Horizon: Zero Dawn

Afternoon. Have you lost weight? No? Maybe you're just wearing a larger hat than usual?

Whatever it is I'm glad to see you, and here are some words about computer games to prove it.

I spent my Summer playing just one game. And a Triple-A game at that. Not for me the varied, peculiar pleasures of the indie market. No. I was all about the big, expensive, colourful joy of the mainstream video game, and it was glorious. That game was Horizon Zero Dawn.

I wasn't necessarily expecting to like Horizon Zero Dawn (do people call it HZD? That sound like the sort of thing cool people do. Let's do it. It will save time if nothing else. Are we still in brackets? Oops - yes, yes we are. Quick - act natural and no-one will notice).

Anyway. Wasn't expecting to like HZD that much. It was clearly expensive and massive. You can tell just by looking at the screengrabs. That kind of beautiful light and texture doesn't grow on trees, you know. It takes hundreds of people thousands of hours to make, and those people need feeding.

And the advertising was everywhere. That's another way you can tell when a game is expensive - it gets big, show-off adverts all over the place. I think I first became aware of the game from a gorgeous looking advert at the cinema. I have a feeling it was on before Suicide Squad, and it was definitely the best thing about that particular visit to the movies.

Now! Suicide Squad. There we have an example of exactly the reason that I approach games like HZD with trepidation. A big, blockbuster film, full of Hollywood stars and amazing special effects, and promoted absolutely everywhere as if it was the most important thing to ever happen to anyone ever.

And what a terrible, awful mess of a film. Gnnnn! It still makes me angry to think about the thing. All that talent - all those designers, actors, effects wranglers and craftspeople - all those professionals working so hard for so long and spending so much money. And for what? For a film that felt very much like being urinated upon by a giggling, idiot child for two depressing, awful hours.

And there's something about the mainstream experience, isn't there,  that tends to go hand in hand with a bland, depressing load of rubbish? Because the more money a company spends on a thing, the more money that thing needs to make in return. And the more money it needs to make back, the less adventurous it is. Timid, idiot studio executives will shy away from genuine creativity in favour of some vague idea of 'what people want'. And since no-one knows what people want, the end results are half baked, misjudged and - worst of all - cowardly.

Suicide Squad is an awful confection of badly conceived 'moments' - snatches of music, flashy edits, quips, costumes and characters all designed to fit a market tested idea of 'rebellious' and 'cool'. Nothing in it works because it has no identity at all. It is a product designed for one thing - to be sold, and to sell other, related things.

Watching the trailer for Horizon Zero Dawn, I suspected I would be in for a very similar experience.  A game priding itself on how amazing the graphics look, showing off fast moving, action-filled gameplay to appeal to the average console owner. A typical 'chosen one' quest, like every other quest in the world of games. And a big bunch of concepts familiar from other big franchises - crafting, levelling up, open world adventure etc.

As you've probably gathered, though, I liked HZD a lot more that I thought I would. The basic concept is genius - "What if you had to hunt robot dinosaurs with a variety of futuristic arrows?" - and the game has the good sense to stick closely to this premise in its core play mechanics. Play develops these mechanics in satisfying, clever directions, but never leaves behind the basic thrill of stalking the robot dinosaurs and planning their demise.

The world is believable and well constructed. There's a pretty good plot which is, for the most part, well articulated through the environment and some nicely drawn supporting characters. Sometimes it lets itself down by giving you huge info-dumps, but these moments are tolerable among all the exciting running about shooting slow motion arrows at giant terrifying - and I never get bored of typing this - ROBOT DINOSAURS.

This is a mainstream game which somehow manages to be an absolute work of art. I loved how it provided opportunities for strategy, arming the player with a bewildering combination of cool and interesting toys and letting them discover the myriad ways in which the toys could be used against the monsters. The dinosaurs themselves are beautiful creatures - varied in their temperaments and attack styles, demanding careful thought about how best to approach them. Good AI too - these things felt alive, and taking them down was immensely satisfying.

I loved being in the world. Prettiness is no guarantee of quality, but sometimes it can be a virtue all by itself. I once spent 15 minutes watching my character sit on a mountain, waiting for the sun to come up over the desert range below. When it did, I watched with joy as crimson light spread across the land.

