange way. I'm not sure what more I can say really. I do appreciate the idea of playing around with less goal-orientated games though. It is probably another thing that is better to just play instead of trying to explain it.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3 exclusive)


I am actually a terrible person to review this. Every now and then I get the urge to buy a game with a lot of shooting or other action in it, even though I know my skills in this area are probably not going to be up to the task. That said, so far I'm getting by. After fighting with camera-angles in Tomb Raider that tempt you to risk leaps-of-death this is a rather nice change. And the scenery is pretty. I would probably prefer something with more puzzles and less action, though.

Valkyria Chronicles (PS3 exclusive)


Mixing genres sometimes results in a horrible mess, but I think this successfully pulls off a combination of RPG, RTS and FPS. All of the potential troops have personality. This necessarily means some of them are annoying, but I'll still take that over commanding a bunch of anonymous mooks. The strategy is interesting and the challenge level is good. The setting feels a bit ridiculous (JRPG issues surfacing again), but once you overlook that and run with it it's well worth it.