Saying that a game is 'better than Suicide Squad' is not much of a recommendation, but there's something very pleasing about seeing a huge, expensive mainstream product which really gets it right. HZD is a beautifully crafted experience, made by people who really love the genre and it made me very happy for quite a long time.

Fragments of Him

I recently played a couple of hours of the 2016 game Fragments of Him. Well, I say 'played'. I'm not sure that's the right word. I sat at my PC and prodded my mouse every now and then, and things happened on the screen in response. If that's playing, then that's what I did. But that could also describe updating my accounts in Microsoft Excel, so I'm not so sure.

Fragments of Him is one of those arty, story kind of games that I theoretically love. I like the idea that games are growing beyond simple definitions and opening up new worlds of experience for those playing. I like that these games are challenging the very notions of 'play' and 'game' and forging new paths. It's interesting and it's clever. One day we'll probably look back and see these games as the first stumbling steps along vital new paths.

So. I theoretically love it. But it's also true to say that I theoretically hate it and think it's stupid and was bored out of my mind.

Here's how the game works. You are in a 3D environment. A kitchen, maybe. A college dorm. The street. You can move around this place, like a slow moving ghost. Sometimes you can see your character, who stands, frozen in time. If you click on your character, they fade out of existence and reappear a little further along their path. You can sometimes click on objects too. Each click pushes the story on a little further, but it's not a story you can in any way control. You are not there. You are merely observing things that happened.

Do you want to click on the chair? Or the sofa? Thrill to the interactive power.

The voices of the characters come out of nowhere, narrating this story, as if remembering it. I think the idea is that a bunch of people are remembering the life of the main guy - the 'Him' of the title. And you are seeing these memories. It's basically a story that you can wander around in. Occasionally you can click on a thing - like a cup - and it will disappear. This is extent of the thrills the game has to offer.

It's a good story, though. It's about grief, and loss, and about the way we remember people once they die. That's a noble aspiration for a game and I can see why they didn't try to make it a first person shooter. Fun as shooting games are, they don't really lend themselves to an examination of the complexities of  the grieving process. Anyone remember this, from Call of Duty?

Yeah... thanks, Call of Duty. Incredibly moving.

I found the stories in Fragments of Him believable and sad. They explore emotions and situations that don't often find expression in games. And there is something quite hypnotic and beautiful about the stillness of the scenes. The aesthetic works with the theme and creates a definite mood, which I'm guessing is the intention.

But as a game, it is boring. There is literally nothing to do. Clicking on things triggers the next bit of the story, and that's it. That's not good enough, in my eyes. I admire the ambition to take games beyond basic themes of conflict and conquest. But I wonder - where is the ambition to find game play to match these concepts?

Why does a move away from basic emotions also mean a move away from game mechanics? Are the two so inextricably linked? If the Devil has all the best tunes, does it also hold that FPS games have all the best mechanics?

I don't think so. I think there must be mechanics that would articulate a more subtle, nuanced side of the human experience. Things that address complexity without sacrificing 'play'. Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest is an interesting example of how to express depressive behaviour through a simple mechanic. Check it out - it's free, here. But there's a long way to go. 

Speaking of depression...

One little side note, before I go. As I was playing Fragments... I was also dipping in and out of Assassins's Creed: Black Flag. Readers of my last blog may remember that I wasn't getting on with the game very well, and was calling it all manner of names. 

Well. I have only become more angry. Having played Fragments of Him one afternoon, I moved onto the console to cheer myself up. "This will be better," I thought, "I'll blow some ships out of the water." For all its faults, Black Flag does offer some very gratifying ship-to-ship combat. A perfect, kinetic antidote to all the stillness and grief.

But it was not to be. I hit one of those points in the game where you are suddenly not a pirate any more. You are a regular guy, in an office, in the future. And so I had to endure a long period of gameplay where I shuffled around office carpets, heading for little glowing beacons as the game dictated. I don't know why. There was a voice burbling away in my ear, explaining some kind of plot. But I was angry that I wasn't being a pirate, so I ignored it. Stupid voice.

It didn't matter, as it turned out. All I had to do was shuffle from point to point. Once I reached the glowy marker, some tedious dialogue happened. I didn't listen to it, and it didn't matter.  When the dialogue finished, another marker appeared, somewhere else, for me to get to. 

I realised that this was no different from what I'd been doing in Fragments of Him. OK, the graphics were loads better, and I was actually moving my character about. But the essential 'play' was identical. I was following a series of prompts,with no freedom to deviate, so that their story could play out. And it wasn't even a good story this time.

I'm not sure what the moral of this is. There probably isn't one. But games need to sort their act out with this sort of thing. I'm here to play. I'm all for you trying to tell a story. But you better start working out how to make that story something I can do, rather than something I have to endure.

Assassin's Creed: Black Flag

I am, at the time of writing, 13% of the way through Assassin's Creed, Black Flag - Ubisoft's 2013 game where you run around being a pirate and doing pirate stuff. I know I'm 13% through, because the game tells me, on the loading screen. 13%.  I like that. I'm the kind of person who always wants to know the running time of a film, or how many pages there are until the next chapter of the book I'm reading. I don't know why, but I find it comforting to have a sense of where I am in relation to the end.

13% isn't very much, though, is it? I feel like I've been playing for ages. I'd like to be a bit further of the way through by now. Which kind of suggests that I'm not enjoying myself all that much, doesn't it? When I was playing Dishonoured 2, I was sad at the thought that the game would ever end, because I was having such a good time. With Black Flag, I'll be kind of relieved to have finished. It's the kind of game I want to have played, rather than one I want to actually be playing.

It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. 

Actually, that's not fair. I am having fun. It's a sunny, colourful game with lots of nice little features and a satisfying level of bloodlust. I've just played for a good three hours and I was happily engaged all the way through. It's just that there's something missing and I'm not sure what it is.

It's possible that there's just too much going on. So, for example, I'm really enjoying the ship to ship combat. I get to be in charge of a pirate ship, sailing through excitingly real-feeling waves, blasting away at other ships. It's very well put together, in terms of gameplay. The waves swell up and plunge down, spray smashing over my ship as I try to haul it around so we can fire more cannons at the other ships. There's a satisfying weight to the controls as I wrestle against the ocean, and there's immense satisfaction in seeing my cannonballs smash into an enemy vessel.

But that's just part of the game. I've also got to do missions on foot, where I creep about trying to murder people. That's the "assassin" bit, from the title, I guess. Though what my "creed" is, I'm not sure. I seem to assassinate people pretty indiscriminately. Plenty of guards who are, presumably, just doing their jobs, die horribly as I pounce out of a haystack and murder them to death. I'm not sure that's a 'creed'.

This guy probably has a family. Now he'll have to explain to them where his knees went.

So, there's two very distinct modes of gameplay. Which is OK, I guess - they seem to be part of the same world and there's a visual continuity between them. But it does feel a bit like two different games. And then there's all the other millions of things you need to do. Following guys sneakily. Chasing after guys, noisily. Climbing things. Searching for treasure. None of these things are terrible, but they do sort of dilute the gameplay and make me wonder what I'm actually doing. There's one bit of gameplay where you have to hunt animals and use their skin to craft new items. Am I an animal assassin, as well, then? What's your focus? Although, it must be said, I do take some pleasure from the achievement you can get, with the truly amazing name "air assassinate an ocelot". It's fun to say out loud. Try it.

The very worst thing - which thankfully has only happened once so far - is the bit where the game suddenly flips away from the pirate scenario and dumps you in an office. That's right - an office. Suddenly it turns out that I'm not a pirate. I'm a guy in an office, doing a simulation of being a pirate. A woman comes up to me and takes me on a tour of the office, explaining how I'm excellent at doing pirate simulation stuff. I mean... what?

At one point we get to a lift and she says, I kid you not, "Why don't you call for the lift yourself?" Well whoopy doo! A moment ago I was a Pirate Assassin, controlling a big beautiful ship through tropical waters. Now I'm being given the chance to press a button so a lift comes? Are you out of your minds?

"No, no, you're right - this is just as much fun as sailing a pirate ship in the sunshine."

I'm aware that most, if not all, of the Assassin's Creed games have this central conceit where you are just a guy in the future, interacting with a machine that lets you pretend to be in the past. Who on earth thought this was a good idea? I'm already a guy in the future, using a machine to pretend I'm in the past. That's my actual life. I don't need you to remind me! It strikes me as weirdly timid, as if the game is ashamed to admit that really we're just all being very silly and playing games like children.

So. My initial experience of this game is that there's lots of fun things to do, but not enough commitment to the idea of a pure game experience. It seems to have trouble settling in one place. Having just played through Dishonoured 2 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, both of which I loved, I feel let down by a game that should be so much more. When it's good, it's great. A moment sailing at night, with the moon reflected in the gently undulating waves beneath me, was truly beautiful. There's brilliance here, let down by a lack of courage.

But hey. Maybe it all kicks in after 22%, or something.

The Walking Dead: Season One

I have finally finished playing through Season One of Telltale's excellent 'Walking Dead' series. It's taken ages.

I started playing it on PC, but I found the control interface really fiddly and irritating. Also, it had a bug where the woman I saved in Episode One was suddenly mysteriously dead in Episode Two. "You saved this other guy!" claimed the game, confidently yet incorrectly. "No I didn't!" I growled. I had liked the woman. She had nice hair. The guy was a jerk. I had deliberately let him die.

So I stopped playing the PC version, which I like to think taught it an important lesson in respecting my choices as an individual.

See? She's got much nicer hair than him. Die, Doug! Die!

Because choice is what this series is all about. Every now and then the game will thrust a dilemma in your path and you have to choose what to do, usually against a ticking clock. It's not always about life or death choices. Sometimes it's about being diplomatic or aggressive. Revealing truths or playing cards close to your chest. Siding with one person or another.

It's a good mechanic and it works well in the world of the game. Which is, of course, the post-apocalypse, zombies-everywhere, oh-no-arg-help-I'm-being-eaten world of The Walking Dead. It's a world created in comic book form by writer Robert Kirkman in 2003 which has found incredible success on television and now in a series of also-pretty-impressive video games.

The premise of the world is simple but elegant. Zombies happen. Civilisation collapses. People try to survive and, in doing so, establish various forms of community. Stripped of the civilising influence of law and social convention, people reveal themselves to be selfish, cruel and easily corrupted. Or sometimes heroic. That's where we come in, making our choices.

This isn't a new idea, of course. The idea of zombies destroying society goes back to the 1960s, with George Romero's Night of the Living Dead,  and has found many iterations since. But the genius of Kirkman's take on the zombie genre is that he sticks around for a long time after the initial breakout. He's interested in the long term consequences. What power structures will humans form? What does it mean to be a leader? Who do we become when the lights are off for more than a few days?

I started the game again on my X-Box 360, a couple of years ago. I was much happier with the controls and romped through the first couple of chapters. It was a great experience. I'm not sure how much actual control I had over events, but I sure felt responsible. People died in front of me, quite a lot of the time. And every time, I felt guilty. There must have been another way.

The truth is, there probably wasn't anything I could have done. The game is sneaky like that. The choices it offers don't meaningfully affect the flow of the overall story. They can't, really. The narrative would branch off in too many directions for any game to keep track of. And a well told story needs shape and structure. You can't completely abandon that and let the player decide. Players are idiots. They'd just sit around eating crisps. That's not a story.

But the choice is important for a different reason. When we make choices, we feel attached to the outcome, in a way that we wouldn't if things just happened beyond our control. There's a psychological investment in the way a story unfolds, once we believe ourselves to be responsible for that unfolding. It's clever, and it works.

Anyway. Before I could get onto chapter three, I got a PS4 and I'm afraid the poor old X-Box 360 went from being an awesome game machine I worshipped to being a heap of white junk that I hated. I'm fickle like that.

And I kept thinking, "Oh, I should really play the rest of that game." And I'd stare at the 360, gathering dust under a shelf, and it would stare back at me full of bitterness and resentment. And the desire to finish the game would collapse against the - much stronger - desire to not have to plug it all it again and get dust in my face.

But then, to my delight, just before Christmas, the game was really cheap on the PS4. And so I bought it - yet again - and played through the first two chapters - yet again. And then I kept going and I kept going and finally, finally, finished the thing.

It's very good.

He's cutting her hair. Not stabbing her in the head with scissors. Just to be clear.

The characters are well drawn, thanks to an excellent script and strong vocal performances from the cast. It looks great - keeping to the aesthetic of the comic books, with extra points for how gross the zombies look. The plot is inventive and keeps moving along, using the restrictions of the game format to its advantage. Each chapter focuses on a couple of locations and gives the player chance to explore them, developing characters and narrative through a series of exciting game events. The changes in pace and location keeps things fresh, while the story develops believably towards a strong, moving climax.

I have a few criticisms. Firstly, the illusion of choice, though sometimes done well, is often tedious and transparent. Progress through a level tends to depend on the player jumping through a series of hoops - go here, pick up the thing, go there, put the thing in the place, go there, tell the person that you put the thing in the place.

There's little room for spontaneity and improvisation and it often feels like you're just doing stuff just so that the game can pat you on the head and say, "See? You did all that stuff! You certainly are demonstrating your ability to make meaningful choices!" But there wasn't any choice, really. The game was just waiting for you to go through the right sequence of things so it could unlock the next bit.

There's also an attempt to add world detail which can be quite frustrating. There are lots of cupboards to open, bits of junk to pick up, doors to open etc. Once in a while these will yield something of interest. But if they don't, your character's internal voice appears to mock you. "I don't have time for that!" he'll snort, as if you are a complete idiot for even thinking of opening a drawer.

"If you're going to be so precious about it, why put the option there?" I shouted, on more than one occasion.

Overall, though, the game is a beautiful and engaging thing and I'm glad I got round to finishing Season One. There's real emotion in the relationships between the characters and a sense of profound loss when they fall into a horde of the undead, never to be seen again.

There are a whole bunch more Telltale games, a few of which are also based on The Walking Dead. I have started Season Two, but - true to form - I've become distracted by Dishonored 2. Maybe I'll get round to it by the next console generation.

In the meantime. If you haven't played this excellent game, I massively recommend it. A major step forward in narrative game design.

Doom: 2016

I've just finished playing Doom. I won by shooting a big spidery demon thing a lot of times and then, when it was looking very sad from all the shooting, I ripped it's head in half, stuck a massive gun inside it, and blew it up.

It has been a thrilling, if not exactly intellectual adventure.


Happiness is...

I've really enjoyed Doom, but for the life of me I can't tell you exactly why. All the time I've been playing, whether leaping about futuristic research labs or traversing the plains of Hell, my brain has been split into two distinct sections. One was asking, "Why is this so good? What is it that's drawing me in here?" The other half was shouting, "Ha ha ha! Whoooo! Kill! Shoot! Kaboom!"

At it's heart, this is an incredibly simple game. You wander through horrific sci-fi environments, looking for the way out. Wave after wave of increasingly hideous demons materialise around you, all hell bent on eating your face. You shoot at these demons with a variety of exciting guns. They explode in a pleasing fashion. Sometimes a demon will glow orange, which means you can run up to it and perform a 'glory kill' - an incredibly gross melee attack which usually involves ripping its face off and sticking it up its bum.

It's not the sort of thing I tend to love. Pure shooters often leave me cold. I've tried to play Call of Duty a number of times, and every time I've given up after about an hour, shouting insults at the stupid, boring, tedious nonsense that it has the nerve to call 'gameplay'.

So, what's Doom's thing? Here's are some thoughts.

Cool Economies

Part of the pleasure of games, for me, is levelling up. I love it when a game gives me perks, and I am pathetically grateful. Doom has a number of upgrade systems and they're all really satisfying.

The most basic thing is the number of guns you can get. As you progress through the levels, the game offers up a number of enjoyable weapons for you to play with. Pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, rocket launcher and so on. 

Each weapon is brilliantly designed to have a different impact on the creatures you face. There's a palpable difference in the way they handle, the projectiles they spew out and the effect they have on the evil pillocks that keep trying to get in your face. It's a joy switching between them and experimenting with their offensive capabilities.

Then there's weapon upgrades - cool secondary abilities that you can unlock like stun rays, exploding bullets and some kind of weapon lock thing that is probably great if you can get the bloody thing to work. I could not. Unless it's function was to help me shoot myself in the face, in which case yes, I could. 

Upgrades can be bought with points, gained from all the demons you blow to bits, with extra special powers only available once you complete very specific challenges, like "Shoot twenty Skum Demons in the face while reciting all the episodes of Blake's 7 in order." Or something.

And you can upgrade your suit, so it has special abilities, and your health, and your armour, and... ooh, all sorts. Lots of cool new toys to unlock and play with. It has the effect of lending real variety to the killing, and driving you to try out differing play-styles to complete the challenges.

Fiero

Happiness in a game comes through the feeling that you are having an effect on the world you are in. Players desire agency and a good game spends a lot of time making sure that's how things feel. In game design terms, that's called 'fiero'. Which is appropriate for this game, given how many things you set on fire. 

Fighting off a wave of demons is hard. There are loads of them, attacking all at once, and in different ways. Some shoot fireballs. Some leap at you, claws at the ready. Some are already on fire, and want you to be on fire too. 

Tackling these unsociable gits requires a player to perform a number of tasks at once. Keep moving, to avoid the billions of things flying at you. Jump, spring and duck, making use of every platform, tunnel and ledge. Grab all the powerups and ammunition dumps, at the right times. Trigger special abilities and manage their cooldown periods. 

And most of all, of course, shoot. Shoot these horrible, ugly creatures as many times as you can, switching between all your cool weapons to hit the right ones with the right ammunition. Trigger their weaknesses and pounce in for glory kills, ripping their stupid heads off their hideous bodies. Watch as health points and ammunition cascade from their dying torso, just in time to replenish you for the continuing battle. Now, quickly, move!

When you get it wrong, it's frustrating. But you know, even as you lay burning to death on the ground, that you're going to press X and go again. Because this time you've worked out what you should have done.

And when you get it right, the adrenalin rush is glorious. You know you deserve this victory. You did dozens of cool, exciting things and came close to death oh so many times. But you made it. Yeah!

Verbs

There's a pretty good book by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark called 'A Game Design Vocabulary'. In it they identify a practice which makes for excellent game design - identifying the verbs of a game. 

Every game is about doing something. That's why it's a game. More or less. A good designer, say Anthropy and Clark, works out what the player is doing, and ties all the gameplay to that thing. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But since I came across this idea, I've realised how many games fail to do it.

I complained a little while ago about the irritating experience I had playing Beyond: Two Souls. There was a game which simply could not define its verbs. Every level had dozens of different things for me to do. Sometimes those things were crucial parts of the gameplay. Sometimes they were mysteriously forbidden. Rarely did they work in combination. As a result the game was a load of tedious nonsense and I spent the last few hours of gameplay calling it a fickle tosser.

No such issues with Doom. In Doom, your verb is 'shoot'. If a thing is moving, shoot it. There is complexity within the verb, oh yes. The aforementioned variety of weapons to shoot with and the interesting range of firing modes open up loads of exciting combinations of gunplay. But the verb remains the same. Shoot those things in the face!

You can also hit them, if you want. The same simplicity applies. The same key press lets you interact with anything - usually by hitting it. Doors, control panels, things you want to pick up, things you want to die - all the same verb. 

And, apart from jumping and basic movement, that's your lot. A brilliant and elegant control system which means that whenever you're playing Doom, you are performing the most basic of actions, leaving your brain free to combine those actions in fluid and beautiful ways. Thus you can focus, thus you are engaged. Thus you enter a state of flow, where you very thoughts seem to translate into action without any intermediary stage. 

In Conclusion

Doom is so good it's hard to see why it's good. Like anything done with skill, it looks simple and it looks easy. There don't appear to be any cracks to show where it was glued together. No way in. It just is. A gorgeous piece of design, both primal and sophisticated. Not easy to make, I imagine. But a joy to play.

Put simply, I liked it. I thought it was good.